Chaos at Prescott High

by Stunich, C. M.

  “Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” I shout after him, struggling to get up. My body feels heavy, used, but in the best possible way. Whatever that just was, I want more. “You can’t leave me to clean this up by myself!”

  Oscar acts like he can’t hear me, pounding up the steps and slamming the bathroom door behind him. My cheeks burn as I get up and pad to the downstairs bathroom, wiping myself down, and then leaning my palms on the countertop to look at my reflection in the mirror.

  “God, that was weird,” I murmur to myself, but I can’t deny that it was incredible, too.

  The question here is: what the hell is Oscar so freaked out about?

  I decide I don’t care. But I am pissed. Royally fucking pissed.

  He’s going to owe me for this, big time.

  Only a total dick fucks a girl on her period and then doesn’t help clean up. I spend another hour scrubbing the couch cushions before Vic finally comes out of his room to stare at me.

  “Jesus,” he murmurs, lighting up a cigarette before heading outside the sliding glass door to smoke.

  “Thanks for the help,” I snap out through gritted teeth. That gets his attention, and he comes back in to look at me, leaning his big body against the inside of the sliding glass door.

  “If you think I’m cleaning up a mess you made while fucking another guy, then you’ve seriously missed the boat on my personality. Who do you think I am, Bernadette?” I ignore Vic, but I know he’s right. Doesn’t rankle any less. “By the way, isn’t it like Thanksgiving next week or some shit?”

  I pause in my scrubbing and then glance back at him in surprise.

  Oh. Crap. It is, isn’t it? Well, in like a week and a half or something.

  We’ve been so busy this month that I spaced it completely.

  Victor doesn’t want me to go home anymore. I agree with that, but it also means that the danger level is amping up. My mother isn’t going to take this lying down. The Thing most definitely won’t. He loves to pick at me from across a dinner table—even more so on holidays. He laps my pain and anger up like a lizard sticking its long tongue to a fly.

  “It’s on the twenty-eighth,” I say, but I don’t really care. It’s an okay holiday, and I get the modern meaning of it, but there’s also just a wee bit of genocide in there, too. Heather, though, she might get upset if we don’t do anything at all. I put my forehead on my arm, the fingers of my right hand still curled around the sponge.

  I cannot believe I had sex with Oscar Montauk this morning.

  At this point, I’ve screwed every Havoc Boy but for Callum. I’m sure we’ll get there soon, I think, and then sigh. Not because I don’t want to see what Cal might be like in bed, but because I hate holidays and all their stupid rituals.

  “The girls will want to do something,” I say as Vic comes over to sit in the armchair on my left. I lay my cheek against my arm and turn my face to look at him. He stares at me with equal parts possessiveness and tender adoration. I’m not sure he’s even aware of the latter bit. “But I’m not sure I have the energy.”

  Victor nods, sweeping his palm over his purple-dark hair. He doesn’t like me sleeping in Aaron’s bed, but I keep doing it anyway because I have a feeling that after the wedding, I’ll rarely be out of Vic’s wicked fingers.

  “Hael can make tacos with that ground turkey meat shit you like. How does that sound?” Vic lights up a joint, the smoke drifting toward the open sliding door. “Gobble motherfucking gobble.”

  I smile, but I don’t have the energy to laugh.

  “Tacos and Havoc Boys. This might be my most exciting Thanksgiving yet.” I sit up and plop the sponge into the bucket of pinkish water. Victor and I don’t talk about me screwing the other guys, not really. It’s implied that I stay within Havoc. I’m dead certain that if I fucked a guy outside of this circle, he would kill him, and I would most certainly suffer.

  Not saying our relationship is healthy or hashtag-goals or anything like that, but it is what it is.

  And I revel in it.

  “The day after, can we get a Christmas tree?” I ask, and Victor gives me a weird look as I push to my feet.

  “You’re one of those people, huh? A sentimental asshole with a need for dead pine trees and lights.”

  I glare at him as I climb to my feet, swiping a hand across my forehead. When I reach out for the joint, he passes it my way and then yanks me into his lap. Victor’s lips brush my ear, and my entire body flashes white-hot before relaxing into a desperate sort of cool, like a dip in a pool after getting a sunburn.

