Nanny To My Highschool Nemesis

Chapter 7

Brooklyn POV

"Are you kidding me? We hate each other."

Emerson blinked. Then he stood up off the bed, looked at his own hand for a second, and spat into his palm.

He held it out to me.

I stared at it.

"Old fashioned way," he said simply.

I looked at his hand. I looked at his face. Then I sighed so deeply it came from somewhere in my feet, and I shook it.

Deal made.

---

He drove us to school the next morning. His car was exactly the kind that made people turn their heads — sleek, black, quietly expensive. Daisy sat in the back with her bag on her lap, and I sat in the passenger seat staring out the window, pretending this was all completely normal.

We dropped Daisy at her school first. She climbed out, gave me a small wave, and disappeared through the gates.

When we pulled up outside Westfield, Emerson kept the engine running.

"Wait in the car," he said.

I turned to look at him. "Excuse me?"

"Give me two minutes to get inside first." He stared straight ahead through the windscreen. "I don't want anyone seeing us arrive together."

I thought about arguing. Then I remembered I didn't want anyone seeing us arrive together either.

"Fine."

He got out without another word. I watched him cross the car park and disappear through the main entrance, hands in his pockets, unbothered as always.

I reached for my own bag and stopped.

Daisy's lunchbox was sitting on the back seat.

I picked it up and turned it over in my hands. Pink, with a small sticker of a flower on the front that Daisy had put there herself. She hadn't eaten breakfast this morning either. By lunchtime she'd be starving.

I looked at the school entrance. Then at the lunchbox.

"Maybe a delivery service," I muttered to myself. I'd figure it out at break time. I tucked it under my arm, got out of the car, and headed inside.

---

I dropped the lunchbox in my locker to keep it safe until I could sort out a delivery. I was still thinking through the logistics when I shut the locker door and found three people standing right beside me.

Savannah Cole. Head girl, Westfield's most decorated bully, and the person who had made my scholarship years miserable in a completely different way from Emerson. She had two of her friends flanking her and a large iced drink in one hand.

"Brooklyn." She said my name like it tasted bad. "Still showing your face around here. Haven't you got the message yet?"

"What message?" I kept my voice flat. "That you hate me? That's been pretty clear for a while now, Savannah."

She stepped closer. Her friends shifted behind her.

"I guess using words isn't enough with you," she said sweetly.

I looked at the drink in her hand. "Are you going to pour that on me? How original."

Something crossed her face. Not embarrassment — more like she was recalculating.

"Please." She tilted her head. "You already look terrible, Brooklyn. Dumping this on you won't make a difference." She paused, smile spreading slowly. "But I know exactly the right way to hurt someone like you. A desperate little try-hard who works twice as hard as everyone else just to stay relevant."

She looked past me at my locker. Her eyes landed on the strap of my history essay folder poking out from where I hadn't shut it properly.

"Don't we have a history essay due today?" she said.

My stomach dropped.

She stepped toward my bag, which was hanging open on the locker hook, the folder clearly visible. Her drink tilted in her hand — slowly, deliberately — almost upside down, hovering directly above it.

"Savannah." My voice broke slightly. "No. Please. I spent two weeks on that essay."

"Too bad." She shrugged. "I really don't care."

"Emerson!"

His name came out before I even decided to say it. I just saw him at the end of the corridor, and it came out loud and sharp and embarrassingly desperate.

"Please — stop them!"