Page 10 of Outcast

My pulse pounded in my ears, drowning out the sounds of forks and knives clinking on porcelain. “Who posted news about my dad?”

“Lots of people.” She tapped her smartphone and scrolled down. “Take a look for yourself.”

Several people, most names I didn’t even recognize, had uploaded news reports about Mom. She was a popular model in the late nineties who left the profession when she married an up-and-coming Danish photographer and had me. They’d even posted a bunch of crap about Dad’s drug problems, trips to rehab, and Mom finally leaving him when I was five. He was mostly clean now, with a small family, but people liked to focus on the negative.

I tore my gaze away. “Doesn’t anyone have better things to do around here?”

Wendy mixed the shepherd’s pie into mush and pointed the prongs of her messy fork in my face. “You’re the biggest news we’ve had since the start of term.”

“How nice for me,” I muttered.

“Do tell.” Her gray eyes darkened with malice. “Why would your mother marry a fat, balding billionaire when she could have your handsome-beyond-belief father?”

I set down my silverware and rose out of my seat. “Apparently, you just looked at the pictures and came to your own conclusions.”

Wendy stood and waved me away. “You might as well stay. I’m going to sit with friends.”

She sashayed to the head table, where Edward, Blake, and Henry sat like they were a triumvirate of kings overseeing their court. Blake inclined his head, with an expression that said he acknowledged my interest in him, and if I was lucky, he’d grant me a night of satisfaction. I ground my teeth and scowled. To his right sat Charlotte, who smirked as though she was about to glean whatever I’d shared with Wendy. I forced my lips into a smirk. Too bad the creepy girl had been unsubtle with her line of questioning and didn’t collect anything she hadn’t already found on the Mercia-Net. From now on, I’d be careful answering any personal questions.

“Wait,” I said.

Wendy turned around, gray eyes alight with excitement, and a smirk dancing on her lips. “Yes?”

“Where’s Rita Yelverton?”

Her face split into the widest grin I’d seen outside of a crocodile. “She lacks the social graces to eat with the rest of the house. But I’m sure you’ll find her scurrying about behind the skirting boards, looking for cheese.”

I shook my head. From what I’d gleaned, Rita had been bullied and now stayed away from the rest of the school. The more these snobs dropped nasty hints about her, the more I liked the girl. She seemed to be the only decent person I’d be likely to meet in Elder House.

After lunch was compulsory Latin, taught by Mr. Frost, a red-haired man who didn’t look much older than us. The lesson mostly centered on him focusing his attention on the triumvirate and ignoring the rest of the class, who worked from a textbook. At one stage, Edward whispered something to him that made the teacher’s head snap up.

He fixed me with a leer, strode to the blackboard and wrote a three letter word in capitals. “Miss Hobson, conjugate the verb sum.”

I raised a shoulder. There was a phrase we’d learned at Park Prep, cogito ergo sum, but I wouldn’t admit that I knew it and give him any ammunition to use against me. It was clear that Edward had told him to catch me out. “We didn’t study Latin in my old school, sir.”

“All right.” He rocked back on his heels, holding the ends of his academic robes, and smirked. “Try an easier verb: amare.”

“The interesting thing about schools that don’t teach Latin is that they don’t. Teach. Latin,” I said, channeling Noelle’s Professor Snape impression.

Muffled laughter bubbled up from around the room.

His face turned red. “That’s five demerits for rudeness!”

I raised a brow. It wasn’t like they could cash in a demerit for a caning. He could give me a hundred, and I wouldn’t care. I glared at Edward, who glared back, eyes blazing with animosity. Did he really think I was pathetic enough to catch the next plane crying because an ass-kissing teacher unfairly called me out in class? He’d have to try a lot harder to make me leave.

The next class was Spanish, where the only person I recognized was Henry, the blond who couldn’t stop staring with those emerald-green eyes. A-level Spanish was more of a literature class than a language class, and the teacher discussed a book, Maria, by Jorge Isaac, in rapid Spanish. Although I struggled with his accent, it was harder to ignore the way Henry continued to gape at me, even when the teacher asked him a question. The way he smiled and didn’t answer made me wonder if he was a dumb jock. He certainly had the physique of one.

I dipped my head, scribbled down notes, and focused on the lesson. Henry might well have the kind of body that made me wish I owned X-ray spectacles and had eight arms to roam over his expanse of taut muscles, but I wouldn’t let him distract me from one of the few subjects I had a chance of passing.

After classes, a group of girls stepped into my path and asked if Mom had really screwed Rudolph Trommel to get me a place at Mercer Academy. I rolled my eyes and told them they were giving their educational institution too much credit. It was more likely someone would screw a multi-millionaire to be sent somewhere else. I stormed through the hallways, making snappy comebacks at whoever called me a trollop or suggested that Mom was a whore for achieving what all these bitchy types were probably sent here to do: marry up.

I reached Elder House, where the insults came thick and fast. By the time the twentieth person hissed the word trollop as I passed, my blood had reached boiling point, and I was ready to snap. I stormed through the first-floor hallway, heart pumping venom and mouth crammed with a barrage of insults I would spew at the next person who dared to call me a name.

I flung the door to my room open, startling a short girl with huge eyes such a deep brown, they appeared black. Her dark brown hair was tied back from her face and formed a luxurious braid that stretched down to her waist. She wore a headband the same shade of burgundy as her blazer, and held a plate of sandwiches covered in saran wrap.

“Who the fuck are you?” I snapped.

The girl shrank into the wall of jazz posters and clutched her plate to her chest. “R-Rita. Rita Yelverton.”