He releases me and takes off before I can even figure out how to respond to any of that.
My heart feels both full and disturbingly empty, all at the same time. The lack of Parrish’s presence is a gaping wound that seems to bleed more freely with each passing day. How can things have gone on this long?
I feel like such a failure.
What sort of Gamer Girl am I if I can’t even beat the first level?
With a curse, I take off for the school, pausing at the edge of the upper courtyard. Everyone there turns to look at me, and none of them are happy to see me.
I lift my chin up and strut past them as best as I can, ignoring the small bits of rolled up paper they throw at me, laughing and whispering and smiling pretty shark smiles. My entire world feels like it’s been flipped on its head, and I’m struggling to stay upright.
A girl I don’t recognize puts her leg out and trips me, laughing as I fall to my knees on the white stone, my broken fingers hitting the ground so hard that pain ripples through me in a violent wave. Before I know it, they’re all around me, hauling me to my feet and dragging me over to the edge of the walkway.
My heart shoots into my throat as several of the girls take my arms and wrench them behind my back with no regard to the splints on my hand or the bruises peppering my body. Before I can even register what it is they’re planning on doing, I’m hanging over the wall that lines the walkway, staring down at the pretty green lawn below.
“Rumor has it that you fucked Parrish the night before he went missing,” one of the girls hisses in my ear. “There isn’t a person on this campus that doesn’t believe you had something to do with his disappearance.”
“You want us to help you catch a serial killer?” one of the others asks, mocking my video with a laugh as I try and fail to remain calm. They’re just trying to scare me; they wouldn’t actually throw me over. I might not survive. That’d be murder. “How do we know you aren’t one? The Slayer started killing right before you showed up here.”
“There are cameras all over out here,” I breathe, closing my eyes against the dizzying drop below me. “If you push me over, you’ll be charged with the crime. Why bother? I’m not worth it.”
The girls around me laugh. I notice they’re the ones taking the initiative. The guys are just standing back and watching. This is clearly on Lumen’s behest. The school seems to run on a binary: Lumen controls the girls; Parrish controls the boys.
Or … he did.
But he isn’t here.
And Chasm … wasn’t Chasm just ahead of me? I know him. He might have agreed to give me space, but he wouldn’t go far. He wouldn’t intentionally leave me like this; he’d step in.
My feet leave the ground, and I end up kneeling on the edge of the wall as the girls release me and step back. I very slowly, very carefully turn around, intending on hopping off into the courtyard.
“You know about your dad, right?” one of the girls asks, pressing in close to me. They’re not letting me off this wall, and I’m not about to start a fight. I might end up accidentally falling over.
“I really don’t know anything about him at all,” I admit, wondering where this is going as my eyes scan the crowd of students around me, all of them dressed in their preppy Whitehall uniforms and horrible, glittering smiles. They are all fucking smiling at me.
This whole town is insane.
“He beat your mother and cheated on her,” one of the girls says. I recognize her red hair and lightly freckled face; she’s definitely one of Lumen’s nameless groupies. “He embezzled money from his startup, stole research from his partners, and got chased out of town. He’s a fucking disgrace, and so are you.” The girl nods her chin at me. “Stand up.”
My mind is reeling with her words—whether they’re lies or not, I don’t know—but mostly I’m trying to understand the last part of what she just said.
“Stand up?” I repeat, feeling adrenaline spike through me. “Are you insane? Class is starting. Just leave me alone before you end up doing something that you’ll regret later.”
“Who says I’ll regret this?” the redhead asks as the others stand around and watch, a sea of black blazers, pleated skirts, and finely pressed slacks. “You’re the child of a liar and a thief, the most disgraced man to ever step foot in Medina. Your mother is lucky trailer trash, a shitty writer who pays for reviews, who got people to read her books because they felt sorry for her. You show up here and Parrish goes missing? A Vanguard, of all people. You should be ashamed of yourself.”
