Page 1 of Hateful
Chapter One
“Alex! Dinner!”
I sit up groggily and push the sleep out of my eyes, glancing down at my bed. My sheets are tangled around my unshaven legs. I’m in my own bedroom at home in Ohio, I realize with a start.
And at least it’s a start. I’m so used to waking up thousands of miles away in my dorm room at Bleakwood that for a moment there, I’d forgotten where I was.
Bleakwood is a prestigious boarding school for gifted kids in Switzerland. Or, at the very least, that’s what it’ssupposedto be. It wasn’t very long after I arrived that I realized Bleakwood isn’t exactly what I thought.
It’s less of an institution for higher learning and more of a social club for the children of the world’s elite. I’m the first kid to ever go there on a scholarship, and it shows. Sometimes it seems as if my peers have only everheardof people who don’t actually own their own private jets.
So, in a way, I became an immediate novelty. And not in a good way.
But even still, having Bleakwood on your college application is pretty much a guaranteed admittance, so I’ve been fighting for that scholarship like my life depends on it … because, in a way, it does.
Bleakwood is a huge, magnificent, prestigious, all-boys boarding school.
And despite everything else, that is where the main problem lies, of course.
Because I’m not a boy.
That’s why it’s such a shock for me to realize I’m hanging out in a nightgown. Back at Bleakwood, I’ve been masquerading as a boy for the better part of the last six months—with mixed results. Only a few people know the truth, including my roommate Rafael, the school nurse, and the dean of the nearby all-girls academy.
Oh—and Jasper.
Jasper.
Head of The Brotherhood. My bully. My tormentor.
And also now the keeper of my greatest secret.
But he, somehow, isn’t the one who worries me the most.
My stomach knots up as I think about the head of the girl’s school, a conniving woman named Dean Robin—or Headmistress Robin—depending on who you’re talking to. I don’t know much about her except that she definitely wants something from me.
She paid for my ticket home over this break. She’s the reason I got into Bleakwood in the first place. And some time before I left, she told me that she needed me to gather information on the school.
That she needed me to be her spy. But other than that … I’ve been left completely in the dark ever since I left for break. Left to stew and wonder at all hours of the night what to expect from Bleakwood when I return.
“Alex!”
My mother’s voice cuts through my thoughts, more shrill this time.
“Coming!” I yell, shoving the blankets away from my body and swinging my legs over the edge of the bed. I’m still jet lagged. There’s a six-hour time difference my body has to adjust to, and I only got here yesterday.
Yesterday. No wonder I’m so confused about where I am.
I throw on some jeans and a T-shirt and shuffle barefoot downstairs to the kitchen. Above the railing are rows of framed photos of my brothers—Caleb, Spencer, Blake, and Mason—and me and my parents. The noise coming from the kitchen swells up to meet me as I descend.
My house is never quiet.
“Put the food on thetable!” Mom is yelling when I reach the first floor. “Stop trying to—Spencer, I swear to God!”
Spencer laughs and jerks a glass dish full of what looks to be mashed potatoes away from Blake’s grasp. He grabs a serving spoon and shoves it into them, pulling out a big wad of potatoes and flinging it into Blake’s face.
“SPENCER!” Mom shrieks again, near hysterics already.
“Sorry,” Spenser replies with a grin, putting the spoon back into the potatoes before heading into the dining room.
