Chapter One
You know what’s the biggest con about me? I love everything about danger—the adrenaline rush, your heartbeat booming so hard in your chest that it becomes hard to hear, the fear of getting caught…the list goes on. That’s why I keep making these crazy mistakes, it was like a drug stronger than heroine.
Don’t worry, I’ve never actually done heroine before but you get the picture.
It’s to the point that danger became a part of who I am and to be honest, I have no idea how I was going to let that part of me go. But once I made one of the biggest mistakes of my life one night, I backtracked on that addiction. It was time for me to let that part of myself go.
I was too ashamed to tell my squad about that specific night, but they eventually found out about it.
I’ve known my squad—Stefan, Thomas and Maria—since kindergarten. There was another girl in our group, Danielle, but she passed away four years ago shortly after we graduated middle school. Nobody knows how she died…she disappeared from Crystal Beach and suddenly ended up disappearing for good…
Let’s go ahead and rewind back to September to get a better clearing of everything.
I decided to go to this party some jock was throwing. The party ended being more packed than I thought, familiar faces everywhere as I swam through the ocean of intoxicated teenagers. Different people greeted me as I passed them, which I returned with a humble “hey” or a friendly wave.
Of course as soon as I get here, someone nominated me to a drinking battle. With the crowd circling me, I finished four bottles of beer from a beer line in under three minutes, beating my opponent, Michael Davidson’s record of three minutes and eighteen seconds.
After I was done, I went to the kitchen which was occupied by others making themselves a drink or sitting on the kitchen island, smoking weed out of a pipe. Thomas was at one of the counters, laughing hard with another dude as he held a bottle of Captain Morgan.
Just as he was about to pour it, he noticed me approaching and smiled instantly.
“Well, if it ain’t the Keg Champion herself!” He teased.
I grabbed the plastic crown from the top of my head, holding it up in mock salute with a laugh.
“Want a cup of coke and captain? You can’t even taste the captain so drink it at your own risk.” He warned, except it sounded more like a suggestion.
And of course, I nodded eagerly. “Then you can count me in!” I exclaimed as I sat on the counter.
He smirked and made me a cup. “You still gonna be fucked up in the mornin’ at school, just wait on it.”
“What makes you think that?” I raised my eyebrows, grabbing the cup from him.
“I mean, you drank beer first and everyone knows not to drink beer before liquor.” He said.
“You gotta live life on edge or else you’re not really living.” I beamed and chugged my drink.
“You’re one hell of a badass and all, but don’t throw up or die.” He laughed.
Just as he was about to say something else, a random dude stumbled next to us with a drunken laugh, nearly sounding like a hyena on crack.
“How y’all nights goin’?!” He enthusiastically yelled, his eyes bloodshot and his strawberry blonde hair messy on his head. He also had a country accent, signaling that he wasn’t from Crystal Beach.
Thomas and I stared at him in baffle as he dug in his pocket. He slapped a baggie of cocaine on the counter before dumping it out, lining it up with his pinkie.
“You guys down?” He asked with a wicked grin.
We shook our heads and the dude shrugged before snorting two thick lines of coke. Thomas and I gritted our teeth at each other and awkwardly moved out of the kitchen. We laughed once we were out, Thomas slinging his arm around my shoulder.
We became confused at the sudden commotion in the living room. Everyone was cheering, screaming and even recording videos on Snapchat and Instagram. Stefan passed by casually, not noticing us since he was busy talking to some chick.
I grabbed his forearm, making him turn curiously. “What the hell is going on?”
He scratched the side of his head, looking over the room. “I think there’s some weird dance competition going on the other side.”
“What is this, a Step Up movie?” I wrinkled my nose.
“There’s a few people skinny dipping in the pool too, I don’t know if you wanna go see for yourself or not.” Stefan joked in a disgusted tone.
Thomas laughed hard, clapping Stefan up with a crisp handshake. “This shit just gets crazier!”
“A little too crazy. We should leave soon before it ends up getting raided.” Stefan suggested and I nodded in agreement.
