Get The Bag And The Rock

I'm the throwaway character. The girl a story kills off in the third act so the real heroine has a body to cry over.

Here's what the story doesn't know. I read ahead. And before this book gets around to killing me, I'm going to rob it blind.

Every rich pocket in it. Emptied. On my way out the door.

The reason I can read ahead: a while back I started seeing the comments. Little glowing lines scrolling past where nobody else can look, a whole audience reading my life like a story. Because it is one. I'm just not the one they're rooting for.

Right now I'm in a lecture hall at Halloway, the kind of school where everybody's father has a building named after him and I'm the scholarship case in the back row, doing quiet math on how many meals my next paycheck covers.

The comments start to scroll.

The comments: [ the male lead's drowning?? he ditched class, climbed the back fence, fell in the lake. HE CAN'T SWIM ]

The comments: [ somebody SAVE him ]

The comments: [ female lead's home sick today lol. rip. whoever pulls him out gets a massive crush out of it btw ]

I prop my chin on my hand and keep not caring. A crush. From the male lead. What am I supposed to do with that. Frame it?

Then a new line slides by.

The comments: [ ngl a family that rich would pay a FORTUNE to whoever saved their golden boy. like set-for-life money. ]

Set-for-life money.

There it is. The bag.

My chair hits the floor behind me before I've decided to stand up.

Chapter 1

The whole hall turns around. Forty heads. The professor stops mid-sentence.

"Miss Cole." He looks at me over his glasses. "Is there a problem with the proof on the board?"

I let my eyes flood. My voice cracks right down the middle.

"Sorry, Professor. It's just... he used to help me solve for x. And last night he left me on read."

A long silence.

He tells me to get out.

I get out. The second the door clicks shut I am gone, full sprint, backpack slamming my spine, down two flights and across the quad toward the lake behind the science building.

Sorry, Professor. I was born loving money. It's a medical condition.

There's the water. And there, right on schedule, someone's thrashing in the middle of it and going under.

A guy on the bank is sobbing into his phone, telling 911 he can't swim, please, somebody has to

Save your breath. Your girl's here.

I scream his name. Callum! Then I hit the water.

I get an arm across a chest and haul. Kick. Haul again. My lungs are on fire by the time I drag him up onto the grass and crawl out after him, coughing up half the lake, hair stuck to my face.

That's when I see the shoes.

A pair of sneakers stops right in front of my nose. Spotless. The kind of expensive that doesn't bother with a price tag, because if you have to ask, it was never for you.

I follow them up.

Callum Ashford is standing over me. Dry. Completely, insultingly dry.

So then who did I just pull out of the lake.

I whip around to the boy on the grass. A total stranger, heaving up pond water, very much not the male lead. Just some poor soul who picked the wrong afternoon to slip.

The comments: [ wait. THAT'S not the male lead ]

The comments: [ my bad my bad I misread, wrong guy went in, sorry sorry ]

The comments: [ ...so who's she been screaming for ]

Above me, dry as a bone, Callum tilts his head. His voice comes out in a lazy rich-boy drawl, like the whole world mildly bores him.

"Hey." He nudges the coughing stranger with one spotless sneaker, not looking at him. "Before you jumped in to play hero. Why were you screaming my name?"

I look up at him.

Black hair falling in his eyes, a jaw like he was assembled by a design team, that bored little curl at the corner of his mouth that says he has never once in his life been told no.

And on his left hand, a ring.

The kind of ring that comes with its own insurance policy.

Oh no. There's the itch, right on time.

"Well?" The boredom sharpens. He snaps his fingers at me like I'm a waiter. "Use your words."

And what exactly am I supposed to say.

Sorry, I can see the comment section of the novel we're both trapped in, and it told me you were the one drowning?

Chapter 2

The phrase "dollar menu" would sail clean over this boy's head. So would "overdraft fee." I could try to explain, and he'd blue-screen on the spot.

But there's a reason I'm first in my program. I think fast.

I lift my wet eyes to his and let my face do something complicated. Six parts panic, three parts longing, one part mild concussion.

"I'm sorry. I don't know what happened. I saw your face and my brain just... stopped. I couldn't get a single word out."

He blinks.

The boredom drains out of his eyes, and the corner of his mouth ticks up, pleased, like a cat that's decided to let you keep your hand a while longer.

Oh. He's one of those. Acts like he's above it. Would lie down and die for it.

I hold my breath until my face goes red and keep going.

