Pretty When She Cries: Black Mountain Academy Read online

  Pretty When She Cries

  Black Mountain Academy

  A. Zavarelli

  Contents

  Disclaimer

  Prologue

  1. Landon

  2. Kailani

  3. Kailani

  4. Landon

  5. Kailani

  6. Landon

  7. Kailani

  8. Kailani

  9. Landon

  10. Kailani

  11. Kailani

  12. Landon

  13. Kailani

  14. Landon

  15. Kailani

  16. Kailani

  17. Landon

  18. Kailani

  19. Kailani

  20. Kailani

  21. Landon

  22. Kailani

  23. Landon

  24. Kailani

  25. Landon

  26. Landon

  27. Landon

  28. Kailani

  29. Kailani

  30. Landon

  31. Kailani

  32. Kailani

  33. Kailani

  34. Landon

  35. Kailani

  Epilogue

  Epilogue

  BOOKS by A. ZAVARELLI

  About the Author

  PRETTY WHEN SHE CRIES © 2020 A. Zavarelli

  Cover photo: Shutterstock

  Cover Design by Lori Jackson

  Edited by Jenny Sims

  * * *

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Disclaimer

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Prologue

  Kailani

  People always say you should trust your instincts. I wish I’d trusted mine. I wish I could rewind time to the day I knocked on his door. I wish I’d never looked into his eyes. And most of all, I wish he’d never looked back into mine.

  My toes sink into the sprawling green lawn as though I'm standing in a pit of quicksand. A part of me hopes it might just swallow me up. Because then I wouldn’t be here, staring up at Landon Blackwood’s mansion with this empty feeling in my chest. If I could rewind time, I might go back and unlearn what my best friend just told me. I might rewind it all back to the day I first stood on his veranda with a plate of pineapple in the hot July sun, waiting to introduce myself.

  I’ve been here more times than I can count over the summer. Two hundred steps from my driveway to his. I know what the marble in his foyer feels like beneath my bare feet. My fingers have memorized the roughness of the etched glass table on the patio. And when I breathe deeply, I can still smell the lingering notes of spicy vanilla and sweet tobacco that haunt the halls where Landon Blackwood lives.

  Time never existed in this place. Nothing else existed here. Landon is an entire universe, and I always thought it was so strange he didn’t seem to realize it. Until him, I always just assumed beautiful people knew their value. They knew the effect they had on the rest of us. But Landon is an enigma. A strange, tortured boy I spent an entire summer with, yet I don’t really know him at all. I don’t think anyone does.

  I tutored, and he listened. It never felt right. It always felt like I was holding my breath, waiting for the truth to come out. I was an imposter and didn’t belong to this exclusive club. I didn’t belong in his orbit with his tall, muscular body that moved like a piece of poetry. He gave me a new appreciation for art, and I wanted to study him every day. Some colors can never be replicated, and they exist in his eyes. Those gray orbs hit me like bullets every time they move, shredding me open and making me bleed. He’s an entire world. An energy. The subject of song lyrics, and the reason for wars.

  When he looks at me, my heart gallops. And then it shatters to pieces. I’ve never seen anyone so achingly empty. He’s a house with four walls but no pulse. His insides are covered with dust, broken furniture, and memories long forgotten. In the echoey cavern of his heart, I can only imagine a dark, shadowy landscape where dreams go to die.

  This house is a reflection of him. Impossibly beautiful, but hollow. Everything he owns is expensive and orderly, but there’s no life inside. I’ve felt that way from the moment I first entered his sacred space. It’s always been too quiet. Too clean. Too still.

  Tonight, it feels unfamiliar and ugly, like betrayal. The behemoth white mansion is lit up like Gatsby’s fictional residence on Long Island Sound. Music blasts from the open windows, and partygoers stumble about with raucous chatter. I imagine this was exactly what Fitzgerald envisioned when he wrote the magnum opus on self-indulgence. But that fictional setting doesn’t make sense in this reality. Landon hates everyone. He’s the boy who grumbles responses and tosses dark looks around like candy. He doesn’t throw parties.

  So why the hell did he leave this note on our front door, asking me to come over tonight?

  I glance at the piece of paper in my hands again. Landon’s handwriting is artistic. I should know because I’ve had plenty of time to study it. But this looks like it was written in a hurry. Just three little lines.

  My house.

  8:00 PM

  Landon

  My chest feels weird. Maybe I’m coming down with a fever. Or having a heart attack. It’s possible, right? I think I need a sick note to get out of this party. But as much as I don’t want to go in there, another part of me is desperate to see why he wants me here.

  “You really didn’t know?” Courtney peers at the scene from beside me, her eyes shooting laser beams into the mansion and everything this town represents. Her face is carefully neutral, never allowing any emotion to bleed through.

