“Don’t forget about Mason,” Aaron adds, arms crossed over his chest. His gaze has barely left me since he found out about the … miscarriage. What a strange word, isn’t it? I’m having trouble registering what, exactly, that means. The only thing I know is that I don’t want a baby yet. I figure if I can’t legally buy a bottle of vodka then I don’t want a kid. Besides, if I can hold out at least one more year, I’ll be the oldest mother on Pamela’s side of the family.
What can I say? Prescott blood runs thick and hot. We just can’t help ourselves.
“Mason Miller,” I start slowly, because I haven’t heard much about the guy. I look over at Callum and find him watching me with eyes the color of sorrow and melancholy. He’s always said that if someone in Havoc had to die, it would be him. Part of me wonders if he’s even really here or if I’m imagining his ghost the way I did Kali’s.
I wonder if she knew how far into this she was? Like, she clearly knew about the GMP being at the after-party, but what else? How deep was she? I guess, like with Penelope’s suicide, we’ll never really know. Then again, I could be wrong about at least one of those things …
“He’s notoriously loyal to Maxwell,” Aaron says as he glances over at Vic, as if for confirmation. A very subtle, slow nod from our leader and Aaron turns back to look at me, his eyes shadowed in the early morning light. The sun has just begun to peek its head above the horizon, but the air outside is as cold as ice. I keep checking the time, so I can call Heather as soon as she’s awake. I texted her new phone—Oscar had them ready for when we took the girls to Oak River Elementary—but I haven’t responded to her reply just yet. I want to hear her voice so bad that I ache. “If we take Maxwell down, he’ll come for us all the same.”
“Tell me: do either Maxwell or Mason like call girls?” I wonder aloud, thinking about Stacey’s face that day in the cafeteria. I can’t get it out of my mind. I know we were wrapped up in our own shit, but I can’t help feeling like we let her down. She was Prescott High incarnate, our queen bee, Havoc’s ally.
She deserves justice, and I intend to wreak some havoc on my quest to get it.
“Oh, Mason is nefarious for his treatment of prostitutes. He’s gotten so bad that his boss forbade him from using any of their girls. Now, he just kidnaps women, uses them, and dumps their bodies.” Oscar taps his long fingers on the arm of the sofa. I hear he retrieved a hidden precision rifle from under a liner of an outdoor trash can and set up to snipe GMP fuckers from the roof.
I honestly have no words to describe how I feel about that.
Another cramp rips through me, and I groan, pressing the hot water bottle into my belly. The boys all turn their attention to me, but I ignore them. We have shit to do and likely not a lot of time to do it in.
“What about his house?” I ask, but Vic is already shaking his head, his black eyes on me, his fingers pressing just a bit too hard into the arm of the couch.
“Same deal,” Vic says succinctly, his voice this primal growl that just barely passes for human. Demonic, is how I’d probably describe it if I were scribbling down one of my shitty poems. I remember once when Kali dug one of them out of the trash and tried to claim that I’d sent her hate mail. What a crock of shit. That bitch really thought she ranked high on my radar, huh? I had better shit to do in tenth grade. You know, like mourn my dead sister, worry about whether Heather was going to be molested by the Thing, or keep myself alive in the face of Havoc’s wrath.
Like I said: liar, thief, coward. Good fucking riddance.
“Same deal,” I repeat slowly, looking over at Victor and watching as the edge of his cruel mouth turns up in the slightest smile. For as long as I live, I will never forget the weight of that crown on my head or the words he said to me in those final few moments before the cops stormed the building. “I told you not to worry about being queen.”
So I guess I won’t. Worry, that is.
Nah, I’ll just act like royalty until it fucking sticks.
The way Vic is looking at me, I know he’s waiting to see what I’ll come up with, what ideas I have. This is what he’s wanted all along, for me to stand beside him, a true Havoc Girl. Now that I can see his true intentions, it isn’t hard to imagine why he was so pissed at me when I suggested ‘performing my duties’ or being ‘Havoc’s girl’. He wanted a partner, not just a plaything.
