Worst Impressions

Chapter Fifty Eight

'I don't need to be rich to matter,' I snarled. 'That's the difference between us, Gideon. I'm not so pathetic that I think my worth has a price tag.'

'Beth!' Jenny raced toward us. Meg, Chrissy, and Charlie were close behind her. Will stepped out to block her from getting too close. Not willing to risk my safety if Jenny startled Gideon, and he saw fit to hurt me. She skidded to a halt and tried to push past Will. 'Let me through! Beth!'

Emboldened by their presence, I asked, 'How many people are running here to help you, Gideon? I don't see any of your friends in this piazza. It's almost like they don't care that I'm poor because they're my friends.'

'Friendship won't pay your bills, will it?' Gideon reminded me.

He was right.

It didn't.

'Friendship isn't meant to pay your bills. It's meant to –'

Gideon crushed his hand around my throat, and I was cut off. 'This is all very touching,' he said while my friends shrieked in horror. It took the combined efforts of Charlie and William to keep them at bay. I could only gasp without offering any words of comfort or reassurance that I'd surely come out of this in one piece. I had to. I always did, right? Undeterred by their cries, he continued, 'but I'm getting bored. I'm leaving, and if any of you try to stop me, they'll be dragging her body out of a river by morning.'

I'd hoped that there was enough humanity left in Gideon for my words to get through to him. Once, I'd thought we might be friends. We had both had difficult childhoods. While I hadn't lost my parents, I remembered how frightened I was when my father almost died in his crash. Not only was he an orphan, but he'd been brought up surrounded by wealth that he felt entitled to but knew he would never possess. He was like a starving dog who'd had a steak waved in front of him, only for it to be snatched away.

That kind of envy could drive a man to madness.

I was sorry to say that it was an envy I'd felt.

I may have professed that friendship was the only thing worth having, but I hadn't always felt that way. It was difficult to be the only poor girl in a school full of rich young ladies. My friends had never tried to actively remind me of my circumstances, but every time they talked about some new outfit they'd bought or a trip they'd taken, I remembered the insurmountable social divide between us. In claiming to hate money and the people who used it to their advantage, I'd constructed a wall between myself and my friends. It was a wall made of my bitter resentment of their charmed lives. I shut myself off behind it whenever I made snide comments about their shopping habits, when I rebuked their gifts, when I mocked the grandeur of their homes, and when I assumed that they would forget that I existed when we weren't forced into one another's company at school.

The only real difference between me and Gideon was that I still had a chance to see past all that and embrace what I had; sisters willing to do anything to save me.

Gideon took a step backwards and dragged me with him. I dug in my heels and tried to take a step in the opposite direction, but it was a futile effort. I wasn't as strong as a full-grown man. I was just a teenaged girl. To counter my feeble efforts, Gideon just lifted me off the ground by a few inches. He told Will, 'I'll contact you with a time and place to exchange the money for her. Until then, I suggest you don't follow me.'

'I'm not letting you take her out of this square!'

'Neither am I!' Charlie announced boldly.

'None of us will!' Meg added.

'How touching,' Gideon mocked. 'But you don't have any choice in the matter.'

Perhaps not, but that didn't mean I had to let him take me without a fight.