Filed to story: Brace Face Betty Drama Story
“Well I’m not gay gay,” he says stiffly. “Obviously, otherwise I wouldn’t have been with Kacey. I like guys and girls. Anyway, let me know if you wanna use this place to work on your bike sometime,” he adds, changing the subject rather clunkily. “I’m never in here. Seems like a shame to let everything just…sit.”
I recognize that as our cue to leave. I climb off the back of the bike and take my drink from him, swallowing down half the liquor inside in one go. I finally feel the effects of the booze, my legs beginning to feel heavier and heavier as we walk back up the slope toward the house.
“You ask me, you’re better off without that Kacey chick, anyway,” I tell him. “She’s a piece of work. Probably would have bitten your dick off if you’d put a foot wrong.”
Leon glances at me out of the corner of his eye. “You’re more right than you know. Kacey’s beautiful. Popular. Fun. But Jesus fucking Christ, her teeth are sharp. Cross her or any of the other girls at your own peril.”
I laugh under my breath, draining the last dregs of the punishing drink. “Don’t worry. I’m not interested in any of those dumpster fire bitches.”
“No. You’re only interested in the weird, quirky, indie outcasts, I s’pose?”
I say nothing, but we trade dry looks and it’s very obvious who and what he’s referring to.
“I won’t tell you to be careful of that one,” Leon says, rubbing at the back of his neck awkwardly. “I know Jake’s already done that.”
“Do I really need a warning?”
For a moment, Leon looks uncomfortable. “I don’t know the details. I can’t say either way. That night just got…it got really fucking crazy, and when the shit hit the fan, Kacey still had her claws in my back so deep, I’m ashamed to say I just did whatever the fuck she told me. All I do know is that Betty used to be one of them…and something really horrible must have happened between her and Kacey for everything to have blown up the way it did.”
I frown, crushing the solo cup in my hand. We’re almost back to the kitchen’s sliding doors. The sounds of the party have reached a fever pitch, the music pulsing like an angry heartbeat. Someone opens the door, throwing an oblong shard of golden light out into the darkness. Inside, someone screams raucously at the top of their lungs, but I’m not focused on what they’re shouting. I’m still trying to process what Leon just said. “Wait, what do you mean, she used to be one of them?”
Leon nods, rocking his head from side to side, as if he finds the idea of Betty and Kacey being friends absolutely un-fucking-believable, too. “Yeah, I know. Kacey and Betty were inseparable not too long ago. You couldn’t say one of their names without the other. Kacey and I were in a relationship for years, but you’d never hear the names ‘Kacey and Leon’ put together. It was only ever Kacey and Betty. You couldn’t picture it now if you tried.”
I am trying. I’m trying to picture it, and he’s right. I can’t fucking do it.
He gives a brittle, hollow laugh. “I guess now it’s not Kacey and Leon, or Kacey and Betty, anyway. It’s Kacey and fucking
Jacob. I wonder how long that’s gonna last.”
MARCUS POV
Leon goes back inside, but I need a moment to clear my mind. I can’t face the football team right now. All I really wanna do is think for a second, to try and wrap my head around the idea that Betty used to align herself with Kacey and her clones. I don’t hate Halliday, but the rest of them are vacuous witches without an independent thought between them, and it’s strangely unbearable to think Betty used to be like that. Like them.
Around the side of the house, I’m unsurprised to come across a swimming pool. Steam rises off the illuminated body of water, up toward the night sky. Leon made it seem as though his father didn’t want to support his commitment to his swimming, wanted him to do anything else but swim, but this makes a different statement altogether. Usually, people have modest pools in their back yards, kidney-shaped, maybe with a fountain or a waterfall. Not Leon’s, though. Leon’s pool was clearly not put here for relaxation purposes. It’s an Olympic sized pool, fiercely rectangular, long and thin with only three lanes. Leon must come out here every morning and swim a thousand fucking laps to justify such a huge, obnoxious body of water.
