BEAUTY WAS ONLY MY TICKET IN

When my boyfriend brought up that sweet, innocent underclassman again, smiling while he did it, I knew his heart had gone wandering.

If somebody makes me unhappy, I can make them pay for it without ever changing my expression. What he did was technically not cheating, but disgusting all the same.

If it had been anyone else, I'd have made my move already. In elementary school I had the nerve to throw my mother's phone into the washing machine because she played favorites.

In high school I used an alt account posing as a rich, goodlooking guy to wreck the entire clique of girls who'd frozen me out.

This time I just smiled and heard him out, and for the first time I held back instead of clearing an eyesore out of my way.

Thatcher was the only son of a family worth nine figures, after all. Nobody was going to keep me from that big payoff. Chapter 1 My phone chimed.

A follow request. [Hiii Sasha, it's Callie!] I held the request up for Thatcher to see. "I sent her your account," he said. "Callie really likes you.

She asked me to introduce you two." I tapped accept.

Callie's messages came in fast. [Hi Sasha!] [I've been pestering Thatch about this forever and I finally got you!] [Ahhh, so happy I get to snuggle up to a soft, sweetsmelling gorgeous girl!] Listen to that.

She thought I was a dumbass. Plenty of people had my contact info. Why go through my boyfriend to get to me? "Callie doesn't come from much," Thatcher said, "but she works hard.

Really inspiring. A lot like you." I smiled at him. "Is that so? Then I should look out for her a little more." "It'd be great if you two became friends.

She's the new kid on the student government's communications committee, and she's assisting me, so you'll probably be seeing a lot of her." I see.

I opened the thread with Callie and typed back: [Hi, Callie.] [Thatcher's got a party this Saturday. Want to come?] Thatcher was a year ahead of me.

When I first got to campus, he was already a big name there. Good family, goodlooking. Someone like that never runs short of people chasing him.

I got him because I won the genetic lottery, of course. But it wasn't only the face. I'd seen a screenshot of Thatcher's group chat with his friends.

One of them summed it up perfectly. [Look at the girls around Thatch.] [Anyone prettier than Sasha doesn't go to a school like hers.] [Anyone at a better school isn't as pretty as her.] [She's exploiting a bug in the system.] Money, grades, looks.

Three circles that touch without overlapping. The circles float above everyone else, holding most of the resources and most of the say.

To get inside them you need at least one of the three. With two, your life is probably running on cheat mode. I learned that during high school. The learning wasn't pleasant.

Back then I wore blackframed glasses, my bangs were hacked off crooked, and I lived in baggy old hoodies and jeans washed pale. One look and you knew I was broke.

The girl I got paired with in lab came from a family with a little money. She was pleasant to everyone, and not long after the year started she was the center of the whole grade.

That day a cluster of girls stood around her, throwing out ideas for her birthday dinner. I didn't join in. I kept my head down over my homework. She smiled and invited me anyway.

Chapter 2 Honestly, I was a little flattered. For that dinner I went digging through thrift stores until I turned up an outfit that could pass. The gift was new, naturally.

It cost more than my whole outfit put together. But when I happily held the gift out to her, she didn't take it.

She looked me over from head to foot, her mouth doing something that wasn't quite a smile, and said, low: "I didn't think you'd actually come. "Sasha, learn to take a hint.

When a circle isn't yours, don't force your way in." She glanced at my gift. "That present… it isn't even worth one seat at my table.

You'd be embarrassed to sit down and eat, wouldn't you?" If she had stopped there, I could have let it go. But she had to keep biting.

At school the next day I found out I'd been frozen out. I was upset about it for an hour. An hour was all it took, because by then I had my way to pay her back.

A girl with a working brain always knows she's beautiful.

I hid my face behind those chewedoff bangs and the black frames on purpose, kept to the edges of school, because I didn't want trouble.

When you can't protect yourself, beauty shown too early gets picked too early. That was my survival instinct. Things were different now.