“He’s right. A wild party in one of the richest neighborhoods at three am is definitely going to make the neighbors bitch so I wouldn’t be surprised if—”
I stopped mid-sentence when bright lights flashed through the tall windows. Guys dressed in all black with bulletproof vests and guns were running up the walkway and that’s when I knew the night was over. Whoever snitched must’ve mentioned all the drugs since they’re being so damn dramatic with their entrance.
“Shit,” I said, making Thomas and Stefan turn to what I was looking at. “We gotta leave now!”
When they busted inside with a bang and shouted “police!”, we were already running through the bodies of people and out the back doors. We ran through the garden maze, the cries for escape and thundering footsteps from inside fading in the background.
“Wait guys!” Melanie shouted from behind, all of us skidding to a stop. We turned around, waiting for her to catch up. “I…I…I saw you guys running out s…so I followed.” She panted.
“Good, now c’mon! I ain’t tryna get caught up in any type of bullshit!” Thomas exclaimed and turned on his heel to run but Stefan grabbed the back of his shirt.
“Wait, where’s Maria though?” He asked.
We exchanged panicked glances. To reassure us, Melanie commented,
“she was outside when the cops showed up, so she probably fled the scene already.”
The beams of lights flashed in the distance, the cops on their way to search the backyard. We were deep in the garden but if we wanted to avoid them from catching up, we had to take off now.
We jumped over the wooden fence when we reached the end of the garden. I slipped when I landed on my Jimmy Choo combat boots but caught myself before we hauled ass down the block.
We saw people from the party running to their cars or hurriedly driving off. My Audi R8 was a two-seater so Melanie rode with me while Thomas went with Stefan in his Porsche GT3 RS. I let out a sigh of relief when we drove onto the Main Street—that was the third party to get raided in the past two months.
Melanie slept over since she lied to her parents about her whereabouts. They knew she was with me but what they didn’t know was that we were partying late.
They were super strict. They disallowed her to go to any type of social events, unless it was with her family or my family. They wouldn’t even let her out of the house after the sun sets so if she wanted to go to a party with me, we had to come up with a whole masterplan.
Don’t get me wrong, just because they were strict didn’t mean that they were assholes. it was just annoying and challenging to come up with new lies every weekend.
I don’t know how Melanie dealt with it. I would lose my mind if my parents were like that.
When we got to my three-story glass house, we ate out of a gallon of French vanilla ice cream and watched Gossip Girl for the third time after throwing on our sweats and washing off our makeup. The best part of it was that we were still drunk.
The next morning, we groggily headed to school but made sure to pick up lattes from Starbucks first. It was slightly chilly and we were already handling it terribly so I couldn’t imagine how we were going to handle winter. The wind was brutally strong, pushing our bodies back as we walked to the school’s main building.
“You know what I just noticed?” Melanie asked, leaning on the locker next to mine while I fidgeted with my lock combination. “We never made our predictions for this school year and we always do before the first day of school.”
Ever since I met Melanie sophomore year, we had this thing of making predictions of how our school year would go and see if it would come true or not. Some things would, some things wouldn’t but that was the whole point of the predictions. It was for entertainment purposes only.
I took my English textbook out the locker and slammed it shut. “It’s not too late to predict, we only been in school for like a month.”
“Okay,” she grinned excitedly with a small clap. “You predict first.”
We never put too much thought into our predictions. We just blurted out whatever we felt in our guts and see if it would end up happening.
“I think this year is gonna be a fun year for me but at the same time, be drama-filled. I feel like there’s gonna be way too many eyes on me and not in a good way either. I’m probably gonna meet a lot of temporary people but all for a reason...” I trailed off for a second, not wanting to say the next thing that came to mind.
Melanie shook her head at me. “Is there something else?”
I held my English textbook close to my chest. “Something tells me that me and Jeremy aren’t going to last.”
My boyfriend Jeremy and I been together for two years and some months, but our relationship had been on edge for a while. It would suck to lose such an amazing guy like him but if we were to break up, there has to be a serious reason. After all, everything happens for a reason.
“What?!” She exclaimed so loudly that students passing by shot her odd looks. She threw her head back with a sarcastic laugh. “Was that supposed to be a joke? You and Jeremy breaking up? You guys are South Crystal Beach’s power couple!”
