The Art of Being Friends Read online

  I shrug and stare out the window, too tired to get into it with her right now.

  I really need some coffee. And breakfast. Why did my uncle have to be in the kitchen this morning?

  I zone out for most of the ride to school while Dixie May babbles about some reality TV show she’s been watching. Aunt Beth occasionally joins in on the conversation, but Dixie May is usually the one to fill up the silence. The girl could probably break the world record with her ability to talk and talk and talk, especially about reality TV.

  As soon as my aunt pulls up to the school, Dixie May’s focus switches.

  “This is seriously the school we have to go to?” She crinkles her nose at the brick building. “It’s so small. And where the hell is student parking?”

  “I’m sure it’s around here somewhere,” Aunt Beth tells her as she stops in the student drop-off area at the front. “Maybe at the back of the school.”

  Dixie May glares at her mother. “Well, they better have it, because there’s no way in hell I’m parking Cutie in this tiny parking lot when it arrives.”

  Cutie is Dixie May’s BMW that she got for her sixteenth birthday. Her parents didn’t want her racking up miles on it when we moved, so they had it shipped over. It hasn’t arrived yet, something Dixie complains about every day.

  Me? I’m kind of grateful it hasn’t arrived because, when it does, I have to go back to riding to school with her. And she usually ends up leaving me stranded after school, so I either have to walk home or catch the city bus. I don’t think Honeyton has a city bus, which means I’ll end up having to ride the bus from school or walk home. I’d be okay with walking, except Honeyton’s winters are supposed to be intense, and riding the bus isn’t fun at all, let alone for friendless people.

  “I’ll look into it,” Aunt Beth assures her.

  “You better.” Dixie May frowns at the school. “Great. I bet there’s not even any FHs here.”

  I roll my eyes. FHs stand for fuckable hotties in Dixie May language.

  “Oh, I’m sure there are.” My aunt smiles as she points at a muscular guy walking past our car. “Look at him. He’s cute.”

  “Ew, Mom, you’re so disgusting. Seriously, are you having a mid-life crisis or something?” Dixie May says with her nose crinkled. Then she sticks out one hand in her mom’s direction while pulling the visor down. “Give me some lunch money, so I can get out of here and away from your gross comments.”

  “Oh, okay.” My aunt starts rummaging through her purse.

  While Dixie May waits for her mom to dig out some money, she does a quick check of her hair and makeup. She fixes a couple of her blonde curls, twisting them before flipping up the visor. Then she glances down at the pink top and white skirt she’s wearing, smoothing out a few invisible wrinkles. By the time she’s finished, Aunt Beth has put a twenty-dollar bill into her palm.

  Dixie May stuffs it into her bag then shoves the door open and moves to get out, but then she pauses, glancing over her shoulder at me. “Don’t even think about talking to me today. You know what will happen if you do.”

  “You’ll have to pull out a dictionary to look up all the above four-letter words I’ll use?” I question.

  “Ravenlee,” my aunt snaps, “don’t be a brat.”

  “Yeah, Ravenlee, don’t be a brat, or else everyone here is going to find out who you really are,” Dixie May sneers with a smirk.

  The muscles in my jaw tick, and I curl my fingers inward, stabbing my fingernails into my flesh and wrestling back the urge to punch that smirk off her face.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought.” Dixie May smirks at me one more time before climbing out of the car.

  “Have a nice day,” my aunt says to Dixie May, who shoves the door closed without even replying.

  My aunt lets out a quiet sigh as Dixie May walks away, heading for the entrance doors. Once she’s inside, Aunt Beth looks away, frowning at the passenger seat. “Crap, she forgot her makeup case.” She reaches over, picks up a sparkly case, and hands it to me. “Find Dixie May and give this to her. And don’t even think about stealing it. I’m going to text her to let her know you have it.”

  “She doesn’t want me to talk to her, remember?” Not that I’m actually going to obey Dixie May. I really just don’t want to talk to her or carry around her stupid sparkly case.

