Ruthless Rival (Cruel Castaways)

Past

“Faster.” Headmaster Plath smacked the back of my head. He glided along the kitchen tiles, lacing his fingers behind his back. Half my body was inside an industrial pot as I scrubbed it clean. My knuckles were so dry they bled every time I washed my hands. Which was often enough, seeing as I was on dishwashing duty at least four times a week.

I sucked in a breath, rubbing the cast-iron cleaner against the tar-like crust that had settled around the edges, refusing to submit.

“Mr. Roth was right. You’re so ugly you could snag lightning.” Headmaster Plath cackled, stopping by a window overlooking the green grass. There were students splayed on a hill by the fountain, catching sunrays, slurping slushies, telling each other about their summer plans. Mine included trying to get some work at the nearest town and walking ten miles to and from boarding school each day, because I couldn’t afford the bus tickets. I imagined Ruslana—there was no point calling her Mom at this point—was playing second violin to the Roths. Making Arya her fancy acai bowls, braiding her hair, carrying a beach bag for her across golden dunes in exotic places near the ocean.

“He is doing you a huge favor, you know,” Headmaster Plath continued, staring idly at his students through the window. His eyes growing large and greedy. I always got the idea that he liked what he saw just a little too much when he looked at some of the boys. “Nothing would have become of you if you’d stayed in New York.”

“It’d have been nice to have a choice in the matter,” I muttered, changing the angle of my arm while scrubbing the pot. My muscles were burning with exhaustion. It was not unheard of for my arms to be numb all night after hours of kitchen duty.

“What’d you say?” His head spun so fast that for a second I thought his neck might snap.

“Nothing,” I hissed. Students weren’t supposed to take on kitchen or laundry duties unless they’d misbehaved. It was supposed to be a detention of sorts, but I seemed to be a part of the staff here. Arsène and Riggs always told me it was bullshit, and I agreed, but there was little I could do about it.

“No.” Plath rushed toward me, eager to pick a fight. “Say it again.”

I turned to face him. My face felt red and hot. I was furious with him for pulling this kind of crap, and with myself for putting up with it. And with Conrad, who kept taunting me years later, albeit from a safe distance, just because I’d dared to touch his precious, stupid, spoiled girl.

“I said it’d have been nice if he gave me a choice!” I turned around, sticking my chin up.

He took a step closer, his nose almost brushing mine. “Do you have any idea how much he pays to keep you here every year?”

“I bet I shell out most of the fee, since I work here all year round.”

Plath pressed his nose against mine, towering over me, pushing my face backward, his eyes boring into mine. “You work here all year round because you’re a piece of trash who cannot stay out of trouble,” he jeered. “Because you’re a useless little prick whose entire contribution to society is cleaning and ironing good boys’ clothes.”

Something inside me snapped just then. I was tired. Tired of waking up at 5:00 a.m. to do other people’s laundry. Tired of doing my homework at two in the morning because I had to clean and scrub pots and pans. Tired of mowing the lawn on hot summer days without getting water breaks. Exhausted from being punished for something I hadn’t even wanted to do. At the same time, I knew Plath was challenging me. He waited for me to talk back. To retaliate. Wanted an excuse to strike me. I wouldn’t put it past him to put his hands on me. He’d been careful so far, but his mean streak overrode all his other traits.

So even though I knew I was going to regret it, I forced myself to smile. Stretching my mouth across my cheeks hurt my face, but I still did it, then uttered the words I should have told Conrad that time he’d beaten me up: “Fuck. You.”

I spit in his face, but not before gathering a respectable amount of phlegm. I knew I was going to pay for it, but it felt good. The spit landed on Plath’s right cheek and slithered down to his neck. He made no move to wipe it off. Just stared at me with an expression I was too anxious to decode.

The next few seconds were a blur. Headmaster Plath cracked his knuckles loudly. On cue, the kitchen door flung open, and three burly seniors who were on the rowing team walked in.

