Page 9 of Necessary Cruelty

Three

Secondhand weed smokefills the air like low-hanging fog. I inhale deeply as I lean back in my leather armchair and survey the room.

These weekend blow-out parties used to be something I did to annoy my parents. But the less they seem to give a shit, the more this all feels like a waste of time. There isn’t any point in rebelling when no one bothers to pay attention.

Neither of them so much as commented on it when I moved out to the pool house a few years ago. I don’t even make it back into the main house for meals most days.

My father has been preoccupied with some business deal lately, if all the time he spends locked in his office and speaking furtively into the phone is any indication. And my stepmother is as up her own ass as she has always been. I can only assume she likes the weather in there.

Chaos teems around me, and I sit at the center of it all like an indolent king on his throne. It isn’t an accident that my chair is raised slightly higher than the others and angled so I can see everything happening around me. Let them think the power is an accident, and not something that has been carefully cultivated for me since birth.

The Cortlands have ruled Deception since the beginning, nothing will change that.

And I’m the heir to this petty little empire.

Lights from the pool shine through the sliding glass doors and cast everything in surreal blue and purple lights. It makes the writhing and overheated bodies look like something out of a fever dream.

People who don’t get invites to these parties like to say it’s always an all-out orgy. They’re not entirely correct, but I let the rumor mill spin on its own. An invite to one of my parties is one of the most coveted things that exists at Deception High. Rumors abound about the secret society shit that must be happening here.

But the truth is that my friends like to get together and hang out with whatever girls they’re in the mood for that week, imbibing on recreational substances and getting laid without too many hang-ups about privacy.

I’ve never been more bored in my fucking life.

Shitty trance music blasts from the Bluetooth speaker, and I turn in my chair to glare at whoever has the balls to mess with my sound system. “What the hell, Elliot? Turn that crap off.”

One of my closest friends since middle school shrugs me off as he plays with the phone he has connected to the speakers. That asshole fancies himself a DJ and likes to force us to listen to dubstep, or whatever the fuck it is, whenever he gets the chance. With his long hair and Viking build, he looks like he should be into Norwegian death metal, not the electronic crap he puts on to assault our eardrums.

Someone’s hand slides along my jean-covered thigh, momentarily distracting me from the shitty music. I look down to see Sophia coiled between my spread legs while she kneels on the floor. As I stare down at her, I wonder if she realizes that she picked the wrong lighting to do her makeup. Under the glare of the lamp behind me, her face and her neck are completely different shades of white girl. It’s dried out honeybun vs. cancer ward beige, and I can’t decide which color I like the least.

I could take out my dick and force it down her throat, or I could humiliate her in front of a room full of people by laughing in her face and shoving her away. Neither choice does anything for me as I stare down into her desperate face, feeling nothing but a keen sense of boredom with life in general.

Maybe I need fucking antidepressants.

“Go get me a drink,” I command her, even though there is a nearly full beer on the table next to me.

“Of course, Vin,” Sophia purrs in a voice I’m sure she thinks is sexy. She uses her hands on my thighs to lever herself up onto the sky-high heels that clack too loudly on my tile floor.

“An import. Check the fridge in the house.”

I watch her go, partly because she has a semi-decent ass, but also because I’m secretly hoping one of those heels flies out from under her and she ends up crashing to the floor. No such luck, I think, as she tottles to the sliding glass door and pulls it open.

My stepmother doesn’t compromise on her beauty sleep, so the the main house is locked down tighter than virgin pussy right now. It should buy me a few minutes of peace while Sophia figures that out. She knows better than to come back empty-handed.

“If you don’t hit that soon, her head might shoot off into the stratosphere from all the built up pressure,” Cal comments from the sofa a few feet away.

“She might need to find a different release valve. I’m not into sloppy fifths, or is it sixths? I heard some rumors about the football team from Verdes Hills last fall.”

Cal laughs, but it isn’t a pleasant sound. “Maybe she really likes you.”

Bullshit. If anybody but the other Vice Lords actually likes me, I’ll suck my own dick. “She’d be the first.”

“Poor little rich boy. People only want him for his money.”

“Fuck off.”

Hooking up with me is like climbing Everest. Something people do for the status, to say they did it, regardless if they think that they’ll actually enjoy it.

I don’t kid myself that there is some deeper connection going on here. If I didn’t have the power and the status that comes with the Cortland name, none of the chicks at school would give me the time of day.

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