SNITCH. It was all over my face, and my face was all over the school. I tore one of the poster-sized pictures down and tossed it in the trash. It didn’t make any fucking sense. I’d seen plenty, but I didn’t exactly have a whole lot of names to go with the faces. Even if I had, I wouldn’t have told anybody. I might have been new to the neighborhood, but I’d learned enough to understand the dynamics. Snitches get stitches. I’d come real close to needing them, but nobody would tell me why. Hell, nobody was talking to me at all anymore—though they didn’t seem to have a problem with throwing shit at me.
Every day I would pull my pictures off the wall. By the next day, three more would have taken their place. Every day when I went home, there would be another one-word note on my doorstep. What had once been the highlight of my day had slowly morphed into just another kind of torture.
Beautiful princess, how can I hurt you? Let me count the ways. Aviation accident. Bloody brain-spattered BMW. Catastrophic car crash. Drag the river, she drowned! Either way there will be--
I sat on my bed and glared at it. “Really? Is this really fucking necessary? You couldn’t just leave me one threatening note, you had to drive me crazy piece by piece? How fucking theatric of you.”
I scowled, wondering if that was a clue all by itself. Whoever was behind this clearly had a flare for drama. If it was the same person who was printing my picture all over the place, they also had access to an art printer. There was one in the drama department and one for the school newspaper. That broadened the search, but not by much. The theater department wasn’t exactly huge. I could make a list and go down it one person at a time, corner each of them and see who I pissed off.
“And get nowhere, because that school is run on mob rules, and anybody with enough pull could have got access to those printers.” I flung myself back on my bed, overwhelmed by the pointlessness of it all.
They wouldn’t talk to me. Even if they did, the chances that my hunch was right were slim. It could be literally anybody in that school. I sat up suddenly as a thought struck like lightening in my chest. No. It couldn’t be literally anybody. It had to be someone who was closely connected to Blayze. Why else would he have cut me off like that? Someone close to him got it into their head that I snitched about something. Blayze was one of the most protective people I’d ever met—if someone he cared about was hurt by me, or even thought they were, he’d react strongly.
There was only one thing to do, and it was the one thing I should have done from the very beginning. I needed to talk to Blayze, outside of school, away from his friends and his bitch of an ex-girlfriend-girlfriend. I still didn’t know where he lived but it didn’t matter. He always told me that he spent more time at Eddie’s than he did at home anyway.
With a new plan in mind, I raised my middle finger to my cork board and all the scraps of paper pinned to it and went to sleep. I was going to resolve this bullshit one way or another. But it was the weekend, and I wasn’t stupid enough to crash one of Eddie’s house parties—especially not now—so I was left to stew until Monday.
9
Dad was gone for most of the weekend. Mom was busy while trying not to be busy. As a kid, I valued the time we spent together. Of course, I don’t remember any of it. But pictures, as they say, tell words brimmed to the millions with stories. And the smiles on my face in those baby years could not be mistaken.
There’s praise to be given to the women who put their careers on pause to tend to their growing littles, just as much as praise should be given to the moms who go out and pull in the dough to keep their kiddo’s butts diapered and their tummies filled. With my father climbing the ladders, my mom fell into the former category. She was there for my first steps, my first falls. There when I tasted my first food and when I got my first fever. For a while it seemed as though the older I got, the less I needed her. This weekend, though, I realized that adult as I might feel sometimes, I hadn’t fully outgrown my mom just yet. I stole her attention whenever I could, plopping down on the sofa to binge Grey’s Anatomy reruns while I tried to forget that the world was still spinning against me. But every time my mother’s phone buzzed, she pulled not just her body, but also my sense of safety and comfort away.
There was a part of me that desperately wanted to tell her about all the things that were going on. But that part of me was terrified. Terrified that she’d worry. Terrified that she’d want to go down to the school and demand answers, point a finger at the kids who scorned me and insist that those in charge bucked the fuck up. Terrified that she’d try to get dad involved. And maybe even terrified that admitting all my feelings out loud would crush me even more than I already was.
