The Seduction Game novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Hattie

Aileen's roommate Hattie becomes her ally and explains the honor code and what a lost Fellowship costs; her mother calls about the bank letter.

"Is it true you save your money in a coffee can?" Camille asked again.

The whole center table had gone quiet.

Teddy Prescott, her boyfriend, was leaning back in his chair with a lacrosse jacket on and a grin.

I looked at Camille, and she looked at me, and neither of us blinked.

So Nash had told her.

Fine.

I let a small, hurt line show between my eyebrows, because I wanted her to enjoy it.

"Who told you that?" I asked.

"Oh, everyone's talking about it," she said. "It's so sweet."

Nobody had been talking about it.

There had been one person in that library when I said it, and he had walked straight to her.

"It's silly," I said, and I took my tray and walked off before she could say more.

Behind me Teddy said, "Bus fare," and a few people laughed.

Hattie caught up with me at the juice machine.

"You look like a girl who just got a present," she said.

"I did."

"The coffee can?"

"There's no coffee can." I filled a cup. "I made it up for one person. I told him, and now she knows."

Hattie's mouth fell open.

She dragged me out into the cold courtyard and sat me on a bench under a dead maple and listened to all of it, from the stairwell onward.

When I finished she was quiet for the first time since I'd met her.

"That's insane," she said.

"Yes."

"That's the best thing I've ever heard." She grabbed my arm. "Aileen, I've been here since I was five, I live over the garage with my dad, I fix their leaky taps and rake their leaves, and I have waited my entire life for somebody to beat that girl."

"I didn't say I was going to beat her."

"You said it with your whole face."

She wasn't wrong.

I told her what I thought I knew.

Ellsworth had an honor code, and it was the one thing everyone at the school was afraid of.

Cheating got you expelled.

So did being out after ten at night or inside the boys' house after curfew.

Hattie explained the rest in her loud, practical way, counting on her fingers.

Last year a scholarship boy was caught with a copy of an exam in his locker, and he was gone in two days.

His family was still sending the school a check every month.

"Nobody ever asked how it got in his locker," Hattie said.

I felt my stomach go cold.

"Who was the proctor?"

"Camille's cousin. Convenient, right?"

I sat there under the dead tree, thinking about a boy I would never meet who had gone home with a debt.

Then my phone buzzed.

It was my mother, Rita Brannigan.

She never called in the daytime, because she slept until three after her shift.

"Aileen, baby," she said, and I could hear that she had been crying and fixing her voice. "Are you eating?"

"Mom, what's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong. I'm so proud of you. I just wanted to hear you."

I knew that voice.

She had used it when my father left, when the mill shut, when the power went off two winters ago.

"Mom."

A long breath came down the line.

"There was a letter from the bank. It's not a big deal. I just wanted to say, don't worry about it, honey. It's a little thing about the house."

Hattie put a hand on my back.

"What kind of a thing?" I asked.

"They said," my mother started, and stopped.

"Mom."

"They said if the Fellowship doesn't go through the whole year, they're calling the loan."

I closed my eyes.

The house, the scholarship, and Camille's plan were all one chain.

If I was expelled by Founders' Day, my mother lost the roof over her head.

"I'm not going to lose it," I said. "I swear to you, Mom."

I hung up and looked at Hattie.

"So what are you going to do?" she asked.

I opened my eyes, and for the first time since the stairwell, I wasn't afraid.

I was angry, and that was much better.

"I'm going to let Nash Reuter fall in love with me," I said. "And then I'm going to see who falls first."

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