  “Why do you have to mess with me like this?” he continues, and it takes me a second to realize he’s not talking about the Christmas tree. No, he’s talking about Oscar. “You know how I feel when I see you with another man, don’t you?”

  “Grateful for a night off?” I joke, and his hold tightens on me. I pretend not to notice, smoking the joint with two, tattooed fingers. The A and the V from my Havoc tattoo stare back at me.

  “Murderous,” he tells me, and then he takes the joint back and pushes me off of his lap just as Callum comes down the stairs.

  “Off to the studio?” I ask, lifting the bucket. Cal shakes his head, coming over to take the bucket from me. I almost don’t let him. After all, he doesn’t know what the pinkish water in it means, but then I decide to just enjoy not having to dump the heavy thing in the sink.

  “Not today,” he tells me, rinsing the bucket with the detachable sprayer on the sink. He looks ridiculously comfortable cleaning up blood. Not his first time at the rodeo, am I right? “I was going to climb onto the roof and watch the sun rise.”

  I stare at him as goose bumps prickle across my arms. I’m wearing his hoodie again, drowning in fabric and the fresh smell of talc and laundry soap. Callum turns around and leans his ass against the sink. His hood is down, but he’s wearing a sweatshirt similar to mine, tucking his hands into the front pocket.

  “My grandmother and I used to do that, every Sunday morning.” He shrugs, like it’s no big deal. It is. It’s huge. I focus on his blue eyes and try not to get lost in the vibrancy of them, but it’s impossible, like falling into the ocean during a storm and praying that you don’t drown. “When she could still get around well-enough to do it, that is.” He ponders on that for a moment. “I might go home in a bit to check on her.”

  Obviously, I knew each of the boys had a family and a backstory and all that crap, but I guess I’m just as much a narcissist as the next asshole because I never really let myself think about that. To me, they were always just … mine. My boys. My property. I would piss on them if I could.

  All of these revelations, though, they’re rocking me.

  Vic has a socialite for a mother and a drunk for a father; Hael’s dad is a murderer and his mom is broken; Callum only has a grandmother to his name. Of course, I know all about Aaron, but when it comes to Oscar? He’s an enigma. I wouldn’t know if he lived with snakes in a wild tangle in the woods.

  “Do you mind if I join you on the roof?” I ask, feeling my heart stutter a bit. The animal side of me says, Bernie, you fucked four of your boys; get that last one. But I need some time to process what happened with Oscar, what’s happening with me.

  My sexuality is opening like a dark lotus inside of me, and I need to at least say hi to her before I test her limits again.

  Callum smiles at me, tilting his head just slightly to the side. The diffused gray of early morning light colors his hair, but all it does is turn it silver. It can’t diminish the shine of it.

  “Of course you can,” he tells me, his voice as rough and beautiful as always, a tumble of dead and dark things that makes the wicked part of me happy in ways I can’t explain. His scars are silver, too, shiny in the strange light, marks of his past stamped into his skin much like his tattoos. As usual, the ballerina on his arm crouches over her legs and weeps, eternally broken. Until Callum is dead and rotting, she will always cry.

  Cal pushes up off of the sink and le
ads the way upstairs, taking me into the room with the bunk beds. Oscar and Hael are still sleeping. The latter looks cute with his red hair all mussed up, one arm thrown across his forehead. The former … I climb on his bed and kick him as hard as I can, slamming the heel of my foot down on his chest.

  The piece of shit catches me before I can make contact, opening his eyes and throwing me into a vivid memory of last night. His inked body above me. Blood hot between my thighs. Gray eyes watching, always watching.

  I jerk my foot away from him and stumble off the edge of the bed and into Cal. He catches me easily, his fingers making me ache in all the places they touch. He sets me upright, and I flip Oscar off. It’s not my most distinguished moment, but I can’t help it. I’m annoyed. I’ve never had sex on my period before, especially not without a cup in. It was an intimate moment; it smacked of vulnerability.

  And I just had to take that plunge with Oscar Montauk of all people.

