The Rush (The Siren Series)

CHAPTER Eighteen



Monday morning was the worst mornings of all. And this particular Monday morning was worse than most. The sky was overcast and cloudy, dripping with freezing rain that reminded everyone winter was close. The trees were almost completely bare, save for the last golden leaf that hung on, desperate not to die. The sidewalks were drenched with puddles and mud. And Central High loomed above me, void of even shadows this morning.

The building usually beamed like a beacon of refined beauty. Once the state capital building, it had sharp lines and aristocratic architecture. It stood directly next door to the gleaming white and pink marble of the Joslyn Art Museum and together the buildings were joined in aged beauty. They broke up the cold, heartless skyscrapers of downtown and forced sprawling lawns in an otherwise jungle of concrete and stone.

“I suppose I should go inside, huh?” I grumbled inside the warmth of Exie’s car.

“Do you want an umbrella?” Exie asked around a sip of her latte.

“Do you have one?” I turned back around to face her.

“Uh, no.” She shook her head causing her golden hair to shake out around her shoulders. Her blue eyes contorted into confusion.

“Then why did you ask if I wanted one?” I laughed. Exie had this incredible ability to take my mind off my problems and forget myself for a while.

“It just felt right.”

“It just felt right?” I repeated and mashed my lips together before I could ask any more questions. This conversation was not headed anywhere logical.

“Yep,” she grinned at me. “Who’s that with your boy toy?” Suddenly her expression was serious, scheming.

I followed her gaze and then worked at trying to swallow. “Uh, that’s Ryder Sutton.”

“Mmm,” she purred.

“Yeah, isn’t he all clichéd bad boy?” I tried to joke, tried to hide the notes of panic that were racing through me, pounding at my heart, tightening the bones that caged my lungs into vice grips of jealousy….

“Sure,” Exie agreed without paying much attention to me at all. “I’ll walk you in, yeah?”

Crap.

Honesty was so not my thing.

“Hey, Ex, he uh, it’s not that he’s off limits or anything, but he kind of has a girlfriend,” I explained weakly.

“I guess that’s not surprising,” she murmured. “He’s delicious.”

I laughed, unable to stop myself. “Is he a boy or a candy bar?”

“Maybe both?” Exie laughed too and then silence fell between us for two beats. “Ives, if you want him, just say so. You can trust me, you know? Besides, I was mostly just admiring from a distance anyway.”

I smiled at my friend because she really was a friend. Somehow I had thought our relationship completely a design of the cosmos without any real attachment, except for a kind of predatory protection for each other since we were going through the same thing. We were more though. There was an actual foundation to our friendship, real love between us.

It was the first time in my life I had been loved. Truly, deeply, genuinely loved. Even if it was all in the friendship form, I realized how rare those emotions directed at me were. And I drank them in; I closed my eyes and let them settle over me.

“No, it’s not that. He’s just different. He doesn’t seem even a little bit fazed by me. He’s like Smith. He sees through it all,” I explained.

“How?” Exie gasped and then narrowed her eyes on Ryder as he talked and laughed with Chase and Phoenix at the top of the stairs in front of the school.

“I have no idea. I’ve wondered if maybe he was sick as a kid, maybe went through what Smith did. I keep meaning to ask him if he’s ever had cancer but somehow it keeps slipping my mind.”

“I can’t imagine why,” Exie whispered.

I relaxed into the seat a little, relieved to be able to talk to somebody about this. “I make him mad all the time. It’s like I was born just to piss him off.” I laughed at the thought, how absurd it was to think he was the only male I could make mad besides Nix. “And he’s constantly making fun of me. And not in the flirty way, like he actually thinks I’m stuck up.”

Exie snorted unladylike. “I’ve got to meet this guy. And Sloane too! Sloane would die to see someone make fun of you.”

“He actually works at Delice. We could go get coffee after school?” I didn’t want to acknowledge the happiness that suddenly ping-ponged around inside of me. How messed up was that? I could have any guy I wanted…. literally. But that thought left me utterly dead inside. The one guy that wanted nothing to do with me however? Yeah, he somehow brought my body to life…. gave me emotions and everything.

