Chaos at Prescott High

by Stunich, C. M.

  “I’ll make sure to deliver that message,” Aaron tells me, watching me for a moment before he steps out of the bathroom and closes the door behind him. My heart flip-flops strangely as I imagine him smiling on the other side of that door, happy to have his girlfriend back, happy to be a part of her life in the most intimate way possible.

  Girlfriend … I still need to unpack that word.

  After all, can I really be Vic’s fiancée and Aaron’s girlfriend and Hael’s … something, all in the same breath?

  Once I get out of the shower and put my cup in—it’s the disposable kind you can still have sex with, so I’m happy about that—I wrap a towel around myself and head back to Aaron’s room to get dressed. I slept alone in there last night, but something about that felt off.

  There’s no reason for me to sleep alone, not anymore. Aaron might’ve been in the woods, but Vic was at the house.

  I check on the girls and find them immersed in a fierce game of Mario Kart together. I feel a bit like an asshole; I haven’t been giving Heather the attention she deserves. Let’s just get through this, and we can be together, I promise her. But I don’t interrupt their game to tell her that. Children are perceptive as hell. If I start acting weird and hugging her, kissing her forehead, murmuring strange shit, she’s going to know something is wrong.

  She knew on that awful day, when I found Pen. Heather knew before she knew, you know what I mean? I remember her starting to scream, throwing her body against my arms, straining for the stairs.

  Penelope was already gone by then, loaded into a bag that looks an awful lot like the tarps we’ve been using, transported away to Neil’s friend at the morgue. Buried. Drowning in dirt. Rotting. My stomach clenches with cramps, and I turn away sharply, closing the door to the girls’ bedroom.

  Heather and I are staying here enough. Maybe I should get her like, a cot or something? Would that be better than an air mattress?

  “Good morning,” Callum says in that husky voice of his, standing by the table when I come downstairs. There’s a heap of chocolate in the center of it, a literal freaking mound. I narrow my eyes, and he grins back at me. “We heard. Congratulations on not being pregnant with Victor’s child.”

  “Shut your mouth, you smart-ass,” Vic says as he leans back on the sofa and crosses his ankles on the coffee table. He’s shirtless and wearing only pajama pants. Come to think of it, they’re all shirtless and wearing only pajama pants. Even Cal, in his usual sleeveless hoodie, has left the damn thing unbuttoned and gaping open to the point that I can’t even figure out why he’s still wearing it.

  They did this shit on purpose, I think, just because it makes me feel like they’re being spiteful so I can be spiteful back. In reality, I know we’re all just settling into a new normal.

  I am a part of Havoc; I am one of the guys.

  Except … with a vagina that they all want to fuck.

  Okay, maybe not Oscar, but the others.

  “Any news about …” I trail off, because there’s no point in saying it aloud when we all know what I’m talking about. Any news about Danny? Or Ivy? I feel nothing for the former, but there’s some shred of feeling deep down inside of me that aches for the latter. Ivy … she was snooty and full of herself, her essays in English last year were as bad as Kali’s, and she cheated at every game she ever played, but she wasn’t a terrible person. A misguided, gossipy little cunt, but that’s about it. She didn’t deserve to die for that.

  “Nothing,” Hael says with a groan, lying on his stomach on the small sofa. I grab a dark chocolate bar from the table and try to forget how stupidly cute it was for them to think of getting me candy. They’re not supposed to be cute; they play games with corpses. “There won’t be. If the Charter Crew is smart, they’ll just put Danny somewhere else.”

  I come around the end of the couch to look down at his face. Hael is pretty badly swollen still. Worse than that, he mentioned Brittany’s dad threatening rape charges. That’s not good.

  That makes sense, about Danny though. Of course Mitch isn’t going to call the cops with a body in the trunk of his car. It really wouldn’t look good for him. Question is: what are they going to do to us now that we’ve struck back? And so much worse than firebombing an old minivan.

  Havoc escalates things, but never unnecessarily. It’s just right, just the correct amount of menace to perfume the air with violence.

  “And the other?” I ask, trying to be cryptic. I feel like you can never really know who’s listening in.