  “Is there a problem, Bernadette?” he asks, turning toward the wall. I notice he gets the queen-sized bed while Callum and Hael share the bunks. It’d be easy to see whose bed was whose, even without their presence. Oscar has silken gray sheets, and a matching comforter. He has one pillow, and a cup of water on the nightstand beside his glasses. Hael, on the other hand, sleeps in a tangle of mismatched children’s sheets with cartoon patterns on them. He also has a single pillow, but it’s not all perfect like Oscar’s. Instead, it’s folded up and ratty at the edges. Callum’s bunk is the top one, decorated with a blue threadbare blanket, a sleeveless hoodie draped over the safety railing.

  “A problem?” I ask, peering at him like the nutcase he is. “We just had sex, you half-wit fucker. You’re not going to write me out of my own story.” Oscar pretends not to hear me, but the muscles in his back tense up. That’s enough for me, knowing I’ve rankled him in some way.

  I refocus on Callum, taking his hand as he helps me out the window and onto the gentle pitch of the roof. We’re still holding hands as he walks me around to face the east side of the house and the rising orange ball of the sun.

  We sit down, side by side, our arms pressed close together.

  For a while, neither of us says a damn thing.

  “You know,” he starts, removing a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of his hoodie and lighting one up before offering it to me; I take it. “When I told you, at the dance studio, that we do whatever is best for Havoc …” Callum trails off, slipping another cigarette between his fairy-tale lips and lighting up. It’s odd, to see such a beautiful boy with smoke billowing from his mouth. That mouth, it should be kissing your forehead, telling you everything is okay, saying I love you. That’s how Callum was built from birth, to be someone special. He still is, but his energy now is dark and muddled; the only thing he’s certain of—besides the rising sun—is that pain is a constant.

  “What about that?” I ask, edging closer to him. By all rights, I should move further away. But each day … no, no, each minute, each second that I spend with the Havoc Boys, the more I’m drawn into the deep, dark well from which they call came.

  We’re forged from the same primal soul, me and these boys.

  I take a drag on my cigarette, lifting a brow as Cal pulls a Pepsi out of his hoodie pocket. He cracks the top and takes a sip. This, too, he offers me, and I accept, just so I can press my lips to the same spot he did. An indirect kiss. My mouth tingles as I hand the can back.

  “You know that I meant you, too, right?” he asks, still staring into the sun. It’s getting a bit bright for me, so I glance away, but Callum manages to hold its fiery stare for much longer. “Because you’re a part of Havoc. It might not have been official until recently, but it was always true.”

  I say nothing, staring down at the shorts I stole from Aaron’s dresser. I’m addicted to wearing his clothes apparently. Even when I know I have my own things in a duffel bag on the floor, I want something of his. Paired with Cal’s hoodie, I feel safer than I ever have in my entire goddamn life.

  Yes, Havoc kills people, but they kill people for me. To protect me. To protect my sister.

  “Somehow,” I start, smoking my cigarette with no small amount of pleasure. Sure, it might kill me one day, but the slow murder of nicotine is delicious. Sorry, but it’s true. Just … don’t start. That’s what I always tell Heather. Don’t start. Don’t get mixed up in something that could kill you. Don’t fall in love with five boys on an elementary school playground. “I knew that was what you meant.”

  Callum chuckles, and I’m just so done with trying to find metaphors to describe his perfectly imperfect voice that I lean over and kiss him. It’s a sloppy, weird kiss, and it makes me feel my age, but it also makes my mouth sparkle and glitter.

  Jesus.

  Flushing, I turn back to the sunrise. Doesn’t mean I miss Cal’s saucy smile out of the corner of my eye. He reaches up to rub a hand over the scars on his neck.

  “You should know, we thought about killing your stepdad years ago, even before we found the video.” Callum says that as easily as one might mention how they like their eggs for breakfast. I stare at him, but he just smokes his cigarette and sips his Pepsi, taking his time before he answers me. “Hael tried to do it for real once, but back then, we had nothing. We were nothing.” Cal snickers, eyes crinkling up with a genuine sense of emotion. “We became something for you, Bernadette. Havoc is a blade; wield it.”