I was so screwed up.

“I am so all over this!” Exie squealed with excitement. “I’ll clear it with Sloane and call you.”

I jumped out of Exie’s car and into the dreary day, but the weather no longer dampened my mood. I waved goodbye to my friend and headed up to meet with my…. other friends. Weird. They were surprisingly happy to see me. Even Kenna. Well…. kind of Kenna.

I fell into the school routine easily. I hadn’t been in school for six months, but somehow the constant schedule, the forty-two minute class periods, the bells and hall passes felt easily natural. And I was kind of thankful for that.

I liked to learn, I liked to study. I even liked to take tests. College would have been exactly where I wanted to go next but there was no way that was in the cards for me. It was escape or enter the trade. Or worse, take Nix seriously and join his household.

I was wrapped up in those thoughts as I took a pass in English and headed toward the bathroom. I loved school, but that didn’t mean Mrs. Wade didn’t get excruciatingly monotonous.

“Ivy Pierce,” a nasally valley girl voice called as Amber walked out of a stall to my left.

“Hi Amber,” I said softly. I recognized the ugly bitterness she was throwing off her in waves.

“It’s because you’re easy,” she said matter of factly while washing her hands.

“Excuse me?” I asked in a pathetically quiet, meek voice. The thing about high school girls was they could be the best friends you ever had with the fiercest sense of loyalty or your worst enemy with the flick of a switch. We were emotional creatures, I got that. But every girl was hard-wired with animosity against me already, born leery of me, waiting for me to betray them. Maybe I already crossed a line with Amber and didn’t remember it, or it was one of those crush things there was no way I could have known about… and probably wouldn’t have mattered anyway…. or she just recognized the enemy inside me that I was to her. It didn’t really matter because obviously Amber had it out for me.

Exie would have told her to mind her own business. Sloane would have figured out just what buttons to push and dated whoever meant the most to her.

Although, apparently I was already doing that.

I cowered in fear.

The truth was, girls scared me.

“You’re easy,” she repeated slowly as if to a child. “Their fixation. Why guys won’t leave you alone. It’s not like you’re all that pretty. It’s just that you’re easy and boys have short attention spans.”

I thought about Sam and his attention span, how it had ultimately led to the car accident. I thought about Chase and how he didn’t push me to spend time with him or be something I wasn’t. I thought about Ryder and how devoted he was to Kenna. Some boys were interested in one thing; I had known enough of that kind to not be completely naïve. But I also knew some of the other kind now and so with deafening clarity I saved my self-esteem.

It also helped that because of the curse I knew I was pretty. So she could suck on that one.

“I’m not easy,” I replied stubbornly. Because I wasn’t.

In return she cackled at me. Honestly, she cackled.

“Please, everyone knows what a skank you are,” she rolled her eyes in the mirror at me and headed for the hand dryer.

“They’re wrong. I’m not a skank.” This was the most I had ever stuck up for myself since being sent away and I didn’t even really know why I was trying. She was welcome to believe whatever she wanted about me. In fact, Nix preferred the rumors even if we were ordered to hold on to our virginity until he could line up a worthy buyer.

“That’s not what Sam Evans told everyone the night of that party,” she countered bravely.

That was enough to snap any calm resolve that remained. “You need to stop with that,” I snapped. “You don’t know anything about Sam, so stop using him to make up your points. Sam loved me. Loved me.” Well, not me. Sam fell in love with the curse, but Amber didn’t need to know that. “So stop putting words in his mouth when it’s so unfair that he can’t defend himself.”

“And look where that got him? Paralyzed and brain dead. Nobody could love you now, not after what you did to him. Now you’re nothing but a used up hag,” she turned on me with biting cruelty, her eyes burning orbs of hatred. “You’re the reason he’s not here to defend himself!”

And she had cut right to the most vulnerable vein.

