Ruthless Rival (Cruel Castaways)

Past

She was going to come. She had to.

I didn’t dare dream anymore. Not often, anyway. But I did today.

Maybe because it was Christmas, and there was a part of me—small as it might be—that still believed in the holiday-miracles mumbo jumbo they spoon-fed us as kids. I wasn’t a good Christian by any stretch of the imagination, but word on the street was God showed mercy to all his children, even the screwed-up ones.

Well, I was a child, and I sure as hell needed a break. This was his time to make good on his promise. To show he existed.

I hadn’t seen Mom in six months. The days came and went in a flurry of homework and swim team. For my fifteenth birthday, I’d bought myself a prepackaged cupcake from a gas station and made a wish to make it to my next birthday alive. I hadn’t even gotten a half-assed by-the-way-are-you-alive phone call since I’d been shipped off from Manhattan. Just one crumpled letter two months ago, stained with rain and fingerprints and an unidentified sauce, in which she’d written to me in her signature italic handwriting.

Nicholai,

We will spend Christmas in my apartment. I will rent a car and pick you up. Wait for me at the entrance at four o’clock on December 22nd. Do not be late or I will leave without you.

—Ruslana

It was impersonal, cold; you could find more enthusiasm at a funeral, but I was still stoked that she remembered my existence.

Tapping my holey loafer against the concrete stairway at Andrew Dexter’s double-doored entrance, I glanced at my watch. My backpack was flung between my legs, all my worldly possessions inside it. Waiting for time to slog forward reminded me of all the times I’d waited for Mom in the cemetery outside Arya’s building. Only now I didn’t have a pretty girl to pass the time with. That specific pretty girl had turned out to be nothing but a bag of snakes. I hoped wherever Arya Roth was these days, karma fucked her long and hard, without a condom.

A kick to my back snapped me out of my mental fog. Richard Rodgers—Dickie to anyone who knew him—peppered the gesture by flicking the back of my head as he typhooned down the stairs to the waiting black Porsche pulling in front of the boarding school’s entryway.

“Mom!”

“Darling!” His socialite mother got out of the passenger door with open arms, wearing enough real fur to cover three polar bears. My classmate threw himself into her embrace. His father waited behind the wheel, smiling glumly, like a child during Sunday service. It was hard to believe Richard, whose claim to fame was farting the alphabet with his armpit, was worthy of this hot woman’s love. Dickie’s mother pulled away to take a better look at him, bracketing his face with her manicured hands. My heart lurched and jerked like a caught worm. It hurt to breathe.

Where the hell are you, Mom?

“You look so good, my love. I made you your favorite crumble pie,” Dickie’s mother cooed.

My stomach growled. They needed to get the hell out of here and stop blocking the driveway. Richard hopped into the car and screwed off.

She’d come. She said she would. She must.

Another hour passed. The wind picked up, the sky turning from gray to black. Mom was still nowhere in sight, and my already shaky confidence was crumbling like the stale pie the janitor had slipped into my room the day after Thanksgiving because he knew I was the only kid who stayed on school grounds.

Four hours and sixteen smacks on the back and “see ya next years” later, it was pitch black and freezing, the snow falling from the sky thick and fluffy, like cotton balls.

The chill didn’t register. Neither did the fact my holey loafers were soaking wet, or that the two tears that had slipped from my right eye had frozen midroll. The only thing that sank in was the fact that Mom had stood me up on Christmas and that—as per usual—I was alone.

Something soft and fuzzy landed on my head. Before I could turn around to see what it was, this boy I knew from the swim team, Riggs, plopped down on the stair next to me, mimicking my pathetic hunch.

“Sup, Ivanov?”

“None of your business,” I hissed, ripping the red velvet hat from my head and dumping it on the ground.

“That’s a big-ass attitude for someone who weighs forty pounds.” The good-looking bastard whistled, giving me a once-over.

I twisted his way, punching his arm hard.

“Aw. Shithead. What’d you do that for?”

“So you shut the hell up,” I growled. “Why else?”

What was he doing here, anyway?

“Die in hell,” Riggs Bates replied cheerfully, finding the situation infinitely amusing.

“Already am,” I replied. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

The Andrew Dexter Academy was a Catholic, all-boys institution right in the middle of rural Connecticut. It had been built in 1891 by a railroad financier. It was supposed to become the number one luxury hotel on the East Coast, but due to financial failures, the construction was boarded up for a few years, before a bunch of rich newcomers flocking from post–World War I Europe threw money at it, shoving a few priests, teachers, and their problematic offspring into the place. One of those priests was Andrew Dexter, and this was how the number one all-boys boarding school in the States had come to be.

There was no way of sugarcoating it—the Andrew Dexter Academy was a shithole. To get to the closest 7-Eleven, we had to walk ten miles each way. We were isolated from the world, and for good reason. This place housed some of the most notorious teenage douches in the country. Silver lining: in case of zombie apocalypse, we would have some buffer before the brain eaters came for us.