"I thought it was you in the water. I didn't even look. I just jumped. That was stupid, I should have checked. But the second I thought it might be you, I couldn't think straight." I drop my eyes. "Sorry. You probably think I'm bad luck now."

He is terrible at hiding his face.

The shock goes through him clean. He clearly did not expect the throwaway girl to nearly drown herself over him.

He turns his head away. Rubs the bridge of his nose. Checks his watch.

Except the watch is on his left wrist, and the hand he lifted is his right.

He does everything except look at me. When he finally speaks, his voice comes out hard, like he's holding a door shut against a wind.

"Whatever. You're not my type. Get over it."

Perfect.

I let my whole body fold in on itself, like someone kicked the crutch out from under me.

"Understood. I'm sorry, that was out of line." I look up at him through wet lashes. "Could I keep the ring, then? Just... as a memento. First and last crush of my life."

I make my eyes hot and soft and devoted, aimed straight up at him like he's the only fixed point on earth.

It helps that they're already red, from lake water that tasted like a penny and a puddle had a baby, and streaming, because that water was not clean.

He flinches like the tears burn him.

For one second there's real pity in his face. Something close to guilt.

He yanks the ring off his finger and shoves it at me, the tips of his ears going pink, still refusing to look my way.

"...Do whatever you want."

I take it in both hands. Our fingertips brush. Warm. One second of warm. And the pink crawls off his ears and down his neck.

I bow to him. Deep. Heartbroken.

Then I walk away like my whole world just ended.

I hold it together across the quad. Around the science building. Through the parking lot.

And then, finally, out of sight, I open my hand.

Herms.

The little stamp, right there in the gold.

That's five figures. Twenty grand if it's a dollar. Resale, easy.

You have never felt salvation until you've watched an Herms logo catch the light in your own filthy palm.

I don't even check the comments. I already know I'm winning.

The comments: [ WHO is this girl. she's not on the character list?? ]

The comments: [ is she... crying, or laughing right now ]

The comments: [ she pocketed the RING. this girl has dollar signs for eyes and honestly I would follow her into war ]

The comments: [ meanwhile the male lead is going friend to friend asking if he was too harsh. girl almost died for him and he shot her down cold ]

The comments: [ his boy just told him he's kind of the worst. he already feels guilty lmao ]

He's circling the drain, and he doesn't even know it yet.

I just haven't decided how far down I'm going to let him go.

Chapter 3

By the end of the day, the ring was gone. Twenty grand in my account.

I don't go home until my parents are asleep.

They look at me the way a repo man looks at a car three payments behind. Pure math. Nothing personal. I was a straight-A kid who never gave them a reason, and it never mattered. To them I was an asset that hadn't paid out yet.

And an asset can be sold.

Last month a fifty-year-old man came to the apartment with an offer. Five hundred grand up front, and he'd marry me the week I graduated. My parents said yes before he finished the sentence. I stood in the kitchen and listened to two people I'd called Mom and Dad price me out loud.

So I clawed a deal out of them. Five hundred thousand in their hands before graduation, and they hand over my papers, kill the arrangement with the old man, and let me walk.

Which is why I grind.

Right now that means boosting strangers' accounts in a game that runs in full 3D. Small problem. 3D makes me violently motion sick. So I'm dosed on Dramamine, a patch behind my ear and another on my stomach, and every thirty minutes I go throw up in the bathroom of the Respawn Lounge and come back to keep playing.

I've just sat down again, wiping my mouth, when a voice drops over my shoulder like a bucket of ice water.

"You actually sold it."

I nearly come out of my skin.

I turn, and there he is. Callum Ashford, gorgeous and freezing, looking down at me like I'm gum on his shoe.

He laughs, low and disgusted.

"So that's what you are. A grifter." His jaw is tight. "A buddy of mine saw my ring listed for resale online. That's the only reason I know what you really are. You conned me. You understand I could have you thrown out of this school without lifting a finger? All that I-jumped-in-the-lake-for-you garbage. Fake. Every word of it."

I go pale. I squeeze out a few tears. I give him a small, broken laugh.

"I was hoping it was fake too."

He stops. His brows pull together.

"...What's that supposed to mean. Hey. Why are you crying."

I don't answer. I just let it run.

He shifts his weight. "Say something."

Slow down, rich boy. Even I need a second to make this up.

I hiccup.

"I sold the ring because I was buying information." A hitch. "About you."

That catches him. "About me. What information."

I wipe my eyes, small and scared.

