Page 2 of Enemies to Prom Dates
Nope. He wasn’t going to make me feel ashamed for having a job.
A job I needed. Because when my father left, he didn’t just ghost us.
He took all the money, too.
For three months my mother had been putting on a show as if everything was fine when, in reality, our whole world had imploded over the summer. She’d had to sell the Range Rover, her jewelry. Anything to keep up appearances.
Because Haddonfield was the type of town where one had tokeep up appearances.
I replayed mom’s words from this morning.
“Now if anyone asks about him…” Mom began.
“He’s gone on a sabbatical.”
“Yes. A little time away for himself and a much-needed vacation from his high-stress job as a hedge fund manager. We speak with him on a regular basis.”
“He misses us dearly,” I said.
“Yes, exactly that.” Mom smiled. “And we expect him back any week.”
Becauseany dayit would become too obvious when he didn’t return.Any monthwould make the lie that he missed us dearly seem improbable. Collectively, we’d settled onany week.
If my mother knew I’d taken the job, she would have been furious at me for risking our family secret. However, I was simply too practical and I understood that eventually we were all going to have to work if we wanted to stay in our house.
Not that I cared about the house itself, orappearances, whatever the hell that meant. But Haddonfield was a place where the very wealthy lived, which meant Haddonfield Memorial High School was ranked as one of the best in the state. Basically, I was receiving the equivalent of an expensive private education and that mattered. Especially now if I was going to need a scholarship for college.
So, yes, I’d worked this summer. At The Club. I hadn’t thought someone like Fitz would have bothered to notice anyone as far beneath him as the staff.
After all, his family was practically royalty in this town. His father was the legendary NBA player Leon Darcy. His mother, Aggie Darcy, was a U.S. Senator.
And Fitz was…well, the embodiment of all that potential.
Tall, broad shoulders, brown skin, out of place blue eyes that confirmed his mixed-race heritage. He was brilliant, athletic, ridiculously wealthy and the most popular person in our class.
He was also an arrogant ass and perfectly insufferable. And he knew—deep down, he had to know—I loathed him with every fiber of my being.
“Yes, I was working,” I said. “It occurred to me I should learn another language and there are three Hispanic people on staff who I thought could teach me conversational Spanish. Do you speak it?”
He pushed away from the column and stood straight.
That’s right. That was a gauntlet. I threw it down hard.
There wasn’t a single thing Fitz and I didn’t know about each other’s academic accomplishments. I was better in English and Math. He edged me out in History and Science, so the war zone was over Language.
Whoever bested the other in Foreign Language Studies was sure to win the honor of Top Academic this year.
“You study French,” he basically accused me.
“I’ve added Spanish,” I lied easily with a smile and a shrug. “I’ve decided this year, it would be in my interest to challenge myself.”
He looked annoyed and I knew why. If I had one more AP class than he did, he was toast.
Why hadn’t I thought of this plan sooner? This was genius.
“You think you’ve won?” he asked me.
“Win? Fitz,” I laughed, deliberately being obtuse. “It’s not like we’re in some kind of competition. Are we?”