I decided my lab partner and the girls who helped her ought to pay something for what they'd done.

I returned the birthday gift, and with the refund I got my hair cut and bought contacts and a clean new dress.

Then I went to find Declan, the guy the whole school agreed was the bestlooking. "Let's make a deal." "Huh?" His bike stopped midpush. "Who are you?" Of course Declan didn't know me.

He was two grades ahead of me and lived in the singlefamily section of our neighborhood.

Living in the same neighborhood as him, even over in the townhouses, was proof enough that my family wasn't poor.

I lived like a rat only because my parents wouldn't spend money on me. Parents playing favorites is not a solvable problem.

I could trip up the cozy little life they had with my little brother, but I couldn't get more money out of their hands.

Any move I made toward the family's resources put them on guard. Declan started to push the bike past me.

I grabbed the handlebars. "Declan, be my boyfriend on paper and I'll keep every girl off you." He raised an eyebrow. "You're not scared of getting hit?" There was a crew of troublemakers who didn't go to our school and had their eye on Declan too.

The girl who ran them came around every day to hound him, and he was sick of it. But that girl had her principles.

She didn't get between people who were together. "Not scared," I said.

That was when Declan actually looked at me. "You know what, someone like you standing next to me is pretty convincing." I walked into school with a whole new face, and it got people talking.

My lab partner wasn't all that surprised. No surprise there. She was the first person to see through the disguise to what I actually was.

When Declan started bringing me breakfast, the mockery in her eyes finally gave way to anger.

She still smiled at me, though, as if she'd never gone after me at all, and said, warm as anything, "Sasha, what's going on with you and Declan?" I gave her a sweet smile. "He's my new boyfriend." My lab partner went back to her old friendly self and started getting close to me.

When Declan and I went out, she insisted on coming along, for my own good, she said. "With a few more people, if your family sees you, nobody's going to say anything." Chapter 3 I not only said yes, I invited her whole little group along.

Declan reluctantly played along a few times. "That about enough?" "That's about enough." I'd already followed all of them from the alt. I never said who I was.

I just posted the occasional flashy photo from that account and geotagged the singlefamily section of the neighborhood, and they assumed the account belonged to Declan.

The first to confess her feelings was her best friend, the one who was never apart from her.

I wrote back: [You're great, but your best friend has been very good to me.] [Honestly, I'm torn.] Soon she was sending me snide, backhanded little digs about my lab partner.

Wonderful. All of it material for me to set them against each other.

When my lab partner came to confess her own feelings, I screenshotted those messages and sent them to her. [I'm only telling you because I'm on your side.

You wouldn't sell me out, would you?] In no time the little group she'd worked so hard to build split into pieces, all of them tearing at each other's hair.

If any one of them had been straightforward enough to put it all on the table and compare notes, they'd have found the problem. Too bad. Birds of a feather.

I laughed under my breath. Declan pressed an icecold Coke against my cheek. "That happy?" I didn't hide it from him.

I told him every calculation. "Don't worry, I never said your name once.

They can't make trouble for you." Declan tilted his head and smiled. "They wouldn't make trouble for me. "There's a kind of person who never picks a fight with anyone above them." I thought about that.

Then Declan said: "Sasha, don't get hooked on going after people who don't matter. "You don't get many chances to climb.

Your time is precious. "Pretty is only the ticket in. "The really smart ones hit the books when they're in Hollywood, and trade on their face when they're at a good school." He didn't mean smart as a compliment.

For someone in my position it was still the best method there was. That was the last time I saw Declan.

He went to the East Coast for college as planned, and little by little we lost touch. Two years later I had my acceptance from a top school.

After that I became Thatcher's official girlfriend. I'd met plenty of girls like Callie. I didn't think they were doing anything wrong. You see a gold mine, you want to grab it.

That's only human. Whether you can grab it is another matter, and that comes down to what you've got. My phone chimed again.

Callie had written back: [Of course I'll come, if it means getting to see you!] I turned the screen off without a flicker. Thatcher had already started on something else.