It was obvious my mother wasn’t coming. Even more so that I was going to spend this Christmas on my own, just like I had the previous one. Last time, the only person keeping me company had been the groundskeeper, who’d mostly checked in to see I didn’t off myself. I hadn’t. Instead, I’d read and printed out good college-application examples. The goal was to become a millionaire. If all the idiots around me and their parents were—why couldn’t I?

“What the hell are you doing here, anyway?” I wrapped my arms around my knees, glaring at Riggs.

He hitched one shoulder up. “Don’t have a family, remember?”

“Actually, I don’t remember.” I arched a brow. “Keeping tabs on your ass is not my favorite hobby.”

I barely ever spoke to Riggs, or anyone else at the school. Speaking to people led to being attached to them, and no part of me wanted to get attached. Humans were flaky.

“Yeah. My grandfather, who raised me, kicked the oxygen habit last Christmas.”

“Shit.” I wiggled my toes inside my loafers to try and get rid of the numbness. I was starting to feel the cold. “Well, I’m sure you can buy a new grandpa or something,” I volunteered. Word was that Riggs was swimming in it.

“Nah.” Riggs seemed cool about my dig, even though I deserved to be thrashed for it. “The original was irreplaceable.”

“That sucks.”

Riggs puffed on condensation coming from his mouth from the cold, trying to make smoke rings. “Christmas is the worst holiday in the world. We should defund it. If I ever open a charity, it’d be called Kill Santa.”

“Don’t expect fat donations.”

“You’d be surprised, Ivanov. I can be pretty persuasive, and rich people like to throw their money on dumb stuff. Grandpa had a toilet seat made of solid gold. I used to take royal craps.” He tsked, looking faraway now. Nostalgic.

“So you don’t go home during holidays?” I asked, slowly letting go of the hope Mom was coming and digesting what Riggs had said. “Wait a minute. You weren’t here during Thanksgiving break.”

Riggs cackled. “Was too. Arsène and I went camping in the woods when no one was looking. We made a fire and s’mores and, fine, caused a small, mostly accidental fire.”

“That was you?” My eyes bulged out of their sockets. There’d been a whole health-and-safety day after that, and we’d all gotten collectively grounded for a weekend.

Riggs beamed proudly, puffing his chest. “A gentleman doesn’t burn and tell.”

“You just did.”

“Yeah. We totally started that fire. But the s’mores were worth it, dude. Fluffy and sweet.” He gave his fingers a kiss.

“So where’s Arsène now?” I looked around, as if he were going to materialize from behind the pine trees. I didn’t really know Arsène Corbin, but I’d heard he was crazy smart and that his family owned a shitload of fancy-ass neighborhoods in Manhattan.

“Upstairs, making mac ’n’ cheese with bacon bits and some ramen in the kitchenette. He sent me to fetch this.” Riggs reached into the gap between his zipped jacket and neck, pulling out a flask. “From Headmaster Plath’s office. Then I saw your sorry ass on the stairway and figured I’d let you know we’re here.”

“Arsène doesn’t have a family either?” A knot of hope settled in my throat. It felt good, knowing I wasn’t the only one. And bad, too, because apparently grown-ups were just trash.

“Oh, he has a family. He just hates them. Got some major beef with his stepsister or something.”

“Cool.”

“Not for him.”

“He could always ignore her and kick back in his room.”

“Eh, I don’t think it’s that simple.” Riggs tilted the flask in my direction, offering me a sip. My eyes traveled from the silver vessel to his face.

“Plath’ll kill us,” I said pithily. I knew Conrad Roth threw a lot of money at this institute to ensure I’d never get kicked out of the haunted redbrick mansion. This was where all the kids who hit their teachers, gambled away their families’ estates, or got into drugs were sent. Now we were all Headmaster Plath’s problem, not that of the people who’d sent us here.

“Not if we kill ourselves first. Which, for the record, I think we might, between Arsène’s cooking, the amount of alcohol I managed to get my hands on, and the fires we start. Are you coming or what?” Riggs stood up, his floppy golden hair falling across his eyes.

It was the first time I saw Riggs Bates as the awesome human being he saw himself as and not as some rich prick who thought he was better than everyone else.

I threw another hesitant look at the empty road.

“Don’t, Ivanov. People are overrated. Parents, especially.”

“She said she’d come.”

“And I said I didn’t eat Dickie’s homemade lasagna last week. Yet there I was, shitting pasta sheets and eggplant in the communal bathroom two hours later.”

I palmed my knees and pushed myself up, following Riggs’s example.

“C’mon.” He clapped my back. “There’s something liberating about realizing you don’t need them. The people who made you.”

Maybe it had snowed and she’d gotten stuck somewhere without reception.

