Chapter Eight: Infamy

Today is my second day in Peddley Grove.

Liam and I are in the car on the way to school, and Liam is acting as if yesterday night’s unusual exchange of words hadn’t happened. I sneak a glance at him. His face is uncannily blank.

Suspiciously blank.

With narrowed eyes and a crease in my brow, I bring my right index finger to my chin and tap it, absorbed in thought. I had woken up this morning with a restored sense of composure, and for the first ten minutes, I lay in bed, trying to make sense of all that had gone on in the past week. Grandfather’s will. Finding out that I had been promised since birth to a family whose veins ran gold. Having my entire life uprooted and thrown into a foreign land without any allies.

When I was younger, I’d devour stories about girls whose lives were suddenly disrupted by adventure, and afterwards, I’d go off into all sorts of daydreams. I’d imagine discovering that my dad was actually a king of some faraway kingdom; that I had supernatural abilities; and of course, that I’d meet a gorgeous stranger by some chance coincidence, and after a series of bizarre adventures, fall headlong in love with him.

But those were just daydreams. I didn’t actually expect—or want—them to become reality.

No, I was perfectly content being Lissy Darling: unofficial waitress, hospital volunteer, History whiz and proud resident of 68 Persnickety Lane. But in a matter of hours, my life had gone from ordinary beige to gaudy gold, from instant noodles to three course dinner meals.

The leather that I feel underneath my fingertips doesn’t reassure me that this new life of mine is real. Half of me is still racing to catch up to the present, hurriedly trying to absorb and digest and accept and live this ridiculous, massive transformation.

I am the soon-to-be Mrs. Liam Leander.

The thought sends an icy shiver shooting down my spine. Mrs. Liam Leander. There’s a coldness to the way the name sounds in my head. I glance at Liam again, and this time, he meets my gaze. We stare at each other for a moment before he breaks the silence.

“Are you alright?” he asks, even though he appears supremely unconcerned.

I look away. “Yes, fine.”

There is a pause before he speaks again. “How are you liking our school?” he asks.

Is he trying to hold a conversation with me?

I look back at him, and he is staring expectantly at me.

Oh goodness, he is.

“It’s… different,” I manage. “Very different from my old one. It’s sort of… fancier.”

He gives me a small smile. He doesn’t seem like the type to casually give out smiles. Maybe I’m growing on him. Maybe we can make this work. Maybe this will have a happy ending after all.

“I don’t want you to come to the game tonight.”

Or maybe not.

My voice comes out wobbly. “W-What do you mean? You told me to come yesterday,” I say, trying not to appear flustered, but I can feel the redness in my cheeks spreading.

He turns back to stare out of the window. “That was in front of them. I didn’t want you to feel excluded.”

My cheeks are burning, and I am fighting to appear calm.

“So you pitied me?” I reply. “Is that it?”

“Calm down,” he says evenly, and I am instantly furious with his condescending tone. “I was only trying to include you. But I don’t want you to come.”

I clench and unclench my jaw. “Why not?”

“I want you safe at home.”

I snort. “If you’re talking about Celia, don’t worry. I have fended off my fair share of Lady Deathstrikes before,” I say as confidently as I can, even though I haven’t. Claws scare me.

Liam gives me another small smile. I really don’t know what to make of him. He must know I’m upset. My face is burning.

“Lissy,” he says, and holds my gaze. “It’s not because of Celia. Go home after school.”

“Why on earth should I listen to anything you have to say?” I say with a bit more venom than I want. “I hardly know you.”

Liam studies me for a moment before answering. “You’re promised to me,” he says.

I feel every nerve in my body flare up in white-hot fury. “I’m not your property,” I spit at him.

“That’s not what I meant,” Liam says calmly. “Because you are promised to me, I am to take care of you.”

“By pitying me?” I spit.

“I didn’t pity you.”

“Yes you did. You pitied me at lunch yesterday, so you lied in front of your friends to tell me to come to your game when you really didn’t want me there.”

I sound like a whiny child. Brilliant.

Liam is silent, so I pipe up again. “Why will it be dangerous for me? Is there somebody after you?”

Maybe he is an escaped convict.

“There’s nobody after me,” he says with a small smile. “And it’s not that it’s dangerous. I just want you to go home. Just for today.”

“Are you one of those lock-my-woman-at-home sort of guys? Because I don’t do the whole solitary confinement thing,” I say, folding my arms. “I want to go to your game.”

“Please don’t argue with me, Lissy,” he says, and I hear the finality in his tone. But it is his next line that makes me stumble and fall. “You don’t belong there,” he says.

You don’t belong there.

Who the hell does he think he is?

I am about to reach over and slap him when the sound of my erratic breathing reaches my ears. I bite my tongue and hold my hands back, listening to myself inhale and exhale a few times, each time a little slower, before opening my mouth.

“You’re right,” I say. He turns to stare at me. I think he is surprised. “I don’t belong there, and I don’t belong here either. I don’t belong in this school or in this town.” I pause, and watch for any reaction from him, but he doesn’t give me one. “I won’t go to your game, if that’s what you want. But don’t expect me to forget how you’ve treated me just now, because I won’t.”

