**Officially published as Clique Bait with HarperTeen!**
Payment is usually a part of a basic transaction. You give and then you take. But, at Arlington Preparatory, people take at their leisure. They take their entertainment in the form of humiliat...
I get it, you're busy. Senior year, right? Have you fought through your humongous pile of letters from colleges BEGGING you to join them yet?
I hope you're not stressing yourself out too much when it comes to getting a perfect score or getting top in the class (which you'll get anyway). Miss your face. Send some pictures next time?
Love, Monica
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Although the cafeteria around me became abuzz with chaos, I couldn't tear my eyes off of the phone screen.
Thin bronzed legs were crossed, but not with each other. One leg was dangling from a boy's thigh, the other intertwined with another's, her black strappy heels barely clinging to her foot as she arched it dramatically. Her body was clad in lacy lingerie, but it may as well have been nothing with the way it was too tight across her chest. In one hand dangled what looked like a cigarette, in the other the cheek of one of her companions.
I recognized the first to be Jonas from his lip stud, but his eyes were hidden with a black sensor bar. Beside him was a boy from Arlington, a member of the lacrosse team. Their hands were all over her, and from the expression on her face, she reveled in it. Her eyes were not covered, Maddy Danton's identity exposed to the world. Her face was smug, eyeing the camera with pride.
I couldn't tell how old the photograph was, but I pinpointed it to be the one Sophie and Lola had been talking about in the bathrooms. The one they were saving for her as punishment for challenging Lola's prized reputation.
Tearing my gaze from the picture which had been sent in a bulk Facebook message – containing all nine-hundred-and-twenty-one of Arlington's students – I took in the horror-struck expression of Maddy in the present.
Even with the hall abuzz, her voice rang cold and desperate to the triumphant girls before us.
"You promised me you wouldn't." Her eyes were cold with rage, her breath coming quickly. "You told me if I dealt with her you'd protect me."
"Oh, honey," Sophie said, clicking her tongue. "But you didn't, did you?"
"I did everything in my power, I just needed more time-"
"Time isn't infinite, Madeline," she said, a smirk brightening her baby blue eyes. "And your time is up. Good luck with your life, you drug addicted whore."
Maddy leapt forward, grabbing the collar of Sophie's blouse, triggering the cafeteria to silence again. "You bitch! After all I've done for you, you fucking ruin me! Do you have any idea the shit I've gone through for you to wear that smug little grin around like you own the place?"
At Maddy's physical outburst, Max and Piers came forward, pulling Maddy back by her shoulders. "Don't either of you touch me, you sick fucking pigs!"
