The Princess and The Jester - A.D. McCammon Page 0,62
are concerned, nothing has changed. But when we’re behind closed doors, she’s mine. I spend most of my days counting down the hours until we get to be alone again.
If it wasn’t for the odd start to our school year, I might never have noticed something was off with him.
They say freshman year of high school is supposed to be the toughest of them all. You’re at the bottom of the food chain again. Easy prey. But Thatcher’s status rose instead of declining. Suddenly our peers were treating him like a king. Arwen and I, like part of his royal court. We’ve been dealing with bullies every day for years. It was nice to have a reprieve, but we knew there had to be a reason. There’s always a catch with these types of things.
So, Arwen and I finally asked him about his newfound popularity. Both of us half-expected him to tell us he’d paid his way into the in-crowd. If only that was the case.
Arwen elbows me, her stunning gray eyes flaring. She wants me to say something, but I’m scared to speak. What do you say to your best friend after he tells you he’s been sexually abused?
My emotions are too high. My heart hurts for Thatcher, and I’m angry. So fucking angry.
“They can’t get away with this,” I say, verbalizing my thoughts.
Thatcher finally turns to face us, his features void of emotion. Like he’s turned it off with a flip of a switch, made himself numb to it. “They already have. Even if I was willing to tell everyone what they did to me, no one would believe it. They’re all popular, good looking girls who come from wealthy families. I’d be nothing more than the punchline of a bad joke. At least this way we’re protected.”
I shake my head, pacing the floor to relieve some of the fury building inside of me. “They’re telling everyone it was consensual. Making you out to be some…man whore who sleeps around. Is that really how you want to get your popularity? Because I don’t want any part of that. What Brandi and the rest of those bitches did to you is wrong, Thatch.”
Brandi Roberts might be the daughter of a famous country singer, but that doesn’t give her a pass to treat people however she sees fit. She and her friends used Thatcher like their own personal practice dummy, using threats and manipulation to keep him quiet about it. They told him he could play along and become a god among his peers. Or refuse them and have his life destroyed.
His sister Kandice is just as guilty as her friends. She had to know what was happening. That it wasn’t right. And she did nothing to help her brother.
“Don’t you think I know that?” he seethes. “What choice do I have? It’s either act like nothing happened or let them make my life worse. Speaking out won’t change what they did. It won’t take it away. This is as close to justice as I’m going to get.”
“No. It’s not. We can dish out our own form of justice—make them pay without revealing your secret,” I say.
“Right,” Arwen scoffs. “How do you suppose we do that?”
Smirking, I rub my hands together as a plan begins to form. “Simple. We find their weaknesses—the skeletons they’re hiding in their closets—and use them against them.”
“Simple?” Thatcher squeaks, running a hand through his hair. “Are you mad? How the hell are you planning to get this information?”
“Leave that to me. I’ll take care of getting what we need.” I smirk, patting him on the back.
No one knows this, not even Gwen, but I’ve become a bit of a tech nerd. It started out with Mark and Nina asking me for help with their phones or computers all the time. It was easy stuff in the beginning. My phone is running slow or I can’t get this app to open. Each time I was able to help them solve a problem or fix something that was broken, they paid me nicely. So, I started soaking up all the knowledge I could.
Now, there aren’t many devices or firewalls I can’t manipulate. And since everyone keeps their most private and personal information stored on their devices or in the cloud, it won’t be hard for me to get what we need.