Chapter 2

The "congratulations" from them felt hollow. I walked away from the sunroom, a knot of disappointment tightening in my stomach. Betrayal. That' s what it felt like.

I remembered when they first arrived at Northwood Prep, scared and overwhelmed. I was the one who showed them around, tutored them in classes they struggled with, defended them when some of the snobbier kids made comments about their "scholarship status."

They' d clung to me back then, full of gratitude. "You' re like a brother to us, Ethan," Chloe had said once. "We' d do anything for you," Maya had echoed.

Loyalty. Affection. It all seemed like a distant memory now.

Just before I' d seen the pop-up, when I was still trying to reason with them, they' d amped up the drama.

"If you don' t support us in this, Ethan," Chloe had declared, tears welling in her eyes, "if you try to stop us from being with Jake, then maybe... maybe we just give up on academics altogether! What' s the point if we can' t even choose our own path?"

Maya had nodded fiercely, "We mean it. This is important to us."

Empty threats, I knew now. Manipulative.

As I reached the main house, my phone buzzed again. Another one of those glitchy DM-style pop-ups. This one looked like a forwarded text message.

`PLOT UPDATE: Chloe to Maya (secret text): 'He actually bought it! Good, phew. Now we can focus on getting Dad [Ethan's father] to pay for Jake's off-season training camp and those premium application essay writers for South Valley. Princeton can wait for us if SVS doesn't pan out, lol.'`

I stopped dead in the hallway. My blood ran cold.

It wasn' t just about following Jake. It was about using my family' s money to prop him up, to get him into South Valley. And "Princeton can wait for us if SVS doesn' t pan out"? They saw Princeton as a backup plan, something they could just pick up later if their little adventure with Jake failed.

The depth of their calculation, their willingness to exploit everything... it hit me hard. They weren' t just naive girls in love. They were users.