Filthy Rich Kids Can Get Away with Filthy Things
Author's Note: Please read and then review. I appreciate every comment. Thanks!
West Tyson narrowed his eyes as he nearly ran out of Mrs. Crack-whore's office. The atmosphere in there was enough to last him a lifetime, thank you very much. Lately, it seemed like he was practically spending his entire social life with that woman.
That's what happens when you spend your free time totaling other people's cars.
"That was retarded. I can't believe this is how I get to come back to school after spring break." West grumbled as he trudged out. Slowly, he could hear the noise coming from inside the school halls as they approached the Roman-inspired arches that graced the front of the school. On it was inscribed in an elegant, loopy script, "Knowledge is the food of the soul."
Hah. That's a good one.
"That bitch can go screw herself for all I care." Duke flexed his arms in a way that showed off his new muscles. Now that he'd crashed a teacher's car, got sent to the principal's office, and received detention all in a single hour, he felt much more awake now. And it wasn't the good kind either. It was the I'm-totally-screwed-now awake.
"I think we made a huge improvement on the car: now people actually know it's a piece of junk that's trying to pass for a Chevy." Ryder said, admiring their morning's handiwork, as they passed the teacher parking lot. Compared to the number of BMWs and Ferraris in the student parking lot, the teacher's was in a sad state.
He'd feel bad for what Duke did, but considering that Mr. Holder had given him a D on his last essay, he really couldn't give a shit. Even a week's worth of detention couldn't ruin his day. As Ryder saw it, a little screw-up didn't have to screw the entire day up.
Well, at least not his day.
On Ryder's other side, Duke felt a familiar vibration in his pocket and flipped out his cell phone. He spun it in his palm, and opened the incoming text message.
Jade Lewallen: Where r u? I need u here ASAP.
He frowned and then fired back a response.
"Okay. What does she want?" West asked, noticing Duke's grimace. When Duke frowned like that, it could only mean that She had something bad in mind. The last time she'd text messaged Duke about something like that, she'd ended up running Laura Hopkins from their AP Government Econ class in tears.
"She's calling an emergency meeting." Duke murmured. He'd been around long enough to know that Jade's emergency meeting wasn't a good sign. All she ever wanted to do was plan over and over again. Besides, she always hated their ideas anyway, so what was the point of showing up?
"An emergency meeting," Ryder paused to look at the other two with a this-is-so-lame expression, "right now?"
He looked up hopefully at the sky to see heaven was taking any pity on him. If it was, he prayed, please send a shower of thunderbolts down to kill him. Right now. Before Jade could.
Thunderbolts in California? Doubt it.
"Yeah. Before school starts." Secretly, Duke also failed to see the point of holding a meeting ten minutes before class. But, as Jade liked to remind him, as a member of their group, it was important that they were all in this together. And if he didn't bother to show up, well, he had no doubt that the next time there was an emergency meeting, it was going to be his turn to be the victim. And he knew for a fact that no matter male or female, it was a fate worse than death. He'd seen it happen countless of times.
"What if we just pretend that we didn't have time to go to her little meeting?" Ryder said under his breath. Nobody in their group knew better than he did how it was like to be the Jade's target. Two years ago, he'd moved here from England, and had became the immediate victim. It was only last year that he'd been accepted into their group after he'd become the soccer team's star forward and therefore, the new heartthrob of the school. Only then was he forgiven for accidentally spilling water down Arielle's shirt the first day in science lab.
Sounds like someone was trying to find out more than the ph level of water.
"Too late. She's already seen us," West said, pointing to the twisted eucalyptus tree that Jade had marked as her territory. Whenever somebody else tried to sit there, Jade would give them one of her you-are-about-to-die-a-very-painful-death look, and the person would immediately back off, no questions asked.
If only they could do the same.
"Here we go again," Ryder sighed, as the three of them trudged up to the tree. Jade was already sitting there Indian style, with Winter and Arielle on both sides of her. When she saw them approaching, she scowled.
"I'd ask what took you guys so long, but I have a feeling I don't want to know." Jade scowled as they sat down to form a little group circle. "Besides, desperate times call for desperate measures. Which, as you all know, is why we're all here."
Unfortunately for three guys who would rather be somewhere else.
"Our dad's getting married," Arielle said bluntly, looking up from where she'd been playing with some blades of grass. She'd yank a chunk out of the ground and then release it into the wind.
West wanted to yawn. Not this problem again.
"So why do you need us?" Duke laid down on the ground, and stared up at the sky. Whenever Jade looked like she was in for a long we-have-to-destroy-them talk, he'd try to find something to concentrate on until she was done. Duke stared at the clouds, trying to see what kind of shapes they made. He counted them out inside his head: bird, pillow...
"I need you to help me track down Hannah's kids. It's their first day here, so if you just look for people walking around looking like the homeless, there's a ninety-nine percent chance it's probably them." Jade snapped a twig straight in half and then proceeded to snap it into halves and halves again.
Well, at least the anger management therapy seems to be working.
"Wait, what happened to the other one percent?" Winter looked up from where she'd been cupping her chin in her palm.
"That's for people like Jenna Craig and Tanya Nelson, who think that wearing baggy T-shirts and fishnets are ways of expressing their artistic side." Jade answered, earning a smirk from both Winter and Arielle.
"Wait, we saw them," West shoved Duke, who was still on the ground.
"Jenna Craig and Tanya Nelson?" Arielle wrinkled her perfect ski-slope nose.
