Page 441 of Filthy Elites

“Oh my god, can you even imagine if his dick was that small?” She cackles. “How gutted would you be if a boy that hot had a microwang?”

We’re still laughing as we pull into the school parking lot. There’re separate dedicated parking areas for sophomores, juniors and seniors. The sophomore spots are the farthest away, the juniors in the middle and seniors right outside the entrance doors. Courtney pulls her car into a spot and kills the engine, then turns to look at me. “First day of sophomore year.”

I can hear the excitement in her voice; she loves this. Being at school, having a million friends, going to parties. She’s been talking about what we’ll do once we’re in high school since the fourth grade when she moved into my class. Now we’re finally here, the shine doesn’t seem to be wearing off. Our freshman year, she calmed down a little bit. I guess it takes a while for everyone to find their place in the hierarchy, but once she officially settled into her role as cheerleader, she embraced it wholeheartedly. I, on the other hand, am still trying to figure out where I fit in.

The town of Green Acres where we live is split into two halves, the ‘Haves’ and the ‘Have-nots’. The ‘Haves’ live in North Acres, which is where all the houses have electric gates, their own pools, and big enough plots that you can’t see your neighbors’ houses. South Acres is where the ‘Have-nots’ live. Run-down houses sit next to abandoned lots, beside drug dealers selling from street corners.

Courtney’s family has a beautiful McMansion on a beautiful road in North Acres, her parents are lawyers and her family comes from money on both her mom and dad’s sides. I live slap bang on the border of north and south, or no-man’s-land as I like to call it. My house is small, just two beds, one and a half baths, and a yard full of flowers my mom bought at the grocery store when they were on offer. We’re not rich like Courtney’s family, but we’re not poor either.

My mom is an author. She writes thrillers and has even hit theNew York Timesbestseller list a few times. What people don’t realize is that even when an author sells a shit ton of books, they don’t necessarily make a shit ton of money.

Some months she makes loads, other months she earns practically nothing, which means that although we almost always manage to pay the bills, we need the money I make working at the diner to bridge the gaps between the good months and the bad.

The only reason I can afford to attend Green Acres Academy—a classy private school in North Acres—is because my mom got a big advance from her publisher to write the next three books in her current series and she paid my tuition in advance for my freshman and sophomore years. If I’ll be able to attend here for my junior and senior years is kind of up in the air at the moment.

Climbing out of the car, I smooth down my green-plaid skirt and hook the straps of my backpack over my shoulders. The kids at GAA are all rich, and even though they’re not assholes to me, they know that I’m not one of them. Thank God the diner I work at is in South Acres, because if anyone here came to the place I work and I had to wait on them, they’d never let me forget it.

I’m not ashamed of having a job, I’m happy to contribute to take some of the pressure off my mom. But to the kids that go here, their idea of a part-time job is interning at their parents’ Fortune 500 company, not serving burgers in a run-down diner in a rough part of town.

“I’m so excited for sophomore year,” Court exclaims, hooking her arm through mine and marching us toward the school entrance.

“Really? Why?”

“Duh, because we’re not the newbies anymore, select sophomores get invited to all the good parties, and we’re going to be two of those people. We’re both hot, maybe we could even get junior boyfriends and then we’d be a shoo-in to be Elite by the time we hit our senior year.”

Green Acres Academy has a ridiculous tradition where instead of having prefects, they have The Elite, it’s a group of seniors that basically constitute the most popular kids in school. Each year, the graduating seniors name The Elites for the following year, or at least that’s how it normally goes. The reigning Elites weren’t picked when they were juniors, they were picked when they were freshmen. From what I’ve been told, that’s never happened before.

Evan Morris, Hunter Rossberg, Clay Jansen and the king himself, Sebastian Lockwood entered the school as rich nobodies and by the end of their freshmen year, they were running the place. According to Courtney, who actually pays attention to the social hierarchy at GAA, their uninterrupted reign of terror hasn’t ever been challenged, because even as freshmenthe seniors all deferred to whatever the four of them said.

Normally The Elites are a mix of boys and girls, but the guys have never added any girls to their power foursome. Instead, they have a rotating harem of eager Elite bunnies who all think they have a shot at the crown if they spread their legs for one of the guys.

What makes no sense to me is that these girls all see fucking an Elite as a badge of honor, and if they manage to bag all four, then I think they get special privileges or something. In this day and age, surely we should all be aiming to get ahead with something more progressive than what’s between our legs.

Courtney’s chattering away as we walk, but I’m not really listening to her. The closer we get to the school the more tense I feel. My bestie spent all summer at pool parties or lounging on the beach at bonfires with our classmates. I spent my summer working every shift my boss Henry would give me. While she was getting tan in a bikini, I was sweating through my polyester waitress uniform.

I’m not jealous of the parties; they aren’t really my scene anyway, but I am jealous of the friendship and connections she made this summer. Before high school, the disparity between mine and Court’s lifestyles didn’t seem as wide as it does now, and I’m not sure I can survive this place without her if she starts to realize I’m not playing in the same league as her.

“Oh my god, look at them. I swear my panties almost melt off just from looking at them,” Court says loudly, her grip on my arm tightening.

“Who?”

“Seriously,” she huffs. “The Elite.”

My eyes follow her line of sight and there they are, the four beautiful boys, Clay, Evan, Hunter and Sebastian. Even in their uniforms they look like they’re posing for a Calvin Klein advertisement. GAA has a strict dress code, green-plaid skirts or pinafores, white blouses, green ties and blazers for the girls. Tan chinos, white shirts, green ties and green blazers for the boys. We basically all look like extras fromGossip Girl, but somehow The Elite boys make the forest-green jackets look good.

I’ll never admit it to Court, but I don’t know which boy is which. All four guys are over six feet tall, well built and muscular. GAA doesn’t indulge in the classic high school sports so there’s no football or basketball teams. Instead, the guys do lacrosse, rowing and fencing, and The Elite dominate in all three. Clay is the captain of the rowing team, Evan fencing and Sebastian lacrosse. They also hold the top four spots on the class list and have done since they started.

Now that I think about it, I suppose it makes sense that they became Elites so early on. Top of their class, captains of all the sports teams, good-looking, and of course, outrageously rich. Individually, perhaps they could have been toppled. Together, they’re an unstoppable force.

“God, can you imagine getting one of them as your boyfriend?” Court says dreamily.

“No,” I laugh. “They don’t have girlfriends, they have bunnies who drop their panties the moment one of them clicks their fingers.”

“Maybe if they met the right girl”

“Jesus, Court, get a grip,” I snap. “Please don’t get dragged into their web; they’d pass you around and then discard you. That’s not what you want, is it?”

“I suppose not, although I bet it’d be fun,” she sighs. “They’re just so pretty.”

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