Page 24 of Raise Hell

“One class isn’t going to get us very far. We need her gone for good.” I feel a familiar tinge of regret that is easy to ignore. If I let myself think of Olivia as a victim, then I start to struggle with the idea of what we’re going to do to her.

But as long as she acts like a freight train rolling through campus, I won’t have a problem derailing her into a fiery crash.

Olivia Pratt has to go — there isn’t anything else to say about it.

“You know me, she’d already be six feet under if I got my way.” Vaughn pulls off his dirty shirt and tosses it into the bottom of his locker. The guy might be the messiest person on planet Earth. He won’t clean up anything, including his locker and his room at Havoc House, unless we force him to.

Vaughn would the king on a mountain made of garbage if I let him get away with it.

“Will you take care of all those sweaty drawers you have stuffed in there, please. This place smells like the devil’s asshole.”

He glances down at the growing pile of underwear and shirts that are stuffed inside the locker. “It’s not that bad.”

“It’s a biohazard.”

“That’s why they’re in here and not back in the rotation.”

“Buying new shirts because you don’t feel like washing the old ones is not a normal thing to do.”

“You don’t know what it’s like, man. I didn’t grow up having to do my own laundry.” He makes a face like the very thought is offensive. “It’s ridiculous. I’m just supposed to go my whole life with freshly-done laundry appearing in my room like magic and then wake up one day knowing how to do it myself?”

I don’t point out that the magic was actually an army of servants paid to remain as invisible as possible. “Pretty much, yeah.”

“That’s what I envy about you. It must have been nice to grow up in the real world. My parents didn’t teach me how to do shit.”

It’s common knowledge I didn’t grow up rich, at least not in any of the ways that matter to people here. My father married my mother on impulse right after college, and his family wasn’t particularly happy about it. I was born a few months after he caved to the pressure and divorced her.

My mother worked two jobs in Cape Town to support us before finally moving us to her parents’ ramshackle estate outside of Port Elizabeth. My father went on to remarry a few times, each wife a few years younger than the last. But he never had any more children. With nothing but sisters, he is the only one who can pass on the family name.

The Van Kochs finally had to acknowledge that the dark little boy with the Zef accent would have to be their heir apparent. He finally started supporting us when I was eleven. I went from a rundown single-room parochial school in the Eastern Cape to the best private academy in South Africa. The threadbare uniform my mother bought used from a secondhand shop and lovingly mended was traded in for designer uniforms and a world I barely recognized as real.

I’ve never forgotten where I came from, even if Vaughn enjoys reminding me.

I keep my voice mild. “You figured out trigonometry. A rinse cycle shouldn’t be your Battle of Waterloo.”

“One of the pledges can take care of my laundry this week. They might as well be good for something.”

“Maybe we should make them wear sexy maid’s outfits while they do it,” I say drily.

I keep trying to forget its pledge season, despite the constant reminders. Movies always make the frat house hazing look fun when you’re on the right side of it: killer parties, ordering other guys around like servants because they’re unlucky enough to be a few years behind you, generally acting like drunken dictators.

Nobody realizes how much work all of it takes.

Parties don’t plan themselves, and Havoc House will be the epicenter of social activity at St. Bart’s for the next few months. It should sound fun, but right now I get exhausted just thinking about it.

“God, that would be awesome.” Vaughn claps me on the back hard enough to sting. “You always have the best ideas. Guess that’s why you’re president.”

Despite his easy tone, I sense the annoyance hidden behind his smile. Vaughn and I might be best friends, but we’ve also been in competition since the day we arrived at St. Bart’s. For girls, grades, accolades, pretty much anything where one person can come out on top of another.

I slam the locker shut. “You know it.”

He continues to watch me, eyebrow raised. “But if you want any help figuring out how to handle Olivia, just say the word. I’d hate for that situation to get out of hand.”

If I let Vaughn take the lead, there’s a semi-decent chance she’ll end up right back in the hospital. I don’t trust him not to do something unpredictable. But it isn’t pity that keeps me from letting him rock her world. Another accident leading back to Havoc House might get us shut down for good.

I can’t let that happen, even if I definitely wouldn’t mind seeing Olivia Pratt booted out on her ass.

“She won’t be a problem. At all.” I say it with significantly more confidence than I feel.

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