  “I’m sure it’ll be fine if you’re giving her the case,” she insists. When I make no effort to take it, she gives me a dirty look. “She needs her makeup, and you’re going to take it to her because, unlike you, my daughter cares about her appearance.”

  “So what if I don’t care?” I stuff the case into my bag. “Looking pretty isn’t the most important thing in the world.”

  She arches a brow. “Have you looked in the mirror lately? You look like a homeless person.”

  Sometimes, I think she treats me so shitty because of how her husband and daughter treat her, like she’s deflecting all her bottled-up aggravation on me. It used to hurt. Now it just pisses me off and makes me want to annoy her.

  “Yeah, well, it’s better than looking like a skank,” I tell her.

  Her eyes widen in horror. “My daughter does not look like a skank. How dare you say so?”

  I raise a brow at her. “Who said I was talking about your daughter?”

  She shakes her head furiously. “You know what? It’s time for you to get out of this car. I’m sick of looking at you.”

  I’m more than ready to get out, but as I peer outside at the school, a drop of anxiety rises inside me.

  Dixie May was right. It’s a really small school. Way smaller than the one we used to go to. I don’t know whether to be nervous about that or not. On the one hand, it means fewer people will mock me. But it also means people will be nosier.

  “Get out!” Aunt Beth snaps. “And I’m not giving you any lunch money. You’ll have to use your own.”

  “I’m not stupid enough to believe otherwise.” I reach for the door handle.

  Her lips curl into a sneer. “That’s very debatable.”

  I push open the door. “So is Dixie May’s IQ.”

  “Dixie May isn’t stupid.” She rotates around in the seat to glare at me. “She just prefers fashion and guys over schoolwork. That’s not that uncommon for a teenage girl. You’re the anomaly, Raven.”

  I give a shrug. “I wasn’t trying to argue that I wasn’t an anomaly. I was merely pointing out that, if you think I’m unintelligent, then you must think your daughter is an idiot.”

  “Dixie May isn’t an idiot,” she scoffs. “She just gets distracted because she has a life.” She flashes me a smirk. “Unlike you.”

  “I may be a social outcast, but at least I’m not an idiot. And when this last year of hell is all over and I graduate, I’m going to take my good grades, go off to college, and make something of myself, while Dixie May probably ends up having a shotgun wedding because she can’t keep her legs closed.”

  Her nostrils flare. “You little shit—”

  I hop out of the car and slam the door shut.

  She starts to roll the window down as I hurry toward the sidewalk that leads to the front doors, knowing she won’t make a scene. It’s not her style. No, her style is to tell my uncle, who’s going to either be annoyed with her that she’s being a tattletale or pissed off at me, depending on his mood. Either way, there’s going to be shouting in the house when my uncle Don gets home tonight.

  “You can get your own ass home, Ravenlee Wilowwynter!” she shouts from the car. “I won’t be picking you up!”

  I cringe as the handful of students walking around glance in my direction.

  Awesome. What a great way to start my first day at a new school. Then again, if Dixie May has her way, it’ll be a shitty day for me anyway. And now I have the walk home to look forward to. It’s my own damn fault for riling my aunt up. I just get so sick of her shit sometimes.

  Letting out a slow exhale, I continue toward the school with people eyeballing me,
eyeballing my outfit, eyeballing my crazy hair. Then the whispering begins. Finally, I can’t take it anymore, so I stick my hand into my pocket and dig out my phone. Then I grab my earbuds, pop them in, and crank up some classic rock, the same music my dad used to listen to.

  I’ve been entering school this way for as long as I can remember. Music helps block out everything, including my own annoying thoughts. Though I made a promise to myself not to do that today, to try a fresh start, I guess old habits die hard.

  I don’t want to listen to the whispering. Don’t want to listen to the name calling. Don’t want to listen to everyone talk about all the made-up stories Dixie May has spread about me.

  “She’s a slut.”

