The Rebel of Raleigh High (Raleigh Rebels #1) - Callie Hart Page 0,51

got…it got really fucking crazy, and when the shit hit the fan, Kacey still had her claws in my back so deep, I’m ashamed to say I just did whatever the fuck she told me. All I do know is that Silver used to be one of them…and something really horrible must have happened between her and Kacey for everything to have blown up the way it did.”

I frown, crushing the solo cup in my hand. We’re almost back to the kitchen’s sliding doors. The sounds of the party have reached a fever pitch, the music pulsing like an angry heartbeat. Someone opens the door, throwing an oblong shard of golden light out into the darkness. Inside, someone screams raucously at the top of their lungs, but I’m not focused on what they’re shouting. I’m still trying to process what Leon just said. “Wait, what do you mean, she used to be one of them?”

Leon nods, rocking his head from side to side, as if he finds the idea of Silver and Kacey being friends absolutely un-fucking-believable, too. “Yeah, I know. Kacey and Silver were inseparable not too long ago. You couldn’t say one of their names without the other. Kacey and I were in a relationship for years, but you’d never hear the names ‘Kacey and Leon’ put together. It was only ever Kacey and Silver. You couldn’t picture it now if you tried.”

I am trying. I’m trying to picture it, and he’s right. I can’t fucking do it.

He gives a brittle, hollow laugh. “I guess now it’s not Kacey and Leon, or Kacey and Silver, anyway. It’s Kacey and fucking Jacob. I wonder how long that’s gonna last.”

15

ALEX

Leon goes back inside, but I need a moment to clear my mind. I can’t face the football team right now. All I really wanna do is think for a second, to try and wrap my head around the idea that Silver used to align herself with Kacey and her clones. I don’t hate Halliday, but the rest of them are vacuous witches without an independent thought between them, and it’s strangely unbearable to think Silver used to be like that. Like them.

Around the side of the house, I'm unsurprised to come across a swimming pool. Steam rises off the illuminated body of water, up toward the night sky. Leon made it seem as though his father didn't want to support his commitment to his swimming, wanted him to do anything else but swim, but this makes a different statement altogether. Usually, people have modest pools in their back yards, kidney-shaped, maybe with a fountain or a waterfall. Not Leon's, though. Leon's pool was clearly not put here for relaxation purposes. It's an Olympic sized pool, fiercely rectangular, long and thin with only three lanes. Leon must come out here every morning and swim a thousand fucking laps to justify such a huge, obnoxious body of water.

There are sun loungers to one side of the pool, though they look like they’ve never been used. I sit my ass down on one and then lie back, staring up at the clear sky. Up there, the heavens are a midnight blue, the color of deep, dark water. The stars are incredibly bright, like burning pinpricks of silver.

Silver.

Silver.

My phone feels like a lead weight in the inside pocket of my leather jacket. I pat my hands against my chest, contemplating taking it out and pulling up her phone number. Maybe hitting the dial button. I wonder briefly where she is. What she’s doing. It’s late, almost one thirty in the morning, so the likeliest answer to those questions is that she’s in bed, asleep, and she wouldn’t appreciate a drunk dial from me.

A burst of giggled laughter disrupts the quiet behind me, to my right, and I hear the sound of a door closing. The hurried padding of feet follows, and I know immediately that someone’s headed this way, toward the pool. I close my eyes, annoyance rippling beneath the calm surface of my exterior. It’s too late to get up and get the fuck out of here without being seen, and I don’t feel like I should have to move to make room for a gaggle of Raleigh High’s social elite anyway. However, when I crack my eyes and realize who’s coming running around the side of the building, wrapped in nothing but towels, I wish I had gotten to my feet and bolted.

Halliday, Kacey, Zen, and three other girls all study me