The Scholarship Girl & The Rich Young Master

The entire cafeteria went silent when I walked in. Not because I was interesting. Because I didn't belong. My uniform was second-hand, the logo faded from too many washes. My bag was from a thrift store, the zipper held together with a paperclip. At Rosewood Elite Academy, where girls carried $5,000 handbags to class, that was basically a crime. "That's the scholarship girl," someone whispered behind me. "Mia Parker. Her mom cleans houses." I kept my head down and kept walking. I'd heard it all before.

For three months since I got the full academic scholarship to the most expensive private school in the state, I'd been invisible and hyper-visible at the same time. No one talked to me, but everyone talked about me. I just needed to survive this year. Get the grades, get the diploma, get into a good college and get out. My mother worked two jobs to keep a roof over our heads. I wasn't going to waste this chance because some rich kids were mean. I headed for my usual empty table in the back corner. The safe table. No one ever sat there because it was next to the trash cans. Perfect for me. I had just sat down and opened my cheap lunchbox when the double doors of the cafeteria banged open. And then he walked in. Jace Carter. Even if you had never met him, you knew him. Tall, handsome in that cruel, cold way. Black hair that always looked perfectly messy. Blue eyes that could freeze you. Captain of the basketball team. Heir to Carter Enterprises, which owned half this city. The Rich Young Master of Rosewood. Every girl in school wanted him. Every boy wanted to be him. And he knew it. He was followed by his usual group - Tyler and Chase, also rich, also handsome, also jerks. His cold eyes scanned the cafeteria like he owned it. Because, technically, his family donated the building. Then his eyes landed on me. On the empty seat across from me. My stomach dropped. No. No no no. Don't come here. He started walking toward me. Slowly. Deliberately. The crowd parted for him. My heart was beating so loud I was sure he could hear it. Why was he coming to the trash table? He had his own private table in the center. He stopped at my table. Looked down at my tray - rice and beans from home in a plastic container - and then at me. And smirked. That famous, arrogant smirk. "You're in my seat, scholarship girl," he said, his voice low and smooth, but loud enough for everyone to hear. The cafeteria erupted in whispers. I looked up at him. I was scared, but I was also tired. Tired of being looked down on. "I don't see your name on it," I said. Dead silence. His friends stopped behind him. Tyler's mouth actually fell open. Jace's blue eyes narrowed. No one talked back to Jace Carter. Ever. Especially not the poor scholarship girl. He leaned down, his hands on my table, his face inches from mine. He smelled like expensive cologne and winter. "Excuse me?" he whispered, only for me to hear. "I said, I don't see your name on it," I repeated, my voice shaking but I didn't back down. "So it's not your seat." For a second, something flashed in his eyes. Surprise? Anger? Interest? Then he stood up straight and his cold mask was back. He looked at my lunch, then with one quick flick of his finger, he knocked my plastic container off the table. Rice spilled all over the floor. "Oops," he said, not sorry at all. Tears burned my eyes but I refused to cry in front of him. I wouldn't give him that satisfaction. Everyone laughed. Someone took a video. Jace stared at me for one more second, like he was waiting for me to break. When I didn't, he turned and walked away, his friends laughing loudly behind him. I knelt down to clean up my food, my hands shaking. This was going to be a very long year. What I didn't know was that Jace Carter wasn't done with me. Not even close.

I thought Jace Carter would ignore me after the cafeteria incident. I was wrong. The next morning, I woke up early. I ironed my white skirt, the only good one I had left. I told myself yesterday was just yesterday. At Rosewood Elite Academy, if you showed fear, they would eat you alive. So I would not show fear. I walked into the school building with my second-hand backpack hanging on my shoulder, my scholarship badge pinned tight. I walked into Homeroom 12-A and froze.

