MORGAN'S POV
"What the hell were you even doing with Orion in the first place?" I yelled. Gigi winced and shut her eyes tight before bending her head down. I sighed, immediately feeling bad for yelling at her.
"Gigi," I called her name softly this time. "What did Orion say to you? Did he threaten you? Cause I heard him ask if you understood what he said and he did not sound nice."
Gigi didn't answer. I looked up at Prescott for help, for any clue as to what Orion talked to her about, but he was just as clueless as I was.
"He…he's changed." Her voice was low and soft, almost a whisper. "He was not like this. He was never this mean to me."
I felt bad for her because she was shaking then. Whatever Orion said to her must have done a number on her. She was right though. Even though he never really paid that much attention to her, he never yelled at her or treated her like he did other people because she was my friend. Gigi wasn't used to being yelled at. This must have shaken her up more than she bargained for.
"What did he ask for, Gigi? Why did he want to talk to you in private?" I asked again. As if waking up from a trance, she raised her head and faced me with a half-smile.
"Oh, nothing much. He just wanted to know where you were and if you'd be coming back anytime soon. Apparently, you didn't answer any of his texts and his calls just kept going to voicemail."
She looked completely fine, like she was over what just happened to her. It made me worried for a second, how she could just go from shaken up to completely fine and unbothered, but I shrugged off the thought and decided that she probably felt that way because she knew just how irrelevant dwelling on Orion was.
"Well, that's because I lost my phone while falling to my death. Speaking of which, why the hell did you do that?" I remembered then that I was mad at her for pushing me and not even checking up on me once. She stiffened and her face turned a bright shade of pink in guilt.
"I get that it was an accident, but you should have at least visited. It was boring all by myself at home and I really needed you there."
Slowly, she lifted her head, her green eyes brimming with tears. "You're not mad that I didn't tell people the real reason why you fell?"
"Gigi, I will not lie to you and say that I am okay with people thinking that I tried to unalive myself because of Orion Breene, but that isn't the reason I'm mad at you. I get why you didn't come clean; my mother would have prosecuted you before hearing the whole story. Maybe even after hearing it – she did blame the parapet and the school administrators for it." She smiled a little.
"I'm more upset that my best friend in the whole world left me to suffer all alone during the Saturday polo match and garden party." I groaned, just thinking of the torture I had to endure last Saturday. All those housewives who only gossiped for a living and their daughters that followed in their footsteps. If I wasn't interested in keeping my mother's reputation unsullied, I would have given them a piece of my mind.
"I'm so sorry, Morgan. I was just so scared and I thought you hated me." Gigi stared crying then and I sat down beside her to hug her.
"I could never hate you, Gigi." I turned my head slightly and that was when I saw Prescott taking a picture of us.
"You guys look so hot right now, I just couldn't resist."
"He's going to use our photo to do something disgusting," Gigi said, breaking our hug.
"Prescott…" I said in a warning tone.
"I promise this is just for me to admire…during my alone time," he added as an afterthought. Gigi and I gagged at the same time and rolled our eyes.
"Speaking of admiring." Prescott sauntered up to me and smiled coyly, his eyes glistening in mischief. "Who's the hottie with the tattoos?"
At the mention of Raegan, my whole body heated up. Every single part of me burned like I was on fire. It was the first time I was reacting like this just from a terrible description of someone I hardly knew. I gave Prescott a quizzical look, trying to pry out how he knew about Raegan, but he just smiled wider and shrugged his shoulders.
"What hottie with tattoos?" Gigi asked interested.
"No one!" I screeched before Prescott had the chance to say anything else.
"Ah, I see. No one knows about him yet. I'll keep my mouth shut then." He made a motion like he was zipping his mouth and then threw away an invisible key. I felt like strangling him in that moment because his statement and gesture only succeeded in peaking Gigi's interest.
The truth was, even though Gigi was my best friend and I did tell her everything, I wasn't ready to share Raegan with her. There was nothing going on with us and with the way things ended when I went over to his place, I doubt I'd be seeing him anytime soon, but I didn't want anyone else to know of his existence. I knew that didn't exactly make any sense, but I was going with my thoughts on the matter and that was that.
"Don't mind him, Gigi. Prescott's just talking about the new manga episode he's working on. He's making the new guy into some kind of gangster with tattoos and ridiculous piercings." Gigi deflated like a balloon at the thought that there was nothing juicy going on in my life.
"I didn't say anything about piercings though." The smile on Prescott's face became a sinister smirk and he wiggled his eyebrows. I blushed. "How on earth would you even know about the new guy when you've never read my manga?" I knew he was going to say that. For some weird reason, Prescott has been pestering me to read his comic book. He's been going on about it for years now and I'm beginning to think it's some weird story with explicit drawings of me. I did not want to see that.
Just then, the room burst open and in came Julia Sanders, another one of the 'new money' members of our school. Her blue eyes were wide and shining so much I thought there was something physically wrong with her. Usually, I'd be mad at someone just entering my domain without permission first, but I didn't think she had the patience to listen to my scolding. She looked like she was going to burst from having to keep whatever information she had to relay to herself.
