Outsider Read online

  Description

  Private schools... Luxury Clothes... Life on the Upper East Side...

  It would take a miracle for a girl like me to live that life…or a lottery ticket. And when Mom and I win, it’s bye-bye trailer park, hello glitz and glamor.

  But this world isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

  The kids of Greisbach Academy don’t know about my sudden rise to wealth, but they can tell that I’m not one of them. And they haven’t been shy about letting me know I’m unwelcome.

  I never thought I’d wish for my old life, but it can’t get any worse.

  Wrong.

  Jaxson Weiss is the king of Greisbach Academy, and for some reason he has his eyes set on me. He has the need for a fake girlfriend and he chose me—the newbie. Playing along with his scheme could earn me a better place in the school hierarchy, but if I fail things will be even worse than I imagined.

  He looks like Prince Charming, but I’m not falling for the King of Assholes. Not even when he looks at me like that, or when he kisses me for show…and for real. I’m going to be immune to his charms and survive my senior year.

  I won’t be another one of Jaxson’s conquests…no matter how much my traitorous body might want him.

  Outsider

  (Greisbach Academy Bully Romance)

  By

  Trinity Towers

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  Prologue

  Forty-two, twenty-three, two, thirty-three, forty, twenty-two. I kept repeating the numbers in my head as I rolled out of bed and desperately searched for a pen and paper. As my mom kept reminding me, my room was a quote, unquote shitpit, which made finding things a challenge. In my defense my room in the two-bedroom trailer that I shared with my mom was pretty tiny and there wasn’t much room to put much of anything so my stuff got stacked, things upon things, upon things.

  Backpack!

  Hanging off the side of an old, beat-up wooden chair was the backpack that I’d used for going on three years of high school. Because we were poor and it was just my mom and me, my mom being a waitress at the local diner, I had to learn at an early age that I only got one of anything, so I needed it to stay in pristine shape for as long as possible. I had been born when my mother was sixteen so we were super close in age, which I think is why we were so bonded; she could relate to me. Luckily, now that I was seventeen, I was also very close to her size, and was now able to share clothing with her.

  While I may have been unfortunate when it came to my financial situation, I was blessed with good genetics. I could eat whatever I wanted and still maintain a size 5 figure—just like my mother. It was a good thing too, since most of the food we ate came from leftovers from the diner. She worked the night shift specifically so she could bring home supper for free for us, which meant we lived off greasy diner foods. If I didn’t have good genetics I’d be lucky to fit through the door, considering all the crap we had to eat.

  I’d wanted to work as well, but she insisted that school was too important. I was going to be the very first person in our family to go to college. The thing is that I needed a scholarship in order to make it happen. She was adamant that she could make our financial situation work and she always managed to keep the electricity on and the bills paid. We just never had much left after that.

  My dad? I had one…. Somewhere. I think? Never met him and didn’t want to.

  Forty-two, twenty-three, two, thirty-three, forty, twenty-two. I said the sequence to myself one more time as I unzipped my backpack and found a pen and paper.

  Eureka! Grinning, I held the blue Bic pen in front of me as if it were the holy grail—which it very may well have been. We’d know tonight when the lottery numbers were drawn. I quickly scribbled the numbers down on the first page of a fresh new binder. My senior year of high school was set to start in a few weeks. Mom had had a really good week with tips so bought my school supplies early when she could get the best sales.

  I placed the binder on the top of the desk that was just as worn as the chair. They were bought as a set at a garage sale when I was ten. I did my best to take care of them, and using some paint I got for free at a local paint swap, I’d painted them a pale pink. It didn’t make the set look new, but it looked better.

  I stripped out of my boys’ boxers and t-shirt, which was my usual bedtime attire as I rushed to the closet. It was only 9am. I really had no need to rush, considering the lottery tickets were sold until 6pm for tonight’s draw but there was an intense pull to get it done and I could barely contain my excitement.

