to stack the deck.”
“How do you know that?” My voice echoes out into the audience, who have all gone quiet between presentations. The audience responds with a titter of soft laughter.
Ah, yes. Dramatic teenagers.
Hilarious.
“One of my friends was doing some filing in the office weeks ago. Y’all’s drawing guy doesn’t realize how loud he is.”
“Mr. Randall,” I speak over the thrumming pulse in my ears. “So, you actually heard him saying all this?”
I want to cry. I want to laugh.
I am furious.
“Not me, but yeah. He was talking to her mom about it, and she was really excited. It just seems, I don’t know—slimy.” She frowns. “I almost dropped out after he told me, but I really need this, so—”
Of course. There was no way she was getting into the Capstone without some kind of outside help—I’ve seen firsthand how little she’s actually turned in for class. I also have French and AP Euro with her, and I know she barely scrapes by in her core classes, too.
There’s no doubt that she’s gone from just-okay grades to literally, actually, failing.
“It was slimy for Randall to do it,” I say, “and slimy for Rhodes to follow through with it.”
Rhodes isn’t smiling when she steps off the stage. She only galvanizes when our eyes meet, her shoulders going ramrod straight and her jaw freezing into hard angles.
She pauses in front of me just long enough to look me over from the top of my head to the toes of my shoes before she makes her way past the others, in the direction of the stage foyer.
I follow her.
I don’t know what I’m going to say when I get where she’s going.
The door slams in my face.
Suddenly, everything I want to say strains against the inside of my mind, two years of it stretching and pressing and growing and screaming—
I fling the door open behind her.
When she whirls around, her eyes are wide, and her jaw is set.
I close the distance between us. She’s got at least six inches on me, and probably a good twenty pounds. She pushes me away from her to create space, and I push back. Harder this time, maybe too hard.
It’s an orgasm of its own kind: euphoria followed by an instant break of tension.
I started this fight, and it isn’t one I’m going to win fairly.
CHAPTER 16
RHODES
Username: I-Kissed-Alice
Last online: 20m ago
Iliana is a force of nature, practically flying through the door to claim any space between us.
Her voice is thunder, and her eyes are lightning.
Electricity surges in each curl that flies about her face; it crackles and glows over the top of her skin—
Her hands are on me, and her breath is on me, and her hair is on me—
I throw out my arms and push her back.
Disbelief hangs heavy around us.
After everything, this is the first time we’ve ever actually touched each other.
“I fought for my place at the Conservatory.” Iliana is first to break the silence. Her chest heaves. “I fought to be here.”
“Of course you think you’re the only one fighting,” I say.
Sarah, as ever, is alternately hovering between the two of us and trying to blend in with the wallpaper. Kiersten hovers close, hammering away at the phone in her hands as she watches. I throw a hand out in Sarah’s direction as proof.
“Sarah is fighting to be here,” I say. “I’m fighting to be here, too.”
“Sarah doesn’t matter right now!” Iliana is on fire. “This is about you.”
Sarah clutches her cheek as if she’s been slapped, but if Iliana notices she doesn’t care. She’s the sun, burning bright and brilliant. She’s too much to look at like this, a black hole caving in on itself and threatening to subsume me into nothingness.
It takes everything within me not to roll over and show her the soft underside of my belly.
“Your family has given you everything,” Iliana seethes. “They paid out the ass for you to start the Conservatory in the eighth grade. You know why you’ve done Ocoee every year and I haven’t? I can’t afford the two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar entry fee.”
“That’s not fair!” I cry. She isn’t fair. “I am so sorry I’ve had advantages in life that you didn’t have—”
“I know you’re only here because June Baker waived the GPA requirements for you.”
Heat flies to my face. “THAT’S NOT—”
“True?” She rests a hand on her hip. “So why do I know that Randall was the one who talked to her?”
“Iliana—”
No. No. No no no no no.
No one is supposed to know this.
Iliana steps