He doesn’t say a word in return.

When we arrive at school, my face is still burning. Liam and I exit the car and head to the gates together, and when we step onto school grounds, there is a buzz of chatter around us. Without a backwards glance or even a goodbye, Liam walks off, his bag slung over one shoulder, towards the cafeteria where his cronies probably await.

Not really knowing where to go, I start walking in the opposite direction. A hush of chatter follows my footsteps and I glance to my sides, noticing the

“That’s her! Yeah she’s the one.”

“What the hell? Her? She’s not even pretty.”

“She’s the one who sat at their table yesterday! It’s so true.”

“It’s her!”

It wasn’t that I didn’t like the attention. I was well known at Barbs for being the only girl who could single-handedly finish off five servings of fries without any condiments, but this kind of renown was of a different variety.

Somewhere between yesterday lunch and this morning, I had become infamous.

Being infamous is a pretty bizarre sort of sensation, especially for someone whose life has been 100% drama-free since I exited the womb. I’ve only ever been out with one boy, and that doesn’t even really count, because Humphrey Hughes only took me to the Winter Dance, and then he got expelled for drugs so it’s not like we ever really hit it off. He was charming and all, but I don’t do the whole drug-seller thing. I sent him a ‘get well soon’ card, because it was the closest thing to ‘get your shite together’ that Hallmark had.

And now I’m about to be married.

To an inconsiderately blunt man who is probably wanted by Interpol.

I give a little sigh, as if this last piece of information is nothing but a piece of lint and flick it off my mind.

I won’t let you win, Liam Leander. I am the world’s sorest loser, and I will use every dirty trick up my raggedy sleeve to bring you down. Or at least, make you feel as rotten as you made me feel today.

Jerk.

I wander absentmindedly towards my locker, one hand plunged into the depths of my backpack as I try to retrieve my weekly schedule.

I dial the combination code to my locker and swing it open to find a little surprise inside. In the little space in front of all my textbooks sits a little black phone. There’s a yellow post-it note underneath it, and I peel it off.

For Lissy.

I gently pick up the phone and examine it. It’s not a fancy phone, not slide-up or flip-open. Just a regular black phone. The edges are a little chipped and the buttons a little worn, so I know it’s not new either. But who on earth would—

I give a little yelp as the phone lights up and starts buzzing around in my hand.

Gingerly, I accept the call and hold it up to my ear.

“H-Hello?”

“Good, you got it.”

“Who is this?” I ask.

“Take a wild guess,” he says in a deadpan voice.

I swallow. “Liam?”

“Smart girl.”

A few people glance in my direction. I lower my voice. “Why’d you leave a phone in my locker?” I demand. “How—how did you even get into my locker? Why—”

He cuts me off briskly. “That’s not important. Just keep the phone with you.”

“Why should I?” I say, frustrated.

“Trust me, Lissy Darling.”

And with that, he hangs up, leaving me at a loss for words.

What planet is this guy from? Is this how he apologizes? Is this how he displays affection? Why the hell is he so hard to understand?

I am extremely aggravated, and it is not even nine in the morning. I look at the phone in my hand and find myself redialing his number. It doesn’t go through. He’s screening my calls, that insufferable pig. Angrily, I type out a text and send it to him.

I am not keeping this phone.

I wait a minute to see if he will reply, to see if he will give me some sort of reasonable explanation to put up with his behavior, but he doesn’t.

Suit yourself, Liam Leander. I’m not bending my will to yours anymore.

*

The day passes by with surprising speed. My classmates, though completely uninterested in making me feel welcome, have, for the most part, left me alone. I hear the gossip, I see the stares, but I haven’t been assaulted, at least.

When the bell signaling the end of the day rings, I walk over to the main gates of the school and see a mass of sleek black cars. The car that is meant to take me home has the Leander family emblem affixed next to the license plate. The driver is standing outside, talking on his phone. He does not see me.

I see a crowd of students head over to the school field, where Liam and his teammates are probably warming up for their game. There is a dull ache in the pit of my stomach when I remember our exchange of words in the car this morning, and I turn away to walk back down the corridor towards the back entrance to the school.

I won’t go to your game, but I won’t go back to your house either, I think bitterly.

I end up wandering down a street lined with an assortment of cafes and little stores. For twenty minutes, my eyes fall over an assortment of hand-made jewelry and trinkets, second-hand books and interesting clothes before I realize, quite abruptly, that the street smells like an apple pie. I sniff the air and instinctively follow my nose to the source of the smell: Rita’s Cakes, Pastries and Pies. I stand in the doorway and look in. Their display cases are filled with all sorts of little cakes—ones decorated with blueberries and cherries, others dusted with cocoa powder. The bakery is rich in colour and smell and I walk in, completely entranced. I end up walking out with five different pastries on account of my indecisiveness.

I think I’ve found my favourite place in Peddley Grove.

