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VI MONKEY SEE, MONKEY DO
SPENCER HATED STELLA BRADFORD. Not because she was a bad person, because she wasn't. Stella was an princess: a bit spoiled, posh, and stubborn. But not bad. Not like them. Spencer hated her for reasons that he didn't fully understand. He blamed it on the way the sunlight hit her hair. It made the blonde hair looked golden underneath the beaming rays. It made his stomach twist in painful knots.
In the front yard of the private school, St. Judith, the Gentlemen's Club sat on a large, quilted blanket, that Elijah had stuffed in the backseat of his car. They all bathed in the sun and chatted softly about unimportant things during lunch. It was all generic conversations and more for them—not them, like the club, but them, as in the world beyond it—than anyone else. It was all random, innocent conversations about topics that Elijah had deemed appropriate.
Elijah would say that it was important when Spencer had first joined the club and found out about it's darker secrets. If Tom complained about the mundane tasks they were ordered to complete—like shopping for shoes at the mall or spending weekends cleaning garbage off the street—Elijah would rant, softly, like a chastising father, about the importance of preserved value.
That's why they're there; on a sunny Thursday afternoon, after a night of heavy drinking, sitting on the front yard of the school. Elijah didn't care what they did behind closed doors, how morally indecent they were—he would look at Tom, almost excessively when he said that, and Tom never had the decadency to seem bashful—as long as they were presentable in public. So Tom could have his skin covered in tattoos, like he does, as long as it's hidden. And Spencer could smoke until his lungs turned blue, as long as he was alone. If they were clean cut, soft smiled, and charming in public, it didn't matter what they did in secret.
Stella Bradford, Elijah's girlfriend, was a stalk character; head-cheerleader, blonde, and empty-headed. She was sitting beside Elijah, with his hand resting on her thigh. His thumb rubbed soft circles against the exposed flesh. She greedily ate up any attention that he was willing to give. She leaned into the touch.
She was talking about something, but he tried to drown out the sound of her voice: high-pitched and constantly-whinny.
"And, I said: "I don't care, Rachel." Can you believe that she asked me that? I was like—," and then Spencer drifted his attention away from Stella.
Elijah was listening intently, smiling and nodding his head, and sometimes muttering 'hm' when it was needed.
Spencer always found it hard to believe that Elijah could be two different people at once. Sometimes, when he was in the public's eye, he was good boy Elijah: the boy that smiled politely, got good grades, and had the perfect life. And sometimes, when the dawn turned to dusk, he was a blood-thirsty monster that prayed to forien Gods. Tom and Spencer had been the only ones to see that Elijah (excluding the dead girls, of course.)
