The Seduction Game novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Easy Mark

Nash approaches Aileen in the library with a rehearsed hello and she plays shy, planting a trap fact; the next morning Camille asks about it.

I did not go to the library.

I stood in the stairwell with my back against the cold stone until the voices were gone.

Then I walked back to my room, sat on my bed, and made myself think.

Founders' Day was the first Friday of December, Hattie had said, and that was the date I would be measured against.

It gave me a whole autumn to learn the game before the trap closed.

Hattie had told me the Founders' Exam was the biggest day of senior year.

She also told me Nash Reuter had been suspended twice and had once ridden a motorcycle through the dining hall for a bet.

I could cry about it, or I could use it.

I thought about my mother's face in the doorway when the Fellowship letter came.

I decided to use it.

So the next afternoon I went to the library, took the long table by the window, and opened my chemistry book without reading a word of it.

He came in at four.

I knew it was him before I looked up, because the whole room changed.

Two sophomores stopped whispering, and a girl at the next table suddenly needed to sharpen a pencil.

Nash Reuter was tall, dark-haired, and wearing a leather jacket that was against the dress code.

He had a scar through his left eyebrow and a way of walking like he didn't care who watched.

He stopped at my table and looked at my book.

"That's upside down," he said.

I looked.

It was.

"I know," I said. "I like to see it from the other side."

He almost smiled, then caught it.

"You're the Fellowship girl."

"I'm Aileen."

"Nash." He pulled out the chair across from me and sat as if I'd asked him to. "I heard what you did to Camille on the lawn."

"What did I do?"

"Made her look like a tax dodge in front of two hundred people." He tilted his head. "I've wanted to do that since ninth grade."

It was a good line.

It was very good.

It was also a line, and I could hear the edges where he had practiced it.

I let my eyes go wide and a little shy.

"Oh," I said. "I didn't mean to start anything."

"You didn't. She did."

"I just wanted a quiet year." I looked down at my hands. "I can't mess this up. My mom works nights. If I lose this, we lose the house."

I watched his face while I said it.

For one second something moved in it that was not part of any plan.

Then it was gone, and he leaned in with the soft look I would learn to recognize as his work voice.

"You won't lose it," he said. "I'll help you."

"Why would you do that?"

"Maybe I like you."

I almost laughed.

I looked up through my eyelashes.

"Nobody likes me yet," I said. "I've been here a day."

"I'm quick."

I let him sit there for ten minutes.

He asked easy questions, and I gave him easy answers that were true enough to hold up.

Where I was from, what I wanted to study, whether I'd ever seen the ocean.

I hadn't.

He wrote none of it down, but I could see him storing it.

Right before he left I fixed my eyes on the table and said the lie I had made up the night before.

"Please don't tell anyone, but I keep my savings in a coffee can under my bed. Forty-one dollars. It says bus fare on the lid. It's silly, but it's all I've got."

I had never owned a coffee can in my life.

My savings were in the bank, all forty-one dollars of them, like a normal person.

Nash's face did something gentle and kind, and I thought, he's good.

"It isn't silly," he said, and touched the back of my hand for a moment. "I won't tell anyone."

He walked out of the library with the whole room watching.

I sat there until the room emptied out.

Then I went to bed and slept better than I had in weeks, because now I had a test.

If Camille ever mentioned the coffee can, I would know where the leak went.

The next morning I walked into the dining hall with Hattie.

Camille was at the center table with her friends, a white cardigan around her shoulders, perfect.

She saw me and stood up, which no one in that room ever did for anyone.

"Aileen," she said, bright and warm, with her hand on my arm. "I wanted to apologize for yesterday."

I held very still.

"Everyone needs a fresh start," she said sweetly. "Tell me, is it true you save your money in a coffee can?"

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