"Someone on the campus forum said if I paid him twenty grand, he'd tell me what game you play the most." I point at the screen, at the boosting job glowing there. "He said it was this one. So I came straight here after class. I wanted to be good at it before you ever looked at me."

The game on my screen is the biggest title of the year. Eight of every ten guys on this campus are grinding it right now.

I'm all in on a bluff. I'm betting he's one of them.

Something goes blank in his face. Then, genuinely puzzled:

"You don't just carry twenty grand on you? You had to sell the ring?"

Is he serious. Is that a question a real person just asked out loud.

I keep my face wrecked.

"I'm a scholarship kid. Twenty grand is what my dad makes in a year."

He nods slowly, like the words are a language he's only half-learned.

Then his eyes catch on the patch on my forehead. Drift to the pills beside the keyboard.

And I watch it start to land.

Chapter 4

His lips part. The anger that was in his eyes a second ago flickers, gutters, goes out, and something floods in behind it.

Guilt.

He starts and stops twice before it comes out.

"You you get motion sick. You're dosed up, you're patched up, you're throwing up every half hour, and you kept playing? Because because it's the game I like?"

Color climbs his face. There's a small fire catching in his eyes.

"You like me that much?"

I picture the most pathetic thing I can and let my head drop. My knuckles go white in my lap.

"I'm sorry. I know I was reaching. A gutter rat with a crush on a prince." Small voice. "You're just different from everyone else. I don't know why, but every time it's about you, I lose my head. And you don't have to worry about me lying to you. I could never lie to a man."

He drags a hand through his hair, shoving it off his forehead.

It takes him a while.

"...Right. Okay. Fine. I didn't mean to misread you, I just" He lunges for the door. "Whatever. It's not like I care whether you like me. I'm busy."

He bolts. There's no kinder word for it.

Jolene, who runs the place, drifts over and watches him go through the greasy window.

A driver in white gloves is bent double, holding a car door open. Callum pours himself into the back seat, red-faced, staring at nothing.

The car pulls away slow. This is a bad part of town. People on the sidewalk turn to look, careful, like it might be a trick of the light.

Jolene clicks her tongue twice.

"Pagani. That's not a money car, baby. That's a bloodline car." She cuts a look at me. "You reeling in a trust-fund baby, Cole?"

I don't answer. I just sit back down at the screen.

The next afternoon, someone's waiting for me in the restroom.

A girl I've never seen. I clock the outfit in one pass. Miu Miu clip loaded with crystals, little Herms bag, Prada heels.

Great. Old money. Exactly the kind of person a gutter rat like me does not get to touch.

She fists my collar and shoves me into the wall.

"You're the one throwing yourself at Bianca's fianc?"

Bianca. Bianca Carrington. The heroine of this book.

Whose fianc is supposed to be Callum. Except they were never actually engaged. Two sets of rich parents said something out loud once, back when they were kids.

I throw my hands up, all wide-eyed panic.

"I didn't. I'm gay."

That was not on her script. She freezes. I can watch her buffer.

I squirm a little. She snaps back.

"Hold still."

I don't. I keep squirming, and on the way down I scoop something off the tile.

I hold it up to her like it costs me the last of my strength.

"When you grabbed my collar, your clip fell out."

She goes still.

I look up at her, warm, earnest, dead into her eyes.

"It brings out your eyes. It'd be a shame to lose it."

Her face starts to come apart. Fury first, then something soft underneath it, then something that doesn't want to let go, like she's fighting a small private war over whether to hit me.

She really didn't need to agonize.

I'm the one who lifted the clip off her in the first place. Then dropped it.

What can I say. I grew up at the bottom of this city, and down here you learn to pick a pocket just by watching.

Chapter 5

In the end she takes the clip. Huffs. Lets go of my collar.

She drops the next part like it costs her something.

"If I were you, I'd run. They're coming."

She walks to the door, chin high, and tosses one more line over her shoulder.

"...Just so you know. I'm a Kappa."

I give her my most lovestruck, scrambled-brain smile.

Inside, my head is doing a hundred. She told me to run?

I've barely gotten to my feet when the door bangs open again.

The heroine. Bianca Carrington.

Four, five people at her back. Boys and girls both.

That gorgeous, expensive face is pure ice.

"So you're the one throwing yourself at Cal."

I don't get my mouth open before they put me on the floor.

They beat me. Properly. I curl up small and take it.

And through the boots, the comments start to scroll.

