Page 74 of The Pawn

Tears are thick in my throat. "It wasn't," I admit, my voice barely audible to my own ears. Holly leans in, looms over me, her mouth a thin line of calm anger. "What I did was wrong. I'm sorry, Holly. I shouldn't have done it."

She shakes her head, dark hair sliding over her shoulders like silk. In a sad voice, she says, "I thought we were friends."

Then she turns around. Walks away. Leaves me alone in the darkness without a single sympathetic soul at my side. And I know one thing, without a doubt: I did this to myself. I've dug my own grave, willingly.

I thought I had nothing to lose.

I forgot that I had Holly.

There's a murmur in the crowd. People are looking at me in various states of shock and confusion. Bile rises in my throat, quick and hot, and I'm struck by the urge to get out of here—to run away fast, as fast as I can, and never look back.

Maybe Blake, Cole, and Tanner were right. I don't belong at Coleridge. I never did and I never will. Nothing is more proof of that than tonight. Even Martha Hayes must think I'm a trespasser, or the candles I lit for her wouldn't have burned me for daring to dress up in her likeness. I have to get out of here before something else goes terribly, horribly wrong.

So I push off from the basin, searching for the best way to get out, the path with the fewest people on it. That's when I spy them, coming straight for me, anger on their faces: Piper and Georgia.

There's no chance to get away. They're on me in a moment, one girl on each side, grabbing my upper arms in grips so tight it hurts.

Piper says, "This is for Holly."

"We'll do what she won't," Georgia mutters, face twisted up in a cruel smile.

They pick me up, heave me over the side of the basin, and push me down in the shockingly cold water. Hands descend on my head, push me down beneath the surface. I struggle to push up from the bottom, but their strength keeps me down, my lungs burning, skin numb from the cold.

It feels useless to fight it. Maybe I deserve to drown like this.

As the darkness closes around me, something else rises up inside my chest: the fire of my old anger, returned to keep me warm. Water trickles into my mouth, bursts down my throat towards my lungs.

And I reach up, nails out like claws, to scratch and fight. I pull the arms that hold me down until they stumble and fall into the water too.

Then I stand up, gasping for air, coughing out the cold and surging towards the edge of the basin. There's a whole crowd of students around it, peering down into the darkness.

They watched. They allwatchedas those two girls tried to drown me. I shove them out of the way, water sluicing down my dress in giant puddles, shivering in the night air.

Then I bend down, scoop my purse up off the ground, and force my chin up. Ignoring the whispers around me, I pick a path that'll take me the Hell out of here.

"Get back here you bitch!" There's coughing behind me as Piper and Georgia stand up in the water basin, screaming like banshees. "We're not done with you!"

"Whatever," I mutter, mentally adding those two girls to my list. "There's nothing else you can do to me that I give a shit about."

Turning down the path, I reach into my purse and grab my phone. When I picked it up off the ground earlier, I noticed a new alert I've been waiting for since that packet about Cole's DUI showed up at my door. Now I've got the rest of what I need to make everything about him public, and take him down—a story that, hopefully, will eclipse my minor credit card theft.

Holly could turn me into the police.

I'll worry about that later. If I get rid of the card and everything I bought with it, they can't prove it was me—hopefully. I tried to pick local businesses without the funds to keep security footage lying around for weeks. But if she does turn me in, I have to at least make sure this new information makes it public first, especially considering the photos I just got in my inbox.

I'm scrolling through them with my eyes down, walking down one of the emptier paths in the garden, so I don't see them until I'm nearly on them. By the time I look up from the screen and into their faces it's too late to turn around and go anywhere else.

In one of the secluded little corners, where darkness keeps them from being easily found, Chrissy is on her knees with her mouth open wide, eyes closed, oblivious to the fact that I'm watching her suck Tanner's cock.

I've barely seen the senator's son since his little apology tour. We don't share any classes, and he's been going straight to his classes like the studious boy isn't. But he's looking at me now, those hazel of us his meeting mine, a smirk on his lips.

As I watch, frozen, he puts his hand in Chrissy's blonde hair and strokes himself into her mouth, deep enough that she makes a little choking sound. Then she pulls off him, batting his hand away, her lips shiny as she complains, "You're gonna make me puke."

"You would deserve it," he says to her, still staring at me, "considering what you did to Cole's little sister all those years ago."

"That deaf bitch should've minded her own business," Chrissy says. "It's not my fault everyone called her a retard. That was just hervoice.'Stahp Kissy, no Kissy.' You'd think with their money, her parents could've taught her to speak better."

She senses me suddenly. Looks up and over, wiping the back of her mouth, eyes lazily moving up to see who's stumbled in on her little scene.

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