The summer between high school and university has been the most peculiar for blue-blooded Parker Holtz.

As a trust funder with a pedigree as glamorous as Parker, one can expect her summers to be filled with yacht parties in Bermuda and jet-setting across Europe- especially a summer as critical as the one in between high school and college. She had, after all, finally graduated high school and was off to the terribly-predictable but still insanely-hard-to-get-into Ivy League.

But no alas, Parker was sentenced to three months in rural West Germany with her insane, borderline Amish aunt.

All because of one fucked-up psycho girl, Amory Scout.

There was a moment when Parker had imagined Amory as her centre of gravity. At one point in time, everybody was sucked into the magnetic field that was the Californian blonde. Orson, Parker...no man or woman was safe.

They all fell prey to her charm. Parker and Amory became friends due to Parker's long-time childhood friend, Luciana. And at first, it was just truly a lukewarm friendship, a girl Parker got close out of her association with the Elites. The minute Parker's eyes first landed on Amory, Parker knew Amory was prime material for their Manhattan inner circle. She had been wearing a cherry red Valentino trench coat over her crisp, tailored Kensington uniform. Her hair was shiny and golden, glistening with that recent blowout shine. Her oxford loafers were Burberry- Parker recognized the designers and the upkeep, having inherited from her friends and her family an appreciation for exquisitely created clothes. Amory is a girl who knows how to make herself look good.

It explained why she and Carmen were so originally threatened by Amory's unprecedented arrival at Kensington. Head bitches in charge were usually wary of potential usurpers entering their territory. When Amory had proven herself to be trusted through an Initiation, getting the Conroys sisters busted for shoplifting after hooking up with Orson and pissing off Luciana, Parker gradually warmed up to the girl.

As Parker grew closer to Amory and drifted away from Carmen, Parker loved how friendly Amory had been. So genuinely supportive and kind; like a fresh breath of warm air. She was so unlike the blue-blooded types Parker grew up with, unlike the guarded stony expressions of the East Coast one-percenters she's familiar with. Amory seemed to be like an open book.

At least she thought so. 

Amory was the kind of person who makes you feel drunk just by being around her. When Parker was near her, it was like she took too many tequila shots and all the alcohol are fusing together on a dance floor. Like suddenly the world's edges are dulled and all of the colours are spinning together. She was used to constantly measuring her words and watching her step being friends with girls like Carmen and Luciana, always looking out for her ranking amongst the Elites. 

Imagine living in a society where you're always walking on a tightrope with no safety net. Sure, everyone's looking at you in sheer amazement but of course, everyone's always watching and waiting for you to fall.

There was none of that cautiously guarded persona with Amory. She was one of the first few friends within the Elite that Parker felt like she could just naturally be herself. 

When everything began to unravel, Parker felt the floor falling from right underneath her. Slipping from her tightrope. Everything was so hard and so fast that she barely had time to properly register what was happening until it happened. As Parker began to suspect Amory's hand in Luciana being poisoned and looked into it, Amory went behind her back and pulled the rug from under her.

Boom! She lost Yale. Boom! She lost the chance to gather evidence on Amory confessing. Boom! Orson's father died.

It was one domino after the after, created by the soul-destroying force that was Amory Scout. No, wait sorry. Bronte Emerson.

Where did it all go wrong? When did Amory's winning smile begin to look like a smirk?

When Parker left for Germany, she had plenty of time to think through the entire senior year. Looking for clues on how she had been so fooled; the many times Amory had manipulated her against Carmen, pitching the two of them against each other. Amory sets her up to win Homecoming Queen as punishment to Carmen but also to create a smokescreen to throw off suspicion. When Carmen was taken care of, Amory focused her attention on mocking her. The teasing, the flirty looks, the coy kisses at the back of nightclubs under the guise of being drunk. Amory knew this whole time Parker liked her- no, loved her- and rubbed it in. She tortured her in that relentless way Amory knew how; teasing her with cheek kisses while confessing to the relationship milestones she and Orson were undertaking.

Parker had seen plenty of cruelty in her lifetime. Hell, she had even orchestrated a few of her own.

No one could ever prepare her for the destructive force that was Amory Scout.

-

Once the summer in Germany has faded and it was nothing but a distant memory in the back of Parker's mind, Parker returned to New York, her stately penthouse and her old friend group scattered across the world.

Orson is cautious, finding it hard to meet with Parker when Amory was breathing down his neck. Hanif fled to Asia, joining Phineas in Singapore; both were desperate to put Kensington and high school behind them. Aidan stopped picking up her calls and Carmen is shackled in a mental institution, unable to get to a phone. When it becomes clear that her old life has withered away, Parker is hungry for a new start.