  Callum starts stretching in front of the fireplace, just below the flickering screen of the TV. He glances my way, blond hair hanging into his eyes.

  “Likely, we won’t see news about her as a missing person for days. In any other regard, she shouldn’t make headlines either.” Cal curves his body over to touch his toe, and I admire the sinewy perfection of his muscles. Some guys get all bulked up, and turn into these stiff statues, strong but about as limber as the stone they’re made out of. Callum is bendy, and vibrant, and I want to know what would happen if we started dancing … and didn’t stop.

  I sit down on the chair between the two couches, figuring that’s the safest place for now. We might be fighting multiple wars on different fronts—real wars, ones with body counts—but there’s also an underlying current of male politics, testosterone, and romance. That’s the real clincher right there, the most dangerous thread in our tapestry of politics and intrigue.

  “What’s our plan for today?” I ask as Aaron pads over and hands me a plate with toast and scrambled eggs on it. The fuck is this twisted reality? I wonder, staring at my ex and feeling his sweaty chest beneath my fingertips, his hips thrusting between my thighs. My god. How far we’ve all come.

  I guess, when I spent every day last summer debating on whether or not to call Havoc, that was a smart choice. This isn’t the type of decision you make on the fly. No, you either feel it in your soul or you don’t.

  Because I knew what price they’d give me, all along. I knew. In my heart, I knew.

  I take a bite of my eggs and do my best to ignore Oscar’s intense stare. He’s been looking at me more lately, ever since Halloween night. It’s annoying the shit out of me.

  “What’s on the agenda for today?” I ask, focusing on my breakfast and trying to ignore the violent clenching of my asshole uterus. Dead bodies, you say? Well, have some cramps on top of it, bitch. My lady parts are out to kill me.

  “Couple of things,” Vic says, like he’s debating the merits of the itinerary he has in his head. We all know he’s already decided; this bit is just for fun, to pretend like he might actually be human. “I was thinking we start off by paying your stepfather’s partner a visit.”

  My head perks up at that, and I turn to stare at Vic like he’s just suggested he perform his own circumcision.

  “You’re kidding me? You want to go talk to a cop about another cop? Do you have a death wish? Or perhaps just a dream of incarceration?”

  Victor ignores me to glance Oscar’s way.

  “You really think she can be of use to us?” Vic asks, and Oscar nods.

  “Neil Pence’s partner, Sara Young, is one of those save the world types. She thought she could make a difference by becoming a cop.” Oscar chuckles, like that’s one of the most ridiculous things he’s ever heard. “She wants to save the world. I figure, either I’m right about her and she’ll want to seek justice or, she’s as dirty as he is, in which case, she dies, too.”

  Dies.

  There’s that word again.

  It’d be pretty easy to think the Havoc Boys might just go down my list and start executing people. But killing folks has a tendency to draw attention. They like to inflict damage without leaving permanent marks, just like they did to me. Like they did to Donald. Or Principal Vaughn.

  But if anyone were going to die, they had to know it was going to be him.

  “You want to tell her about Neil and … what? Wait for her to go vigilante? To report him through
official means?” I look up from my eggs and find that Hael’s fallen asleep again. Oscar glances his way, but he doesn’t seem to mind. Guess even that heartless asswipe figures the other boys need their sleep after a night of unburying, and then re-burying, bodies.

  “You’re not going to tell her anything just yet. You’re just going to talk to her.” Oscar leans back into the couch, watching me with empty gray eyes and giving me the chills. He’s gearing up to something; I just have no idea what, exactly, that is. “Confide in her, make her your friend. You can handle that, can’t you, Bernie?” Oscar asks, but then, he doesn’t get to hear my answer because Victor’s phone rings. He glances at the screen, still casually slumped into the old sofa.

  “Mitch,” he purrs, and I wish I could truly describe the way Vic smiles then. There are demons there, twisting up the edges of his lips. It isn’t a natural or normal smile and yet, my blood pressure spikes as soon as I see that malicious expression spread across his handsome face. It’s pure … I don’t want to say evil, because Victor is far from evil. Real evil, I’ve seen that, in the Thing’s face, in Eric’s bleeding scowl, in Kali’s pink painted sneers. But it’s something dark and wicked, something that glitters like the edge of a bloodstained blade. By the time he answers with a curt “Yeah”, I’m soaking wet.

