Enemies to Prom Dates (Haddonfield High Book 1) Read online

  Enemies To Prom Dates

  S. Doyle

  Copyright © 2021 by S. Doyle

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  a Scandal in Homeroom

  Also by S. Doyle

  1

  First Day Junior Year

  Haddonfield Memorial High School

  Beth

  It was him. Of course it was him.

  Who else would I least want to witness my suffering and mock me for it?

  It was the first day of school and, stupidly, I’d chosen to walk rather than ride with my mother and sisters. The house had been too chaotic given the twins’ excitement over their first day of high school.

  So I’d announced I was walking, and headed off without heeding my mother’s last warning.

  But Beth, it’s supposed to rain.

  Not only was it supposed to. It had.

  Hard.

  Deciding I was too cool for umbrellas, I’d been forced to embrace the wet-dog look. Only taking care to try to keep my leather school bag dry under the designer blouse I was wearing.

  I don’t know why I cared about the damn bag. Yes, it was expensive and monogramed with my initials, but it was also the last gift my father ever gave me.

  Before he left us.

  Just up and ghosted all of us. For no reason that any of us could understand.

  My mother. My four sisters. Me.

  So I don’t know why I cared about the stupid bag because I didn’t care very much for my father right now.

  Having someone to focus my sudden burst of anger on, I actually smiled in the rain.

  “Bennet,” he drawled as I approached. “Forget your umbrella?”

  Fitz Darcy. My classmate. My competition. My nemesis.

  My mortal enemy.

  He was leaning against a column under the portico of the old Greek Revival Haddon Fortnightly building. Home to the Haddonfield Historical Society.

  Because Haddonfield was the type of town to have an historical society.

  And he was inconceivably dry.

  “Fitz,” I replied. “What are you doing here?”

  “Walking to school like you. Only I had the sense to take cover when it rained. Figured I would wait for you here.”

  “Are you calling me senseless?” I snarled as I stepped under the shelter of the portico.

  “I’m not calling you anything. Simply saying hello. Now it’s your turn. It’s called being polite.”

  “You’re right,” I said, offering him my fakest smile. “How nice to see you after not having to for three solid months. My summer was wonderful and yours?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Oh come on, Bennet, it’s not like we didn’t see each other at all. You were bussing tables at The Club this summer. I saw you often enough when my family and I dined there.”

  Nope. He wasn’t going to make me feel ashamed for having a job.

  A job I needed. Because when my father left, he didn’t just ghost us.

  He took all the money, too.

  For three months my mother had been putting on a show as if everything was fine when, in reality, our whole world had imploded over the summer. She’d had to sell the Range Rover, her jewelry. Anything to keep up appearances.

  Because Haddonfield was the type of town where one had to keep up appearances.

  I replayed mom’s words from this morning.

  “Now if anyone asks about him…” Mom began.

  “He’s gone on a sabbatical.”

  “Yes. A little time away for himself and a much-needed vacation from his high-stress job as a hedge fund manager. We speak with him on a regular basis.”

  “He misses us dearly,” I said.

  “Yes, exactly that.” Mom smiled. “And we expect him back any week.”

  Because any day it would become too obvious when he didn’t return. Any month would make the lie that he missed us dearly seem improbable. Collectively, we’d settled on any week.

  If my mother knew I’d taken the job, she would have been furious at me for risking our family secret. However, I was simply too practical and I understood that eventually we were all going to have to work if we wanted to stay in our house.

  Not that I cared about the house itself, or appearances, whatever the hell that meant. But Haddonfield was a place where the very wealthy lived, which meant Haddonfield Memorial High School was ranked as one of the best in the state. Basically, I was receiving the equivalent of an expensive private education and that mattered. Especially now if I was going to need a scholarship for college.

  So, yes, I’d worked this summer. At The Club. I hadn’t thought someone like Fitz would have bothered to notice anyone as far beneath him as the staff.

  After all, his family was practically royalty in this town. His father was the legendary NBA player Leon Darcy. His mother, Aggie Darcy, was a U.S. Senator.

  And Fitz was…well, the embodiment of all that potential.

  Tall, broad shoulders, brown skin, out of place blue eyes that confirmed his mixed-race heritage. He was brilliant, athletic, ridiculously wealthy and the most popular person in our class.

  He was also an arrogant ass and perfectly insufferable. And he knew—deep down, he had to know—I loathed him with every fiber of my being.

  “Yes, I was working,” I said. “It occurred to me I should learn another language and there are three Hispanic people on staff who I thought could teach me conversational Spanish. Do you speak it?”

  He pushed away from the column and stood straight.

  That’s right. That was a gauntlet. I threw it down hard.