So the weekend rolled around with me trying to pretend that the four walls of my home were the only walls that existed. I absorbed as much of mom as I could and hung onto as much normalcy as possible. When Monday came, it felt harder than ever to drag myself out of bed and prepare myself for another day of hell. The fact of that matter was, this crap had been going on for almost a month, and it hadn’t gotten any better, but I was still alive.
I followed my usual routine, gave myself a little pep talk, collected my breakfast, dropped a kiss to mom’s cheek and went on my way. As I pulled into school, fliers with my face on them blew through the parking lot. They were stuck on every car and bulletin board, shoved into doors, stacked on the stairs and in the bathrooms. I grabbed one to throw it away, then stopped.
SNITCH was still scrawled across it, but someone had added a target to my forehead. SNITCHES GET STITCHES…IF THEY’RE LUCKY was printed on the back of the flier. Shuddering, I tossed the flier in a trash can and went through the day with my head down. The attacks redoubled, along with the jeering and jostling. Whoever was printing all of these things was really good at getting the crowd whipped up in a frenzy. I wanted to ask somebody who the amateur lobbyist was, but nobody would stoop so low as to converse with me.
The worst part was the administration. Even with all of this obvious bullying, complete with paper trail, none of them addressed the problem. There were no announcements, no assemblies, none of the teachers even mentioned the fliers. Fliers which had been placed on every single desk - including theirs. Ms. March wouldn’t even make eye contact with me.
I’d never felt more hated or more vulnerable. Back home, I’d always been able to rely on the authority figures in my life to enforce the rules—even if those rules included loopholes for bribery. I didn’t think that was what was going on in this school. My teachers looked more frightened than ashamed, as though they’d been threatened with violence rather than paid off. Knowing that I was completely and utterly alone in a hostile world did my mood no favors.
I was about to jump the gun and corner Blayze in the parking lot, girlfriend be damned. But as I was storming down the stairs toward him, somebody stuck their leg out in front of me, catching me in the shins. I rolled enough to avoid breaking any bones, but it hurt like hell. The jeering laughter didn’t feel too great either. By the time I’d gathered myself and my stuff, Blayze was already gone.
“Fine,” I groaned, trying not to limp. “Eddie’s it is, then.”
I barely remembered how to get to Eddie’s. Honestly that whole night was still kind of a blur for me, but with a few wrong turns and a couple of double-backs, I found the place. It looked different in the daylight. If it weren’t for the trash and broken bottles all over the place, it would have looked like an old woman’s house. There were plastic flowers and flamingoes in the yard that I didn’t remember seeing before, but to be fair I had been very distracted by the debauchery going on all around me.
Blayze’s truck was parked outside, just as I’d suspected it would be. A flash of fear that he’d brought his girlfriend shot through me, but I brushed it aside. I couldn’t afford to care, not anymore. If I didn’t get to the bottom of this, and quickly, I would end up a sticky smear on the school blacktop.
An obscene jingle echoed through the house when I pushed the doorbell and I r
olled my eyes. Nobody answered, so I knocked on the door. Loudly. That seemed to do the trick and the door flung open and before I could register anything else, I was jerked inside by my wrist and slammed into the wall.
“The fuck are you doing here?” Blayze was millimeters from my eyeballs, growling in my face. “You’re goddamn lucky that Eddie had somewhere to be. If he knew you were here, he’d…” Blayze trailed off, grinding his teeth.
“What? What would he do?” I pressed hotly.
Blayze sighed, sending the heat of his breath gliding across my lips. The smell of this house, the way he had me pinned with his arm across my chest and his hips against mine—it made me weak. So fucking weak. Because all the other times he’d ever had me this close…they were good times. Times where I felt like the luckiest fucking girl in the world.
He shook his head slowly, his eyes flitting up and down my face. “Eddie doesn’t like liabilities. Why the hell are you here?”