“I hate to take the risk, but what if we use one of Stacey’s girls to get Mason to a known location? I’m sure he’ll have security with him, but it’ll be much less than if we try to raid his or Maxwell’s places.” I flip the cover on the iPad shut and set it aside, going for the tea instead.
Hah. Tea. Like anybody in this house ever drinks tea besides Oscar. You should’ve seen that motherfucker’s face when Hael tried to put a cup of tap water into the microwave. I thought he might whip out his revolver and blow his friend’s head clean off. I’ve never heard someone say something as inane as “there’s a kettle in the cupboard” and have it sound like “I’m going to fucking murder you.” Impressive, I must say.
The taste of this particular tea—one of Oscar’s choices, obviously—is deep and earthy, like wet leaves on a warm summer morning after a rain. And there I go again with the metaphors and shit. I can’t help it. Language is just too much fun to play with.
“Special order Makaibari Estate green tea,” Oscar explains, as if his glasses give him enough focus to read my mind. It feels like he could, like he could read my heart, my mind, and my soul with a single glance. I meet his gaze and take another sip. Briefly, I wonder if the pregnancy I just lost could’ve been his. Really, it could’ve been any of them. That’s what you get when you let your five boyfriends run a train on you, am I right?
“He’ll want the girl to come to him,” Vic says finally, as if he’s been mulling my words over in the ensuing silence. “Although, considering his reputation, it’s possible that he’d venture out after fresh prey. Question is: how do we get him to hire one of Stacey’s girls after the whole robbery fiasco?” Vic pauses and clenches his jaw, grinding his teeth in frustration for a moment.
“Well, first off, I think we should officially bring Stacey’s girls into Havoc.” I look at Oscar and, finally, after about ten seconds of dead silence, he nods his chin almost imperceptibly. “We get one of them to talk to Maxwell, to apologize for the oversight of what they did to that John. Then, we have her offer up a girl but on the condition that Mason meets her somewhere public, like a hotel. If they refuse the gift, so what? They’re already after blood. If not, that gives us a chance to deal with him.”
“I’ll kill him,” Cal offers, lifting up his joint in solidarity with the plan. “Just give me a vent or an accessible exterior window.” He takes another drag and then reaches out to grab the ash tray off the coffee table.
“You need to rest,” I tell him when he glances back up at me, wearing a fresh black hoodie that hides all his wounds from prying eyes. “Somebody else can do it. We’re all capable of getting blood on our hands.” I pause for a moment, that old, familiar anxiety rushing through me. But Kali’s ghost doesn’t appear, and I don’t summon her. I don’t need that shit in my life. I need to move forward, and there’s only one way to do that: down the rockiest fucking path possible.
Because nothing worth having is ever easy to get.
“Oh, come on, Bernie,” Cal says with a dark chuckle, cringing slightly and putting his fingers to his throat. I can only imagine what it’d be like to have a garrote wrapped around your neck—especially one made of piano wire. Without those whip-fast dancer reactions of his, I doubt he’d have been able to escape. “You know there’s no rest for the wicked; I need to redeem myself.”
I give him a look, but I don’t plan on letting him out of my sight until he’s had a few days of downtime—and a hospital visit. Like, I’m not done harping on that shit. Fucker needs antibiotics whether he likes it or not.
“Whatever the details,” I say, exhaling and closing my eyes as another cramp rip
s through me like a slash to the belly. I swear, I can feel my insides tumbling out onto the floor. When I open my eyes, they’re all looking at me again. “We have one thing the GMP doesn’t. That is, us. We have hot, angry Prescott blood. That has to account for something.”
“For now, we need to move,” Vic says, mumbling around a cigarette that’s clenched between his teeth. “To the safe house. The feds are an okay deterrent, but we killed Maxwell’s son. He’s coming for us, sooner or later. It’s inevitable.”
Vic stands up and moves over to the front window, throwing open the drapes to reveal the cop car parked across the street. I glance over my shoulder to watch him.
“It isn’t difficult to listen in on a conversation with the right technology. Shit, you can buy that crap on Amazon now.” Vic tilts his head to one side, like an animal on the hunt. “I wonder exactly how interested in us the VGTF is.”
