Page 24 of Save Me (Maxton Hall #1)

Ruby

My cloak of invisibility has slipped.

Everyone’s heard that I was in London with James at the weekend.

Apparently, there are even photos of us going into the shop together.

Suddenly, people at Maxton Hall whose faces I’ve never even seen before know my name.

Some are friendly and say hi in the hallways, others—the majority—whisper behind my back.

It’s at its worst in lessons, where I can’t concentrate at all because of my classmates staring at me the whole time.

Like they’re expecting me to stand up any second and blurt out a loud explanation of what Beaufort and I got up to on Saturday.

But it was a day I’d rather forget as soon as possible. I still feel so humiliated, and my anger with James grows every time I think about the horrible way he acted.

When the bell rings, I seriously consider skipping lunch, but I’m too hungry for that to be a realistic option. Besides, Lin promises to act as a human shield for me and to tell me the latest about her dad.

“He’s got a new girlfriend already,” she announces, once we’ve eaten in silence for a while.

I look up from my udon noodles. “But not another con artist or anything?” I ask through a mouthful.

“No.” She pulls a face. “Or at least I hope not.”

“And?” I inquire cautiously.

Lin gives a shrug. She pushes away her half-eaten sandwich and wipes her fingers on a napkin. “I don’t know. I just think he could give dating a break for a bit, seeing that it went so wrong the last time.”

Lin meets up with her dad once a month so that they don’t totally lose contact, and I admire her for the pragmatic way she deals with the whole situation. I don’t know if I could even look Dad in the eye if he treated me and Mum that badly.

“Was she nice?” I ask after a while.

She shrugs again. “Yeah. A bit too nice, maybe.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, I don’t know. We just didn’t click somehow.” She starts to shred the napkin. “But that’s OK. You can’t get along with everyone.”

I think a moment. “Sometimes, surprisingly, you do click with a person after a while.” I find my eyes wandering over to James and his pals.

They’ve got one of the good tables by the high windows, and their conversation seems pretty lively.

Whatever James just said makes Wren laugh so much he chokes, and Kesh has to whack him on the back.

“Sounds like you’re speaking from experience,” Lin says, looking pointedly at James.

I shake my head and stare at my noodles again.

“Hey, are you ever going to tell me what happened?”

“I did.”

Lin raises an eyebrow. “All you said was ‘we got the costumes,’ but I’m not an idiot.”

I take a deep breath. “It was OK. More than OK, actually. Until his parents suddenly turned up.”

Lin inhales sharply. “You met the Beauforts?”

I nod pensively. “They were…very impressive. Especially his mother,” I begin. “I didn’t get to talk to them much because they weren’t there long. After that, James went back to normal.”

“What did he do?” Lin asks, apparently remembering that I’m not the only one with a tray of food in front of her. She bites into her sandwich and gazes intently at me.

“He chucked me out. I was escorted out of the shop.”

She stops chewing and stares.

My shoulders twitch helplessly. I really don’t want to think about the horrible drive back on Saturday, where I had to force myself to take deep breaths in and out to calm down.

“It was the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever experienced,” I mumble, risking another glance at James.

At this exact moment, he looks over to me. As our eyes meet, the rage bubbles up again, and I’m on the verge of standing up and whacking him with my tray.

But he blinks, breaks off the connection, and turns his attention back to his friends.

“But why did he throw you out?” Lin asks.

That’s exactly what was baffling me the whole rest of the weekend. And there was only one vaguely plausible sounding explanation that I could come up with.

“I think he was embarrassed by me. You should have seen the way his father looked at me. Like I was dirt on the bottom of his shoe.” I pull over my little bowl of pudding: chocolate mousse with whipped cream, topped with a strawberry and a sprig of mint.

At least there’s going to be one nice thing in my day.

“That’s rubbish. You mustn’t let anyone make you feel that way,” Lin says, sounding so angry that I look up.

“It’s the truth,” I reply. “Even you would never have looked twice at me if it hadn’t been for the stuff with your parents.”

Lin flinches like I’ve thrown my dessert in her face. The color drains from her skin, and it’s only then that I realize what I just said. I immediately open my mouth to apologize, but she jumps up.

“Nice to know you have such a good opinion of me,” she snaps, grabbing her tray even though she hasn’t finished eating. She dumps it back at the tray station and leaves the dining hall without looking back at me.

I stare into my mousse and realize that I’ve lost my appetite. What a shitty day.

By the time I head to the library in the afternoon, I’ve almost got used to whispers and funny looks in the corridors.

I’m finding it easier to ignore them, although their voices still echo in my ears.