There are sun loungers to one side of the pool, though they look like they’ve never been used. I sit my ass down on one and then lie back, staring up at the clear sky. Up there, the heavens are a midnight blue, the color of deep, dark water. The stars are incredibly bright, like burning pinpricks of silver.
Betty.
Betty.
My phone feels like a lead weight in the inside pocket of my leather jacket. I pat my hands against my chest, contemplating taking it out and pulling up her phone number. Maybe hitting the dial button. I wonder briefly where she is. What she’s doing. It’s late, almost one thirty in the morning, so the likeliest answer to those questions is that she’s in bed, asleep, and she wouldn’t appreciate a drunk dial from me.
A burst of giggled laughter disrupts the quiet behind me, to my right, and I hear the sound of a door closing. The hurried padding of feet follows, and I know immediately that someone’s headed this way, toward the pool. I close my eyes, annoyance rippling beneath the calm surface of my exterior. It’s too late to get up and get the fuck out of here without being seen, and I don’t feel like I should have to move to make room for a gaggle of Ravenshire High’s social elite anyway. However, when I crack my eyes and realize who’s coming running around the side of the building, wrapped in nothing but towels, I wish I had gotten to my feet and bolted.
Halliday, Kacey, Zen, and three other girls all study me with amused eyes as they tiptoe toward the pool. They all have wet hair, which makes it seem as though this isn’t their first dip into the water. Halliday’s expression tenses when our eyes meet, but Zen’s on the other hand…There’s something fucking wrong with that girl. She doesn’t seem to be getting it, and I don’t know of many more ways to tell her to fuck off without getting really hostile. She bounces on the balls of her feet when she sees me, covering her mouth with her hand as she leans over to whisper excitedly in Kacey’s ear, and I swallow down a groan. Kacey’s eyes cut to find me, and she arches an assessing eyebrow-she seems to be considering something. Zen clasps her hands in front of her chest, doing little hops from one foot to the other, her mouth stretched wide, bearing her teeth as she clearly says, “Pleeeeeeeeeeease?”
Kacey sighs, rolling her eyes at Zen, but she nods all the same. Zen squeals like she just got something she desperately wanted for Christmas. Halliday dumps her towel on the tiles by the side of the pool-she’s wearing a pink bikini and doesn’t seem bothered by the fact that I’m here to witness it. But then, why would she? She’s strutted around the stage at the Rock half naked, her tits hanging out of her doctored Ravenshire High cheerleader uniform. One guy sitting by a pool isn’t going to faze her now.
The other girls shed their towels, all of them wearing a scant, tiny swimsuit or bikini of some description. Zen makes a point of bending over, ass facing me, making sure I get a good look at her as she stoops to fiddle with the ankle straps of her sandals, taking her time to unfasten them. She’s shit out of luck, though. I’m not interested, and I’m not looking. I go back to lying down on the lounger, my eyes firmly fixed on the stars overhead.
A series of loud splashes, along with girlish, high pitched squeals, signal that they’ve jumped into the water. Still, I don’t look.
The door opens again, and Jake’s voice carries on the fresh, autumnal air. “You girls better be naked,” he calls. “My dick could break concrete right now.”
Gross. I don’t wanna think about Jake’s boner, or what nightmarish catastrophe is about to take place in that pool. Gradually pulling myself up into a seating position, I’m about to get to my feet when Jake sidles past me wearing board shorts and slumps down on the lounger next to mine. He holds out a beer to me, grinning from ear to ear. “Saw you out of the window there. Looked like you needed this.”
I don’t want the beer. I specifically don’t want it because he brought it out for me, but I can’t be an asshole. Not if I want to put all of these moving pieces into place and get what I want out of this fucked up situation. The glass is beaded with condensation, cool in my hands. The night’s growing colder, and it feels as though it’s going to start raining any second now, but the beer’s still somehow refreshing. I press the beveled rim to my mouth and allow the golden liquid to pour down the back of my throat, raising my eyebrows at the guy sitting across from me.