Page 1 of The Baller

ONE

RADLEY

“I think you got it all.”

The very loud, borderline-obnoxious, slurping ceased. Millie lifted her head, the striped straw stuck to her bottom lip, and grinned. “You know I like to make sure nothing is wasted.”

“It’s ice.”

But her grin, along with the amusement sparkling in her dark brown eyes, only grew; I expected nothing less from my best friend.

“Come on, we have to swing by the bookstore before next class.”

She picked up her phone and frowned at the screen. “We have two hours. Even you can’t spend two hours looking in abookstore.”

I coulddefinitelyspend two hours looking in a bookstore, but that wasn’t why I wanted to get going.

“I don’t want to be late to class and give everyone another reason to stare. Plus, if we’re lucky, we’ll get at least twenty minutes in there, and we don’t have to rush.”

Her thick brown hair was tossed over her shoulder with an exaggerated flick that would have made Beyoncé proud, and she arched a perfect eyebrow at me. “You know, Rad, we still haven’t established people aren’t staring atme. It’s kind of big headed of you to assume that all these years we’ve been best friends, people stare at you and not me.”

I laughed, just like I always did at her teasing. Though, just like it always did, the constant tightness sitting on my chest stayed put. “We both know they stare plenty at you, but for an entirely different reason.”

“Yeah.” Millie tipped back her glass, and the one remaining ice-cube slid into her mouth for her to crunch down on. “Come on, let’s grab Batman and Robin, and get out of here.”

Her voice had been loud enough that I caught Special Agent Jake Riley rolling his eyes from the booth he’d been sitting in behind ours.

It was the only indication he ever gave that Millie got under his skin, like she’d made it her mission to do since he’d been assigned to lead my protective detail right before my mom took office at the beginning of this year.

I wasn’t sure if she did it to purely make me laugh and distract me from the situation I was in, or if she was trying to get Jake’s attention because she had the hots for him, but wouldn’t admit it.

“Radley, we’re going to go out the back entrance,” Meg Fordly slipped into the seat next to me and shot a wry look to Jake, “and just so we’re all clear, I’m Batman.”

I didn’t bother asking why we were going out the back door. I didn’t particularly want to know. It wouldn’t be anything different to yesterday’s reason, or the day before that. Wherever I went, people liked to stare. It had been this way for as long as I could remember. It came with the territory of having parents in public office. I’d almost gotten used to it, but then I became the President’s daughter, and the staring moved from a local stage to a national one.

I’d only been at Columbia for three weeks, so we still hadn’t reached the point where the sight of me mundanely walking to and from my classes, or even less interestingly, eating in one of the campus diners, wasn’t enough to cause a stir. Not to mention the one time I attempted to use the Columbia gym, but spent my entire workout trying not to be distracted by a few undergrads sneaking a picture of me from the reflection in the mirrors, and hoping I hadn’t seen them.

I had.

Then there were those who thought I’d love to know I looked fatter or thinner in person, taller or shorter, or how awful it must have been for me that pictures of my naked ass and one breast had flooded the internet eighteen months ago.

Yeah.Awful.Not the word I would choose, but it’s hard to know what to say to someone in that situation. Right?

I tried to make it as hard as possible for the ones who liked to stare, but Millie had forbidden me from wearing sweats and a hoodie 24/7 and only going out in the dark, like I’d wanted to. So instead, I stuck to exclusively black or navy, and prayed I’d blend in.

She said it would die down.

It hadn’t yet.

Neither I, nor any of the eight Secret Service agents assigned to me on rotation, had taken fraternity pledge weeksinto account. Because since the beginning of last week, it had become clear that pledges had been set the task of getting a selfie with me – or any kind of picture with me for that matter.

Millie had noticed it first; the iPhone wielders had been more zealous than usual, and then she overheard a frat-boy wannabe talking about a top prize being awarded to anyone who managed to bring me back to their house – by any means.

Official warning letters had been immediately fired off to the Dean and the heads of each of Columbia’s sixteen fraternities that they’d risk being heavily fined, or shut down if the behavior continued. But dropping a lit match to gasoline would have been less incendiary; the attempts increased – and got more creative.

For the past week I’d woken up twitchier than normal, more tired than normal, but that was nothing on Jake’s feelings. His days were spent marching down a warpath; something two guys discovered this morning after they’d jumped at me from behind a bush as we walked to our first class. They were subsequently invited to spend the rest of the day answering questions at the Secret Service headquarters downtown.

In short, the back entrances to buildings were becoming my friend.

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