  “She’s a satanic freak.”

  “I once saw her kill a puppy just for fun.”

  “She slept with a teacher.”

  “Slut.”

  “Freak.”

  “Murderer.”

  I yank myself away from the memories, telling myself that I don’t need to rehash the lies she told about me.

  Well, almost all of them were lies.

  One carries a drop of truth to it.

  Murderer.

  Because, in a way, their deaths were my fault.

  3

  Hunter

  I’m having the shittiest morning ever, mostly because one of the first people I see is my stepmother from hell. I despise the woman. Hate her. Just seeing her makes my skin crawl, which is why I try to avoid her at all costs.

  I don’t live with her or my father, having rented a house with my two best friends, Jax and Zay, the day I turned eighteen. We made a pact to do so when we were twelve, to move away from the shitholes that were supposed to be our homes but, really, were just houses, with roofs and walls that offered shelter. Nothing more. And yeah, I know that’s more than what some people have.

  The houses are huge, too, since all our parents are pretty wealthy. So, most everyone who doesn’t really know us, which is honestly everyone outside our group, thinks of us as spoiled brats. They don’t know all the ugliness that’s gone on in our homes. Of how we were broken. Of how our parents—if you can even call them that—got that wealth that they flash around for the entire town to see.

  Money and power. That’s all our families care about. And that kind of mentality makes people do messed-up stuff, makes them cold and uncaring.

  But Jax, Zay, and I left all that behind the start of our senior year when we moved out of our homes and into our own place and started our own business. Our parents weren’t happy at all, mostly because it made them look bad, as if their children didn’t want to be part of the family anymore. Which is completely true. And if I’m being honest, what happened this morning is exactly what I’ve been expecting to happen since the day we moved out.

  It started with my wicked wench of a stepmom knocking on the front door of our two-story home in the small neighborhood we live in. While the place isn’t a dump, it’s also nowhere near close to the mansion I grew up in, which is what I wanted—to remain lowkey and live a normal life. Well, for the most part. Our job choice is anything but normal. But hardly anyone knows about what we do.

  The Raven Three. That’s what we call our company. And our job business description includes hacking, digging up intel, tracking someone down, and pretty much anything that has to do with solving a mystery for someone. We’re basically a private investigative business, although we don’t call ourselves that. We learned all our skills from the best, too, since my father has several private investigators on hand for his business. Having grown up around it, we got to learn the trade, and now we use it to our benefit. We have to remain anonymous as possible, though, which we do.

  Creating the business allowed us to move out of the house and gave us a chance at attempting to live a semi-normal life, minus the whole PI thing. But I should’ve known better. You can’t be a Hathingford and live a normal life. No, in order to be one, you have to be corrupt—it’s how my family got and kept their wealth and status. And everyone with the last name has to play their part, something I am reminded of when I step out onto the front porch of my home.

  She didn’t even knock, which causes me to startle.

  “Holy shit,” I breathe out with my hand pressed to my chest as I stumble back.

  Once I see who it is, I start to turn to go back in the house where I plan on locking the door and staying in there until she leaves.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” she tells me with a warning tone. “Unless you want this,” she pauses, her tone oozing with sarcasm as she eyeballs the house, “lovely little set up of yours to be over.” She grins as I grit my teeth and stay put.

  A few of my neighbors are wandering around and eyeballing the scene. I don’t blame them. On top of her shiny red Porsche parked out front, she’s wearing a red dress, a leather jacket, and a diamond necklace. If I didn’t know better, I’d guess she was going out clubbing, but this is how she always looks—overly dressed with sparkly things decorating her. She’s kind of a sparkly thing herself, being about fifteen years younger than my father. The only reason she married him was for his money and power. She doesn’t love him, doesn’t care that he sleeps around, doesn’t care about anything except what she wants. And she’ll do anything to get it.

  Anything.

  “Smart boy,” she says, her grin broadening, her gaze trailing over me.