It never occurred to me before we went that a single day with James could have such an effect on my life at Maxton Hall.

What was I thinking? James is the king of this school—of course people are interested in who he spends his free time with.

Getting into that car with him was a massive mistake.

And now I’m paying for it with my invisibility.

The events meeting is a nightmare. Lin won’t look at me, and I can’t look at James.

It’s hard even to tell the others about the costumes without letting on how hurt and angry I feel.

But it must have worked because once I’m done, everyone seems thrilled with the photos.

Then Camille says that her parents know the people who own a big cutlery factory and that they’ll let us have whatever we need for the party.

Jessalyn has been getting quotes for decoration rentals, which she goes through with us, and Kieran’s been finding music that he plays for us on his laptop.

I only take about half of it in.

Once we’ve sorted out the jobs for next time and I’ve closed the meeting, I catch hold of Lin’s arm. She’s still avoiding eye contact but waits for the rest of the team to leave the room. I shut the door behind them and turn to my friend.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” I begin. “I’m sorry for what I said. All I meant was…you used to be friends with completely different people. I just wonder if we’d have got to know each other this well if things had been different with your parents.”

Lin looks at me for a while. Eventually, she sighs and whispers: “You’re right.”

I’m startled. “Am I?”

She nods. “If you hadn’t spoken to me in the loos that day, we’d never have been friends like this,” she says, looking me properly in the eye for the first time since lunch. “I was so grateful that you came over to me.”

Her voice catches, and she gulps hard. I still remember the day eighteen months ago when I went into the toilets on the first floor and heard someone sobbing.

I had no idea who it was in there, only that they seemed extremely upset.

So, cautiously, I asked if everything was OK, and Lin just said to leave her alone.

I didn’t listen, just sat on the floor, opposite the cubicle, passed tissues under the door, and waited till she was ready to come out. That was the start of our friendship.

“I’m so glad I spoke to you too. And I really am sorry.”

“Me too. I didn’t mean to be bitchy.”

“This is just one of those days,” I sigh. I pull out my phone and take a photo of the notes we made on the whiteboard during the meeting. Then I sit at my laptop and send the picture plus the minutes Lin took to the others. Meanwhile, Lin starts to wipe the board down.

“Beaufort was looking at you the whole time,” she says, out of the blue.

I snort. “I was at the front. Everyone was looking at me.”

“Not like that. His eyes were practically begging you to look back at him.”

“Bullshit.”

Lin shrugs her shoulders. “Whatever. Either way, it was great the way you gave him the brush-off. He deserved it.”

I shut the laptop and put it away in my backpack.

“I just want everything to go back to how it was,” I say as we switch off the lights in the room.

“The way people stare at me now, it’s like we got up to God-knows-what on Saturday.

But none of them have a clue what really happened. Which is nothing.”

She hums thoughtfully. “I know. But you know what they’re like here. The smallest thing, and they’re on it like wolves. Especially if it involves James Beaufort.”

I give her a grumpy look. “Hmm.”

She digs her elbow gently into my ribs and holds the door for me. “Come on. They’ll have forgotten just as soon as the next rumor does the rounds.”

We step into the corridor, and I’m about to answer when I see somebody leaning against the wall.

James.

I stare at him.

I’m about to ask what the hell he’s doing here still, but I remember just in time that I’m ignoring him. So I look away and walk on.

He levers himself up and comes toward me.

“Do you have a minute?” he asks. His soft tone confuses me. It doesn’t fit the James who treated me like shit forty-eight hours ago.

You have to walk away, Ruby.

I’d love to scream my opinion of him in his face, but I’m too fond of my library pass and keycard to the group rooms for that. “No, I don’t have a minute,” I retort instead. I’m proud of myself for keeping my voice calm but firm. He needs to know that he doesn’t get to act like that to me.

“We need to talk,” James continues, glancing at Lin a moment. “Alone.”

I shake my head. “We don’t need to do anything, James.”

Lin touches my arm—a gesture of encouragement that shows me I’m not on my own here.

Suddenly, I just feel weary. “You know what?” I say, looking James square in the eyes. “Maybe it would be better if we just went back to the old days.”

He frowns. “The old days?”

I have to cough. There’s a lump in my throat, and it’s getting bigger. “I mean the days when you didn’t even know I existed. Maybe it would be better if we could go back to that. Because I was much better off then.”

He opens his mouth to reply, then shuts it, and the furrows on his brow deepen. In the end, he nods slowly. “Got you.”

This is good. He gets what my problem is. So in the future, I won’t have to deal with him anymore.

Even so, it hurts as I turn around and walk with Lin toward the exit.