She couldn't wait to return after two months in rural Germany only to realise she wanted to get the fuck out of New York. In fact, she wanted to get the fuck out of the entire East Coast.

So she focused her attention on the next best thing- getting into college. Every Ivy League had basically frozen her out after hearing her plagiarising scandal from Kensington but as she was a Holtz and a Holtz would do nothing less but go to a relatively decent university, her father called in a favour.

One thing about this world was that despite her transgressions, rich people always looked out for each other. And being Parker Holtz, a daughter of two major Ivy legacies and a bloodline as important as hers, Parker Holtz can be accused of plagiarising a college personal statement, apply late and still be able to procure a cushy spot into Berkley out of nowhere.

It is moments like these that remind Parker how her entire life has been designed for her, as long as she played a role she was expected to play. The luminescent golden girl, the Ivy League scholar. The Yale star, the debutante. The money was all hers to spend, as long as she never kept a toe out of line.

When Amory ripped away everything from her, leaving her with only her thoughts, she thought Amory made her empty. It was only now, as she prepared herself to leave for California, Parker realised she was empty her whole life.

Lying to her parents about dating a boy from Dalton, the type of boy that would be perfect to bring home and marry, lying about her sexuality, fighting with Carmen over solo spots and pretending to love the painful and ultra-feminine sport of ballet, stressing over a plastic crown and high school domination. Everything in her last eighteen years had seemed so stupid now. So trivial.

Amory had taken everything from her. Except...there was nothing to take, as Parker had nothing, to begin with.

It was all a lie.

Amory had thought she won by ripping out the golden crown from Parker's head. But what Amory truly did was ripped out the golden brocade curtains covering her, forcing her to look into her soul and bare it all.

Amory might have taken everything from her but one thing she did was made Parker free.

So the night before her flight to Berkley, she headed to the salon and gazed into the mirror, hard and cold.

Her blonde hair seemed like a costume now.

"What are we thinking?" the hairdresser asked her.

"I want something completely different," Parker said.

-

East Coast trustfunder Parker Holtz was blonde, ethereal and resplendent. Never caught dead in last season's designer clothes, Parker followed the style of most girls in her calibre. She was prim and polished with ramrod-shiny wheat hair and Cartier studs given to her by her grandma. East Coast old money traditions are things like having silver knives and forks instead of stainless steel ones (they've been passed down, why would her family buy new ones), it's the massive portraits of her ancestors in her stairwell (they're worthless if they were ever sold because no one would buy a very average portrait of someone not in their family), and massive silver candle sticks and wine holders which have also been passed down.

Parker's whole life has been huge houses and money and social climbing, having one house in Rhode Island, a riding cottage in Connecticut and a seaside mansion in Nantucket. Her whole life is random worthless academic validation and large dinners, having au pairs raise her and her siblings and be closer to them than her own parents, it's white blonde women who all have the same plastic surgeon, it's long dinner parties where you have the same stilted conversation 17 times with different people. It's asking anyone with the same transatlantic accent as you 'what school did you go to" and expecting to know the name of what they say since there are only a few main private schools that were respectable enough to send your kids to. The same goes for where you ski (there are a few resorts everybody goes to). It's gillets and schoffels, linen shirts and chinos, shooting, hunting, getting blooded, sailing, skiing, wine snobbery and harsh exclusivity. It's her mother screaming at her for wearing Versace or Gucci on her Instagram as it was gauche, tacky and 'cheap'.

It was just so...exhausting. Her whole life has just been about pantomiming a role she wasn't happy in, a girl running on fumes and fantasies about what she thought the world wanted from her. Now that her dream of Yale was shattered and what was expected of her was no longer expected, Parker was free.

Amory might've taken away everything but she gave Parker something more valuable than anything she ever had. Her freedom.

So when Parker arrived in California, she did everything in her power to become a different person. Her long blonde hair was chopped and transformed into a riot of strawberry ginger strands, ending at her shoulder in an angular bob (her mother hated it, which made Parker feel like it was the right thing to do). She gave away all her Chanel tweed jackets and Isabel Marant trousers and stopped dancing ballet.

For once, Parker became a normal girl her age going to college. She wore frayed denim from Urban Outfitters and college hoodies; she didn't measure her food and gorged on cheap takeout and drank cheap keg beer at frat parties. She even dated girls openly and didn't care about popularity or what people thought of her.

In the cramped college dorms of Berkeley, she could just be...her.

Her whole life at Kensington, as a snobby Upper East Side bitch, seemed so far away. Like a bad dream.

When Parker returned back to New York for Christmas, she was rudely awakened by how her bad dream was a reality. She arrived at her old penthouse, ten pounds heavier and wearing jeans to a soiree her parents had thrown without informing her.