Maybe the preholiday traffic had made her late.

Maybe she was involved in a horrific car crash.

Whatever it was, one thing was for sure.

She didn’t come.

Arsène’s mac ’n’ cheese was atrocious. Lumpy and unevenly cooked, with balls of orange powder everywhere. His ramen made you wish you were drinking bleach instead, and I hadn’t even known screwing up ramen was possible. Yet here we were, eating stale instant ramen swimming in what looked suspiciously like piss from Styrofoam cups. Riggs mixed whatever was in the flask with Tropicana, which gave it the diluted yet sharp taste of dish soap. This had to be the lowlight of my life. If God did exist, I was going to sue.

The three of us were sitting on Arsène’s bed. It was a bunk. We sat on the bottom part, using his roommate Simon’s top mattress to prop our legs.

“Love what you did with the place.” Riggs motioned with his wooden chopsticks around the room. Arsène had an entire wall on which he’d graffitied a thousand times in neat, black, and bold handwriting:

I hate Gracelynn Langston. I hate Gracelynn Langston. I hate Gracelynn Langston. I hate Gracelynn Langston. I hate Gracelynn Langston. I hate Gracelynn Langston.

“Who’s Gracelynn Langston?” I swallowed a lump of mac ’n’ cheese without tasting it.

“Arsène’s evil stepsister,” Riggs supplied, slurping a noodle into his mouth. I was still trying to work the chopsticks. There were a ton of things rich kids knew how to do and I didn’t. Using chopsticks was one of them.

Arsène flashed me a deadly look, his brown eyes scanning me head to toe. I could tell he wasn’t sold on me. Riggs was a go-with-the-flow type of guy, but Arsène didn’t seem hot on extending his social circle, which currently only included Riggs.

“You sure about this, dude?” Arsène asked Riggs. “We don’t know anything about him.”

“That’s not true. We know he’s dirt poor and is a good swimmer.” Riggs laughed, but somehow, I couldn’t be offended by anything this guy said. There was no malice in him, something I couldn’t say about Arsène.

“What if he tells about the flask?” Arsène spoke directly to Riggs, ignoring my existence.

“Look at him. Does he look like he can hurt anyone? I wouldn’t trust him to kill a cockroach. He won’t tell about the flask.” Riggs waved him off. “So. Arsène. How do you feel about Gracelynn Langston? And please don’t hold back.” Riggs chuckled into his Styrofoam cup of MSG and sewer water.

“I’d murder her if she was worth wasting a bullet on,” Arsène ground out, his eyes hard on his food. “She’s the reason I’m spending Christmas with you dickheads.”

“Not this again.” Riggs yawned. “Either fess up to what happened with her, or stop bitching about her.”

“You were the one who asked.” Arsène kicked Riggs in the shins. “Hey, can this guy even talk or what?”

“I can talk,” I clipped out, stirring the noodles in my cup. I just didn’t want to. There was nothing much to say, really.

“I’ll amend—can you say anything interesting?” Arsène pinned me with a look.

“Cut him some slack. His mother stood him up,” Riggs explained.

“Bummer.” Arsène sucked his teeth. “So what’s your story, morning glory?”

“How do you mean?” I scowled.

“How’d you end up in this prison for teenagers? No one came here willingly.”

Forcing myself to look up from my food, I met his gaze. “Got caught copping a feel of a billionaire’s daughter. This is my punishment. Haven’t seen my mom in over a year. Don’t know if I ever will again.”

It was only when I said these words that I realized I genuinely didn’t know if I’d ever see her. Arsène stroked his chin, considering this. He looked like he could murder someone for real. Whereas Riggs had that scruffy, cute look girls really liked.

“Whose fault was it?” Arsène asked. “The getting-caught part.” He put his Styrofoam cup on the floor, grabbed mine, and did the same. He opened his nightstand drawer and took out vinegar chips and some popcorn. He popped both bags open, and I let out a relieved breath.

“Does it matter?” I asked.

“Does life matter?” Arsène deadpanned. “Of course it matters. Vengeance keeps a person going. If there’s someone to blame, there’s payback.”

I thought about it.

“It was her fault, then.” I helped myself to a handful of popcorn. “The more I think about it, the more it feels like a setup. Her dad walked in a second after I put my lips on hers.”

“Definitely a setup.” Riggs nodded, chewing his chips loudly, cross-legged. “Was she at least hot?”

“Um.” I rubbed my chin, willing Arya to materialize in my imagination. I didn’t need more than to think her name before I had a clear vision of her. Her swamp eyes and full mouth. “Yeah, I guess.”

“Your guess is not good enough. Show us,” Riggs demanded.

“How?”

“She must have social media.”

“Bet she does, but I don’t have a computer,” I said. It was half the truth. I did have a computer, but the ancient type. One that I could barely use Word on. Even that was because Andrew Dexter Academy demanded we have computers.