“Because I need answers,” I said a little too loudly. “What the hell happened, Blayze?”
Blayze ground his teeth at me, and tension filled his shoulders. “Get the fuck out,” he said, but didn’t wait for me to find my own way out. His hand closed around my arm he made sure I no longer had a single foot inside Eddie’s house.
Yanking my arm away from him, I spun so that my back was to my car and my face pointed at him. “I don’t fucking understand what your problem is, Blayze!”
He shot me a surprised glance and chuckled coldly. “I’m sure you don’t, princess.” The way my nickname sat in his mouth made me wince. He’d turned it to acid in a breath.
I slid into my car and almost had a heart attack when he slid in beside me. Him holding a finger up was all it took to render me completely silent. I followed his gaze and watched the last few inches of Eddie’s garage door sink down to kiss the ground. Finally he looked at me with ice in his eyes.
“You didn’t tell me your dad was a fucking rat,” he said.
I blinked, then squinted at him. “What?”
He raised his voice to a mocking falsetto. “Oh, we moved here because my mom needed a change of pace. Oh, my parents both work from home so you can’t ever come over. No, I don’t know anything about the drug scene.”
My belly churned and my heart thudded so loud I was sure he could hear it. But I didn’t know how much he really knew, so I twisted a defiant scowl onto my face and cocked my head. “Yeah? And?”
Fury flashed across his face and down his body. My pulse raced as he wrestled himself under control. “You did not say one fucking word about your dad being a lawyer. A prosecutor. For the state. You didn’t tell me he was working with the cops to ‘clean up’ this city. Not a single word.”
I swallowed and shrugged, but I couldn’t meet his eyes. “What makes you think he’s all that?”
He punched the dashboard so hard I screamed without meaning to.
“Stop fucking lying to me! I know your dad is the Super Prosecutor. I know he moved your family here on a big commission from the mayor, and I know that he’s a fucking prick!”
My spine stiffened and my eyes snapped. “How dare you?”
“How dare I? How dare you! You brought that fucking predator into my circle, you narked on my brother, you screwed up my whole damn life, Arlena! Do you know what you’ve done? Do you even care? My reputation is trashed, and that’s just the least of my problems.”
Fury ignited my nerves. “Even if I had any control over what jobs my dad takes—which I don’t, by the way—your reputation is ruined? Fucking really? Have you even looked at the school lately, or are you too busy sucking face with that idiot who screwed you over a bunch of times already? You know, the one you swore you would never touch again.”
A muscle jumped in his jaw. “I’ve seen the posters.”
“And the fliers?”
“And the fliers. You really should have expected it, though.”
My jaw dropped. “Excuse me?”
He shrugged exaggeratedly. “You play with fire, you’re gonna get burned. My brother is a big deal around here. Him, me, and Eddie, we’re the big three. Everybody knows us. Everybody’s loyal to us, which I guess is a concept you don’t fucking understand. Not surprising, considering you were born with a goddamn silver spoon shoved up your ass.”
That stung. It really did. Not because of how much emotion sat behind each word he belted out. But because even though he wasn’t one hundred percent right, he wasn’t one hundred percent wrong, either. “I understand loyalty,” I said shakily.
“Yeah, sure you do. You understand it so well you’re willing to sell my brother up the river for a little more of daddy’s attention, right?”
Tears welled up in my eyes. Okay, so that’s where he got it all wrong. I never did any such thing. I knew if I opened my mouth I’d just start bawling, so I bit my lip hard, trying to force the heartache back down.
Blayze scoffed. “That’s what I thought,” he said acidly. “Get out of here, Arlena. And don’t you ever fucking come back.”
He slammed the door and stalked back to the house. Tears flowed freely as I watched him walk out of my life. He didn’t want anything else to do with me. Even if I wasn’t to blame for his brother getting locked up, it wouldn’t matter. I didn’t say the right words, didn’t do the right things. I thought that, of all people, Blayze would have been the one who understood why I didn’t announce my parentage to the world. He saw how hard it was for me at the beginning, he could have put two and two together. I guess he did, in his way, but somehow he’d ended up with five.
