close eye on her.
“Yo!” Kash called as he barged into our room. “I got a hot date tonight.”
His eyes skimmed over my dresser and he grabbed one of the bottles of cologne. He sprayed it liberally, then started to choke.
“Dude!” he gasped. “What the fuck?”
The smell reached Kingston next and he jumped out of his bed. “Bro!”
I grinned when the scent of some seriously stinky cheese reached me. “Looks like Katya didn’t want us to forget about her.”
Kingston used his pillow to fan the fumes toward Kash and the doorway. “Out, dude.”
Kash cursed. “I’m going to be late.”
“You should probably cancel,” I advised him. “You’re going to need at least fifty showers to get that smell out.”
Kash slammed out of our room, cursing down the hall.
Kingston wrinkled his nose. “I can still smell it.”
I cracked one of the windows opened and hit the switch for the overhead fan. “We’re going to have to leave the door open to get a cross breeze going.”
Once we had some airflow in the room and disposed of anything that Kash might have sprayed, the scent was tolerable, but still there.
Kingston sighed and plopped back on his bed. “She got us again. I told her she wouldn’t be able to.”
“That was probably left over from the first time,” I reasoned.
Kingston looked worried. “You think she messed with more of our stuff?”
I shrugged. “I suggest testing each bottle of cologne before spraying it.”
Kingston groaned, but he had a smile on his face. “She’s good – I never would have thought about that. She hid one bad bottle in with the rest so we wouldn’t find it right away.”
“She’s smart,” I admitted.
Kingston gave me a sly look. “So it’s better to have her with us than against us, right, bro?”
I didn’t answer. Even if we wanted Katya on our side, had I already taken things too far for her to be able to trust us? She wouldn’t be happy when she found out about Abby or the truth drug. What would she do if we found that her grandmother had been murdered? Would we be able to work together against a common enemy, or would she be determined to fight us, too?
Chapter 42
Katya
“Hey, Abby!” I called out as I knocked on her door. “Let’s go to breakfast.”
She answered in her pajamas and with her hair in a tangled mess. “It’s Sunday morning at nine am,” she said as she squinted against the sunlight that shone through the tall windows at the end of the hall. “Why are you awake? Are you a complete psycho?”
A male murmur came from inside her room, and my eyebrows rose. “Never mind,” I said with a forced grin. “Text me when you’re up.”
Abby grumbled and shuffled back into her room like a zombie, shutting the door behind her.
I was almost done my eight weeks at Bedford, and I was looking forward to getting out of here. I had quickly realized that the students here were definitely not as well supervised as their parents thought. These rich kids ran the school and most of the staff were afraid to stand up to them. Late night parties full of underage drinking were ignored, and the rules about boys not being allowed in the girls’ dorm, and vice versa, were complete bullshit. Everyone did exactly what they wanted.
While the others partied, I stuck to ballet and my studies. Most of the students were gone for the summer, and the few that remained ignored me completely. Abby was my only real friend, but that was okay.
She tried to pretend everything here was fine, and I’d eventually fit in. However, I’d heard the whispers and felt the stares. Everyone was convinced I was the illegitimate love-child of Richard, probably thanks to his insistence that I use the Wilder name. I didn’t bother to correct anyone because why did it matter?
I missed Babulya more than ever. Living in a dorm, surrounded by kids that hated me, just made my heart ache in her absence. I knew she would tell me to toughen up and to hold my head up high, but being completely alone wasn’t easy. At least before I had Ryan. He and I used to have the same goals and lifestyle, but he was practically a stranger to me now. Our conversations were awkward and stilted, and they got shorter and less frequent every time I spoke with him.
It didn’t help that Ryan discovered Brett’s interest in him stemmed from his desire to get closer to