Dirty Little Secrets

Prologue

Flashing lights, perfect lawns, picket fences, fancy Italian cars and ironed Capri pants. Designer purses, ball gowns, debauchery, and gossip.

If my town, Leighton Fields, was a book or movie, that would most probably be the synopsis. Something depicting rumors and casserole-baking mothers and suits and ties and leather briefcases. Your average, rich town filled with strip malls and short skirts and affairs.

It’s all very sickeningly cliché, if you ask me. 

Of course, when you’re always vying for a town’s votes or the president of the bridge club, previously sanitized hands become dirty, and Leighton Fields melts into a very friendly catfight filled with fake truces, saccharine smiles and lies, lies, lies.

Of course, I thrive on lies, the way a cop feeds on donuts. Really, I love them. 

Which is why there’s not much that goes on in my postcard-perfect town that I, Camila Stryker, don’t know about.

I’m used to blackmailing people, making deals and manipulating my way to the top of the food chain.

Ever since I was old enough to know how potentially harmful Mayor Quagmire’s affair with the housekeeper, Liza, was, I’ve pretty much ruled this town.

And I’m not afraid to get my hands a little dirty—for a price, of course.

Really, I’ll do anything for you. It’s a fair game. You want SAT cheats? Consider them downloaded.

You need that pesky little lawsuit to disappear? Why didn’t you call me earlier? I’m already flying out my dad’s lawyer from San Francisco.

Need a date to prom? A little desperate, but I’ll bite. I’ll even make it a cheerleader. Hint: Buy the corsage in red.

But, of course, all dirty deeds come at a price, and, in a town like Leighton Fields, nothing ever comes cheap.

What’s my price, you ask?

Secrets. And I mean juicy ones.

I don’t care that you wet the bed until you were nine.

Do I look like I care about that time you accidentally sent a love confession to your geeky biology partner?

Now, if that geeky biology partner were to reciprocate those feelings and try to woo you with sonnets and love poems, then I’d be interested. After all, a piece of dirt is a piece of dirt, right? He may come in handy one day.

But when you’ve got a dangerously unhinged best friend, a totally cute new guy has turned up at your town, and your parents are three bad words away from a divorce, sometimes you have to keep nasty secrets of your own.

But now someone’s fighting back 

Letters, texts, pranks; you name it, this person (people, possibly), are determined to drop me down from my rightful place as Queen.

What they should learn, though, is that there is nothing I do better than revenge.

Play with fire, and you get burned.

And, honey, you better believe I brought matches.

 Get ready, ladies.

Because things are heating up.

And I’m already feeling hot.