  I hate when she looks at me. I often dream about a day when I can gouge out her eyes so she can never look at anyone again. But my father has made a rule that she’s off limits, and if I break any of my father’s rules while I’m still living in town, Jax, Zay, and I will be punished for it. I know it sounds crazy, but trust me, that’s how much power my father has over this town. And me.

  “What do you want?” I bite out, crossing my arms and leaning against the doorframe, trying to appear more confident than I really am.

  She doesn’t answer right away, just smiles at me, toying with me—her favorite thing to do.

  She once told me I was her favorite toy, but it never really made any sense, since she did everything in her power to break me.

  But I didn’t break. I’m still standing here. Granted, I wish she wasn’t here.

  “One of your father’s employees has bailed out,” she informs me.

  By bailed out, she means either he ran or is currently at the bottom of a lake somewhere.

  I lift my brows at her. “So? What does that have to do with me?”

  “He needs you and your little friends to fill in,” she explains, fiddling with one of her earrings.

  I promptly shake my head. “No way.” I step back inside and move to shut the door, but she slams her palm against it.

  “If you don’t do this, he’ll make your life a living hell. And you should know better than anyone that he can very well do that.”

  My fingers curl inward, my fingernails piercing my flesh. I want to scream out a protest, but know she’s right. I hate how much I know she’s right.

  “I’ll just do it,” I tell her. “Zay and Jax don’t need to get involved.” Deep down, I know this is a pointless argument. Because Zay’s father and Jax’s father work with my dad so, more than likely, they’ve sent the wicked wench to deliver messages to their sons, too.

  She rolls her eyes. “You know that’s not how this is going to work. Their fathers have instructed that they be part of this, too.” She smiles at me. “Your first job is tonight.”

  “What’s the job?” I ask, not really wanting to hear the answer. But eventually, I’m going to have to, so I might as well rip off the Band-Aid.

  “For now, you’re going to be doing intel on the new sheriff,” she explains, her heels clicking against the front porch as she backs away. “You’re to find out what sort of guy he is then report back to me.”

  While it sounds easy enough, spying on the sheriff is never a good thing. Plus, if the dude turns out to be a good guy, my father will do everything in his power to ruin hi
s life and get him fired. Because, if he can’t be bought off, then my father can’t continue running his illegal businesses that range from drug trafficking to illegal underground casinos. Yeah, he’s a real winner.

  I sometimes wonder if he was always like this, or if perhaps when my mom was alive, he was a different man. She died when I was two, so I don’t remember the time she was alive, and my dad refuses to talk about that time. He won’t even tell me stories about her, and he got rid of most of her stuff, except for a few photos. All I know is that she gave birth to me, had the same blonde hair as me, and died right after she gave birth to my younger sister, Harlow, who unfortunately still lives with my father, although she stays over here as much as she can.

  “Stop by the diner after school and pick up the information on him. Text me when you’re heading there so I don’t have to wait around, but be vague about your word choice—don’t use anything incriminating. And don’t be too late. I have a salon appointment later.” She continues to back away, lifting her hand and waggling her fingers at me. Then her gaze drifts to something over my shoulder and the corners of her lips tug downward.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Jax’s voice sails over my shoulder as he steps up beside me.

  I feel a bit better having him there, and I hate that I’m that way. Hate that I’m a coward when it comes to Diane. Plus, Jax can be a scary mothereffer when he wants to be. He’s a softy at heart, though he’d try to kick my ass if I ever told anyone that. I never would. My friends and I have worked hard at creating the façade that we portray to everyone else outside of our circle. We’re only who we really are when we’re only around each other. To everyone else, we appear cold, collected, and in control of everything. It’s the best way to not get screwed over, which happens a lot when you come from wealthy, powerful families. Jax, Zay and I learned from a young age that people will use us if we let them. We don’t. Not anymore.

  “I came here to give you details on a job you’ve been assigned to,” Diane tells him. “Hunter can inform you.”