My breath stuttered in my lungs as I tried to suck in enough oxygen to remain level headed. Hot tears pricked at the backs of my eyes and I wanted to curl up into myself and die, or at least weep. I repeated to myself that she didn’t matter, that she didn’t matter to me. I was stronger than this.

But I wasn’t. And all of the broken, shattered pieces of me came crashing down in a suffocating deluge of weakness.

The bathroom door opened and laughing girls walked in completely unaware of the impending mental breakdown I was just seconds away from. I couldn’t even look up to see who the happy girls were, my eyes were focused on the dirty drain and broken porcelain sink I needed to hold me up. My knuckles turned as white as the sink basin as I gripped on for my life.

“Ivy, what’s wrong?”

Kenna.

She was exactly the last person I wanted to witness this tragic side of me.

“Amber, why does she look like she’s about to burst into tears?” Kenna demanded of my attacker. A soft hand rested on my shoulder as if to comfort me and surprisingly it did. I lifted my eyes to meet Amber’s ashamed gaze in the mirror. She quickly fixed her expression to innocence and shrugged one shoulder casually.

“What did you say to her?” Kenna ground out and then thought better of rehashing Amber’s accusations. “You know what? Nevermind. You’re a bitch. You’ve always been one and that isn’t going to change. It drives you crazy Chase is happy with Ivy, but jealousy is an ugly color on you. Just leave her alone, Amber. She doesn’t need your drama and neither do I.”

Amber struggled to swallow against Kenna’s tirade. I watched her throat work to finish the action, while her eyes glossed over with tears. She silently turned around, tugged at her shirt to make sure it was in place and then left the bathroom. I didn’t have any trouble believing Kenna’s words had hit home.

I realized slowly how popular Kenna was. It wasn’t that before I left I was oblivious to her social status, but while I had my own agenda, popularity never really mattered to me. Besides Kenna seemed like one of the nicest girls ever, in the history of girls. She tried to befriend me for God sakes. Or at least she put up with me.

And now she was sticking up for me. The whole scenario felt surreal.

Nobody should be sticking up for me. I was the lowest of the low, the worst of the worst. I had one agenda and one only and it was completely selfish. But in the last three days more people had come to my aid than I thought existed in my life.

I wasn’t alone. Not by a long shot.

But now what was I supposed to do with that realization? Besides my girls, I couldn’t take anybody with me and there was nothing on earth that could persuade me to stay.

“Thanks,” I mumbled to Kenna who waved me off like it was no big deal.

“Don’t worry. She is a bitch. It’s not like she doesn’t know it. She’s just not used to being told the truth,” Kenna laughed and then turned to primp and preen in the mirror.

I smiled in response but didn’t offer anything else. Suddenly and very inexplicably I felt bad for Amber. Which sucked since she made me feel like the worst kind of awful…. but still. I didn’t deserve this kind of attention from Kenna and their friendship didn’t deserve me getting in the middle of it. At the end of all this I was gone, out of here. There was nothing long term between any of us, and besides Amber couldn’t even really be blamed. She hated me for good reason. Especially if she had a thing for Chase….

I sucked in a deep breath and snuck another peek at Kenna.

I couldn’t identify anything going on between Ryder and me, but either way I knew without a shadow of a doubt that Kenna should not be defending me. She should be defending her relationship. I promised myself at least four times a day that I wanted nothing to do with Ryder, but the guilt seeping into my bloodstream and pumping through my heart with crackling clarity begged to differ.

“Are you going back to class?” Kenna asked me while her other two friends waited for her by the door.

“In a minute,” I whispered, still trying to put the broken pieces of myself back together.

“No worries,” she grinned a carefree smile and then met her friends at the door. “See you later, Ivy.”

“Yep,” I croaked and went back to gripping the sink. I looked up and met my watery green eyes in the mirror. I looked over my silky auburn hair, the reddish gold highlights were really coming out now that my hair had a chance to heal from the poor dye jobs I was obsessed with right before I was sent away. My skin seemed paler than normal but still held that milky-porcelain-perfection all the women in our circle kept. I was beautiful.

But empty.

And I didn’t deserve any of this.