“Gentlemen.” Plath stepped backward, my saliva still on his cheek. Crap on a cracker. They’d been waiting that entire time. This was all a plan to aggravate me. “I have to step away to clean up this mess. Please keep Mr. Ivanov company while I’m away. Care to do that for me?”

“No problem, sir.”

One of the boys—the biggest, dumbest one, naturally—waved his hand like a fortune cat toward the headmaster as he stomped toward me. The door to the kitchen closed with a click. I looked between the three of them. I knew what was about to happen. Still, I wasn’t sorry.

Shithead Number One cracked his knuckles, while Shithead Number Two slammed me against the wall. Shithead Number Three stood by the door, making sure no one was coming. I knew it was the end for me. That I’d probably die.

“Why, hello there, Oliver Twist. Found your way into the upper crust and thought we’d just let you walk in like you own the place, huh?” Shithead One asked. I didn’t answer. He punched me square in the jaw, sending my head flying to the other side, while Shithead Two held me firmly in place.

Shithead One laughed. I was bleeding from my mouth. My jaw was numb, but I felt something hot trickling down my chin.

“And to talk back to your headmaster like that . . . where were you raised? The jungle?”

He kicked me in the gut, and when I folded in two, he kicked my face repeatedly, holding my shoulders to keep me from falling. There was a lot of thrashing after that, but I was only half-conscious at this point. My eyelids were too heavy to keep open, and the noises around me became muffled. Like I was at the bottom of the ocean. I didn’t know how much time had passed. Maybe it was a few minutes. Maybe an hour. But at some point, there was screaming and punching around me—people were hitting one another, not just me—and then there were two pairs of hands dragging me away from the kitchen, their owners barking at one another. I recognized Arsène’s voice first. It remained calm throughout. Chillingly so. Riggs, however, wanted to go back there and hand them their asses.

“You already broke that dude’s nose,” Arsène said, groaning with effort as they dragged me up the stairway to my room. I kept my eyes closed, too ashamed to open them. I didn’t want to answer any questions.

“That asshole looked like a stomped possum to begin with. I want to inflict permanent damage,” Riggs complained, tugging me as they got to my floor and rounded the carpeted hallway to my dorm room.

“The most permanent damage that kid will suffer is having the intelligence of a goddamn Froyo, and that has nothing to do with you. Let it go. They’re chummy with Plath.”

“We should strike Plath too,” Riggs said, giving my door a roundhouse kick. They dumped me on my bed. I cracked one eye open and spotted Riggs hauling his shirt off by the collar, discarding it in my sink, and letting it soak in cold water.

Arsène plopped down beside me, forcing some water between my cracked lips. “No. This Conrad guy has him in his pocket. We’ll have to keep a better eye on Nicky.”

Riggs squeezed his shirt, unbuttoned my uniform, and began pressing his balled wet shirt as a compress against my hot, bruised skin. I groaned in pain, but it felt good.

“Aw, look. The princess is up,” Riggs cooed. “You okay there, sweetie?”

“Eat shit, Riggs.”

Riggs laughed. “He’s okay. Hey, how about I get us some burgers? I can drive downtown.”

I shook my head frantically. “You might get caught.”

Riggs had graduated from exploding random things and causing small fires to stealing the staff’s cars and sneaking into town. He didn’t have a driver’s license. That didn’t put a damper on his big plans.

“Good.” Riggs patted my knee, while Arsène wrote a list of all the things he needed to bring back. Extra-garlic fries among them, no doubt. “That way I’ll get kitchen duty and you won’t. Or better yet—we’ll do it together. The big, fat, dysfunctional happy family that we are.”

“You can’t do that,” I mumbled, too tired to argue.

“We can and we will.” Arsène pushed me back down on the bed. “And you better fucking reciprocate when it’s our turn to fuck up.”

The next day, Arsène got caught buying weed he had no intention of smoking from one of the seniors, while Riggs brought an actual mountain lion he’d somehow managed to get a leash on and declared his new pet. Both my best friends got three weeks of kitchen and laundry duty.

After that day, Riggs and Arsène made sure I would never do a kitchen shift all by myself again.