“Uh…”
When I looked back, Gray and Gemma had vanished.
FUCK.
I slowly raised my hands. A mob of about ten angry Spanish hipsters were waiting for me to give them information about a dog I’d never seen.
“Have…” I took a step back. “You…” Another step. “Checked…” I turned on my heel and sprinted away. “Idon’tfuckingknow.”
I reached the pier, finding Gemma and Gray already in the boat. The air was extra brackish, and the wind had picked up, whipping my oversized hoodie.
“What did you do with the dog, asshole?”
Gray rolled his eyes. “The dog is fine. It’s in the bathroom.” He turned on the engine, and that was when I noticed they were unanchored and pulling away from the dock. I ran to the edge, but there was already too much space between us. The sea was a dark void.
I could’ve asked them to stop, to come back, but it would’ve been pointless. I was such a fucking idiot. It hit me in the gut hard as they laughed, pulling the boat away.
I was the fall guy.
There was always one in every group.
I don’t know why I’d thought tonight would be any different. Of course the only reason they would invite me was because I was the fall guy.
But it hurt.
It hurt to be abandoned. Flashbacks to boarding school assaulted me. When Gray paid a boy to ask me to the dance, only so he could abandon me the night of. Or the time I thought I’d fallen in love with another boy, and he’d sent my dirty pictures to everyone.
And then Gemma had bribed someone on the yearbook to include them.
I’m no saint, either. My hands are bloody, my soul is stained. We’re all stuck in this vicious cycle of hurting and being hurt.
I glanced to my right, where paparazzi and officers had gathered. My options were slim. If I wasn’t home by morning, Mom would kill me. If I got spotted tonight, Mom would kill me. It was looking like Mom was going to kill me.
Gray waved, and the engine revved, dark water churning white as they got smaller and smaller, fading into the glittery night. “Enjoy the nunnery, Newt.”
Oh my God.
Newt.
Newt! After Isaac Newton, the nickname given to any fall guy at our boarding school. I’d totally forgotten he had a real name, because Newt—err Ned—was everyone’s fall guy back in Rosey, and no one called him anything save Newt all the years we were there.
I was on the precipice of remembering something important, so close to remembering his full name, his real name—
An arm yanked on my shoulder, pulling me back.
Theo.
“Did you think you could run from me, Reject?”
Theo dragged me to another boat in silence. This boat was nowhere near as nice as the one we had. It was a small, wooden one that fit two, maybe three, people and the engine sputtered. I wondered if he’d got it off one of the servants.
I kept thinking back to Newt/Ned, trying to remember his last name, but I couldn’t remember one person calling him by it in all the years we went to Rosey.
We tiptoed from the dock up whitewashed steps to the Spanish colonial, pausing to hide from Mother’s servants beneath the shadow of a wooden trellis. Theo’s chest was pressed to mine. His chin barely grazing my scalp. Below us, the sea slapped against the dock walls, a soothing melody.
“I read it,” I whispered. “I read her diary.”
Theo cleared his throat. “Told you, not much in there.”