A Whole New Crowd(5)

I smirked at him, he was so close to me. “Good for you.”

His eyes were laughing and the hazel color darkened to an amber color.

“But I’m not interested.”

A low chuckle slipped from him, and he moved back. “Listen, business only, okay?” He paused, an eyebrow lifted. “Next week is homecoming and we play the Panthers from Pedlam. They stole our game book last year, and we got screwed. We lost the game, and we lost going to the championships because of it. Some of my friends didn’t get football scholarships.”

“You want me to steal their game book?”

“Mandy says you used to do this stuff. I respect that you don’t want to do it anymore, but we know that they’ve already been sniffing around campus. We caught a few of ‘em Friday night. They were trying to take our state championship flag from two years ago.”

“You don’t even play football. Why do you care?”

“Because this is my school. Those guys are my friends, and I take care of what’s mine.”

I frowned. “I know people from Pedlam.”

“You went to school there?”

“More than any others. I don’t know if I want to help you screw with a school that I used to consider mine.”

Tray sighed, rolling his eyes. “You’re Mandy’s sister. This is your school now, Taryn.”

That was the first time I’d heard him say my name, and I hated hearing it from him. I hated him. A whole host of emotions were unlocked. Memories seared through me and Brian’s voice, saying my name, was on repeat inside of my head.

I wanted it gone. I wanted him gone. “I’m not helping you.”

Tray Evans was in my car, but memories of Brian were overwhelming me. I didn’t want to remember him.

“What?”

“Get out.” My voice was rougher than it needed to be. I couldn’t help it.

“Fine.” He got out and shut the door. As he walked away, I tried to calm the storm he had unknowingly unleashed.

I missed him. I missed both of them.

*

I let myself inside the mansion, dropping my keys in the bowl beside the coat-rack. The place was just massive. I already knew no one was home. My parents—it was hard to think of them as parents; I had to keep reminding myself not to call them Shelly and Kevin in my mind—were gone to a medical conference. It wasn’t long until I learned that Kevin was rarely home. He was either on-call at the hospital or he was moon-lighting at a different hospital. When he wasn’t, he took Shelly with him for weekend conferences. When they both left, it was Mandy, Austin, and myself. A neighbor came over to check on us in the evenings. There’d been a few times when the neighbor slept over, but she always watched television in her room so we had the house to ourselves most of the time.

Grabbing a soda, I headed to the media room. It wasn’t long until I heard voices coming from the kitchen, and I groaned. Mandy’s friends’ voices. The gods of the gods.

I muttered, “Kill me now.”

“She’s down here.” Mandy bounced down the stairs and plopped next to me. Devon came in behind her and stood at the end of our couch, frowning at her. She beamed at me. “Hey!”

“Hey.” I frowned.

“Tray said you said no. A big fat no actually.”

I shook my head. I wasn’t going to deal with this from her. “No, Mandy.”

“Why not? This would be so easy for you.”

“What’s going on?” Jennica Kent asked, laughing as she sat on the couch opposite us. Tray and a few others came into the room. The only one missing was Amber Sethlers. She and Jennica were the two females at the top of the food chain.

I knew some about the others, Grant, Samuel, and I couldn’t name the third guy. There were enough rumors swirling about every one of them. One hated the other. They had all slept with each other at some point. I never cared. They were rumors. I could barely keep track of the ones about me. This was the social circle at the top, and they were in my media room, well, Mandy’s media room.

I wanted to run. I never mixed with Populars well.

“Leave her alone, Mandy. The girl said no.”

I glanced at Tray in surprise. I didn’t believe that he had backed down. “I’m not doing it. Wherever you want me to break into, I’m not doing it.”

“We’re not asking anymore.”

“Okay.” Mandy nodded. “We’ll figure something else out then.”

She bit her lip and glanced around the room to the others. The guys didn’t care about the conversation. Devon had taken the remote and turned the channel to a basketball game. Jennica was watching Tray, who was staring at me. The longer he did, the redder her face got. I didn’t look at him. I wasn’t going to step back into that dark hole. He was like a vortex, a very hot and lethal vortex, but I couldn’t stop myself from enjoying how upset she was becoming. Then she shot me a nasty look and I turned away, biting my lip. What was I doing? I needed to fit in, strip off my rebel ways, and assimilate into this pack.