Page 20 of The Pawn

"I'll be fine. As long as the key card works to let me back in."

"Oh, Mrs. Reynolds will test it out for you. See ya later!" She's about to head out when she pauses and adds, "One last hot tip: the showers are crazy busy in the mornings, so I highly suggest you shower in the evening if that's something you're into. Even here at Coleridge, hot water is in limited supply."

I frown. "I thought our room came with its own bathroom?"

"Half bath," she corrects, sighing forlornly. "I mean, it's better than nothing—you won't catch me using a public toilet anywhere outside Japan—but alas, the only place to shower is with the other girls. And they hog their steam."

"Got it. Thanks for the tip."

I watch her as she leaves, long dark ponytail swaying behind her, steps eager and quick. In another life, in another world, a girl like me and Holly could be friends.

Then again, I was friends with Maggie until she got a rich boyfriend and ditched me for beach houses in Rhode Island with his posh family. Maybe no one can really be friends with a great divide between them like money.

When I knock, Mrs. Reynolds calls out, "Come in." It's easy enough to explain what I need and get my ID coded to open up the room in addition to all the labs, libraries, and other buildings I need to get into. There's something creepy about all of the card's features—for one thing, it can track us almost anywhere on campus, given how often it connects to a sensor or gets swiped through a terminal—but at least I won't have to worry about anything as long as I never lose it.

The key works, and Holly is out, so I have at least a few minutes to myself in the room. I make the bed with the regulation Coleridge sheets, ignoring the twinge of jealousy I feel at their low thread count compared to what Holly has. In addition to the white sheet with the blue Coleridge insignia on them, there's also a blue comforter with gold thread at the edges. Coleridge colors are blue and gold; money and royalty brought to life.

Once the bed is made, I open up my side of the wardrobe and try not to stare into Holly's side. It's simple enough to hang up the few dresses I have, then the Coleridge button-ups and skirts. I put my pajamas, athletic clothing, socks, underwear, and bras into the little dresser on my side of room and stare at the empty space in the drawers.

I remember what Tanner said."I'd set you up with him, but you're not his type."He meant that Blake Lee wouldn't date someone crazy enough to burn an Elite's hand, but there were other things implied in his tone. I'm not one of these Coleridge girls, born into the upper class with money to burn. Someone like Blake would never roll around in the muck with a girl like me.

But Tanner seemed to imply that he would.

Unlike the other three Elites, Tanner George Connally wasn't born to money. His father is a self-made man who grew up in a trailer park and became a race car driver at a young age. Skill and athleticism rocketed him to the top, and he became the face of dozens of brand sponsorships.

Then came the talk show interviews. The charming speeches about politics, and what family means to him. He grew up and settled down, gave up racing, and started running in local politics. Money rolled in, just like when he was a driver, and soon enough he made it to the national stage as a senator from Kentucky.

Tanner may have plenty of wealth in his family now, but his father didn't make it right away, and the Connally were young newlyweds when Tanner was born. I bet he remembers what it was like not to have much; his father probably tells him all the time how lucky he is.

And I know already that he's a player, the kind of guy who'd get called the school slut if he were a girl instead.

Gears whir in my mind, plans taking formation. If I'm going to face the guys as myself, and not just Legacies, I need to figure out a way in, a way to tear them apart and turn them against each other the way they turned against my brother. Tanner is a weak spot, a messy impulsive nouveau riche without the class of the other three.

I've never seduced a guy before.

I wonder if I could.

The thought of trying thrills me.

First, though, I pull Silas's old laptop out of my bag, set it on the desk, and turn it on. The low battery alert flashes, forcing me to plug it in; the computer is a couple of years old and running on empty. It's also low on storage space for some reason, despite having a one terabyte hard drive Silas upgraded it to himself with lawn mowing money and a few YouTube videos.

I don't understand much about computers, but thankfully I don't need to in order to take these guys down. Yesterday I reactivated the blog and set up the tip line, then scheduled a post to go live today. It's up now, and has already gotten over a thousand views from the blog's loyal readers. It doesn't hurt that I set up the blog posts to push alerts to Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and of course Secretz, the newest social media website for anonymous gossip.

It's been a while. What do I have to say to excuse this blog's hiatus, except that in the age of SnapInstaTwitter, people have moved on from this old format. It is, not to make a pun, a legacy of the old internet.

But the need for a blog like this isn't dead. With the rich up to their old antics, from Elizabeth Holmes at Theranos to Mark Zuckerberg's ongoing scandals, there's a need to stop the rich and privileged before they gain power. Every Elon Musk has a hidden sordid past, and the only way to stop them is before they ascend to power.

So tell us about this generation's rich, spoiled, and Insta-famous. Is there an influencer who lies about their finances, a teenage pop star faking their songwriting abilities, or an heir to an empire with a drug problem? Tell us. Send your tips to our inbox, and we'll make sure they make it to this blog—and to our newly reactivated social media sites, including our brand new Snapchat and Secretz accounts, because we know that's where everything happens these days.

Until the dirt is excavated, this is Legacies signing off.

I studied the style of the blog's previous posts and did my best to match the style of Legacies I and Legacies III. As the third person to admin the blog, I've got quite the mantle to take on. Legacies is the website that exposed the admissions scandal of Wordsworth Preparatory School in 2010 and the cocaine ring of Missionary Academy of Pennsylvania in the early 2000s.

Of course, the punishment students at both schools suffered was short-lived. It's not hard to find the public profile of the cocaine ring boys and discover that they're investors, tech moguls, and even one District Attorney now. The blog comes up buried in search results when you look up their names, further proof that the rich get second chances the poor never do.

Curious to see if I've gotten anything, I open up the Legacies email inbox and all its social media DMs. There are a few comments on the blog wondering if there's gossip to come out—and a few angry emails complaining that the hiatus ever happened in the first place.

Someone sent a tip that a rich ambassador's son in a prep school in Los Angeles is cheating on his girlfriend with a teacher. Cringing, I set it aside to look at later, in case that teacher needs to be reported for sleeping with an underage boy. There's also a tip that looks promising at first, but devolves into a claim that some kids at a school called Miskatonic Prep are the dead brought back to life with dark magic and ritualistic sacrifice—obvious fiction from the mind of someone obsessed with Lovecraft. I appreciate the creativity, but I can't publish something this out there on a blog dedicated to truth and justice.

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