Prince Charmings (BOOK ONE)

28

It took more false starts than I expected for me to actually say hello to Spencer in the halls.

Given it was the last official week of school, with the first exams beginning on Friday, time was running out for me, and Spencer's ability to disappear into thin air at any given moment was not helping me. The guy was like a ghost. One minute I'd track down his head bobbing among the hundred of other souls trapped at Newport High and in the next second, he would be gone. I even went so far as to walk Iris to the Arts hallway after bumping into her outside the library in the hopes of catching him.

"I heard you went to Fleur's party the other night," Iris said, hugging a notebook to her chest as she waltzed down the hall beside me.

"If by went to Fleur's party you mean showed up for a half-hour then bailed, yeah I did," I said and Iris laughed, pushing her hair behind her ear.

"I was going to say hi, but then I saw you in the kitchen talking Stanley Farns," Iris admitted, glancing up at me quickly. Her cheeks flushed red under gold highlight. "You looked pretty angry."

My jaw clenched unintentionally at those words, remembering my conversation with Stanley.

It was a last minute decision to even go to Fleur's party, made when Dad attempted to corner me into a conversation after I'd spent the night before sleeping on the couch. Walking to Fleur's house wasn't that much of a stretch, she lived in the suburbs a few blocks away from my own place in a house four times the size of all the other's on the street.

Her dad was an investment broker, rarely home, and often let Fleur and her sister do whatever they wanted. She let me stash my jacket in her room, giving me a more than friendly kiss-to-the-cheek-hello, and told me to enjoy the party. And I was, nursing a beer in the kitchen with Clark and Andrew Yang when Stanley walked in. Now I had no problem with Stanley. For the most part, he was just another student in the halls to me, but the guy always tried to get on my nerves. It had been that way since middle school, when once during English I made fun of his stutter when he was forced to read out his book report on Bridge to Terabithia. Since then he'd been on my ass, and one of the first people at school to call me out for the Barkers incident.

At first glance, Stanley wasn't the most intimidating guy. He was on the school's golf team, average in height with shaggy hair he refused to cut after shaving his head for Cancer Awareness Month back in sophomore year. Overall he seemed decent enough, so I didn't understand why the guy was so hung up on something that happened almost ten years ago. Something I didn't even remember doing until Saturday night.

"Fleur might wanna check the fire alarms in her house are working, especially if she's letting Minders roam around," Stanley said, cracking open a beer with the hand that wasn't draped along Gwen Therson's back. Gwen blushed at the words, batting Stanley's chest. She and I shared the same PE and Spanish class in junior year and since then she'd always made it a point to wave at me in the hallways.

"Nice one Stanley, managed to make it through that entire spiel with stuttering. Gold star absolutely earned," Clark applauded, tone dry.

"Can I help you, Stanley?" I asked, not in the mood for a fight when I had literally come to the party in order to avoid one. "Gwen you look gorgeous by the way, red is definitely your color."

"Thanks, Beau," she grinned, fiddling with the hem of her shirt, blushing when she caught Stanley's scowl. Beside me Clark chuckled, clapping my shoulder.

"You've had your moment of macho posturing Farns, fuck off," Clark had said, taking a drink from his cup as he waved his free hand to dismiss Stanley. I wasn't sure what it was he was drinking, the liquid suspiciously pale but definitely not vodka or gin. An identical cup sat in Andrew's hand, but the guy hadn't taken a sip of it yet. Rather, he stared down at it as though the contents came straight from the pit of Lazarus, not willing to mess with that kind of power.