Worst Impressions

Bonus Chapter - Darcy in the Rain

I squeezed the pillow around my head and groaned, 'Charlie, if you don't answer that bloody phone, I'll shove it so far up your arse you'll only be able to speak in ringtones.'

I didn't know what time it was, but it had to be some ungodly hour. I wasn't an early to bed sort of guy and the shrill cry of the mobile charging on Charlie's nightstand had drawn me out of a deep slumber. Whenever sleep attempted to reclaim me, it cried out again. Charlie could sleep like the dead, but he wasn't deaf. I knew he was trying to ignore it. The only person who'd call so late was his sister, and it was usually over some nonsense about her hair or a fight with a friend.

Apparently, if Chantelle was too tormented to rest, then no one else should be allowed to, either.

Charlie rolled over with a huff and slapped his hand down heavily onto the offending device. Sheets of rain dropped outside, hammering against the glass. Through the crack in the curtains, I could see it cascading down like a waterfall. It was speckled with white. Hail at this time of year? Even the weather was angry at my idiot friend for disturbing the peaceful night.

'What?' Charlie croaked in the handset. He had sandwiched it between his ear and the pillow. I knew that move. No doubt he'd soon be snoring and drooling all over his phone while Chantelle obliviously prattled on.

Except... perhaps not?

Charlie sat bolt upright, snatched up the phone and held it to his ear. 'Say that again?'

Even I was interested, and I was never interested.

'What do you mean? Slow down!' Charlie snapped at her. I dragged myself into a sitting position and forced my eyes to focus through the dark, taking in the sharp edge of concern in his eyes which were illuminated by the phone screen. Something told me that this wasn't about a bad manicure when Charlie asked, 'What the hell made you think that was a good idea?'

'Chaz,' I hissed, slapping my hand against the duvet to catch his attention, 'Hey, what's going on?'

'Hold on,' he hissed at me. 'No, not you, Chan'. Okay, where are you?' There was a pause before he exploded incredulously, 'You think I care if you get a bit wet? This is your own fault, and you dragged them all out there with you!'

For one fleeting, ridiculous moment, an image of Beth flashed in my mind. Bedraggled, cold, possibly face down in a puddle on the expansive grounds while Chantelle just left her there and worried about her hair being ruined in the downpour. Not that I cared, of course. We'd been acquainted barely two days and, in that time, she'd made a thinly veiled death threat against me and made it abundantly clear that she'd rather make up excuses about studying than so much as sit beside me in class.

No, I didn't care a bit if she was stuck out in the rain. It was probably her own stupid fault, anyway.

'Chaz!' I snapped with renewed urgency. 'What's going on?'

He covered the phone with his hand. 'Chantelle dragged her friends off to the lake for some stupid reason. I don't know. You know how she gets when she's hysterical.'

'When isn't she hysterical?' I asked before I could stop myself.

Charlie's eyes narrowed. 'Anyway,' he continued far more gravely than I'd ever heard, 'she said that they're all too worried to go back in the rain on their own and they want me to go help them. Sounds like she made Jenny go out there, too. She'll be sick to death if she stays out in this rain. You saw her, she's far more delicate than the rest of Chantelle's friends.'

My friend was seeking reassurance that the girl he was so suddenly smitten with – yes, smitten, like a puppy meeting their new owner for the first time – was most likely unharmed and safely sheltered from the rain in one of the school's outbuildings. I couldn't offer said reassurance. Jenny seemed like a sensible girl, but Chantelle wasn't. She wouldn't have found them an unlocked building to crawl into until the rain stopped, nor would she have taken a single umbrella or decent coat. They were probably all in impractical designer outfits, freezing to the bone.