  My bestie throws off a hate-the-world vibe, and the only color that exists in her wardrobe is black. She’s not a ray of sunshine. She’s a hurricane. And if you told her the world was ending in two seconds, she would simply shrug.

  Court doesn’t come from old money either, and therefore, she’s an outcast like me. I met her in the cafeteria at Black Mountain Academy, bonding over the only table that didn’t require a gold-encrusted invitation. After disproving her initial doubts that I was one of the brainless urchins, as she likes to call them, she eventually let her guard down, and we became good friends. But she’s been gone for the entire summer, visiting her dad in Georgia, and she came over to see me as soon as she got home. While I’ve been getting her up to speed on what’s been happening in her absence, she’s been getting me up to speed on who Landon Blackwood really is.

  “I didn’t know.” I release a breath, realizing how stupid that sounds.

  Most girls my age are obsessed with social media, but I was raised on a steady diet of sunshine and surf. Growing up in Hawaii, my mom was a single parent trying to bring me up on a paper-thin budget. We couldn’t afford many things, so I found ways to entertain myself that mostly consisted of reading, dancing, and spending time outdoors. I was taught the importance of being present. My grandmother didn’t want me to lose touch with the world around me like everyone else has, and since she looked after me so often, that practice sort of stuck. I guess you could say I was a little sheltered in that way. When I finally did get a cell phone, I used it for calling and texting. It never occurred to me to look up Landon’s Snapchat or Instagram or whatever because I don’t have those accounts myself.

  When the principal asked me to tutor Landon, the only information I received
was that he’d just moved back to Black Mountain. Being a transplant myself, I hadn’t been here long enough to know his history. After a rough start to the tutoring sessions, I saw him practically every day. The school said he needed a little help, but that was obviously an understatement because Landon was behind in almost every subject. Of course, I thought it was a little strange, but being that he was so cagey, I never worked up the courage to ask him for an explanation. I was more concerned with getting him caught up in time for the new year than checking to see what he posted each day. But now that Court just dropped this bombshell of truth about his identity, I’m dying to know.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you guys were hanging out?” She eyes me curiously. “You never mentioned him when we talked this summer.”

  “We only hung out a few times.”

  I’m not sure why the lie slips from my lips, but I always got the impression that Landon wouldn’t want anyone to know about the tutoring. It felt like a secret, and I didn’t want to betray that. But the longer I stand here, digesting the scene before me, the more I realize this summer was a bigger secret than I ever could have imagined. Nobody knew he was here, and the entire time, I was completely oblivious to who he really was. Now everything makes so much sense. His barbed wire exterior. The immediate distrust when we met. The disbelief when I said I didn’t know him. I thought he was just an angry guy with trust issues. As it turns out, he’s one of the most famous faces of our generation.

  The time we spent together doesn’t mean anything. This party is proof of that. That must be why he invited me. He wanted me to see the truth.

  I always suspected it would be like this summer never happened once school began this year. We’d sit at different tables, and maybe he’d look at me in the hall, but he’d never admit that he knew me. Because deep down, I understood he was one of them. I just thought we had more time before the line was drawn. I’d nurtured a silly, girlish hope inside me that these feelings weren’t one-sided.

  “I’m so stupid,” I groan toward the sky. “I just thought he was the new kid.”

  “Yeah, no.” Courtney snorts. “This town loves to claim him as their very own. Black Mountain’s child actor turned teenage heartthrob. He never really lived here permanently, but his grandmother did, and he’d visit her between filming breaks in LA. I still can’t believe you’ve never seen Blood River Legacy.”

  “We didn’t even own a television before I moved here,” I remind her.

  Before my mom married Theo, we didn’t own a lot of the things we do now.

  Courtney blows a giant pink bubble between her lips. “My mom says he’s like their generation’s version of Johnathan Taylor Thomas. Whatever that means.”

  “I can’t believe this.” My voice wobbles. “Why didn’t he tell me?”

  “You have to admit, it’s a little funny.” She quirks a brow, clearly amused. “It was probably refreshing for him to be around someone who didn’t worship the ground he walks on. Everyone here has always lost their minds whenever he came to town. He couldn’t walk down the street without fan girls flinging themselves at him like dodgeballs. And now he’s going to school here? He’s automatically elevated to god status.”

  I dig my fingers into my temples. “Yeah, and meanwhile, I’m the only idiot in town without a clue.”

  “Well, he invited you tonight.” She pokes me in the arm. “You should go in there and let him know you already know. He probably wants to get that conversation out of the way before school on Monday. That way, there won’t be any awkwardness.”

  Oh, but there will be awkwardness. How could there not? Over the past few months, Landon has quietly crept into every aspect of my life. Peeking over at me from his backyard to ask what I was reading. Texting me his observations about the books on his reading list. Asking me questions he just as easily could have googled. He was always unsociable and moody, but he became a fixture in my life. I could expect to see him every day, and at some point, I started to look forward to his grumbled responses and icy stares.