My desk - the one in the last row where I could hide, where I could be invisible, where I could just try to survive my final year - had been trashed. Someone had poured red ink all over it. Not a little spill. A whole bottle. The thick, bright red ink was dripping down the side of the desk, pooling on the floor. It was all over my books, my notes, my second-hand backpack that I had left in my locker yesterday evening. My history textbook was soaked. My notebook, the one where I had spent weeks writing notes for my finals, the pages I had written so carefully with my small handwriting to save paper, was now just red. Just a blur of red. On the blackboard, in big, bold letters, written with what looked like the same red marker, it said: SCHOLARSHIP GIRL GO HOME. The whole class was already there. Early. They were all staring at me. Some were giggling behind their hands. Some were openly laughing. Some just looked away, like they didn't want to be part of it, but they wouldn't stop it either. My hands started shaking. I could feel my heart beating so fast, so loud in my chest. Those notes were for my finals. I had spent weeks on them. I had stayed up late every night. I couldn't afford new books. My mother couldn't afford to buy me new ones. This was all I had. "Who did this?" my voice cracked. It was small. I hated how small I sounded. Tyler, Jace's best friend, the second-in-command of their little rich boy group, put his feet up on his desk. He had that lazy, cruel smile on his face. The smile of someone who knew he would never be punished. "No idea," he said, shrugging. "Maybe you should be more careful with your stuff, poor girl. You shouldn't leave trash around." A few people laughed at that. Trash. And in the corner, by the window, where the sun was coming in and making his brown hair look golden, Jace Carter sat like a king. His blazer was off, his white shirt sleeves rolled up a bit. He wasn't laughing. He was just watching me. His blue eyes, cold, unreadable, so blue they looked almost grey in this light. Like he was studying my reaction. Like he was waiting to see what I would do. Would I cry? Would I scream? Would I run? He didn't stop it. He didn't have to say anything. Everyone knew who ruled this class. If Jace didn't stop it, it meant he allowed it. I swallowed my tears. I would not cry here. I promised myself last night I would not cry in front of them ever again. Crying was what they wanted. I walked to my desk. Step by step. The floor was sticky with ink. I grabbed my ink-ruined bag. The fabric was wet. My hands turned red. And I sat down. I sat down in the ink. My white skirt, my clean, ironed white skirt, was now stained red. At the back. Great. Just great. Now I would walk around all day with a red stain. Ms. Johnson, our homeroom teacher, walked in. She was holding her coffee. She saw my desk. She saw the blackboard. She saw me sitting in a puddle of red ink with red hands. And she sighed. A long, tired sigh. Like I was the problem. "Mia," she said, "please clean that up before class starts. We have a test today." Not "who did this?" Not "are you okay?" Not "who wrote that on my board?" Just "clean it up." Just like that. This was Rosewood Elite. This was how it worked. If you were poor, if you were a scholarship girl, you were invisible unless you were a problem. And then you were told to clean up your own mess, even if you didn't make it. I nodded. I couldn't speak. I took out tissue paper from my pocket, the cheap kind that tears easily, and I started wiping the ink. My hands were red. The stain wouldn't come off the desk. It just smeared. The more I wiped, the more it spread. My tissue turned red, then broke apart. Suddenly, a shadow fell over my desk. The giggling in the class stopped. It went quiet. Jace. He stood in front of me. Up close, he was even taller. I could smell his cologne, something expensive and cold. He was holding a clean, new set of textbooks. Expensive ones. The same edition I had, but new. No bent corners. No second-hand stamps. The Rosewood Elite crest shining on the cover. He dropped them on my desk. Thump. Loud. "You're making the class smell like cheap ink," he said loudly, so everyone could hear his disgust. His voice was cold, arrogant. The voice of a Rich Young Master. "Use those." I stared at the books. They were brand new. No name on them. No writing inside. Someone had just bought them from the school store this morning. Was he... helping me? After he ruined my lunch yesterday? After he stared at me like I was nothing? "Why?" I whispered. My voice was so low I thought he wouldn't hear. He leaned down, close enough that only I could hear. I could see his eyelashes. I could see a small scar near his eyebrow. His voice dropped. "Because you're distracting me, scholarship girl. And I don't like distractions. So stop being pathetic and sit down. You're blocking the air." His voice was harsh, but his eyes... his eyes looked at my stained hands for a second too long. His jaw tightened. Like he was angry, but not at me. Or maybe he was. He went back to his seat. The class was in shock. Jace Carter had just given something to the scholarship girl. The poor girl. In front of everyone. Tyler frowned at him. He took his feet off the desk. "Bro, what are you doing?" Jace didn't answer. He just looked out the window, jaw tight, his hands in fists on his desk. He ignored everyone. I sat there, holding the new books. They were heavy. They smelled like new paper and like him, that cold expensive smell. My old books were ruined, my bag was ruined, my skirt was ruined, but for the first time in three months at this horrible school, someone in this class had noticed I was drowning. Someone had actually done something, even if he said it in the cruelest way possible. Even if it was Jace Carter. And I hated that my heart beat a little faster because of it. I hated that my cheeks felt hot. After class, I waited. My skirt was still stained. My hands were still pink from scrubbing. I tried to give the books back to him. I waited by his locker, where all the girls usually waited to talk to him. He came alone. "Jace." He looked at me, surprised. Like he didn't expect I had the courage to talk to him after everything. His locker was open, full of basketball jerseys and expensive shoes. "I can't take these. They're too expensive. I can't." He shut his locker hard. Bang. "I don't take returns. Keep them." "My mom said never take things from people who look down on you. Never." He laughed, but there was no humor in it. It was a short, cold laugh. "Your mom cleans houses, right? That's what they say." My face went hot. My whole body went hot with shame and anger. "Don't talk about my mother. Don't you dare talk about my mother." "I'm not," he said, his eyes dropping to my face, to my angry eyes. "I'm saying you need the books. Your old ones are trash now. Take them. It's not that deep." "I don't want your charity, Rich Young Master. I don't want anything from you." "It's not charity," he said quietly. He looked down the hallway to make sure no one was listening. "It's... I ruined your old books yesterday when I spilled your food and you ran. Consider us even. Okay?" I stared at him. Was that an apology? From Jace Carter? The king of Rosewood? Was he saying sorry in his own arrogant way? "Fine," I said quietly, hugging the books tighter to my chest. "But I'm paying you back. Every dollar." "How?" He smirked, that familiar arrogant smirk back on his handsome face, the face every girl in school was obsessed with. "With your scholarship lunch money? You get free lunch, right?" I wanted to slap that smirk off his handsome face. I wanted to scream at him. "You'll figure something out," he said, and walked away, his backpack over one shoulder, leaving me standing there holding the expensive textbooks that smelled like new paper and like him. I watched him walk away, his tall figure disappearing into the crowd of students. My hands were still holding his books. My skirt was still stained. I didn't know it yet, but this was just the beginning. The next day, the bet would start.

