“Oh yeah? And you’re gonna be the one to take him down?”
No, I said in my head. His dad would be the one to do that. By throwing him in a mental hospital. With my help.
Suddenly my food didn’t seem appetizing anymore. Mercifully, the bell rang.
"Well, back to the old grindstone," I stood up and packed my books away. "It was nice talking to you, but I understand if you never want to speak to me after this. We've shared too many terrible musical secrets to ever look at each other the same way again."
"Oh, stop." She smiled. "We only covered the American boy bands. We still have all of the British boy bands to get through."
She waved and I waved, and for once, walking to history class didn't feel like a mindless trudge. We got our tests back that day, and I tried hard not to look at Mr. Brant’s grim face as he passed mine back.
“You need to try harder, Beatrix. I’m disappointed.”
“I will,” I muttered, trying not to look at the C that was written in red marker at the top of my paper. It was a bald-faced lie. I couldn’t try hard, not while I needed Fitz to keep tutoring me. I caught Fitz’s eyes, though they seemed flat, dull. I couldn’t read his expression. It wasn’t until the end of class that I’d figure out how he felt. By him accosting me, of course.
“You seriously don’t expect me to believe you got a C,” Fitz said. “Not after everything we’ve covered.”
“I’m sorry,” I hung my head. “I guess I just don’t get it as well as I thought. It’s not you – you’re a great teacher –“
“And you’re a smartass,” He interrupted, green eyes narrow and not a single wisp of a smile on his face. “So why the hell are you tanking?”
“I’m – Dad is –“
“Your Dad isn’t an excuse, Bee,” He said, a little sharper than usual. “You were doing just fine before I stepped into the picture.”
“It doesn’t work like that,” I argued. “Sometimes I have off days –“
“Only in history class.” Fitz interrupted. “Only ever in history class. The one you have with me.”
The way he said it was so confident. Too confident. He knew something was up.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I tried to play it off cool. He rolled his eyes.
“I took the liberty of hacking the school’s grade system. You’re getting a perfect, golden string of A’s in everything except this. That’s kinda weird, huh?”
I could see the doubt festering in his face. I was teetering on the edge, like Burn teetered on the cliff, like Kristin never got to teeter because Fitz was so suspicious of her in the first place. And now he was turning that suspicion on me. I had to do something, quick. An excuse – a good, solid excuse that seemed reasonable and wasn’t related to Dad. A lesser secret to cover up my other awful secret; something that he’d be willing to believe.
“Okay, fine.” I threw my hands up. “I was failing on purpose, okay?”
“So I’d tutor you,” He said quickly. “Why?”
I forced myself to look at my feet, to conjure a deep, dark blush. How did girls blush again? My brain instantly jumped to that sunlight afternoon in Seamus’s, me in a dress, Wolf’s eyes on me. My face lit up like a bonfire in August.
“It’s – God, I feel so stupid saying it out loud.”
I snuck a glance up – Fitz’s curiosity was piqued, his body leaning into mine.
“Can we not talk about it out in the open like this?” I hissed. Fitz looked around, then pulled me by the arm into a stairwell.
“Spill it,” He insisted.
“Because –” I swallowed hard and spat the words out all at once. “IlikeWolf.”
Fitz’s freckled face lit up, all traces of suspicion gone. “Seriously?” he burst out laughing. “Oh, this is precious. I should’ve seen it earlier with the way you two go at each other’s throats. It’s not just him. It’s you, too. So you decided to fake stupid so I’d tutor you and, what, get you closer to him?”
My chest squeezed as I nodded. It felt so wrong, lying so intricately like this. But I couldn’t back down now. I couldn’t let him know the truth – he’d figure out I was hired by his dad like Kristin was. He’d tell Burn and Wolf that I was spying, and it would be over. They’d never speak to me again, and Mr. Blackthorn would have no reason to keep my scholarship intact.
I can’t lose Lakecrest.
Not now.
Fitz rubbed his hands together delightedly. “You could’ve said something earlier.”
“No, I couldn’t have!” I snapped. “You can’t tell him. You can’t tell anyone, or I’ll eat your firstborn. Whenever you have one. Somehow.” There was a pause. “I’ll invent a time machine, wait for you to procreate with some unlucky girl, and then I’ll go into the future and eat your firstborn.”
Fitz applauded me sarcastically. “Alright, Dr. Who, I get it. My lips are sealed. You aren’t as bad as I thought you were.”
“What?”
He sighed. “Listen, our dad’s….an ass. He became even more of an ass when our Mom, you know. So. She was the only one he ever really cared about, not us. It’s hard, living with him. He’s not a nice guy. Burn and Wolf and me are pretty much just buying time until we can move out from under his shitty nose.”
“I’m confused.”
“He’s tried to hire hackers to break into our computers and phones to figure out what we’re up to,” Fitz said. “Since we were young. Where do you think I learned to hack? It was trying to counter-hack the guys he hired.”
Mr. Blackthorn hired hackers to know his kids better? God, rich people were weird.
“Plus,” Fitz mused. “There was Kristin.”
I swallowed hard. He just smiled.
“She was a bit of a bitch. She agreed to rat us out to our Dad in exchange for, I dunno. Whatever Dad can give people. Lots of stuff, I guess. But I saw right through her – comes with territory of being a smooth criminal myself, you know? She was a two-faced liar.”
I nodded, trying to tame the shaking in my hands as Fitz smiled.
“Look, you want my help hooking you up with Wolf, and I’ve got your back. I know for a fact he’s at the Auto Shop garage at this very moment. Let’s go say hi.”