their vast differences, she shocked us all by leaving her house on Heartbreak Hill to my mom. It wasn’t until we moved in over the summer and saw the state of things that my mom realized it was my grandmother’s last fuck you. Turns out, Amelia Courtland was a bit of a hoarder in her old age. The downstairs was in decent condition, but upstairs? Upstairs was in shambles. We’re still nowhere near finished, but it’s livable and better than our place in Shadow Ridge. Not to mention paid off.
“It’s going to be fine,” Valen reassures me for the thirty-seventh time in as many minutes as I stand here hesitating before the imposing red-bricked building. Sawyer Point has a reputation for scary, haunted, and historic buildings. But not one of them is as intimidating as the one I stand before, and not for reasons of the paranormal variety. Ghosts have nothing on the rich and beautiful teenagers of Sawyer Point High School. I haven’t faced any of these people in nine months. I know the second I walk through those doors, the whispers will start.
As if that’s anything new.
“I know,” I say, shrugging, aiming for casual when I’m feeling anything but.
“No one’s even talking about you guys anymore since Bryce Anderson knocked up Melissa Matthews over the summer,” Valen says when I still don’t make a move. She produces a lip gloss from the tiny pocket of her equally tiny skirt before she drags the wand across her full lips. Valentina Solorio looks more like an Instagram model than a high school student with her olive skin, the perfect number of freckles across the bridge of her nose, and the dimples in her cheeks. Her thick dark hair is rolled into twin buns on the top of her head, leaving two strands hanging in the front. If I tried to pull off that hairstyle, I’d end up looking like an actual alien. But Valen manages to make everything look hot. Her style is what can only be described as rich-girl grunge. Feminine with a little edge. Meanwhile, I’m looking decidedly less hot in my cut-off black denim shorts, cropped grey sweatshirt, and Chucks. We’re complete opposites, but she’s my best friend, and the only one who stuck around when everyone else turned their backs on me.
I raise my eyebrows, pinning her with a look. Everyone wants to know what happened to make Thayer and Holden drop me. Myself included.
“Okay, fine. These losers are still talking about it,” Valen says. “But that doesn’t mean anything. It’s senior year, and you’re Shayne fucking Courtland.”
I shake my head, but a small smile tugs at my lips. My name means absolutely nothing. In fact, it’s more of a scarlet letter than a badge of honor these days, much to my late grandmother’s dismay. My mom grew up here, and apparently, she wasn’t exactly the perfect little debutante they expected her to be. I’m not sure of the details, but after a falling-out with her parents, she moved away at a young age. Both Grey and I were born out of wedlock, which apparently was still frowned upon here like it’s 1952. Our father left when I was too young to remember, and all I have left is a single, faded picture.
When my mom returned to Sawyer Point to visit her parents for the first time in over fifteen years, she managed to snag August Ames, CEO of AmesAir, without so much as batting an eye. That made her the talk of the town, and when she dragged my brother and me to live at Whittemore, it made me the shiny new toy at Sawyer Point High. Rumors weren’t exactly a novel concept for me. I didn’t expect it to last more than six months with her track record, but she stuck around for two whole miraculous years. Sometimes, I wonder if she would have stayed with August for good, if not for Danny’s accident.
“Solid pep talk.”
Valen shrugs. “It’s true.”
The first bell rings and I hitch my backpack onto my shoulder, straightening my spine. Valen hooks her arm through mine and I blow out a breath. “Let’s do this.”
We make our way across the student parking lot, through the clusters of cliques, heads held high. It starts immediately—the hushed whispers, the furtive glances. With each step, they get louder, bolder, more obvious.
“I heard she got caught fucking one of the Ames brothers, so they sent her away.”