Page 60 of A Scandal in Homeroom
He knew whatthatword meant to me. He knew how it would hurt me. When you grew up like I did, you learned pretty quickly that when someone was hurting you, your best strategy was to hit back.
The best way to hurt Locke was to make him believe what he already suspected about me. That he’d been played, used, manipulated. That everything I did had been planned and calculated and nothing I did came from any place of emotion or real feeling for him.
It would drive him crazy.
It would also make him hate me.
Locke hated me now.
I felt the tears well up again and willed them away. For one, my eyes couldn’t get any puffier, and for another, I couldn’t let myself be weak like that. I had to be sharp now. Last night I’d ditched the game for the first time ever. I’d texted Coyle I was grounded, then hadn’t looked at my phone for the remainder of the night.
When the doorbell had rung last night, I’d been so afraid it was Coyle, or worse, maybe theactualMoriarty coming to drag me to Thornfield. Instead, it had been Locke with a lame story about needing my Chem notes.
Now he hated me. Which was fine. Because I couldn’t be distracted by him. I didn’t know what Coyle or Moriarty were going to do about my sudden defection, but it was either leave the game or risk getting kicked out of my not-home home.
I stopped abruptly when I saw someone who did not belong on this side of town walking along the sidewalk.
“What the hell are you doing in the West End?”
Heath stopped and turned. A sneer, his version of a smile, lifting his lips. “Just taking a stroll. Reminding myself how good I have it now.”
I snorted. “You’re such a prick.”
He tilted his head as if acknowledging the truth of that statement.
“You know who is behind the List, don’t you?”
Locke’s words came back to me, and I told myself that I didn’t know.
I didn’t. If I knew, like had actual proof, then I would have told my best friend. I would have told Beth who was targeting her sisters, who was targeting her.
That’s what I told myself. That I didn’tknow.
I only suspected. Because I knew exactly who Heath was and what he was capable of. Maybe now was the time to end it. To prove what, so far, had been only a theory.
“Seriously, why are you here? Did you come to see me? Worried I might give up your secret?”
His eyebrow lifted as I approached him on the sidewalk. I made sure to keep at least three feet between us. If he made some kind of move, not that I thought he would do something so obvious, I still had room to dodge him.
“You think you can play me like you play everyone else,” I said. “Fitz and Ed. But they don’t know you like I do.”
Another sneer. “You don’t know shit about me.”
“We both know that’s not true.”
This time his face was a little uglier.
I pressed him. “Bet your boys don’t know that you used to run a betting list very similar to the Freshman Bait List back when we were in Thornfield together. Now of course, we were all poor orphans back then. It wasn’t like we were betting on people’s virginity. No, we bet on things like who would cry that night. Or which of the two new kids would get in a fight first. And of course the bets were only a dollar or fifty cents. However, it did sound awfully familiar to me when the Freshman Bait List sprang up at school. Taking the Snobs for all the money you could milk out of them…that sounds about right, too.”
Heath shook his head. “Reen, do not pretend to grow a brain. You’re already in enough trouble.”
“I’m not in trouble,” I said.
I was in ten kinds of trouble, but there was no way he knew that.
“Aren’t you?”
“Why aren’t you with Fitz?” I said, deflecting. “You heard about what happened, right?”