  Now everything is going to change. He’s a veritable deity. Black Mountain Academy’s newest left tackle. Famous actor. Heir to his grandmother’s fortune. And I’m… well, me. His pint-sized neighbor everyone at BMA still calls that new girl. The only fortune I ever knew before we came here was collecting seashells on the beach. Our worlds are not the same.

  He’s probably in there right now with a whole cult of admirers. All those pretty girls in my class who look as though they’re walking around with a permanent photo filter on their face. The wisp thin cheerleaders and models and Instagram influencers. I can’t compete with that, but it’s that same notion that creates a fire in me. I have to see it for myself. I have to see what his life is really like.

  “Do you want to come with me?” I ask Court.

  “You know I’d rather watch paint dry.” She smirks. “I have to get going anyway. My mom made me promise I wouldn’t be long.”

  “Alright.” I nod stiffly. “Well, I guess I’ll talk to you later, then?”

  “Text me everything when you leave. If I don’t hear from you, I’ll assume you’ve been reprogrammed.”

  “Very funny.” I roll my eyes.

  “Seriously, though, text me so I don’t worry. If I don’t hear from you, I’m coming back.”

  “I will,” I assure her. “Thanks, Court.”

  She turns, and I watch her head back down the street. She only lives about a mile away, so we can walk to each other’s houses easily enough. I just wish she didn’t have to go home tonight.

  When I glance back up at the most impressive mansion on the block, a deep sigh heaves from my chest. I guess it’s now or never. I walk to the door and open it like I’ve done countless times before. Only this time, Landon’s priceless marble floors are littered with empty beer cans and red Solo cups. The pungent scent of liquor burns my nostrils as I take in the scene around me. It’s so loud my eardrums are vibrating, and I can’t hear myself think. This must be what Las Vegas feels like. The place is wall-to-wall maniacs.

  In the foyer, two guys are sliding down the banister in their underwear while the crowd cheers on their stupidity and films it. A few feet away, identical twins are dancing on a table in bikinis while entitled assholes throw dollar bills at their feet. It only gets more depraved the deeper I venture. In the sitting room is a group of footballers fondling a nearly naked brunette. In the kitchen, guys are lining up to take body shots off a girl from last year’s biology class, and she’s not wearing anything. Everywhere I look, it’s chaos.

  My mind conjured up a lot of scenarios for what this party might be like, but it wasn’t this imaginative. A wave of nausea crashes over me as I consider what else I might find. In particular, who I might find Landon with.

  I don’t know what I’m doing here. I shouldn’t want to see this. Technically, Landon and I aren’t even friends. I’m just the girl sent by the school to help him, and he’s just the moody asshole I couldn’t help crushing on. So, it’s no big deal what he does, right?

  Except it feels like a big deal to me.

  “Bruhhhh, look who showed up.” One of the football players from BMA intercepts me, humping the air as he eyes my chest. “Yo, Hawaii! Wanna smash?”

  “Ugh, don’t be such a pig, Camden.” A platinum blonde with icy blue eyes shoves him out of the way and takes his place in front of me. “Men, am I right?”

  “I’m not sure you can call these atomic masses of hormones men just yet,” I answer dryly.

  “You’re funny.” Her red lips tilt at the corners, and I think I just entered an alternate universe. One where Audrey Rothschild has suddenly decided to notice my existence.

  I know who she is because everyone does. Audrey is a Black Mountain Academy fixture simply for the fact that her entire family is alumni. She belongs here as much as one of the historically preserved buildings. Nobody challenges her existence. They just worship her for what she represents.

  Rumor has it her grad
es suck, and her parents pay off the staff every year, but nobody really knows for sure. In either case, it doesn’t seem to matter. She’s one of those freakishly genetically gifted girls who looks like a Stepford daughter. But she supposedly spent the summer on a medical holiday in an unknown location nipping and tucking her assets. We had three classes together last year, and not once did she ever bother to look my way. So, I can’t figure out why she’s talking to me now.

  “It’s Kailani, yeah?” She smiles, her white teeth shining through her painted lips.

  “Yep.” I resist the urge to roll my eyes. “We’ve had a few classes together. And we officially met yesterday at the bookstore.”

  “Oh, that’s right.” She pins me with her feline gaze. “You were with Landon.”

  Yesterday, we went to pick up the last book on the summer reading list, and when we bumped into Audrey and a few other BMA students, Landon practically sprouted wings. They weren’t aware he was in town, but it became apparent pretty fast they all knew each other. Yet he couldn’t get away from them fast enough. He muttered an excuse that we had somewhere to be, except that wasn’t true, and as soon as we got back to my house, he ditched me too.

  “Do you know where he is?” I ask Audrey.