We had that title ever since we started dating in Sophomore year and I never understood why we got it. Everyone swore we were a perfect couple because of how kindly we treated each other but we weren’t, just like everyone else. There’s no such thing as perfection, everything and everyone has their flaws.
“I can’t help what I feel and we both know that my gut is literally always right.” I shrugged.
“Riiiiight,” she dragged, squinting her chocolate brown eyes. “Not with this though, that’s for damn sure.”
The first bell rang, giving us five minutes to get to our first period. Melanie’s class was on the other side of the school, so we prepared to say our goodbyes to go our separate ways.
“You gotta tell me more about that prediction later and I’ll tell you mine.” Melanie said as we hugged each other goodbye.
My class was upstairs so I got to English about a minute before the bell rang, my friends sitting in a group since Mrs. Bennet changed the classroom’s set up from individual to group seating.
And of course, she wasn’t here. She was always late, especially since we were the first class of the day. It was already bad enough that we always had to take our assignments home because she tends to go off topic and have an outside-class discussion with us instead. That was probably the only reason why students didn’t mind showing up to this class.
“Violet! Yo Violet! Aye Violet!” Stefan and Thomas chanted in sing-song tones as they banged their hands on the desks, making a beat.
I rolled my eyes at my silly friends as I slammed my black leather Prada bag on the table. “You guys are so extra for nothing, I swear. It’s too early for this.”
“We wouldn’t be your best friends if we weren’t extra, am I right?” Stefan said, high-fiving Thomas. I let out a chuckle and greeted our two other friends, Junior and Roy, before taking a seat.
Mrs. Bennet didn’t arrive until ten minutes after the bell rang. Everyone shot amusing greets at her, which she laughed to before starting the lecture. She informed us about the essay we had to complete by Wednesday, which wasn’t enough time at all.
It had to be specifically done too—twelve size font, eight thousand words, double spaced, indented, informative and our name and period number on the top left of the essay. If it didn’t get turned in by Wednesday, it was an automatic zero. She was a laidback lady but fuck, she was overly strict with her work.
She sped up her lecture so we could have the rest of the hour to get our work done, rather than us taking it home and having more homework.
“Hey,” Thomas whispered, cranking his head over his shoulder to make sure Mrs. Bennet wouldn’t catch him talking. “Did you do the assessment on page twenty yet?”
I picked my head up but didn’t tear my eyes off my iPhone, which I was hiding under the desk. “Huh?”
I didn’t have to look at him to know he was shaking his head at me. “I don’t even know why I asked, you never finish your work until the last fifteen minutes of class.”
“You’ve known me for twelve years, you should be used to the way I handle my schoolwork.” I responded nonchalantly just as I pressed send on a message to Maria. “But don’t worry man, I got you at the end of the period.”
“Wait, why don’t you ask Stefan? He’s way smarter than Violet.” Roy commented, making Thomas interrogatively whisper-shout “ooo”’s.
“Damn, you’re gonna let him talk to you like that?” Thomas instigated, making Stefan elbow him on his rib.
“Shut the fuck up man. This is exactly why South Crystal had so many fights, because you instigated ninety percent of them!” Stefan reminded.
“Stefan is smart as hell, but everyone knows I ace every single assignment when it comes to English. Anything else, ehh, not so much.” I half-joked, making Roy grin as he scribbled on his paper.
“Hey if it makes you feel better, Thomas has been failing every single assignment in every class since freshman year. If anyone deserves Dumbass of The Year, it’s him.” Stefan pointed his thumb at him.
Thomas pumped his fist in the air with an ecstatic “yes!”, making me laugh. Stefan shook his head, whispering a slick comment and went back to working on his assignment.
The creak of the door caught my attention, making me look up along with a couple of other students. A tall tanned boy walked in the room, his black hair messy on his head. He was wearing a black hoodie, denim jeans and a pair of Adidas shoes. He approached Mrs. Bennet and handed her what seemed like his schedule change form.
The boy scanned the room for a seat, exposing his sharp masculine face and that’s when I recognized him.
Ryder Sanchez. I remembered him being the new kid last year. What’s even crazier was that I had him for first period last year and now I have him for first period again.
I spoke to him a couple of times last year—a few times in class and a few times when we would bump in each other in the hallways. Other than that, I didn’t know anything about him.