“Sara really came at me,” I say, thinking of the plea deal. Just the idea of it makes my stomach hurt. I should tell the boys; I’m just trying to figure out how to word it, so they don’t decide to get all stabby on Sara Young. “Pretty sure she knows we aren’t ‘just high school kids’ now,” I say with a long sigh. Remember what Nora Roberts said: some of the balls you’re juggling are made of plastic, the others glass. Drop what you need to drop, Bernie.
“Bernadette,” Victor begins, a warning in his voice. “Your mother is here.”
A sharp, hot anger overtakes me as I exhale. I put the water bottle aside and stand up with a groan. There’s no blood on my thighs this time, so I guess I was right that the bleeding seems to be slowing. According to Google, early miscarriages sometimes only result in a few hours of heavy bleeding. It’s been, what, a day for me? I’m almost through this hurdle, yet another one I can check off my list of accomplishments. Survive beating on front lawn of high school, survive ensuing miscarriage.
“Let me deal with her,” I say, but all of the boys are standing now. I turn and sweep a narrowed-eyed gaze across them. Maybe I’m bleeding like hell from my vagina and cramping so bad I want to scream, but that’s what I do best: persevere. “I’ve got this. Seriously. Do not fucking intervene.”
I head for the door and open it, but not before Oscar puts a hand on my shoulder.
“Let me check for snipers,” he says, which is legit one of the weirdest and most romantic things any guy has ever said to me. He slips past me, and even though I don’t see any weapons on him, I just know he’s got one there somewhere.
Pamela is already halfway across the lawn when Oscar gives me the all clear.
I step out onto the porch and lean my shoulder against the exterior wall of the garage. Well, what used to be a garage. More like a dedicated grow room now. In typical Prescott fashion, Pam comes at me with violence brimming in her red-painted fingernails. She’d love nothing more than to dig them into my arm or slap me across the face, but I guess Oscar’s presence—or the police across the street—give her pause.
Guess she’s not as stupid as I once thought.
“Where is my daughter?” she demands, dressed in a white blouse that looks more suited to a country club than to the southside. I wonder if she stole this one or purchased it with one of the credit cards she ‘borrows’ off of her rich friends. Pamela Pence is nothing but a world class manipulator. I’ve known lots of those—Kali, Coraleigh, Neil, etc.—but Pam has always had a certain level of finesse that they didn’t have. She’s much better at not getting caught.
“I’m standing right in front of you,” I tell her, and then I lick my lower lip. It tastes like caustic biting remarks and bullshit, acid and fucked-up lies. I cannot stop the next words that fall from my mouth. It’s as if they’ve been summoned by some dark goddess just to incite drama. “Or were you referring to the one you let your husband rape on the regular?”
Pamela’s mouth thins into a line, but she doesn’t react, not the way I so desperately wish she would.
“Where is Heather?” she snaps, and I smile.
Heather.
I won’t let anyone use her or hurt her, not for any reason.
“Out of your reach,” I say, crossing my arms over my chest. I’ve got on an old t-shirt that has the face of some hideous guy on the front with the word NOPE! slashed over his eyes. I can’t remember if he was just a racist, sexist reality TV host or if he was like, a senator or something. He might even have been president, but shit if I can remember. I think the shirt used to be Pen’s, but it was in the duffel bag full of clothes I packed when I stopped by the house with Cal. I don’t remember packing it, but I’m damn sure glad to have it. “Why? Are you worried about her?”
“I told you that you’d regret pissing me off,” Pamela warns me, shaking her head. “And now Neil is dead because of you.” I cock a brow. This is the perfect opportunity to test out my bullshitting skills. They’ve been honed to a fine point living in Prescott; I expect nothing less than perfection from myself.