  “You sociopathic nightmare!” Mitch screams, now on speakerphone. Hael startles awake, his hand snaking underneath the cushion, likely to grab a weapon of some sort. He cracks one brown eye to watch Vic set the phone down on the coffee table. Victor leans forward, putting his elbows on his knees and clasping his hands together in front of him. “We’ve been fucking with you until now. You’ve just opened the floodgates, motherfucker.”

  “What on earth are you talking about?” Victor asks, completely deadpan. His entire stance though, that speaks to violence. I take a bite of my eggs to hide the involuntary shiver that passes through me.

  “You think I wouldn’t notice the goddamn corpse you put in my trunk? Are you nuts? You’re lucky I’ve got Kyler and Timmy on a short leash or you’d already be dead, motherfucker.”

  “Try a different word. You’ve used motherfucker twice,” Vic says, and I hear the crash of something on the other end of the line. Mitch is clearly in a mood. Maybe he should’ve thought about what could happen when he decided to challenge Havoc? “And slow down. A corpse? What corpse? Should I notify the police?”

  “You are going to bleed for this. I’m going to hold your girl down and fuck her until she begs me to end her life. You hear me, Victor?” Mitch is panting and cursing; I hear voices in the background but they’re too faint to make out.

  Vic’s eyes narrow, and his face darkens into something truly terrifying. I hear Mitch’s words, but they pass over me like a light breeze. How many times have men threatened to rape me? More than I can count. I’m not afraid of Mitch Charter.

  “If you speak about my girl like that again, I will drown your mother in her bathtub. Do you understand me?” Vic’s as calm as could be, his eyes on the phone, his shoulders tense. I have no doubt in my mind that he’s telling the truth.

  “And if you think we’re done avenging Kali’s face, you’re seriously deluded. Tell Bernadette her stepdad says—”

  Victor hangs up on Mitch and then promptly blocks him.

  Wow. Dismissive. I love it.

  “My stepdad says … what?” I ask, feeling my stomach hollow out. If Mitch is somehow working with the Thing, that won’t go well for us.

  “Irrelevant,” Vic says, waving his hand at me. “We have to deal with the Charter Crew, and we have to deal with your stepdad. It’s all one in the same to me.” He stands up from the couch, and I find my eyes drawn down the muscular length of his body. He’s built like a dark god, and I’m here to worship on my knees. Shit, fuck, goddamn it …

  I frown.

  “Everyone get up and get dressed,” Oscar says, making Hael groan. Aaron is perched on the edge of the couch, finishing his breakfast. He takes my empty plate from me before heading into the kitchen. “We have a lot to get done this weekend.”

  “Like moving more bodies?” I quip as Cal finishes his stretches and stands up, arching his arms above his head with a yawn.

  “Better,” Oscar says, glancing over at me with a smile that’s as sharp as a garrote, wrapping around my neck and sucking the air from my lungs. “We’re going to look at a wedding venue.”

  Sara Young is a pretty young blond who lives in a pretty yellow house on a pretty little street.

  I stand at the end of her driveway, staring at the bright, red color of her front door. I’m not a fan of this plan, not at all. I don’t trust the cops. But … I do trust Havoc. Even though I shouldn’t. Even though their secrets are buried as deep as the bodies in the woods.

  The video.

  Vic’s confession about my price.

  The truth about the incident with Kali.

  Yet, here I am, walking up to Sara’s front door in a crisp linen summer dress that I watched Callum pinch from Nordstrom. He even had a tool tucked away in his backpack that he used to remove the security tag. Impressive.

  I feel like a fraud in it.

  Taking a deep breath, I lift the tattooed knuckles of my left hand up and knock softly.

  It takes Sara a minute to show up. She answers the door with her hair wrapped in a towel … but her hand on her gun.

  As soon as she sees me, she relaxes … and then spots the tattoos on my hand and tenses up again.