"The scholarship girl just came in," she announced.
Gigi gasped and grabbed my hard with so much force I thought she was going to break it.
"I can't believe she actually showed her face in school today," she said. "Chloe has been avoiding the school grounds since that video came out. No one has seen her for a week."
"Hurry up and go to the cafeteria!" Julia squealed eagerly. She was so hyper I feared for her heart. Gigi made to stand up but stopped when I didn't budge.
"And why should we care about her to the extent that we rush over to the cafeteria to see her? Is she now some sort of celebrity?" The idea that people now thought of her as someone that important pissed me off. I remained unmoving, determined to not go over to where she was like I was an eager fan desperate to catch a glimpse of her.
"Because…The Dynasty just pulled up to the cafeteria and Paris is just too eager to display her Trash Couture."
I didn't understand exactly what she meant by that, but it didn't take a genius to know what it was about.
We all went up to our premium cafeteria on the third floor of the main academic building that was opened during the day for those of us too lazy to go all the way to the residence building to have lunch. The foul stench that hit my nose the moment I got into the dinning area was revolting. I gagged twice and almost succeeded in bringing it all out the third time.
"What the fuck?" Prescott exclaimed. Every single student there used a perfume that was worth at least $5000, but none of their combined scents could mask the repulsive stench that filled the room.
I inched closer to where the students were circled, despite my whole body begging me to leave the room. I could see the back of Paris' brown luscious hair. A few inches closer and I had a full view of Chloe the Scholarship Girl.
Her face was completely covered in what I only wished was white paint with a little bit of lumps in it. I couldn't see her expression clearly as she sat limp on the marble floors but I could tell she did not like it one bit. Her uniform was torn and messed up badly and she had tiny bits of fish sticking out of her hair.
"And that everyone, is how you make a gourmet slop. Hope you enjoyed my cooking lessons today?" Paris said to the crowd gathered there. She had a Hermes scarf tied over her nose to keep the smell away while wearing thick, pink rubber gloves and an apron. The students gathered there were all so happy and excited, taking pictures and making crude comments about Chloe. I mean, I hated the girl and I was so mad at her for what she did, but even I felt this was too much. They were going to post it online for sure, but the real issue was how she was going to get that smell off her. Even barn animals had better smell than she did in that moment.
"'Curdled milk, rotting fish, maggot infested meat' eww, there are actual maggots in that shit. That's disgusting," Prescott was saying by my side. Paris had posted the 'recipe' for making a gourmet slop on our platform and he was reading it off there. "Oh my God! Morgan, there's cow shit in that and also fish sauce and fermented shrimp paste. Ugh! She's going to stink for the rest of her life."
"And now, for the finishing touch. The gravy." She said 'gravy' like it was the sweet and delicious one that we knew and loved, but in reality, it was rotten eggs and onions that were left to marinate and become the sulfuric, eye-watering mix that it was. I heard someone throw up behind me.
The gravy came pouring all over Chloe like a waterfall. I knew in that moment that there was nothing, absolutely nothing in this world, that could take the smell off. She was branded for life.
"What the actual fuck did you just do?"
Everywhere went eerily still and quiet at the sound of that booming voice. We all waited patiently to see who had spoken. One person moved and I was able to see the one who had the voice.
He looked like he wanted to murder someone, and not just murder but add an extra layer of torture to the person's soul in the great beyond. I have never seen anyone that furious before, especially when that fury seemed to be directed at me.
Whispers rose although I could tell they tried not to raise their voices too loud in order to not be on the receiving end of the angry foreigner's wrath.
With strong, furious determined steps, he approached me. I will not lie, I was scared shitless. No one has ever looked at me like they wanted to have my head on a spike.
As he approached where we stood, I saw him take a glimpse at Chloe sitting on the floor like all hope was lost. Though I couldn't see her face, I could tell from the way her shoulders sagged in relief as she sighted him that she was glad someone had come to save her from this hellhole.
He finally reached where I was and I felt my knees buckle at the intensity of his gaze. It was both mesmerizing and terrifying at the same time.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" he yelled again, this time at me. I flinched and released a small gasp, utterly scared of what was happening. I was by myself in my common room when some girl barged in and invited me to watch this mess. I didn't even want to come and here I was being scolded for what I didn't do in front of everyone. I felt victimized. I wanted to cry.
I opened my mouth to defend myself, to yell back at him and tell him he got it all wrong, that I wasn't the one who decided to bully his girlfriend like that and that I didn't even like what was happening to her. But he beat me to speaking, and boy, did his words shock the daylights out of me.
"How dare you spill rotten-egg-gravy on the shoes of my princess?"
The silence that followed after that statement was deafening. Then, without breaking eye contact with me, Raegan slowly bent down, pulled out a white handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the tiny drop of gravy that had fallen on my shoe.