The comments: [ wait. the girl doing the BULLYING is the heroine?? ]

The comments: [ it's a psycho-heroine book, they warned you up top. Bianca's whole rule is "as long as I'm happy, everyone else can suffer." iconic ]

Cute. Real cute.

Then a new line, and this one lands colder than the tile against my cheek.

The comments: [ ok but the cannon fodder getting stomped right now? she's the REAL Carrington heiress. Bianca's the imposter. and the family KNOWS. they just love the fake one more, so they never traded them back ]

Wait.

I'm the real heiress?

The real daughter. The genuine article. And they looked at the real daughter and chose to throw her in a gutter and sell her to a stranger, all so the forgery could keep wearing my name.

The comments: [ that's nothing. before a certain exam, Bianca had someone break the real girl's right hand out of pure jealousy. she wrote the whole thing left-handed and still placed. ]

The exam. My right hand. The cast I wore for a season. The letters I taught myself to shape all over again with the wrong hand.

That was her.

The comments: [ oh you want worse? the fifty-year-old who "made an offer" for her? Bianca funded it. paid him half a million to put a ring on the real heiress and make her vanish into a marriage. ]

I stop feeling the boots.

I stop feeling anything.

The old man. The half a million. The number I've been bleeding myself dry to buy my way out from under.

She built that. On purpose. To bury me alive.

The comments: [ god this heroine is vile. I'm dropping the book ]

The comments: [ she's not vile she's DELICIOUS. second in her whole class, flawless face, does whatever she wants. that's the fantasy ]

Sure. Love that for you.

Here's my note for the heroine, though. If you're going to be a monster, pick someone your own size.

Not the gutter rat you already stripped down to nothing.

Something white and total goes off behind my eyes.

I throw off the guy pinning my arm. I put my shoulder into Bianca and I run.

Pain tears across my scalp. She's got a fist in my hair, and she hauls me back like I weigh nothing at all.

"Did I say you could leave?"

I turn my head and I bite down on the hand in my hair.

Hard.

Copper floods my mouth, and Bianca Carrington screams.

She lets go. Staggers back, cradling her hand, blood sheeting down her wrist and dripping off her fingers onto that flawless floor.

I'd put money on it being the first time in her whole gilded life she has ever bled.

Her people freeze. Then they scramble. Someone's dialing 911. Someone's grabbing for anything to stop the bleeding.

And the untouchable heiress just stands there, staring at her own red hand like she's never once seen the color.

Chapter 6

I find my opening, pick the guy who threw the first punch, and put everything I've got into his groin.

He drops, howling. I'm already gone.

It's pouring. Someone's behind me, gaining.

Through the rain I catch two shapes ahead. Callum, still in his campus clothes, and a driver holding an umbrella over him. Heading home, probably.

Salvation. Medical resources acquired.

I aim myself straight into his chest, let my knees fold, and pass out on cue.

Callum catches me. His voice cracks around something he doesn't bother to hide.

"What happened? Verity. Verity!"

He rounds on the driver. "Get the doctor. Now."

Tucked against his chest, through the slit of one eye, I watch Bianca skid out into the rain after me.

She's gray. Her hand is still bleeding, and she's staring at the two of us like the ground just shifted under her.

A boy hurries up with gauze. She knocks it out of his hand into the mud and never once looks away from us.

The wire in my chest goes slack.

And then I really do pass out.

When I open my eyes, I'm clean.

My cuts are dressed. My rain-soaked hair is dry. I'm in a warm bed, in a room bigger than the whole apartment I grew up in.

I sit up. Callum's family estate. A guest room. Empty.

The door isn't shut all the way. Voices in the hall.

I slip out of bed and put my ear to the gap.

Callum's profile, that sharp expensive cut of him, and a guy across from him I know on sight. Everyone on this campus knows him. Dashiell. Genius jungler, richer than God, an esports celebrity who plays under one handle. Error.

Down at the front gates a crowd is already forming in the rain, banners up, light-boards flashing his name.

I catch Dashiell mid-sentence.

"You brought her to your house? If Bianca finds out, she'll cry herself sick."

Callum doesn't touch the Bianca part.

"Her name's Verity," he says. "She's the real Carrington heiress."

Dashiell laughs. "Come on. A year ago that story broke, remember. Bianca's a fake, the real one's out there somewhere. And you're the one who buried it. Personally. So what's this. Guilt? You feel bad for the genuine article now?"

Everything in me goes very still.

Callum flicks a lighter open and shut, restless, the flame scratching up and dying, up and dying.