I reach into the bag and take out a cherry jam tart, bringing it to my nose for a good inhale before biting into it. I chew slowly, savoring the sweetness, feeling the warmth of the freshly made piece of heaven spread. I walk a bit further down the street, where I find an empty park. Perfect, I think. I can go eat my cakes there.

“That’s her.”

I am about to turn around and walk away, dismissing it as some other crazed fan girl of Liam’s who has gotten upset over the fact that there is now some mysterious girl in his life. But I realize, suddenly gripped with fear, that the voice is not female.

When I look up, I see a giant of a man with closely cropped hair. Next to him stands another man, slightly shorter and thinner, grey-haired and grim-looking. He is wearing a pinstriped suit. I don’t know whether it is the suit or the unsmiling faces or the fact that the street is empty of life, but I am instantly afraid for my life. Every single warning nerve in my body is going off. I want to throw my cakes at him and bolt back down the street into the Leander family car.

Instead, I choose to be civil.

“Can I help you?” I ask.

Who chooses to be civil in such a dire moment? What planet am Ifrom?

“Ms. Darling, is it?” Pinstriped asks.

I nod slowly.

“Please come with us, Ms. Darling,” he says, and his associate clamps his hands around one of my arms. It isn’t a suggestion.

“L-Liam’s waiting for me back at school. He’ll worry if I don’t get back in five minutes,” I blurt out in a panic.

Pinstriped turns to me and bares his yellow teeth. It is a villain’s smile. “We will take care of that for you.”

“No really, he will. Just let me call him—I’ve got my phone with me here somewhere,” I say, twisting around trying to break free. I feel a lead brick drop in my stomach when I remember putting the phone Liam gave me back into my locker.

“No, that won’t be necessary, Ms. Darling. Please, just come with us.”

They start pulling me over towards this silver car. In a panic, I start screaming at the top of my lungs, but I have walked too far from the main little street for people to hear. They start pulling me harder, so I resist harder. I thrash around so violently that the contents of my bag are spilling out with every twist of my body.

I can’t get in that car, I think. I can’t get in that car.

And just as I think to myself, this has gone on too long, I’m doomed, I’m doomed, I feel their hands release me and I slump to the floor, barely paying attention to them as they speed away in their car.

The remnants of my cakes are splattered around me, and my books and pencils are strewn about everywhere. Tears are leaking down my cheeks and I sit there in a crumpled heap, sobbing in shock.

My entire body jolts in a panic when I suddenly feel hands on my shoulders. I try to scramble away, but the hands hold me too firmly. They pull me to my feet and turn me around so I can see that it isn’t Pinstriped or his associate. It is Liam.

“Are you alright?” he asks, and I manage a shaky nod.

Without saying another word, he wraps an arm around my shoulders and leads me gently to the black car parked beside us. We drive home in silence. It is only when we are back home, sitting in the living room that he addresses me again.

“Tell me what happened.”

It is an order, and this time, I have no energy to disobey. I tell him about seeing the car and deciding to go wandering on my own, about how I found the little bakery and the little park, about how those two men had appeared out of nowhere and wanted me to get into their car, about how I had tried to resist, how scared I was, and then about how they suddenly released me.

At the end, I am breathing heavily, trying not to cry again. My eyes are staring at the legs of the coffee table and my hands are still shaking in my lap. I know Liam is watching me intently.

“Why didn’t you go home like I asked you to?” he asks.

“Because you pissed me off this morning,” I say quietly. “I didn’t want to do anything you told me to do.”

I am surprised when he gives a little laugh. “And look where that has gotten us.”

“Who were they?” I venture, looking up.

Liam studies me briefly. “It is not something you need to worry about.”

“I just got assaulted,” I say angrily. “I nearly got killed. I think I deserve to know.”

“They weren’t going to kill you,” he replies calmly.

“How the hell do you know?” I ask.

He doesn’t pause, doesn’t blink, doesn’t even hesitate before answering.

“A corpse doesn’t make for good leverage.”

I sit there stunned by the bluntness of his reply.

“Who are you?” My voice is quiet and scared. “Why do I get the feeling that this isn’t the first time this has happened?”

It is only then that I see the mud specks on his legs and realize that he is still wearing his team uniform. He left his game to come rescue me, I think. But the thought doesn’t give me any warmth.

“I told you to trust me. I won’t hurt you. As long as you listen to me, I can keep you safe,” he says.

“But what do I have to be kept safe from?” I cry, voice cracking.

I can see him debating over whether or not he should tell me. Finally, after a long silence, he exhales deeply and meets my gaze.

“There are people,” he says slowly, “who have been bothering my family for some time. We’re not in any immediate danger, but we still have to take certain precautions.”

My head is swimming. “What do you mean they’re bothering you?”

Liam reaches over and places a hand on my shoulder. “You’re not ready to know,” he says. “Not yet.”

He stands up to go, and I let him.

A/N: Thank you so much for your sweet reviews, guys! I really appreciate it. Sorry for the delay - I hope this chapter introduces some interesting twists for you guys. Happy speculating! :)