Page 5 of Enemies to Prom Dates
And rich!
That was my mother in my head. When he’d pulled up in his Benz this morning to pick up Star for an early breakfast, my mother had been practically giddy. I called her on the fact they were just a high-school couple.
“You know this town,” my mother said. “They inbreed here. Money marries money. Now maybe they separate for a time, go off to college and so forth. That’s certainly normal, but everyone from Haddonfield always comes back to Haddonfield. A good impression once left can never be undone. Star is beyond beautiful. Chas will never find her equal and, once he realizes that, he’ll know marriage is the only answer. We just need to keep up appearances until that happens.”
I wanted to tell her she was insane, but I knew part of what drove my mother was fear.
Fear of the future now that Dad had left us high and dry.
Well, me, not so dry now.
“Come on,” Star said, pulling me along as we ran for cover.
Once inside, I tried to shake off the rain and pushed my hair out of my face.
“Why do you have to be such a bitch to Fitz all the time?” Star asked me. “It’s like you two are still back in the third grade kicking sand in each other’s faces from the sandbox.”
That’s when Fitz’s parents had moved here. We were supposed to be friends, but it had been my sandbox first.
“Why do you have to be so nice to him?” I countered. “You know he’s my academic mortal enemy and we’re basically competing to the death this year. You should be on my side.”
“Of course I’m on your side. But I’m nice to him for a very simple reason. I’m nice to everyone. Because it feels good.”
“Yuck.”
There you have it, ladies and gentlemen. My perfectly wonderful sister.
We split up and headed to our respective homerooms. The school wasn’t large, each grade consisting of just over or just under a hundred students. Which meant four homeroom classes for each grade. I was lucky in that homeroom also included my two best friends.
I walked into my assigned room and found them right away. I didn’t know what it said about me that my two best friends were actually two of the poorer girls at school.
Haddonfield, by state law, had to have what was considered low-income housing, which wasn’t exactly the hood, just some smaller modular homes in a two-block area called the West End.
That’s where Janie and Reen lived now. Although at one point they had lived together at Thornfield Home. A state-run foster home for kids under eighteen. The home had been funded by a bunch of wealthy benefactors for years, until a government program shut it down declaring that children did better when placed in individual homes with families.
Janie lived with her foster mom quite contently.
Reen, not as much.
My friends could be summed up pretty succinctly.
Janie wanted to change the world for the better.
Reen wanted to get rich.
Sometimes it made me take a hard look at what I wanted. The simplest, purest form of me.
What did I want?
Before my dad left us, the truth was I would have said defeating Fitz by any means necessary. Which was a pretty sad commentary on my existence as whole. But now everything was different.
My single purpose was protecting my family. Also by any means necessary.
Janie and Reen both knew my dad was gone, of course. But I hadn’t told them about the money. I didn’t really know why. Embarrassment?
Or was the truth something a little darker?
As long as people still thought I had money, me being friends with the Havenots—the utterly disgusting term used to describe the kids who lived in the West End—was considered whimsical. A choice I had. To be friends with people from all economic classes.