"I buried it because Bianca kept crying at me about it," he says. "She got annoying to look at."

Annoying to look at.

I stand in a stranger's guest room with my hand flat against the door and let that go into me, piece by piece.

There was a version of this where the truth got out. Where a family, cornered by the noise, had to take back the daughter they'd thrown away. Where I got my name. My hand. My whole life. No old man. No half a million. No one pricing me across a kitchen counter.

And the reason it never happened is standing ten feet away, bored, clicking a lighter.

The boy whose ring I lifted off his finger.

He didn't just fail to save me.

He's the one who erased me.

Chapter 7

Across the hall, Dashiell tips his head, tossing a controller hand to hand, and keeps going.

"But hey, that's the world. Winners and losers. The real heiress drew a bad hand, and we're not gods, so why lose sleep over her. And don't forget, Cal, Bianca's the one who grew up with us. A girl out of the gutter like that. Probably filthy, inside and out."

Callum's thumb stops on the lighter.

"Get out."

Dashiell blinks, then spreads his hands. "Come on, what did I say that's wrong? Half my fans are camped at your gate. You throw me out now, you're feeding me to the wolves, man"

Callum doesn't look at him. A butler in a suit is already there, one arm out, showing Dashiell the door.

Dashiell's face goes cold. He grabs his jacket and leaves.

I ease back onto the bed and let my brain run.

A year ago, the story got out. The real heiress isn't Bianca. It's me. If it had spread, if the noise had gotten loud enough, the Carringtons would have had no choice. They'd have had to bring me home.

The story didn't spread. Because a girl cried at a boy until he made it disappear for her.

Three debts. The Carringtons, who stole my name and kept the counterfeit. Callum, who buried the truth and sealed the door. The two people who raised me, who put a price on my body and called it a wedding.

Every one of them is going to pay me back. In full.

The heat in my chest isn't loud. It's very quiet, and very cold, and it isn't going anywhere.

I take off the cheap beaded necklace I always wear, pop one bead open, and slide out what's inside.

A bug, small as a grain of rice.

I fix it to the underside of the nightstand drawer. It's only a guest room. But servants talk, and a house like this is rotten somewhere. Money like the Carringtons' never comes up clean. I am going to find where the body is buried, and I am going to dig it up with my own two hands.

Step one. Learn to listen.

That night, when I wake, Callum sits on the edge of the bed and asks me who hurt me. Give him names. He'll handle it.

I go quiet. Scared. I don't give him a thing.

So he decides he'll find out himself.

Good. It always lands harder when they think it was their idea.

I can't wait for the day he does.

Three days later, I am holding court as the reigning queen of odd jobs, elbow-deep in an engine at Maple Ridge Raceway, passing tools to an old mechanic.

Full summer. Sky like a swimming pool. I finish checking a race tire, straighten up, and come nose to nose with Dashiell.

Here to play with the cars, obviously. Not dressed for it. Thin shirt worth more than my month, top buttons open, that studied who-cares slouch, a diamond stud in one ear throwing off the sun.

He sees me. Surprise first. Then a flick of contempt.

There it is. The full trust-fund-brat starter pack.

"You work here?" Cold.

I look up at him, wide and harmless. "Oh. Yes, Mr. Dashiell."

He frowns. "You know me?"

I nod, all shy admiration. "Everyone on campus knows you. You're an esports prodigy."

He huffs a cold little laugh. "Save the sweet talk. I'm not Cal. It doesn't work on me."

I've got a wrench in my hand and I'm gazing up at him like a saint.

Of all the moments to start something with me. I am holding a wrench. It is taking everything I have not to test its aerodynamics against his skull.

He steps in, voice dropping.

"The ring you conned off Cal and pawned? I'm the one who told him. People like you, broke and grasping, I've seen a hundred of them."

I stumble back a step like he's frightened me half to death.

And I open my mouth to answer.

Chapter 8

"It's not what you think. I already explained the ring to Cal"

He's already turning to go, done listening.

I catch his wrist. He rips free, hard, and I go down onto the concrete. My knee splits open.

He frowns. Looks back.

I lift my head, pitiful, hair stuck to my cheek, small and wrecked. I don't touch my knee. I just point at the watch lying on the ground between us.

"Mr. Dashiell. I'm not trying to cling to you. I only wanted to tell you. Your watch came off."

He goes still.

I look up at him, earnest, clear-eyed. "That has to be worth a fortune. It looks good on your wrist. It'd be a shame to lose it."

His face starts doing several things at once.

Shock