  Pulling on a pair of well-worn jeans and a snug black tank top I was set to go. I loved the fact that the new trend with jeans was the ripped and worn look. It made my wardrobe on point when in actuality it was just well-used hand-me-downs, at least I had that going for me. In reality we lived in a poor community, in Florida of 30,000 people. No one had the high-end brand names here, so I fit in with everyone else. Well, sort of. I didn’t fit in completely, but I did have a handful of friends…. If I were to be honest with myself, acquaintances would be more the word I’d use.

  Tearing the sheet of paper from the binder with the lottery numbers on it, I folded it up and stuffed it into the back pocket of my jeans before heading to the bathroom. The bathroom in our trailer was small, just enough room for a bathtub, toilet and sink sitting atop a three-foot-long counter space.

  Taking a look at myself in the mirror, bright blue eyes stared back at me, full of hope and excitement. I hadn’t seen that look in my eyes for a long time. Living like my mother and I did, not being able to afford the luxuries that many families have, it was easy to fall into a depression that affected every aspect of our lives. But I refused to allow it. I held tight to the dream that my mother had for me. I’d get top grades, excel in school and in all extracurricular activities and then get a scholarship to one of those Ivy League schools. I’d make it. I had to—for me and my mother. Volleyball was one of my favorite high school sports—beach volleyball in particular—and I was damned good at it; I was the star of my high school team. I made sure I was the best because volleyball was part of my ticket out of here.

  Academics—check.

  Extracurricular—check.

  I grabbed the brush from the sink counter and ran it through my chestnut brown hair. My hair lay all the way down my back, coming to a rest at the small of my back. It took an obscene amount of dollar-store conditioner to keep it manageable. Grabbing a hair band from the little elephant trunk that held them, I tied my hair back in a ponytail.

  I wasn’t drop-dead gorgeous, but I wasn’t completely unfortunate looking. I was just me. An average girl with brown hair and blue eyes. Once satisfied I looked as good as I ever would without the assistance of make-up, I slipped into a pair of pre-tied sneakers, grabbed my purse and exited the trailer.

  The trailer park had a convenience store a few streets away. Legally, I wasn’t allowed to buy lottery tickets, but the owner of the store didn’t give a shit. He’d sell the local teens lottery, vapes, liquor. Whatever we wanted, we just had to promise not to tell anyone where we got it. His motto was that if we didn’t get it from him, we’d get it somewhere else, so it might as well be at his store. Made sense to me.

  I jogged to the convenience store, my ponytail swinging back and forth behind my head with each step. By the time I reached Ricky’s Convenience I was panting, but happy.

  “Hey baby, fancy meeting you here.”

  Oh God! Closing my eyes, I counted down from ten and slowly turned around, forcing a tight smile to my lips. I knew who the voice belonged to—Kevin Sullivan. He lived across the street from me. He was the trailer park bad boy, mostly because he sold weed out of his trailer. His dad was a long-haul trucker
and was never home, so he had parties there nightly that always included drugs and alcohol. The police were there more often than not so I normally stayed away, not wanting an arrest on my record.

  Kevin had been trying to get into my panties for three years now. Though I will admit I did make a one-night drunken mistake not to log ago. He didn’t get my V-card that night, but he’d told everyone he had. I’m embarrassed to admit that even though he hadn’t gotten the opportunity to stick it in me, he had seen me naked.

  “Kevin. Hey...”

  His smile was wide, and he didn’t even attempt to hide the fact his eyes were drinking every inch of me in. I was still in the process of catching my breath, causing my chest to heave with each inhale. Just the way he looked at me made me feel violated.

  Enjoy the view buddy, if this lottery thing pans out the next thing you’ll see is the dust from the tires of my mom’s car as we get the eff out of here.