"You look different," Amory Scout remarked when she saw Parker for the first time in six months. If Parker had known about the event, Parker would've pulled out all the stops- gotten a tan, had a facial and her makeup done, hit the gym and swiped her credit card for a presentable outfit. But here she stood in her UC Berkeley pullover and thrifted jeans at a party full of East Coast brats and their parents.

That feeling of inadequacy and being judged and picked apart settled in her stomach for the first time in months, embittering her and wishing she had chosen to remain in California for winter break.

"What are you doing here?" The phrase flung out of her mouth before she could control herself. Parker had forgotten what it was like to weigh out every word before speaking and composing every movement. She had gotten used to just being herself.

"Parker, manners!" admonished her mother, "Is that how you speak to one of your best friends?"

Parker and Amory stared at each other. So many emotions in just a single glance were exchanged; hatred, betrayal, pain and a silent understanding of each other. That they were never best friends. Parker had thought this was her sister-in-arms when Amory had seen her as a stepping stone in her fucked-up power-hungry plan for the throne of Manhattan and the key to the Calloways' kingdom.

"Inside joke, Mrs Holtz," Amory chuckled naturally. "Parker and I are always speaking to each other like that, we thought it'd be funny."

In typical Amory Scout fashion, she had out-manoeuvred and manipulated Parker in her own home. She forced Parker to stumble out a, "Yeah Mom, just an inside joke," forcing her to play a role necessary for the situation they were in. A situation of Parker Holtz and Amory Scout still being best friends, like nothing had changed., As if it was still just them terrorizing their peers in Kensington.

It was familiar and foreign all at the same time.

"I'll help Parker change into something more..." Amory's lips curled, dissecting Parker's ordinary clothes, "Appropriate."

"Oh please do," her mother noted, disapproval written all over her face at Parker's appearance. "Something like what you're wearing, Amory. You look stunning!"

Parker hated to admit that her mother was right. Amory was pure moonlight in a strapless Chanel haute couture gown of the palest silver, pleated over the bust and very fitted, which dipped in the back to the waist.

"Orson," Amory called towards the living room; Orson Calloway was in the middle of what looked to be an uncomfortable conversation with Parker's father. "Parker and I will be heading to her room to help her change. I'll be back in a second."

Parker's body was frozen in a spot at the thought of being alone with Amory but the weight of everybody's eyes on her was even more paralysing than her fear of Amory. Soon, she began to mobilise and start her way towards the Holtz's grand foyer with Amory Scout, the golden girl of the Manhattan social scene, trailing behind her.

Once they were well out of earshot of the party, Amory drops her polite smile. "You know you can just be normal around me," she says, "It'll help our case a little better."

"It's kinda hard to be normal around you," Parker snaps back, "Considering you've spent the whole of senior year killing your peers and poisoning your friends."

Amory laughs, "Don't be ridiculous. Do you know how stupid you sound?" she asks, and Parker's stomach clenches. Amory has perfected the art of agreeing to the truth while admitting no wrongdoing, just in the event Parker might have been recording the conversation to wait for a confession. The glint in her eyes told Parker that Amory understood what she was implying and that she completely relished in the terror of her crimes.

She was the perfect mastermind.

"I thought you and Orson moved to London." While Parker had enjoyed living in a haze of anonymity away from the world of Kensington, Parker wasn't stupid enough to let herself stop keeping tabs on Amory and the rest of the Elites.

"We did," Amory confirmed, "But you know how much I just love Christmas in New York."

Parker opened the door to her bedroom for the first time in months. The room was still kept in pristine condition as if she had never left. Sleek, modern furniture with a walnut finish, a king-size bed with a headboard covered in distressed chocolate leather. In the corner, a desk held her old laptop and a Bose iPhone Sound Dock.

"It looks the same," Amory said, almost forlornly. The sound of her voice was almost sincere.

Parker dropped her duffel bag onto the bed before trudging into her walk-in closet, which was larger than most New York studios and stocked with Balmain capes, Valentino shoes and McQueen clutches. Dresses that no longer fit her hung beautifully on rolling costume racks.

"I've always liked you in pink," Amory commented, grabbing a Tom Ford in oyster pink with flounces on the hips. The hips. It added ten pounds. The man had to be a misogynist to design something like that.

"It's not gonna fit," Parker muttered, looking at the tag, It was a size 0. She was now at least a size 4.

"What a shame," Amory sighed, "You've really let yourself go. What happened?"

Parker's eyes flung to Amory, as if gobsmacked those words came out of her mouth.

You know what happened. You happened.

"Get out of my room," Parker snapped, voice shaking, "Get out."

Amory's lips pursed. "If you say so. I hope you find something to wear."

And just like that, she left but the frost in the room remained. 

-

hope y'all enjoy!