The Getaway by Lamar Giles

Author:Lamar Giles [Giles, Lamar]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2022-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Paige took the curving slide down to the water, squealing until she splashed and sank. She shot beneath the surface like an eel, popping up close to Seychelle and the other girls to chatter about something or other.

The music was louder where we’d come from, no thumping high-end speakers on this side of the pool. We caught snippets of the girls’ conversations.

“Did you see that speed? That stroke?” Paige said. “I could’ve gone to the Olympics, you know.”

“As a spectator?” a dark-haired girl said.

Paige didn’t clap back. Maybe didn’t recognize the jab at all. She sounded sad. “No. Like, I was really good for a long time. But Daddy knew what was coming, and there was no reason to focus on training after a certain point.”

A heavy silence fell over the group. Before it stretched too long, a redhead in a lounger next to Seychelle slurped something icy through a straw and said, “I can draw. I wanted to do comic books or storyboards for movies. Anybody else into art?”

Shrugs and low grumbles.

The redhead wasn’t deterred. She turned sideways, fully facing Seychelle. “Sey-Sey? I even thought about doing character designs for some of your grandfather’s movies. Can you make that happen when everything’s back to normal?”

Zeke sneered and mouthed, “Sey-Sey?”

Paige shouldered herself from the pool, dripping water and disdain. “What kind of dumb question is that, Ames? Nothing’s ever going back to normal.”

The redhead—Ames—turned vicious. “About as dumb as your dye job. The pool’s going to be blond now.”

Paige grabbed a phone off the table and aimed it at Ames.

I flinched, waiting on the zap, but realized almost instantly it was an empty threat.

Ames rolled her eyes, unbothered. “I know, I know. You love your little torture button. Take it out on your Concierge later, boo. I’m not the one.”

Was Take it out on your Concierge a rich people expression? I didn’t know what that meant.

Paige lowered the phone and opted for an obscene hand gesture before flopping on a deck chair.

Ames said, “Sey-Sey, what are you doing when things go back to normal?”

Seychelle said, “Hopefully never seeing you again. So, I probably won’t be helping you get an internship.”

Her words were as sharp as I’d ever heard them. Mean in a way I wasn’t used to from her. A way I didn’t know she was capable of. Though directed at Ames, I felt the sting.

Then Seychelle laughed, and they laughed. Mean was funny to this crew.

One of the Dude Bros splashed to the pool’s edge, breaking up the tension. “Anybody down for something stronger than drinks?”

Paige said, “If it’ll make Sey-Sey be less of a butt, sure.”

The boy thrust himself from the water and went for a bag on an empty chair. He yanked the zipper and poured a few shiny morsels onto a table. They looked like Karloff chocolates, but in prismatic wrappers that combined the usual Karloff candies’ purple and red with splashes of yellow and green, giving them the look of psychedelic diamonds.

Seychelle sat up, shifting from cruelly aloof to concerned.

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