10
It wasn’t until I was driving home with tears rolling down my face and a great, grey emptiness in my heart that I really internalized the fact that it was over. Really, truly over.
The few golden months I’d had on his arm, the kisses, the touching, the feeling of being on top of the world—it was all gone for good. Some part of me had been holding onto some stupid, silly little hope that we could still be together. I’d imagined that we would talk, realize it was all a misunderstanding, and get back together. I’d forgive him for Sam, he’d forgive me for doing whatever the hell it was he thought I did, and we’d be laughing about it by graduation.
I never expected him to have a legitimate grievance. I honestly hadn’t thought I’d done anything wrong, but as the cold, empty minutes rolled by, I began to see things from his perspective. He was best friends with the crime king of Burnaby High. His brother was also into some shit, apparently, though I’d never picked up on that before. I knew he wouldn’t believe me if I told him that—now that I was looking back on it, all the signs were there. I just hadn’t been looking for them.
“Stupid little rich girl,” I growled at myself as I wiped the tears off my face. “Can’t see what’s right in front of your fucking face.”
If he thought about it a little longer, he’d realize that I would make a terrible spy. Spies are charismatic chameleons. I was the weirdo outcast who only made it to one party and got completely plastered. For an instant I hoped he would think about it like that, but I squashed that hope vengefully. The last thing I needed to do was set myself up for more heartache and disappointment. The rest of the world was doing a damn good job at it without my help.
That point was driven home when I pulled into my driveway and saw another goddamn envelope on the stoop. I wanted to be sick of the envelopes, but they were almost comforting at this point. A consistent sort of torture, a constant drip against my forehead, rather than the chaotic waterboarding session that school had turned into.
I pulled into the garage and my heart sank. Mom’s car was parked inside. I’d taken too long with Blayze.
“Just what I need,” I said as I flipped the mirror down a little harder than I had to. “An interrogation. Why’s your nose so red, Arlena? What’s wrong with your eyes, Arlena? Oh my God, Arlena, have you been crying? What happened? What’s wrong?”
A spike of guilt tried to press into my chest, but I pu
shed it savagely away. She didn’t deserve the mocking sarcasm in my tone, but it wasn’t like she heard me. I just needed to get through this on my own, without her hovering. God, if things were bad now, they would only get worse after a parental intervention. A few swipes of makeup and several deep breaths later, I figured I could make it upstairs without a fight.
I sauntered over to the envelope, glaring at it.
“What’s the word of the day, oh silent stalker?” I asked sarcastically.
Time seemed to slow down as I ripped it open. There was no word this time. Just a folded piece of paper covered in tiny little red-brown droplets. Blood? That’s stupid, it’s just ink. I sniffed it and my heart froze in my chest. No, it wasn’t ink. It was blood, fresh blood, still damp in some places and rippling the paper. Someone had left actual blood in a letter on my doorstep. Wasn’t that a crime? My brain whirled dizzyingly. Bodily warfare? No, biological. Biological terrorism. I should take this to Dad right now, right this second. He’d take it to the cops and they’d get fingerprints or at least figure out where the blood came from—God, what if it came from the victim of a crime? Was I holding murder evidence in my hands?
I dropped the envelope as though it had suddenly caught fire and swallowed several screams into deep, out-of-control breaths.
No, I can’t take it to Dad. He’d pull names out of me. He’d use his cross-examination voice on me and slowly piece together every name and event of the last several months. Blayze would be his number one suspect. Even if the envelope hadn’t come from him, which I highly doubted it had – seeing as I was with him just moment ago -Dad would have him detained for questioning. He had the power to do that now. The entire judicial system, from cops to judges to the mayor himself, had been bending over backwards for my father. If he decided Blayze was to blame, Blayze’s life would be wrecked in a heartbeat.
Manic: A Dark Bully Romance Page 7