He sat at an empty group in the back of the room. Before he or anyone else noticed, I turned back to the front since I was looking over my shoulder at him. Something about him made me so intrigued, it was weird. It had always been the case when it came to him.
For the remainder of the period, I finished the assignment but Ryder lingered in the back of my mind. I started to wonder things like what his favorite color was, what music genre he preferred, what his dreams and accomplishments were. But when I started thinking about how he was like in bed, that’s when I shut my brain off.
No need for perverted thoughts in the middle of class, especially this early in the morning.
The bell rang and everyone dropped their work in the bin on Mrs. Bennet’s desk on the way out, completed or not. As I stood from my seat and flipped my long black hair, Ryder disappeared out the door. He swaggered out of the room smoothly, like if he wasn’t in any type of rush to get to his next class.
Meanwhile, my friends were rushing me like crazy.
“Violet, hurry yo’ slow ass up! Not all of us want to be as cool as you and be twenty years late to class!” Thomas clapped his hands impatiently from the door, Roy and Stefan laughing next to him.
We pushed through the populated corridors, gossiping about the party last night. Apparently, some people got caught with cocaine and Xanax and ended up spending the night in jail. They were most likely let loose because we were only “wild teenagers” or that “we weren’t aware of what we were really doing”.
Also, it’s rumored that the most hated bitch in school—Valerie Valdez—got a train ran on her somewhere in the garden. Everyone, including myself, believed it because of her bad reputation. She had four abortions since freshman year and got caught getting fucked by some senior in the bathroom sophomore year. So yeah, it was believable.
At the staircase in the main lobby, we went our separate ways since each of our classes were in different wings. I had office aid this period so technically, it was a free period. I barely assisted anyone in the office, unless I got bored of walking around the school.
My earphones were plugged in with my favorite band, Inked Disaster, blasting in full volume. I strummed my fingers on the strap of my bag along to the guitar solos, wanting to have a rock out moment in the middle of the hallway but I wasn’t down to look like a weirdo today.
I bumped into a figure and stumbled a few steps back. I was ready to insult whoever it was because this could’ve been easily avoided if they knew how to move the hell out of the way. All this space in this hallway and they still managed to walk right into me.
I looked up to a familiar grin and slapped him delicately on the chest. “You bumped into me a little hard, you know!”
Jeremy bursted out a laugh. “You weren’t paying attention so why the hell not? You’re lucky I didn’t decide to go all out and body slam you to the floor.”
“I probably would’ve liked it if anything.” I smiled, wrapping my arms around his neck and pecking his cheek.
His brown eyes twinkled enticingly. His hands grabbed my curvy hips. “In that case, you wanna take this elsewhere? We have a whole hour and twenty minutes to spare.”
“As much fun as that sounds, not right now. I have to get started on this stupid English essay so I don’t have to do much at home.” I said. “Plus, I’m trying to keep my model student image.”
“Yeah, being involved in two of the biggest fights in South Crystal is definitely model student material.” He sarcastically retorted.
Freshman year, I got into a huge fight with some chick named Marisol Fisher in the cafeteria because she poured milk down my shirt. I was already in a shit mood that day and on top of that, was wearing a white shirt. As a reflex, I grabbed her by the hair and slammed her face on the table before beating her ass.
Her friend, Gabriella Pina, jumped in and guess what happened? She got her ass handed to her too! More embarrassing on their part because they were seventeen-year-old juniors and I was a fifteen-year-old freshman.
My most recent fight was last year with Valerie. She decided it was a good idea to fuck with me while I was cramping like hell on my period. All I wanted was to get the last class of the day over with and take my ass home. But then, she started mimicking me whenever I responded to the teacher’s questions and threw a pen at my face.
Best believe I spilled her blood all over the floor after that.
I shrugged, taking off my AirPods. “The administrators know it wasn’t my fault. Plus, they always mistake me as a quiet girl for some reason.”
“Yeah, because of the front you put on. One full conversation with you and they’ll realize how much of a crazy person you actually are.” He smirked, wrapping his arm around my shoulder. I rolled my eyes and snuggled closer to him, the smell of his axe cologne filling my nose as we approached the quad.
