Time was moving steadily on, and Katie couldn’t help but feel like it was all going so fast. Between her classes and extracurriculars, her dad’s campaign, the oh so ominous absence of Ms. Fortune, and one baseball player in particular, her mind had not known much peace in the last three weeks.

When Birdie texted, she was glad for something to distract her. Clothes were strewn about her room in haphazard piles, the aftermath of her failed attempt to find an outfit for tonight’s events. A whisper in the back of her head had plenty to say about that, but she did her best to ignore it. Ren would help her deal with that later, and she’d help Birdie with this boy trouble now. Besides, confirming a possible stalker was way more important than trying to find an outfit that said, “I’m fun and different, but still classy and way out of your league.”

Growing up surrounded by wealth and status, Katie had learned a thing or two about digging up dirt. Finding out where someone went to school, now, that was usually easy. If she’d been a normal girl, she might’ve sat on her phone for the next hour, scrolling through the various Elliots of the world, trying to match one with the descriptions she’d gotten from Birdie. Katie wasn’t normal though. She had connections, and she liked to use them. Time wasted, was time lost, after all.

Luckily for her, Mr. Callaghan hadn’t lost all of his contacts at OIC. One in particular, was a family friend, one who owed his job in the admissions office to a letter of recommendation from her father. Grant was a few years older than her and Jamie, and his dad had been her grandfather’s favorite driver. The Callaghan’s put Grant through school, and always treated him like one of their own. He’d been close with the twins, closer than close with Katie some might’ve said, but that was a long time ago now. Katie always thought that was normal, that that was just how her family was. Generous. She would learn, and later accept, that she was wrong. Grant, and all the other people her family liked to lift up, were just investments. Today she figured she’d collect.

---

Katie walked into the Office of Admissions with her usual swagger. The interior of the building was regal, dripping with money. If she was anybody else, she might’ve stopped to admire the decor, the meticulous details, but she was a Callaghan, and wealth didn’t faze her. In the warm yellow light, she seemed to glow, luminous as she strutted across marble floors, clad in designer fabrics and extravagance.

She found Grant on the second floor, quietly tapping away at his computer. He was tall, dark hair framing a handsomely average face, green eyes tucked away behind black framed glasses. He didn’t look up as she walked over, nor as she stopped in front of his desk. Finally, Katie tapped her manicured nails against the monitor, and Grant gave her the attention she was so used to commanding, looking up at her with the startled expression of a deer about to meet the front end of a car.

“Grant Petrov, is that any way to greet a friend?” Katie tilted her head and smiled, fluttered her eyelashes just a little too much to be unaware of what she was doing. Of course, she never was. She knew she was gorgeous, knew that men fell for that kind of shit, and was certainly not going to waste a gift she’d been so generously given.

She knew too, that Grant had never really gotten over their summer all those years ago. She saw it in the flush that came to his cheeks, and the way his eyes stuck on her hair just a bit longer, the same hair she’d let him run his fingers through, when she was young and he seemed exciting. Of course, he’d only been an adventure for a moment, and then he became another mundanity. She broke it off as soon as it started, but she didn’t have any qualms about using his feelings to get what she needed. It was harmless anyways, and it wasn’t like this was something Zach needed to know about.

“Katie! Uh, hi!” Grant stammered out his response, eyes flicking everywhere but never quite landing on her face for more than a second. “What-uh I mean, erm, what are you doing here?”

“Good to see that I was missed,” Katie joked. She looked around, spotted an empty chair, and as if she owned the place, swiveled it over so that she could sit, ignorant to Grant’s attempted protestations. “So, how have you been?”

Grant looked around, like he was stuck in a cage. Katie suddenly noticed that this wasn’t the usual Grant Petrov nervousness that had been so endearing in her childhood. He was practically shaking. “Good. Good, just, y’know, working.” He practically hissed the last word at her, as if some extra force might deter her.

“Clearly. I mean like, you know, with life and everything.”

Grant sighed. “Katie, what do you want?” The look he gave her was unmistakable this time. If there were still feelings there, in those green eyes, they weren’t some misplaced love.

Confusion broke through the confident mask that Katie wore so well. “Grant, what-”

“There’s always something with you guys. It’s never enough. Fucking Callaghans. My dad drove your grandfather around for practically his entire life, but that wasn’t enough, you guys needed me too, right? Look, tell your dad it was low of him to send you here, and that-”

“Why the fuck would my dad send me?” Katie said, hushed as she could with the sudden adrenaline of her rage beginning to course through her. The mention of her father wormed it’s way into her brain. Last she heard, Grant and her father had been fine. When had the world gone upside down? “Look, obviously we aren’t as cool as I thought we were, but-”

“I mean, are you shocked? Really? I wasn’t going to be okay with you running me around on some leash all my life, Katie. I used to think you were really something, but you know what Katie? You’re just like your dad. Like a fucking truffle pig, just tracking down people you can use.”

Truthfully, if she hadn’t been doing this for Birdie, she would’ve hit him. Anger bubbled in her, hot and dark and mean. She bit the inside of her lip, and stayed silent for a moment. Deep down, she had this sinking feeling that he was right. Not because she was insecure, but because she knew it was true. She’d thought it enough herself, had pondered over this mistake, and all the ones after that seemed to wear his face. Would this be how Zach saw her, seven years from now?

She let out a long breath, and spoke. “Grant, we can go over all the ways I’ve fucked things up sometime over dinner, my treat, but right now, I’m trying to help my friend. I just need to run a name by you, that’s it. It’s probably only like, a mild invasion of privacy, and if you were in the mood to hear the story, which you’re clearly not, you’d probably be on my side.” This wasn’t Katie as she usually was, at least not completely. This was Katie as the guards lowered their spears, vulnerable, at least ever so slightly.

Grant stared back at her for, and for a moment she thought she’d failed. “One name.”

Katie grinned. “Elliot Wood? Woodward? I don’t know his last name for sure, but he’d be a recent transfer.”

Grant turned to his computer and the keyboard let out a quick beat as his fingers fell against it. “I’ve got an Elliot Underwood. UCLA transfer.”

“Anybody else?”

“He’s the only one this year.” Grant said. There was still a terseness to his voice, but it had softened somewhat. Somehow, she felt worse about that; that she’d done such a number on him, he couldn’t even hate her properly.

“That works. Thank you, Grant. Seriously.” She went to place a hand on his shoulder but thought better of it. There was a rift between them that she hadn’t noticed, and it had thrown her for a loop. She was used to being on top of everything, in control of everything. For the first time in what seemed like forever, she couldn’t shove away the doubt creeping it’s way into her mind. She got up to leave, and as she did, Grant let her name slip from his mouth, this time without the hard edges of earlier.

“If you stopped sprinting for a second, things might seem easier, y’know?”

Katie looked at him and smiled, softly. “Wouldn’t the world like that?” She turned and walked away without another word. She couldn’t imagine a world where she wasn’t running all the time, spinning as many plates as she could, especially now. Suddenly, she had a friend to help, a father to look into, and a budding romance to keep alive. There wasn’t time to stop.