  “Hael tried to … kill Neil?” I clarify, blinking at him. Cal nods, his blond hair turning gold in the light of the rising sun. Even though mornings make me sad—because they always remind me of Pen and the way she used to say rise and shine when she’d wake me up—I can at least take a moment to say this is shaping up to be one of my bests. I’m here, and not with Pamela and the Thing. I’m here with Callum freaking Park.

  “Not my story to tell,” Cal explains, glancing my way. His eyes are as blue as the sky behind his head. My breath catches, and I find myself looking away. I can’t believe I screwed Oscar before Callum. What a dick move. In any hand, in any game, Callum beats Oscar. “You should ask him though; bet he’d love to tell it.” I think about that, about Hael Harbin facing off against Neil Pence for me. My lips twitch against the beginnings of a smile. “We might’ve let Hael do it—helped him do it, actually—but the world was stacked against us.” Cal keeps watching me, like he’s trying to gauge my reaction. “We didn’t want Neil’s murder pinned on you. That, and someone would have to go to jail. That would mean never seeing you again. We were all too selfish to let you go.” Cal stops smoking, ashes his cigarette on the brown roof tiles, and then flicks the butt into the netherworld. “I won’t make that same mistake again, Bernie.” He looks out toward the other suburban houses that surround Aaron’s, their backyards all butt-fucked up against each other. Not that I can complain. Still better than the sandbox-sized dump they call a backyard that Pamela has back in South Prescott.

  “Please don’t talk like that,” I say as he laughs at me, giving my scrunched up face a curious onceover with that beautiful blue gaze of his. Birds twitter in the trees around us, singing songs that are more cheerful than any living creature has a right to be. “If I were reading a book, I’d peg you as the sacrificial type, the first one to die.”

  “Foreshadowing?” Cal jokes, but it’s not funny to me. I don’t want any heroic bullshit moves ruining what we’re building here. And what, exactly, are we building here, Bernie? I ask myself, but I’m not ready to answer that question, so I don’t bother.

  “We haven’t slept together yet, so … it’d make narrative sense for you to be killed off.” My voice cracks a bit on the words because the thought of losing a Havoc Boy when I’ve only just gotten them … that kills me.

  “Yet,” Cal purrs in his husky voice, expelling the sunlight from my aura and replacing it with star-studded darkness. I shimmy even closer to him. “There’s no rush, Bernadette. Just enjoy yourself. I don’t date, and I haven’t slept with anyone since school started.” He keep
s smiling, but his eyes are far away and full of wicked whimsy.

  “Victor acts like there’s a rush,” I say, wondering if Oscar or Hael is listening in on our conversation. They can if they want; I don’t give a shit. The shower was on when I came up the stairs, so I figure Aaron is naked, and wet, and his soapy hands are trailing down his inked body …

  “There isn’t,” Cal tells me, voice firm and maybe just a little bit scary. “Vic is good at what he does. He created Havoc; he owns it. He’s fair, and he’s smart, and his fuse is long, but he’s also an asshole. Don’t listen to him. Sooner or later, he’ll understand.”

  “Understand what?” I ask, but really, I don’t need Callum to answer me. We both know what he means. Havoc Girl. Not Vic’s girl, not even if I heat up on the inside every single friggin’ time he says it.

  “Do we need a turkey for Thanksgiving?” Callum asks after a long pause. He lights up another cigarette and holds it between two fingers, his nails painted blue like always. “My grandma probably has one in her deep freezer. I could bring it over here after I check on her.”

  I wet my lips.

  I’m dying to ask about Cal’s grandma, about his homelife, what his bedroom looks like … but we’ve already had a tender moment up here, and my heart still feels a bit raw. That’s a subject for another time.

  “Won’t she need it?” I ask, but Callum shakes his head, flipping his hood up to cover his hair. Defense mechanism. I’m getting good at recognizing the boys’ little tics. Or … I always knew what those tics were, because I’ve stalked them like a creeper for half of my life.

  “She always makes me buy one for her, but she can’t cook it, and I’m no good with that shit.” He keeps smiling, even though there’s melancholy laced in those words. “It makes her happy though, when I bring one home. Maybe I should’ve made more of an effort to learn to cook?”

  “You mean, in your spare time, after all the free dance lessons for impoverished little girls, the murdering, the burying of bodies …”