  There wasn’t a single thing Fitz and I didn’t know about each other’s academic accomplishments. I was better in English and Math. He edged me out in History and Science, so the war zone was over Language.

  Whoever bested the other in Foreign Language Studies was sure to win the honor of Top Academic this year.

  “You study French,” he basically accused me.

  “I’ve added Spanish,” I lied easily with a smile and a shrug. “I’ve decided this year, it would be in my interest to challenge myself.”

  He looked annoyed and I knew why. If I had one more AP class than he did, he was toast.

  Why hadn’t I thought of this plan sooner? This was genius.

  “You think you’ve won?” he asked me.

  “Win? Fitz,” I laughed, deliberately being obtuse. “It’s not like we’re in some kind of competition. Are we?”

  He was about to say something when a car pulled up next the sidewalk where we were standing.

  “Hey, you two. Need a lift? OMG. Beth, you’re all wet!”

  I smiled instantly at my older sister, who was in her boyfriend’s car, leaning over his lap to call out to
me through the window. Star was also perfectly dry having chosen to ride to school with her boyfriend in his brand-new Mercedes-Benz.

  Solid choice.

  “Come on, get in you two,” she insisted. “We don’t want to be late for the first day.”

  “After you,” Fitz said, standing back to let me go first.

  “I hope you trip and fall on a steel spike,” I muttered under my breath.

  “What was that?” he asked as he practically shoved me over the back seat.

  “Just something I picked up in Spanish.” I smiled again.

  He was big and practically took up the whole back seat. I could do nothing but feel and smell him.

  “Your wet jeans are touching me,” he said, clearly annoyed.

  “Well, maybe don’t sit so close,” I fired back.

  “I’m not sitting close. This is how much room I take up.”

  “Okay, stop fighting,” Star said from her spot in the passenger seat. “That’s no way to start the year.”

  She turned and looked at us. Specifically me.

  “You’re a mess, Beth.”

  “I love you too, Star.”

  All I could think about was how little effort she put into her appearance this morning and yet, she was practically glowing. Long blonde hair that bounced around her shoulders.

  Mine was a shade darker that mostly annoyed me when it touched my shoulders, so I kept it in a braid or ponytail. Now it was just plastered against my head.

  She made a maxi dress look sexy and cool.

  While I stuck to my normal uniform of dark jeans—professionally torn at the knees of course—Doc Martens and whatever designer top Mom had bought and shoved in my closet for me to wear.

  We were utter opposites. While all eyes turned in her direction as if they couldn’t help themselves, I usually went unnoticed by everyone. That was fine with me.

  Star wasn’t even her real name, but very early on she’d been dubbed the star of the family and somehow the name had just stuck.

  “Yo, Bro. Yo, Beth,” Chas Bingly, my sister’s boyfriend welcomed us. “Beth, you ruin the leather back there and I’ll bounce you. For real. Why don’t you sit on Fitz’s lap instead?”

  “Yeah, that’s not going to happen,” I snorted.

  “Fine, I’m wet anyway,” Fitz said simultaneously and effortlessly pulled me into his lap. I had to duck my head so I didn’t hit the top of the car. “We’re good now.”

  I tried not to feel his thighs under my butt, tried to figure out where to put my hands where I wouldn’t be touching him. When was the last time I’d sat on anyone’s freaking lap?

  Answer: Never!

  “Stop squirming,” he muttered.

  “I can’t get comfortable,” I mumbled. “You’re hard everywhere.”

  “That’s what she said,” Bingly snorted from the front seat.

  Not. Funny.

  I glared at Fitz and said quietly. “You’ll pay for this.”

  He glared back. “I’m already paying for this. Your ass is soaked, too.”

  “Dude,” Chas said. “Where’s your car?”

  “That’s right,” I exclaimed. “You got a car this summer. You shouldn’t even be walking where you could possibly run into me at all.”

  “It’s not my car,” he said. “It’s my father’s unless he chooses to loan it to me. Today, I wanted to walk. I didn’t know about the rain. Either, apparently.”

  I made a face at him, but he ignored me. Instead, he and Chas started talking about the upcoming football season. Despite being a grade apart—Chas, a senior and Fitz, a junior—they were actually good friends. They both played quarterback. While Chas currently held the title of QB One, everyone knew Fitz was the more talented athlete. However, the coach weighted the fact that Chas was a senior and it would be his last season. Fitz could wait until next year to take the title.

  “So what were you doing talking in the rain? You guys catching up?” Star asked, looking at me, then Fitz.

  “You could say that,” I drawled.

  “Always happy to be in the presence of a Bennet girl,” Fitz said with his own hint of sarcasm.

  “Well, that’s not too hard given there are five of us in the school now,” Star laughed as she counted us off. “Me, Beth, Lyd, Kit…” her voice trailed off.

