Page 56 of The Pawn

An absurd desire goes through me, to tell him I'll leave Coleridge if he gets down on his knees and asks me again. I force the feeling down, put a brick wall around my heart.

"I've got plenty of fight," I warn him. "You'll regret trying to get me to leave."

Spinning on my heels, I walk through the stacks, past the dusty books, and towards the door out. I don't hear footsteps following me; whatever Tanner is doing, he's not going to try to convince me to leave again.

As soon as I'm out of the library, I take out my phone and open the email so I can read it more thoroughly.

What I see makes me smile.

Tanner Connally can ask me to leave. He can even beg. But he'll be the one to regret crossing me just now. I almost didn't want to spill his dirt, but after that conversation, I'm going to make him pay.

* * *

This piece of dirt is one I sit on for a while. I want to release it when it'll have the most impact—and look the least like I'm the one who leaked it. It's one thing that the Elites figured out my real name; it would be disastrous if they somehow discovered I'm Legacies.

So I publish other pieces of dirt about rich kids to the blog. A girl at Morhaven Prep has been cooking and selling drugs; a boy at Pennally Academy steals cars and takes them on joyrides. Taking down these other rich kids, who I've never even met, isn't quite as satisfying. But it feels good to know that I'm single-handedly keeping them in check.

On Tuesday, I find that my big calculus homework has gone missing, and the teacher wants to give me a zero. Eyeing Blake, it becomes clear that he must've stolen the assignment I turned in, maybe with his old TA keys. Thankfully I have a copy on my computer and the teacher lets me email it to her, with ten points taken off for being late.

Thursday evening, as I'm taking my shower, I squeeze my shampoo bottle into my hand and nearly vomit. There's a thick, disgusting-smelling sludge in the bottle instead of shampoo. I pour it down the drain, along with the similarly disgusting conditioner, and use my body wash all over in an attempt to get clean. As I leave the shower stall I spot Georgia blow-drying her hair near the mirrors, right next to Holly, and she gives me a wolfish grin.

This weekend the Rosalinds aren't hosting an event, so I hole up in the library to study and catch up on all my subjects. Compared to the other students here I'm disastrously behind; even Tanner, who doesn't seem very bright, manages a B average. Finding a studying program on Silas's computer, I put world history facts onto notecards and try to memorize in preparation for the big exam.

It goes on and on. I fall more behind in Calculus I every day; as soon as I figure out what was happening on my last test, I'm barely managing to pass the next one. Ms. Saint recommends me for extra tutoring on the weekend, taking up even more of the time that I could spend on my revenge.

And in Visual Arts class, Cole gets petty. My ink bottles somehow wind up full of grit; the pencils I pick out are always mislabeled, and my light sketching strokes turn into dark ones that don't come up when I try to erase them. The watercolors I pick out somehow change color as they dry on my paper.

I work with what I've got. I grit my teeth and ignore the smirks he sends my direction. After all, if this is the worst he's got, then he's got nothing. If he couldn't get me with a snake, he won't get me with ruined art supplies.

I try not to see Tanner in the hallways, especially when a new girl is at his side. He really did ditch Georgia permanently, and she hasn't released that video of us in the library—at least, not yet. But he doesn't even look at me as he passes me by, as if he's never even met me.

I'll make him pay for everything he's done. I just have to bide my time, make sure I get it right. I want this dirt I got on Tanner to be talked about for longer than Blake's video was discussed.

Finally, the moment comes.

The headlines on all the news sites are huge, the chatter on social media big. Everyone is talking about it.

GEORGE CONNALLY ANNOUNCES HIS BID FOR PRESIDENT

The senator is running for the highest office in the country.

And the world will see the truth about his son.

Chapter 29

Iwatch the video one last time before posting it, even though by now I've seen every second of it enough times to be able to describe it with my eyes closed.

It all starts innocently enough. Tanner and a small group of boys are at the shore of a lake, wearing swim trunks. None of the boys are the Elites; it looks and sounds like it was filmed in Kentucky.

"Hey Tanner." The boy holding the phone is snickering as he approaches them, his phone shaking with his footsteps. "You got something in your hair."

He scoops up mud from the bank of the lake and pushes it into Tanner's short black hair. Laughing and shaking the mud off, Tanner grabs his own handful of mud and throws it.

Soon enough a mud fight starts. No one is spared; they all get each other in the hair and the mouth. Even the phone lens gets a little dirty and has mud swiped off it. Laughter and boyish glee breaks out.

Until Tanner gets a little too zealous with the mud throwing, and, yanking the waistband of a blond boy's swim trunks, drops mud inside. The other boy gets spitting mad. Whirling on Tanner, he yells at him.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing, Connally?"

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