Total pages in book: 36
Estimated words: 33795 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 169(@200wpm)___ 135(@250wpm)___ 113(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 33795 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 169(@200wpm)___ 135(@250wpm)___ 113(@300wpm)
I’m claiming what’s mine.
2
Tempest
God these two are dorks.
I mean, summer school — ugh. I could roll my eyes. Or puke. Trust me when I say spending more time at freaking Thornbull — after I should’ve graduated and been done with this place — is the very last thing I’d like to be spending my summer doing. But obviously, it’s not my idea to be here. It’s Paul and Carrie that have me coming to this. Well, them and the fact that actually graduating from this snob-factory of a school and going off to college at Harvard is contingent on passing two stupid classes this summer.
I know what you’re thinking, and you’re wrong on a few levels.
No, I’m not off to Harvard — insert effected accent here — because of who my parents are. My parents are dead, actually. Paul and Carrie were their best friends, and in the will to take over as my guardians in the “unlikely event of a two-parent loss.” Well, that “unlikely event” turned out to be more likely than anticipated — a car crash when I was eleven, and, ironically, being babysat for the night by Paul and Carrie.
Carrie and Paul never wanted kids. That’s not to say they haven’t done a pretty admirable job with me. They’ve been great, really. Just, you know, not “parents.” More like a cool aunt and uncle. Or scratch that, maybe even more removed than that. More like cool friends of your parents, ‘cause that’s what they were. But cool friends of your parents give you fun birthday presents and maybe your first beer. They don’t raise you.
Until they have to, I guess.
So, no, it’s not because of who my parents were, though they did leave me some money. But, I’m going to Harvard in the fall because I’m smart. Yes, I have a rep here at dorky Thornbull, and in this town. And it’s a reputation that I like, a lot. I’m the instigator. The outsider. I don’t really belong here, and this town has enjoyed reminding me of that for seven freaking years. But whatever, I know it, they know it, so why pretend otherwise? I made the decision years ago that instead of trying and failing to fit in with all of these phonies and snobs, I’d just fuck with them instead. Them and their sensibilities.
I like sticking out. I like being the bad influence they don’t want their little Stepford children hanging out with. And I’m fine with that. Which is why I’ve bullied, coerced, and basically shamed these two poor dorks into ditching first period to smoke cigarettes behind the gym with me.
The two of them look like they’re about to commit a felony. I watch as Jon, and then Mike — sorry, Jonathan Fillmore Price the third, and Michael Charles Lewis Sterling — wait for it — the fifth, fumble with the pack of cigarettes. Mike finally awkwardly pulls one out, and sticks the wrong end in his mouth before I roll my eyes and snatch it away.
“No, like this.”
I shake my head as I show him. God these two are lame, and these are like the two most popular guys in this school.
I know, it’s insane.
In a normal high school, go-getter nerds like this would be, well, nerds. Not at Thornbull — an “institution of academic and personal excellence.” And the people who go here really take it to heart. There are sports teams, but no jock culture. The real rockstars of this school are the math-team wizards and the model United Nations masters who’re going off to whatever token Ivy League school next year before coming back to West Haven to run their fathers’ mutual funds or whatever.
“Here, like this,” I mutter as I show both of them how to light a cigarette, and then take a shallow drag of mine.
I don’t actually smoke, I was just bored today. Bored enough to finally do something about “my problem,” which, as I start in on another whole semester here, is only going to get worse. My problem who I know watched me come back here with these two. My problem that the dirty, excited, nervous, and toe-curlingly wanting part of me just has to do something about.
My problem wasn’t ever going to be my problem, until the day I was waiting in his office and felt my whole body turn to mush when he stepped in. I’d been expecting old Dr. Lindon.
He was not who I was expecting.
He who made me blush and tingle all over — who made me lose my ability to speak, and who made me just grin at him like a stammering idiot while my body grew warm in places that made my pulse skip a beat.
Those piercing blue eyes. That dark hair. That body and oh my God those tattoos. He was everything I’d always secretly lusted for, which is exactly what I’ve been doing ever since that day.