"No, the three new kids in Cracow's office," Ryder said, suddenly remembering what had happened this morning. That girl hadn't looked like a hobo to him, "That girl who had a nice ass."
Jade glared at him, "Let's see how nice it is when my Jimmy Choos kick it right out of Beverly Hills."
Everybody else wisely said no more. One of the reasons they tolerated this was because if they didn't, it'd be their ass she was kicking next. And when she did, it would be a bruise that would never heal itself again.
"So that's it. We already saw them," West finally said, to break the silence that had fallen over the circle. Was he still supposed to stay here? If that was all she wanted, he was more than willing to go back to oblivion.
"Well, observe them," Jade snapped, "Oh, and one more thing. Don't let them know that you're watching them. Don't even talk to them if you don't have to," Jade paused and looked around at everyone, "But if you do, be nice, but the one thing you're looking for is signs of weakness."
"Like what?" West said exasperatedly. This was what girls were supposed to do. Plot to get even and ruin each other's lives. Let them do this kind of stuff. He couldn't have cared more if Mark Lewallen turned out to be Hollywood's biggest closet homosexual as long as the name West Tyson didn't crop up during the field day that the press would have if something like that came out.
"I don't know. Something. Something they care about or want. Those kinds of things." Jade said just as the five-minute-passing bell rang. She stood up and smoothed out the back of her Joie cutoffs, and checked it for grass stains.
The three of them got up lazily and headed away from Jade as fast as they could before she could tell them to do something else.
"She needs to chill out," Ryder muttered after checking behind his shoulder to make sure that Jade had gone the other way. Life was much simpler back before he met Jade. Sometimes he wondered if his life had been better before Jade had decided that he was worthy of being in her life.
Duke stopped at his locker and twirled the lock expertly. "Aw, give her a break."
Ryder stopped in front of his own locker and looked over at his friend, "Oh. Sorry. I forgot he has to like her." Ryder snickered to West. West shook his head. It was such a pity that Duke was in a relationship with someone who could probably make his life miserable if he ever had any thoughts about breaking up with her. But then, he'd gotten himself into this situation in the first place.
"I can hear you," Duke taunted, hitting Ryder with his binder.
"Just so you know, you've basically gone ahead and screwed yourself over," West said, putting both hands up by his face like he was surrendering.
"Yeah, and keep in mind that you will never be able to break up with her and live it down." Ryder continued. "Man, to be with her for –whoa!" He lunged to the side, grabbed a tiny wrist, and yanked it back.
"What do we have here? Hey, you guys, check it out. It's the new kid!" He called out to Duke and West, who'd gone ahead.
The two of them slowly doubled back so that all three of them towered over her.
So this was the girl they were supposed to be tracking. The three of them simultaneously checked her out.
Oh, man.
They all grinned at each other wolfishly. What's-her-name had said to be nice to the new kids, right?
They could do that. No problem.
"Ah, so, new kid. What's your name?" West turned to her and put his arm against the row of lockers, with one foot posed in the back of the other, the way that was supposed to display the best of his physical characteristics.
How suave.
"Uh, Arielle Lewallen." she said softly, her green eyes darting around nervously. She glanced down momentarily at Ryder's hand, which was still encircling her wrist. He saw where she was looking, but he didn't let her go. Instead, he held on even tighter, causing her to squirm slightly.
"You guys, we have a liar on our hands," West whistled. Arielle Lewallen, huh? She really must be new to his town to not know how obviously clueless she was. Poor thing.
She paled when she heard that her lie had been exposed. "How do you know?" she demanded.
"We know Arielle Lewallen, and believe me, she doesn't have your pretty red hair," Ryder said, fingering a strand of it. When he looked closely, he could almost see some dark blond streaks. It reminded him of strawberries and condensed milk.
"Really? Then you must know her twin, Jade Lewallen too," the girl shifted her binders back and forth between her arms.
"You could say that," West interjected smoothly before the other two could get a word in. Believe me, you don't want to know more than that, he thought. He certainly didn't want to be the one to ruin her first day.
Aw. How considerate of him.
"Do you know where they are? I'm supposed to find them," the girl bit her lip nervously. Between the four of them, they were starting to attract attention in the hallways.
Ryder ignored the hurt look on Mandy's face as she tracked his hand to the new girl's wrist and they all exchanged a look over her head. No way were they going to present her to Jade all wrapped like Christmas had come early. No effing way.
"Uh, no. But we can help you," Ryder casually rolled up the sleeves of his shirt and flexed his arms.
The girl looked doubtful. "For people who crash other people's cars, you guys are awfully nice," she commented suspiciously, darting her aqua eyes back between the three of them.
Ryder and West both looked at Duke. No wonder the girl was so freaked out. She probably thought they were going to send her crashing into the wall, or something. "Hey, we can be nice when we want to." West said in an almost insulted tone.
Which was actually almost never. Not that they were going to tell her, or anything.
"Okay. Then can you tell me where room D143 is?" she asked, taking only a slight sneak peek at the crumpled piece of paper in her hand. Or what was left of the soggy, wet mess.
"Of course I can," Ryder assured her, as he winked at the other two, and motioned to them that he would handle it, leaving them behind. After all, he was only doing what Jade Lewallen told him to do.
Of course, Jade had made it pretty clear that she didn't want any of them being on friendly terms with her future family members. In fact, Ryder vaguely remembered that she was out to destroy them. Which would make the girl an enemy to all of them.
He discreetly checked her out again and then slowly reached a hand to guide her through the noisy hallways, using the lower part of her back. After all, you know what they say. Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. Right?