The Bully Switch Read online

  The Bully Switch

  Mercedes Jade

  Published by Mercedes Jade, 2019.

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  THE BULLY SWITCH

  First edition. May 10, 2019.

  Copyright © 2019 Mercedes Jade.

  ISBN: 978-0463079102

  Written by Mercedes Jade.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  About This Book

  18+ Readers

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  Acknowledgement and endnotes

  Also By Mercedes Jade

  About the Author

  To everyone I wanted to bop on the nose for being mean. Be thankful I'm really short and guard your toes.

  About This Book

  “Who are you and what did you do with Jen?”

  They don’t know I’ve switched places with my sister yet. It’s all part of the plan. My appearance isn’t the only thing I’ll need to change to get vengeance. I’ll need to break every nice bone in my body if I’m going to get justice.

  Break them like they broke her.

  My name is Genevieve Taylor. I’m not a nice girl. That is my twin, Jen, the sweetheart with the heart of gold that she expresses in her art. Jen used to be fearless, diving her way to a university scholarship without the crippling fears of the sport that I had developed after an accident almost drowned me.

  My twin had been a star, shooting for the moon. I’m going to get it back for her.

  I have three names, a list of bullies that tried to bring my sister down. Chris Harrison, the ruthless business empire heir that said my sister could only pass art history on her knees. Liam Stone, my secret crush from summer camp that rejected me because his old money standards didn’t include girls with racy families like my sister and I. Lastly, there’s Jordan Walsh, the mysterious new boy that has a reputation as a scoundrel and a matching, dangerous smile.

  I know what I have to do. My weapons are prepared. A plan has been cleverly plotted with my sister. Only, I didn’t realize that it would all start with a kiss. Kisses.

  What will I do if the bullies turn their attention on capturing me when I’m trying to drive them away? Do I run, or do I stand up and risk losing my own heart?

  18+ Readers

  This is a reverse harem bully romance. It contains adult situations, including intimacy, violence and language that is intended for readers 18+. There is mention of bully behaviours, victimization and eating disorders.

  1

  Home smelled like apple pie and enchiladas.

  I inhaled the comforting scents like I could satisfy my hunger on air alone as I walked through the door to my dad’s house. It certainly felt like I had been starved without having anything more substantial during the cross-country flight and then the hurried car ride when I had shown up late in the airport after an hour delay on the tarmac. The hired driver was more worried about being behind for his next pick up than my comfort or even obeying traffic laws.

  I bit down on the last of my Nerds. The crunch and powdery sweet hit of sugar between my molars was even more addictive than the pink Crush pop I preferred over this pastel water pretender I had picked up at the airport.

  Sugar and calories were needed stat in an IV. What was cooking smelled like the perfect combination to give me new life. Thank goodness, I didn't have to do anything more athletic than participate in Christmas present unwrapping ‘speed’ contests with my sister and to wrestle with my father over the TV remote and ultimately the choice of what Netflix show we were going to binge tonight.

  A holiday food coma was sure to result from coming to the table with my eyes almost matched up to my empty stomach. I was going to eat until I got a little pouchy of soft belly satisfaction.

  Jen would make me work it off in the barn mucking stalls the next day anyway. My sister had gotten a new Arabian-Appaloosa horse at the beginning of the school semester. For the first two weeks, all I had heard in our phone conversations had regarded Mr. Spot in the Darkness.

  That was his registered name. Jen had lovingly called him Sinbad and I had decided Sin was as good a name as any for the dark bay with an almost hidden spot on his left, rear hindquarters. He sounded like quite the handful, full of spunk and power. My sister was a good rider, almost as enthusiastic about it as me. Jen preferred dressage and I jumped.

  The sooner I found said sister and ate something from the kitchen, the quicker I could meet up with Sin. The new horsey smell hopefully had worn off enough that Jen would let me ride him around the ring. It had been so long since I rode.

  “What’s cooking? Is that a bun in your oven J-Lo?” I called out to my sister as I rounded the corner of the long hallway leading from the front foyer to get to the rear kitchen. Only she could be cooking enchiladas. Dad burned everything, and his housekeeper made plain, British food. It was boiled or parboiled.

  The house was huge, built big and tall like my dad and a showpiece for our family’s wealth that had embarrassed me when I was younger. Horseman, especially those in racing, liked flash and power.

  It probably was why my modest mom had left him, preferring a quiet dignity and keeping her ‘old money’ wealth close to her chest. I had adapted my mom’s reserved stance since I lived with her most of the time after the twin-split divorce that allowed our parents to each have the majority custody of one child and live further apart than the usual partial custody agreement.

  “Which boy was it, Genevieve? We’ll have him tarred, feathered and dragged behind Jack-in-the-Box.”

  My dad was bent over in front of the oven, hauling something not burnt out using a tricky combination of paper towels and two big, silver salad tongs. He clearly was focused on the task, not even looking up to greet me as he asked which boy had gotten Jen pregnant after my joking comment, so he could carry out ranch justice with our slow-as-molasses donkey.