I learned about the bet during lunch break. I was hiding in the library, trying to salvage my ink-stained notes, when I heard voices from the next aisle. Tyler, Chase, and... Jace. "Dude, you're losing," Tyler laughed. "You said you could make any girl fall for you in a week. It's been three days and the scholarship girl still looks like she wants to punch you." My blood froze. Scholarship girl. Me. "She will," Chase said. "No girl can resist Jace. Especially not a poor girl who never had a boyfriend before. She'll be obsessed by Friday." I peeked through the books.

Jace was leaning against the shelf, hands in his pockets, that cold, arrogant smirk on his face. He looked bored. "She's different," Jace said, his voice low. "She's not like the other girls. She actually thinks she's better than me." "So? That's hot," Tyler said. "Make her fall, then dump her. That's the deal. Fifty thousand dollars says you can't make Mia Parker say she loves you before prom." Fifty thousand dollars. To make me fall in love. My stomach turned. So the textbooks, the staring, the cafeteria - it was all a game. A bet. I was a bet. Tears finally came, hot and angry. Jace chuckled. "You're on. By prom, Mia Parker will be begging me to be her boyfriend. And then I'll be bored of her." They high-fived and walked away. I slid down to the floor between the bookshelves and covered my mouth so I wouldn't make a sound. I felt so stupid. For a second, for one stupid second, I thought maybe he had felt a little sorry for me. That maybe under the rich young master cold act, there was a person. There wasn't. He was just a cruel, spoiled rich boy who saw me as entertainment. I wiped my face hard. Okay. So that's who he was. Fine. Game on, Jace Carter. I stood up, fixed my stained skirt, and walked out of the library. I knew exactly where he would be - the basketball court for practice. He was there, shooting hoops, shirtless, sweat glistening. Girls were watching from the bleachers, giggling. I walked straight onto the court. Right into the middle of his game. The ball bounced and stopped at my feet. Everyone stared. Jace looked surprised to see me. Then his smirk came back. "Well, well. Scholarship girl came to watch me?" I picked up his $200 basketball and threw it as hard as I could over the fence, far away. Gasps. "What the hell?" Tyler shouted. I looked straight into Jace's shocked blue eyes. "I heard your bet, Rich Young Master," I said, loud enough for the girls in the bleachers to hear. "You want me to fall in love with you? You could never afford me. Not with all your father's money." His eyes darkened. His jaw clenched. "I would never fall for a boy who has to pay people to like him," I continued. My voice was shaking but I didn't stop. "So keep your books. Keep your fifty thousand dollars. And stay away from me." I dropped his new textbooks I had been carrying onto the court at his feet. "I don't need your charity." I turned and walked away, leaving him standing there in the middle of the court, staring after me. For the first time, Jace Carter didn't have anything to say. And for the first time, I felt like I had won. But winning against Jace Carter had a price. The next morning, my locker wouldn't open. Someone had super-glued it shut. My chair in class was missing. I had to stand for the whole lesson. In the hallway, girls bumped into me on purpose, spilling their expensive iced coffee on my uniform. "That's for embarrassing Jace," one hissed. I should have been upset. But I wasn't. Because for the first time, Jace wasn't laughing with them. He was watching me from a distance, his jaw tight, his blue eyes guilty. He had started a war with the wrong scholarship girl.