  “So, I’m having some people over to smoke some weed and chill.” He ran his index finger down my upper arm and I had to keep from cringing, though I did step away and out of his reach, batting his hand away. I was in a precarious position. I had to be nice to him or he’d turn the whole park against me, but at the same time, I didn’t want to encourage his advances. I know that sounds odd that I’d care, but I was already a bit of an outsider since my grades were next to perfect and I didn’t usually party like the rest of the teens did. I was the only girl my age in the park who still had her V-card—and up until Kevin told his lies about what happened that night I’d gotten teased consistently over being frigid and a prude. Now I was just considered one of his girls, which, sadly, wasn’t much better than being considered frigid and a prude.

  Was it such a bad thing that I had standards?

  “No. I’m good.” As I turned to leave, it didn’t surprise me when his hand lashed out and grabbed me just above the elbow. I spun around to face him jerking my arm from his grasp, not even attempting to hide the anger in my gaze as I punched him in the center of his chest.

  “Get your hands off me!” I hit him with the dirtiest of looks I could muster.

  “Look, Kiera. I know you must be mad about last weekend.”

  Cocking a brow at him, I crossed my arms over my chest and openly glared at him. “Why would that be, Kevin, because you told everyone you had sex with me when we both know that’s not the truth?”

  He ran an agitated hand through his hair and sighed. “I don’t know how people got that impression.”

  “Probably because you told them!”

  “Whoa. No. Kevin Sullivan doesn’t make up stories.”

  I cocked a brow up at him, my sneakered foot tapping on the ground. “Then why didn’t you correct them?”

  “I can’t just correct them after they’ve already assumed we did. That would make me look like a chump. If it helps, not everyone thinks I screwed your brains out...”

  I scoffed and shook my head. “You’re a fucking asshole. Don’t talk to me.” Screw him if he turned the park against me, I wasn’t going to be here much longer anyhow. Waving a dismissive hand in the air I spun and stormed up the three cement steps and into the air-conditioned store. The Florida heat was insane this summer and our trailer didn’t have air conditioning; each time I set foot into the store it was like stepping into a heaven of coolness.

  Fucking Kevin…

  I halfway expected Kevin to try and stop me a second time, but to my relief he didn’t. I chanced a look out of the glass door, which was encased in an iron frame, to see he’d given up and was walking in the direction of home.

  “Hello Keira, what can I do for you?”

  I looked over to the counter to see Mr. Anderson the owner of the store, a balding man who I guessed to be in his late fifties. I’d grown up with him running this store. He’d owned it from well before I was born and would still be here after I was long gone, I imagined.

  Slipping my handbag off my shoulder, I dug inside and produced my wallet.

  “Nice purse you have there,” the older man said, nodding to my bag.

  “Thank you.” I looked down at the black bag and smiled. It was a very rough Chanel knock-off of their boy bag. I didn’t care that it was a knock-off. I was just happy to have it. “It was my mother’s, she got it from a street vendor when she was in New York a long time ago. She gave it to me the other day.”

  “Very nice, dear. What can I get for you?” He was humoring me; he didn’t care about my purse.

  I opened my wallet and peered in. All I had was four quarters. One dollar. Just enough for a ticket. As I pulled the quarters from my wallet, I hesitated. A dollar wouldn’t mean much to many people. I’d wager there was a decent percentage of the population who wouldn’t even bend over to pick a buck off the street, but to me and my mother it meant a package of cheap hot dogs. Or a loaf of bread. Or five pouches of noodles. All of which amounted to two or three lunches for the two of us. In the right hands a dollar meant a lot.

  But this ticket could mean a new life.

  Placing the quarters on the counter, I pulled the sheet of paper from my back pocket and placed that on the counter as well. “One lottery ticket for tonight’s draw please. With those numbers.”

  He grinned, taking the money, and swiftly began filling out the little card with the selected numbers. He showed it to me. I nodded, verifying they were correct. A minute later he was passing me one new ticket for the Florida state lottery. “You picked a good day to get a ticket; it’s close to one billion dollars tonight! Good luck, sweetheart.”

