Page 6 of Wicked Games

“Nope. The opposite. But they pay to have their names kept off the rich lists.”

“Because they don’t want to brag?”

April shook her head. “It’s for protection.”

“Oh, that makes sense. People might go after them if they knew just how much money they have. Ransom their kids, or whatever. Right?”

“Exactly.” April’s brows rose. “So, there are quite a few families around here with a net worth in thetrillionsbecause they own and control so much stuff. Not just millions or billions.”

“Wow. That’s crazy.”

I felt like I was in way over my head now. Some of the kids at this school had access to so much money and power that I couldn’t even wrap my head around it. I couldn’t even remember how many zeroes a trillion had.

“But don’t worry,” April said. “There are quite a lot of scholarship kids here too.” She paused and pointed to a girl with auburn hair in the second row. “See her? Total math genius. Free tuition in return for repping Babylon at mathlete events.”

“Cool.”

“So what’s your talent?” April asked, tilting her head slightly.

I gnawed on the inside of my cheek, wondering exactly how honest I should be at a time like this. Should I say my talent was grand theft auto? Or being in the wrong place at the wrong time which miraculously turned into the right place at the right place?

I settled on a half-truth. “I got decent grades at my old school, and I’m also really good at coding.”

April’s face brightened. “Oh, awesome! You mean like, building apps and other stuff like that, right?”

“Sort of, yeah. Programming in general. I got into it because my old school had computers that anyone could use during school hours, and there’s tons of free courses online. Plus, it turned out I was pretty good at it.”

“That’s so cool. Do you have Snap or Insta?”

“Yup. I have practically every social media thing. I just don’t use them much,” I said.

“I’ll follow you. What’s your handle?”

I told her, and she grabbed her phone and tapped at the screen a few times. “There. Request sent.”

I accepted the Instagram request and followed her back before briefly scrolling through her top photos. “Cute dog,” I said, looking at a photo of a panting black labrador.

“His name is Fido. It’s a running joke in my family that we always give our pets the most clichéd names ever,” April said with a grin. “He was even cuter as a puppy. Scroll down further. There’s some older pics of him on there, so you can see.”

I scrolled all the way down and finally spotted a puppy pic from a couple of years ago. “Aww, he’s adorable!” I said, smiling at the screen. My eyes were quickly drawn to the photo on the left, featuring April with another blonde girl who looked very similar to her. “Is this your sister?”

“Yeah, that’s Abby.”

“She’s so pretty. Is she older or younger than you?”

“She was a year younger than me.”

My gaze shot up to meet April’s. “Did you say… was?”

“Yeah.” She looked down, lips tightening. “She died.”

“Oh my god. I’m so sorry,” I said, heart lurching.

She waved a hand. “No need to apologize. You had no way of knowing.”

“I know, but still, I’m really sorry you went through that. It must’ve been so hard,” I said.

I didn’t ask her what happened, but there must’ve been a question flickering in my eyes, because April swallowed hard and supplied the answer. “She was a real party girl from a young age. Got into some bad stuff. She overdosed last year.”

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