  Except this wasn’t an actual ranch and my father was more a high-priced accountant type than a cowboy. He was good at making money, buying racehorses and picking the right trainers to do everything else.

  “Dad let me get it. Put it down on the oven door. I’ll get the oven mitts,” I shouted, hoping he hadn’t burned himself yet. “Where’s Dorothy?” I asked as I pulled the towel drawer open beside the kitchen sink, got the mitts and hurried over to the oven.

  “We have a new housekeeper,” he said, straightening up and using his paper towels to wipe the sweat from his brow. “She’s on vacation with her son for the winter break. This was left with instructions on how to warm it, but I don’t remember reading anything about oven mitts.”

  I rolled my eyes. That was like telling someone to turn the oven off when they were done cooking. Some things were meant to be understood and not stated. The new housekeeper must have been so new that she didn’t realize the Herculean task it would be for my dad to warm up a prepared dinner.

  “Jen could have done this,” I told my dad as I hefted the generous casserole dish of baked enchiladas on top of the stove. I went back into the oven and retrieved the apple pie that smelled heavenly and was nicely browned around the edges with a sprinkling of coarse sugar decorating the lattice top. The new housekeeper was fast becoming my favourite even if it seemed I wouldn’t be meeting her during my winter break since she was on vacation.

  “Your sister said she wasn’t hungry,” my dad said as I took the oven mitts off and returned them to their drawer.

  My stomach was growling. “What? This smells amazing!” I said.


  “Can you go get her and we’ll see if Ms. Walsh’s pie can tempt her picky palate?” my dad asked. “I’ll set the table,” he offered.

  Jen inhaled her food so fast most of the time, I doubted she even tasted it. What pickiness was dad talking about?

  “Alright, but take your Rolex off, and don’t put it in your pants pocket, or you’ll forget it and end up washing away a fortune again,” I said, pulling out a knife and a serving spatula so he could put some food on his plate if he got impatient waiting for us to wash up at the barn before dinner.

  “Are you accusing me of laundering money?” my dad asked with mock seriousness.

  I laughed and put down the utensils on the stovetop for him in easy reach. “Of course not, dad. When have you ever done a load of laundry around here?”

  “Hey, I just cooked your dinner,” he said, faking offence this time.

  “Heated. In the future, there will be robots to replace your cooking skills. The prototype microwaves are already out,” I retorted.

  “Oh, science fiction. Did you get that from one of your books?” he asked, taking his Rolex off like I had suggested and placing it on the kitchen countertop. It was far enough from the sink edge that I fought back the urge to move it.

  “I’m starving. Let me get Jen so we can pig out. It was a long flight,” I said.

  “Okay, but I’m setting us up in front of the TV and I get to pick what we watch while eating. None of your horror films until thirty minutes after eating.”

  “That’s a swimming rule and it’s not really a rule,” I said, but I brought my hand up to my forehead and saluted my dad. “Makes more sense when it comes to eating and watching something gory,” I admitted.

  “Ugh, even the word,” my dad complained.

  “What, gory?” I said.

  “Retrieve your clone so we may discuss more of these science fiction ideas of yours instead of these violent terms,” my dad replied.

  I turned to walk out the back sliding doors so I could take the shortcut to the barn.

  “Hey, she’s not at the barn,” my dad said.

  I turned back around. “She’s not in here cooking, not at the barn. Where could she be?” I said.

  My sister could move her bed in the barn she was there so often, and baking cookies and tarts were one of her favourite pastimes, which I wholly supported while I was here. I loved the mock Cinnabons that Jen made.

  “She’s in her room,” my dad answered, flicking his eyes up toward the big, curved staircase that served as a focal point front the foyer. It was a double staircase, a circle with a huge chandelier, like something out of Gone with the Wind in plantation style.

  Again, we didn’t live on a plantation or a ranch, but that kind of detail wouldn’t stop my dad from building something as grand as his double, curved staircase. To be honest, it was one of my favourite parts of the home, too. Jen and I used to race down both sides, usually riding the banisters down on our bottoms.

  I knocked on my sister's door before I walked in. She made a noise, but it wasn't anything I could make out through the thick wood of her door. The lights were off and the blinds were drawn so the room was almost pitch-black, the only light coming from behind me, through the door I had opened.

  “Close the door,” my sister's voice croaked at me. I had to look for her, finally finding her form underneath the blanket that moved as she rolled over and gave me her back, tucking the blanket over her head better.

  “Do you have a headache?” I asked.

  I closed the door and I sat down on the floor in front of it. I could barely see my hand in front of my face. Tipping my head back, I looked up at the glow-in-the-dark stars Jen and I had put on her ceiling when we were kids. I had been obsessed with astronomy and made sure that we did everything according to the books my dad bought me, keeping it all as scientifically accurate as possible. My sister had gone along with me and my idiosyncrasies, even letting me pull out a ruler and make sure everything was according to the scale I calculated.

