A WHOLE NEW CROWD

CHAPTER ONE-3

I let myself inside the mansion, dropping my keys in the bowl beside the coat-rack. The place was just massive. I already knew no one was home. My parents—it was hard to think of them as parents; I had to keep reminding myself not to call them Shelly and Kevin in my mind—were gone to a medical conference. It wasn’t long until I learned that Kevin was rarely home. He was either on-call at the hospital or he was moon-lighting at a different hospital. When he wasn’t, he took Shelly with him for weekend conferences. When they both left, it was Mandy, Austin, and myself. A neighbor came over to check on us in the evenings. There’d been a few times when the neighbor slept over, but she always watched television in her room so we had the house to ourselves most of the time.

Grabbing a soda, I headed to the media room. It wasn’t long until I heard voices coming from the kitchen, and I groaned. Mandy’s friends’ voices. The gods of the gods.

I muttered, “Kill me now.”

“She’s down here.” Mandy bounced down the stairs and plopped next to me. Devon came in behind her and stood at the end of our couch, frowning at her. She beamed at me. “Hey!”

“Hey.” I frowned.

“Tray said you said no. A big fat no actually.”

I shook my head. I wasn’t going to deal with this from her. “No, Mandy.”

“Why not? This would be so easy for you.”

“What’s going on?” Jennica Kent asked, laughing as she sat on the couch opposite us. Tray and a few others came into the room. The only one missing was Amber Sethlers. She and Jennica were the two females at the top of the food chain.

I knew some about the others, Grant, Samuel, and I couldn’t name the third guy. There were enough rumors swirling about every one of them. One hated the other. They had all slept with each other at some point. I never cared. They were rumors. I could barely keep track of the ones about me. This was the social circle at the top, and they were in my media room, well, Mandy’s media room.

I wanted to run. I never mixed with Populars well.

“Leave her alone, Mandy. The girl said no.”

I glanced at Tray in surprise. I didn’t believe that he had backed down. “I’m not doing it. Wherever you want me to break into, I’m not doing it.”

“We’re not asking anymore.”

“Okay.” Mandy nodded. “We’ll figure something else out then.”

She bit her lip and glanced around the room to the others. The guys didn’t care about the conversation. Devon had taken the remote and turned the channel to a basketball game. Jennica was watching Tray, who was staring at me. The longer he did, the redder her face got. I didn’t look at him. I wasn’t going to step back into that dark hole. He was like a vortex, a very hot and lethal vortex, but I couldn’t stop myself from enjoying how upset she was becoming. Then she shot me a nasty look and I turned away, biting my lip. What was I doing? I needed to fit in, strip off my rebel ways, and assimilate into this pack.

I was screwed.

I glanced at Mandy. I should leave, but her hand went to my arm. Even though she hadn’t said anything, I felt that she wanted me to stay. Oh hell. I knew she wanted me to be friends with her friends, but I couldn’t. I belonged in the criminal crowd, not this one. This was a whole new crowd.

But...she was my sister and I was trying a new way. Going against my instincts, I tried to watch the game.

Mandy squeezed my arm.