Arsène took out a brand-new laptop from his leather backpack and handed it to me. “Here. Use my MyFriends. Just type in her name.”

“You have a MyFriends?” I eyed him skeptically. All I knew about Arsène Corbin was that he was an evil genius who barely attended any classes and yet somehow ended up passing each year with honors. While Riggs spent his time trying to get himself killed by climbing trees, skipping between rooftops, and getting into brawls, Arsène was more the type to build DIY bombs and sell them online. Come to think about it, they were an odd pairing. They were probably so close only because they were forced together by loneliness.

“For research purposes.”

“You mean stalking.”

Arsène kicked my side with his socked foot. “I tolerated you better when you kept your mouth shut.”

I typed Arya’s name in the search bar, feeling my fingertips going clammy. I didn’t even know why. I had thought about Arya often—mainly bad things—but it wasn’t like I liked her anymore or anything.

Arya’s smiling face popped into the feed, and I clicked on it.

“I can’t believe her account is not private.” Arsène’s head almost knocked mine when he peeked into the screen. “Her parents must be dumb as bricks.”

“Her mom is kind of MIA. She’s always on some shopping trip. I think she hated Arya for not dying instead of her twin brother. And her dad is clueless about this shit.” I began to scroll through her pictures.

As suspected, Arya was having a ball while I was away. In the last couple of months alone, she’d posted pictures of herself attending the winter ball at her school, ice-skating in Rockefeller, having a girls’ night in with a friend called Jillian, and licking ice cream in the Bahamas. But the image my eyes kept getting stuck on was the last picture, posted only four hours ago. The location showed as Aspen, Colorado. Arya was standing on a mountain of snow, in full snowboarding gear, smiling to the camera, next to her father. The lava-hot anger that stirred in my stomach wasn’t from the sight of both these assholes having the time of their lives while I was stuck here in an asylum for troubled kids. I was used to getting screwed over by now. It was the person behind them who made my pulse skyrocket. The woman who stood behind them. She was holding their ski poles, looking like she was about to topple over, catering to their every need, as always.

Mom.

“Nicholai?” Riggs waved a hand in front of my face. “How’s that mental breakdown going?”

“It’s her.” I meant Mom, but they both blinked at the picture of Arya, their attention fully on the younger girl.

“No shit it’s her. We have eyes. She’s kind of hot, but not enough to get thrown into Andrew Dexter for.” Riggs scrubbed his stubble with the back of his hand.

“Hotter than Gracelynn,” Arsène spit out, like his stepsister was right here with us and could take offense. I got why he was mad. All these fuckers were off living their best lives, while the three of us were left behind, forgotten.

“No. I mean my mother. She went with the Roths on their Aspen vacation and didn’t even tell me she changed her plans. There she is.” I zoomed in on her.

It was a stupid thing to get mad about, everything considered, and still—what the fuck? Couldn’t she call? Text? Write another stupid letter? She was not stuck in the snow or in traffic or suffering from a horrible accident. She was right there, in the flesh, choosing these people over me, time and time again.

It drove me nuts. How little I mattered to this woman.

I wondered if I’d ever stood a chance in the first place. If maybe she’d given up on me because I’d always reminded her of my no-show father. Or if I’d messed it up myself.

Arsène clapped my back. It was the first time he’d touched me. That anyone had touched me, really, since Conrad had beaten the daylights out of me. “Sounds like she’s a piece of work. You don’t need her. You don’t need anyone.”

“Everyone needs someone,” Riggs pointed out. “Or so I read in the self-help books I steal from the library.”

“Why do you steal them?” I asked.

Riggs threw his head back and laughed. “What else am I supposed to use to roll up my DIY joints?”

“I need people,” I heard myself say. “I can’t get through this alone.”

This school. This life. This bitterness that cut through my skin every time I thought about Conrad and Arya.

“Fine. Then we’ll be each other’s someone.” Arsène perked up, letting the popcorn bag he was holding fall to the mattress. “Fuck them. Fuck our families. Our parents. The people who have wronged us. Fuck Christmas dinners and decorated pine trees and scented candles and neatly wrapped gifts. We’ll be each other’s family from now on. The three of us. Every Christmas. Every Easter. Every Thanksgiving. We’ll stick together, and we’ll fucking win.”

Riggs fist-bumped Arsène. Arsène raised his fist and offered it to me. I stared at it, feeling like I was on the cusp of something big. Monumental. Both Arsène and Riggs were glaring at me expectantly. I thought about that thing Arya had said all those years ago, in Mount Hebron Memorial, about how money wasn’t everything in the world. Maybe she was right after all. These kids were rich, and they didn’t seem happier than I was.

I raised my arm, my fist touching Arsène’s.

“Attaboy.” Riggs laughed. “Told you Nicholai was one of us.”

And from that moment on, I was.