  She had painted her ceiling around them, using glow-in-the-dark paint and her imagination. No books for reference, nothing scientific, just beauty and passion that were so like her. I hadn’t appreciated her skill as much as I enjoyed her talent now. It was so beautiful and relaxing, complex enough to take my mind to another world but everything fitting together in a way that blended in a hypnotic circle.

  If I hadn’t been so hungry, I might have fallen asleep sitting there beside her and looking up at the ceiling.

  “Go eat,” Jen said as my stomach grumbled. “I’m not hungry.”

  “Dad made supper. You’re in your bed and there’s still enough daylight outside to be riding Sin. What’s wrong? Dad’s ready to tar and feather some poor guy behind Jack-in-the-Box,” I said, ready to turn on the lights and confront Jen if I had to to get some straight answers.

  “It’s not just one guy,” she said, then I heard a sniffle.

  I got up and fumbled my way in the dark to her bed, knocking one of my knees on the side before I tumbled in to lie down on the outside. I wrapped my arms around her and hugged. “You’re scaring me, Jen. What’s wrong? You keep missing our phone calls for weeks and you barely text. This isn’t like you.”

  “I don’t want to be me,” she whispered.

  “Well, twins can change for a day. Come on, it can’t be that bad,” I said.

  She had always been so cheerful. I was the one that had gone through moody teenage years while Jen skipped to eighteen like adolescence was a smooth climb up instead of my bumpy, cliffhanger path. She sniffled again. I reached over and brushed my fingers soothingly through her hair, stopping short way too soon.

  “Jen, what happened to your hair?” I said.

  “Guess we can’t do the twins switch unless you want to get a bob,” she said.

  Jen had even longer hair than me before this cut. She loved it. I had gone short as a pixie once and grew it out when I stopped the dive team. Jen refused to cut her hair even if it would have made her dives better. She wouldn’t compromise on her shining glory, and she was willing to do the extra work it took to maintain her envious lengths. So why the cut now?

  “I’ll do it,” I said, convinced that something awful must have happened. If my sister needed a break, I would give it to her.

  “You’ll cut your hair? It’s blonde. I bleached it, too.”

  “Sure, sounds edgy,” I said, saying goodbye to my golden brown.

  Jen kept her looks more classic beauty than me. I had gotten a secret tattoo she didn’t know about of a fox on a whim when I cut the pixie. Mom had to sign for me to do it since I was only sixteen at the time and she had insisted it be on the inside of my ankle where I wouldn’t live to regret it later, as she predicted. I had been so surprised she let me do it that I agreed to the less conspicuous spot immediately.

  It also meant Jen and I could never be fully mistaken if someone knew where to look since I voluntarily tagged myself. My mom hadn't thought that was a good reason to get a tattoo. A lot of people didn’t realize the struggle to remain individual with twins. It was the little things, even the stuff we had to hide from each other to not hurt the other’s feelings, which is why Jen didn’t know about my tattoo yet.

  Dad knocked on the door. “Food’s getting cold. I have something scary from Netflix on pause. Come down so it’s safe for me to eat,” he said through the door.

  “We’re coming,” I said. “Give us five more minutes to finish up our girl talk.”

  Dad had been warned. He backed away from the door, yelling that he was going to start eating his slice of apple pie first. Knowing his sweet tooth, that might be half the pie.

  “Come on. Watch TV with us even if you’re not hungry. I just got here,” I said, sitting up.

  Jen sighed a big breath out. “Okay, turn on the lights,” she said.

  I got up and did just that with a teasing smile on my face. As I turned around to crack a joke about her being a slugabed since she got into
Stanson University for Art History with a diving scholarship to boot, hence not even trying to overcome her natural inertia with everything falling into place, I froze, and the smile slipped from my lips.

  “Wait five minutes,” I said, looking at the trashed bedroom the overhead light revealed and my sister’s tearstained face with mascara tracking down her cheeks. Her school swimsuit was cut up into jagged pieces. “I’m going to grab the other half of the pie from dad and then you’re going to tell me everything,” I said.

  My sister rolled out of bed with her usual coordination, got up and gave me a big, squeezing hug. “Thank you, Genie,” she whispered to me.

  “I’m going to make everything okay,” I promised.

  2

  “Hey hooker, looking to score at tonight’s game?”

  I slammed my sister’s locker shut. Jen had moved back with my mom to complete her last semester of high-school at my old school. The bullying she had revealed to me had driven her to the breaking point. They fucking broke her, my baby sister.

  I’ll tell you something about twins. It doesn’t matter how many there are in a set of multiples, one always comes first. I damn well was going to act like the older sister I was and serve these asswipes the tar-and-feathers justice my dad had wanted to met out, except I would use something a little more modern to smear them.

  “Do you know any Johns with big enough dicks to make me overlook them using their daddy’s wallets to buy a kiss?” I asked, turning to face the first victim of my reverse bullying.

  He stopped laughing. Oh, I bet my sweet sister didn’t snap back at their crass remarks. She was always looking for the good in people, and if it came to confrontation, she would take the high road.

  We were twins, and in this, we couldn’t be more different.