He'd met with some friends recently and was getting ready to put money into a project. I listened closely, picking out the useful parts and filing them away.

Though I knew perfectly well that concepts like vision and information gaps were sometimes a false premise.

Even if Thatcher spelled out exactly where the next wave was and was happy to bring me along, I had no money to put in.

After we ate, Thatcher took me to the mall to buy a dress. "What's the big occasion?" I asked. The saleswoman sat us down and brought over coffee and pastries.

Thatcher took a sip of his. "Verity asked me personally. That party Saturday.

She says she has something important to announce, and she wants pictures taken." Verity Ellingham was a close friend of Thatcher's, a rich, beautiful girl from a good family, and she was always courteous to me.

The party was out in the far suburbs, at a restaurant converted from a private estate on a hillside. Very secluded. One private road up the hill, with a guard post at the turnoff.

Chapter 4 I sent Callie the time and the place. She wrote back fast: [Sasha, I looked it up, they're really strict there, cars only get waved up the hill if you show an invitation.

I can't get up there in an Uber.] [Are you leaving from campus?

Should we go together?] I took a photo of Thatcher picking out a dress for me, sent it, and unsent it immediately. [Sorry, wrong chat.] [Thatcher and I have other plans, so we're not leaving from campus.] [Just get to the bottom of the hill.

I'll have him send the driver down for you.] The driver was not going to be there, of course. Once Callie got to the foot of the hill, she called me and Thatcher over and over.

But the reason the restaurant was so private was that everyone checked their phones at the door.

She could have run Thatcher's battery flat and nobody would have paid her any attention.

Thatcher put a hand on my waist. "What's got you so happy?" I looked over at Verity at the piano and smiled. "I'm happy for Ms.

Ellingham." Verity always presented herself as brisk and capable, but tonight her makeup was unusually soft. Whatever she was announcing probably had to do with her love life.

A little while later a man in a dark suit came up onto the stage, sat down beside Verity, and played a fourhands duet with her.

The lights caught the sharp lines of his brow and eyes. It was Declan. Seeing him out of nowhere put me somewhere else, and I missed whatever Thatcher said in my ear.

Until a heated argument broke out at the door of the ballroom. The piano stopped. Verity frowned. "What's going on?" The restaurant manager hurried over. "Ms.

Ellingham, there's a young lady who says she's your guest. She insists on coming in." "Does she have an invitation?" "No.

That's why we're holding her." Verity's displeasure was showing, and only then did Thatcher remember about Callie. "Verity, that's probably my friend." The words were barely out when Callie's crying rose into a scream. "Don't touch me!" Thatcher went over and pulled the ballroom door open. "What's going on?" Callie was being held back by security, worked up past reason.

Most of her delicate cocktail dress was dark with sweat, her hair was stuck to her face, her makeup was past looking at.

To come in a state like that, she really must have felt wronged.

She bit her lip. "If you didn't want me here, why did you invite me?" Thatcher frowned. "What are you talking about?" Callie said: "No driver ever came for me. "I waited at the bottom of the hill for half an hour and called you both more times than I can count, and nobody picked up. "In the end somebody who lives around here was kind enough to bring me up the back trail." There was mud on her high heels, and the backs of her feet were rubbed raw. "You've got this wrong…" I said gently.

Callie's voice shot up. "Wrong about what? Sasha, is messing with me fun?" "It really is a misunderstanding. Come with me and I'll explain it properly. This is Ms.

Ellingham's party…" I stepped forward as if to lead her away, and she slapped my hand off hard. "Explain it right here. I'd like to hear what excuse you come up with.

Let you drag me off and who knows what you'd pull next!" By now the look on Verity's face was very bad.

Thatcher had to step in and put a stop to it. "I'm the one who sent the driver. If he didn't pick you up, that's on me. Why are you coming at Sasha?" "You arranged it yourself?

How is that possible?" Chapter 5