  “Can I help you?” she asks, and I do my best to smile. The expression feels forced, like it’s stretching my lips in an unnatural way. I don’t even know what it means to smile anymore.

  “Maybe. I’m Bernadette Blackbird, Neil’s stepdaughter.” I watch the information wash over her. The fingers on her gun relax and she pulls the towel from her hair. I wonder if Neil is supposed to be picking her up soon in the cruiser; she’s already dressed in her uniform.

  “Bernadette,” she says, like the name is familiar enough. Sara’s face is so little, her features petite and delicate. I have a hard time believing she commands authority in cold-hard criminal types. “Yes, it’s nice to finally meet you.” Her eyes flick to my knuckles again, and I realize then that Oscar wasn’t exaggerating when he called her a save the world type. She’s one of those black-and-white, good-versus-evil hero types.

  And those types … they are dangerous as fuck. Their morality is the most important thing to them. They only think they know what justice means. Sara Young here probably thinks pedophiles like Neil deserve life in prison … with three hot meals a day, unlimited access to HBO, and feather pillows in their cells. Because, like, that’s humane.

  I frown, even though I know I’m supposed to be playing a part here. The thing is, Sara is even worse than I thought. She’s seen my tattoo; she already knows I’m a gangbanger. I may as well be wearing an orange jumpsuit in her mind.

  “Sara Young,” she says, trying her best to smile. I mean, I’m still a teenage girl, so her conflicted inner sense of justice is struggling to make my presence make sense. “As glad as I am to have finally met you, may I ask what you’re doing at my house?”

  “The …” Don’t say the Thing, not outright. “My stepdad’s driven us past your house and pointed it out once or twice.” I shrug my shoulders. It’s a lie, a pretty terrible one, if I’m being honest with myself, but it doesn’t matter. That part of this interaction is irrelevant, as Vic might say. “I know it’s weird for me to just show up on your doorstep, but I don’t have your number or anything and I thought …”

  I try to remember what the old Bernadette used to believe. Oh, that’s right. People in positions of authority are there to help. Report bad things. Be honest. Ask for assistance when you need it. I mean, it’s laughable to me now, but I used to believe those things with my whole heart.

  “I thought you might be able to help me,” I say, making sure I maintain eye contact with her. She has soft brown eyes, like those of a baby deer. Jesus Ch
rist, what am I doing here? At best, I’m going to get Sara Young killed. At worst, she might end up hunting the Havoc Boys down as a part of some justice warrior plot.

  Sara frowns, but only a little. Unlike me, it seems as if she’s used to smiling. She’s young—I’d peg her in her late twenties—but she has little marks on her face from smiling too much. Looking at her is like shoving an entire stick of cotton candy down a parched throat. I’m choking on sugar and sweetness; it’s basically poison to me.

  I crack my knuckles in the awkward silence and her eyes find my HAVOC tattoo again.

  Something shifts in her expression, a flood of hormones that I liken to … empathy?

  Oh.

  Oooooh.

  She thinks I’m here because I want to leave the gang, I bet. I think about Ms. Keating and the soft sympathy in her face when she told me I had options, that she used to be in a gang herself once upon a time.

  “Do you want to come in, Bernadette?” she asks me. “Neil should be here soon. The three of us could sit down before our shift—”

  I cut her off by raising both hands and taking a step back. This time, I don’t have to fake the revulsion in my face at the mention of my stepfather.

  “No, I … I don’t want him to know I was here,” I start, and Sara pauses a moment before nodding briefly. She’s probably making up some story in her mind, where I’m too afraid to talk to my ‘father’ or some shit. In reality, he’s the monster I hate most.

  Sara combs her blond hair over her shoulder with her fingers as she waits for me to continue.

  “How can I help, Bernadette?” she asks after a moment, when I just stand there in that stupid white dress, wondering if my cup’s going to overflow and I’m going to bleed all over it. I glance to the right, down the row of fifties bungalows with their American flags waving in the wind. There are no trees left in this neighborhood. Over the years, the homeowners have cut them down, one by one. I don’t think it was intentional, but the look of it is … austere, at best.

  I turn back to Sara.