  “And Mary,” I reminded her.

  “Mary! Shoot. Why do we always do that? Anyway, Lyd and Kit did okay this morning? Sorry I had leave you with them on your own.”

  “Other than Lyd wanting to wear a cropped top that exposed her midriff and Kit wanting to wear a strapless corset, which resulted in an epic battle I eventually won, they did fine.”

  Star shook her head. “Those two are going to be trouble. It’s like they’re actually trying to become freshman bait.”

  Freshman bait was a term used by the junior classmen who wanted to fish easy pickings. Since a junior guy, who already had his driver’s license, was like a god to a freshman girl, they often fell right into their hands.

  “We won’t let that happen,” I assured her.

  Then it occurred to me my sisters weren’t the only freshman bait starting this year.

  “Isn’t your sister a freshman this year, too?” I asked Fitz.

  “Yes. Gigi’s a freshman. But I’m not exactly worried about her dressing in crop tops or corsets,” he said condescendingly.

  I really did hate his breathing guts.

  The school was now only a block away so the rest of the trip was blissfully short. As soon as Chas pulled into one of the parking spots assigned to the seniors, I scrambled to get off Fitz’s lap, while he practically pushed me out the car door.

  Once outside the car, standing his full height, Fitz looked down at me. “Next time bring an umbrella, Bennet.”

  “Yeah, well next time…”

  I didn’t get to say anything clever in return because he was already walking away, his back to me as he headed through the arched stone gates that guarded the school at brisk clip.

  It occurred to me then, I didn’t even know why he’d been waiting for me in the first place.

  “Asshole,” I said.

  “Pretty much,” Chas agreed with an easy smile. “But that’s Fitz. Later babe, I’ll catch up with you after practice.”

  He gave my sister a quick kiss and once again I was struck by how lucky she was. Chas was sweet and kind and funny.

  And rich!

  That was my mother in my head. When he’d pulled up in his Benz this morning to pick up Star for an early breakfast, my mother had been practically giddy. I called her on the fact they were just a high-school couple.

  “You know this town,” my mother said. “They inbreed here. Money marries money. Now maybe they separate for a time, go off to college and so forth. That’s certainly normal, but everyone from Haddonfield always comes back to Haddonfield. A good impression once left can never be undone. Star is beyond beautiful. Chas will never find her equal and, once he realizes that, he’ll know marriage is the only answer. We just need to keep up appearances until that happens.”

  I wanted to tell her she was insane, but I knew part of what drove my mother was fear.

  Fear of the future now that Dad had left us high and dry.

  Well, me, not so dry now.

  “Come on,” Star said, pulling me along as we ran for cover.

  Once inside, I tried to shake off the rain and pushed my hair out of my face.

  “Why do you have to be such a bitch to Fitz all the time?” Star asked me. “It’s like you two are still back in the third grade kicking sand in each other’s faces from the sandbox.”

  That’s when Fitz’s parents had moved here. We were supposed to be friends, but it had been my sandbox first.

  “Why do you have to be so nice to him?” I countered. “You know he’s my academic mortal enemy and we’re basically competing to the death this year. You should be on my side.”

  “Of course I’m on your side. But I’m nice to him for
a very simple reason. I’m nice to everyone. Because it feels good.”

  “Yuck.”

  There you have it, ladies and gentlemen. My perfectly wonderful sister.

  We split up and headed to our respective homerooms. The school wasn’t large, each grade consisting of just over or just under a hundred students. Which meant four homeroom classes for each grade. I was lucky in that homeroom also included my two best friends.

  I walked into my assigned room and found them right away. I didn’t know what it said about me that my two best friends were actually two of the poorer girls at school.

  Haddonfield, by state law, had to have what was considered low-income housing, which wasn’t exactly the hood, just some smaller modular homes in a two-block area called the West End.

  That’s where Janie and Reen lived now. Although at one point they had lived together at Thornfield Home. A state-run foster home for kids under eighteen. The home had been funded by a bunch of wealthy benefactors for years, until a government program shut it down declaring that children did better when placed in individual homes with families.

  Janie lived with her foster mom quite contently.

  Reen, not as much.

  My friends could be summed up pretty succinctly.

  Janie wanted to change the world for the better.

  Reen wanted to get rich.

  Sometimes it made me take a hard look at what I wanted. The simplest, purest form of me.

  What did I want?

  Before my dad left us, the truth was I would have said defeating Fitz by any means necessary. Which was a pretty sad commentary on my existence as whole. But now everything was different.

  My single purpose was protecting my family. Also by any means necessary.

  Janie and Reen both knew my dad was gone, of course. But I hadn’t told them about the money. I didn’t really know why. Embarrassment?