“Because of me? No, he was working for some white supremacist gang from Portland. Likely, that’s what got him.” I pause as Pam stares me down with matching emerald eyes. Why do we have to share the same eyes, me and her? The same skin color. The same shade of ashy white blonde hair (when hers isn’t overly processed, that is). It isn’t fair, for us to look so alike. If I share so many of her physical traits, is some of her ugliness in my DNA as well? “You didn’t … kill him yourself, did you?” I hazard and Pamela’s nostrils flare wide, the sickly-sweet scent of her perfume making me feel dizzy. Or maybe that’s the blood loss? I have no idea. I put a hand on the wall to steady myself.
“What the fuck are you playing at, little girl?” Pamela asks me, and I swear to fuck, I have to have a PTSD attack right then and there. Little girl, little girl, little girl.
“You sit your ass in here and think about what you’ve done, little girl.” Pamela’s nails are digging into my arm so hard that blood runs hot and wet down to my elbow, drip, drip, dripping to the floor. She shoves me into the bathroom so hard that I stumble, smacking my chin on the edge of the bathtub as tears run down my face like rivers. There’s something smelly in the bathtub, something that reeks of bleach.
“Mom, I’m sorry!” I wail, pushing up to my feet and trying to get to the door before she slams it in my face and locks it from the outside. I didn’t realize until I was much older how weird it is to have a lock on the outside of a bathroom door. “Mom, please!”
I didn’t mean to spill the orange juice. Pen stuck French fries in her nose, and I laughed so hard that I bumped it with my foot. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean to …
I shake my head and reach my fingers up to my temple. Oscar waits at the edge of the driveway, his eyes as sharp as daggers. Our eyes meet, but only for a second. Then Pamela is slapping me across the face as hot blood begins to run down my legs. I’ve overfilled my cup. Again.
Scratch what I said about the bleeding slowing down. Too optimistic too soon, I guess.
I feel dizzy.
I put my hand to my cheek, but I don’t retaliate. I don’t need to.
“I know you were upset when you saw that video of Neil raping Penelope. Any mother would be. In fact, I don’t blame you for doing what you did—”
Pamela is on me like white on rice. That’s white trash, southside shit for you. One time, her best friend went to a Halloween party without her. You should’ve seen how my mother blew up. “I will ruin that cunt! I. will. RUIN. her!” She ripped the woman’s earrings out and hit her so hard in the face that she gave her a blowout fracture.
Neil and his family got my mom out of facing any charges. Unsurprising.
Pam grabs my hair and yanks me toward the grass, and I let her. I could fight back and kick her ass. If I wanted to.
“Don’t touch her!” I yell at the boys, because I need them to show restraint right now. “She won’t hurt me, not really.” Pamela throws me into the grass, bleeding and shaking. But not because of her. Fuck. My fight or fight harder instinct is bla
zing so hot, I wouldn’t be surprised to stand up and see a burnt swatch in the grass beneath me. “Mom, please!”
Shit.
And now I’m triggering my own PTSD.
Mom, please. Please don’t lock me in the bathroom with a tub full of bleach. Please don’t hit me when I sneeze too loud or cough too hard. Please don’t laugh at me when I throw up on the rug in front of all of Neil’s awful friends. Please, please, please.
Be a mom.
Only … she isn’t. She never really was. Because being a mother isn’t just about pushing a human out of your vagina. It’s a state of fucking mind. It’s about caring for someone more than you care for yourself. Aaron is a better mother to his sister and cousin than Pamela ever was to me.
She gets on top of me, and I won’t lie: it hurts. She straddles me, one hand gripping my hair and yanking so hard that white fire explodes behind my eyelids. I guess I learned how to fight from watching her. I suppose we are similar in some ways, me and Pamela.
As I’m lying there underneath her, aching and hurting and bleeding, I realize that she was probably a victim of the system, too. My father was nearly fifteen years her senior. He was married. He got her pregnant at sixteen. As fond as my memories of him are, wasn’t he in the wrong?
The thing is: once you cross that line from victim to perpetrator, there is no absolution. You should know how much the atrocities you suffered hurt. How dare you perpetuate that cycle. How dare you.
But I let Pam beat my ass while my boys wait, gnashing teeth and foaming at the mouth.
Victory at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys Book 5) Page 10