  One billion dollars…. I couldn’t even conceive of that kind of money.

  Taking the ticket, I carefully stored it in my wallet. This could be the first day of my new life. Or the loss of my dollar. Either way, it was a done deal.

  ~*~ TT ~*~

  “Oh Keira, you can’t be serious. You wasted money on a lottery ticket.” My mother sighed and gave me a look of disapproval. “I’m not even going to bring up the fact that you’re not even old enough to buy lotto tickets.”

  Plunking myself down beside her on the sofa, I flipped the channel to where they would be drawing the numbers in less than a minute. “By mentioning I’m not old enough you’re technically mentioning it, Mom.”

  She rolled her eyes and smiled at me. “When did you get so smart? Must take after me.” She then added under her breath, “Certainly wouldn’t be after your father.”

  Returning her smile, I couldn’t help but feel bad for her. She looked tired; way older than her thirty-four years of age. I’d never tell her, but she looked like she was in her mid-forties sitting next to me in her stained waitress uniform. Her parents had already passed, and she had no siblings, it was just me and her. She was my best friend, it was the two of us against the world and nothing would ever change that.

  One thing I did think about from time to time was my father. Who was he? I didn’t care if I ever met him ad certainly didn’t want any type of relationship with him, but I did still have a spark of curiosity about his side of who I was. My mother and I had the same figure, same eye color and hair color. I was basically a younger version of her. What could I have possibly inherited from my dad?

  The music began for the lottery and the ball machine came up with the host and hostess standing next to it.

  This was it! The start of our new life!

  “Don’t get your hopes up sweetheart.” My mother placed a hand on my knee and gave it a pat.

  I wasn’t paying attention to my mother right now. The first number had dropped. The first Powerball number was:

  22

  I looked down at my ticket. 22 was there. That was a free ticket win right there. Smiling, I nodded to the ticket, which just made my mother laugh.

  23

  I had 23.

  42

  My heart began to race. Even though I’d been optimistic, there was a big part of me that still doubted. It was insane. No one dreamed of lottery numbers and won. That was insanity. But even if I
didn’t get any more correct, I had turned my dollar into $100.

  “One hundred dollars, Mom!” I’d never won a thing in my life.

  2

  My mother perked up, her blue eyes, which were identical to mine, widened, as her mouth dropped open. “You’ve got to be shitting me,” she whispered under her breath.

  40

  I think my heart stopped at this moment. I was going to wake up at any moment and realize that it was just a dream.

  But it wasn’t a dream. As the final number rolled down the track and ended up being the final selected number on my ticket, it matched exactly.

  33

  My mother’s expression became unreadable, the bowl of popcorn she had in her hand tumbled from her fingertips and spilled onto the floor at our feet. “This is a prank, right? It’s a prank Keira, isn’t it? Some sort of prank ticket? If it is, it’s not funny.”

  I didn’t respond. I was in shock. This wasn’t happening.

  But it was. We’d won. We were close to a billion dollars richer.

  As we would quickly come to discover, the fallout from the win was unlike anything either of us could have ever imagined—and it wasn’t all good. In an instant our low-key lives became a whirlwind of chaos that threatened to destroy both our relationship with each other, and the people who we’d come to be, on a very fundamental level.

  Chapter 1

  “Just leave it all, Mom,” I said as I carried a box through the living room, heading for the front door of our trailer. My mother insisted we pack and move ourselves, including driving the moving van. We didn’t own much; it all would fit in a medium-sized van with lots of room to spare.

  “We just can’t leave our stuff,” she replied, carefully stacking our old, beat-up pots and pans in a plastic tote.

  “We can buy new stuff.” I shook my head. It was as if she couldn’t wrap her head around the fact we were no longer poor. We were moving to New York City, the Upper East Side to be exact and there was no way we were going to use all this crap we’d accumulated.