“They probably won't kill him,” he says, and my brows go up. Probably. Do I want Don dead? What was it that Oscar had said, “How far, exactly, you want this to go: that's up to you.”
How far do I want this to go?
Don is a privileged, spoiled monster. I doubt I’m the only girl he's tried to hurt, and I won’t be the last.
I bite my lower lip, shred it with my teeth, but I don’t move from that spot. I don’t know how to.
After about twenty minutes, the boys come back through the gate, and all of them … are speckled with red droplets of blood.
“Let's go,” Vic says, and as he passes me, he pauses and waits until I meet his eyes. “You can cross that name off your list.”
Even though I know I shouldn't, I creep back toward the gate anyway and glance toward the tree where Don was hung.
There’s no sign of him, of anything at all amiss.
“Come on,” Aaron says, grabbing my arm from behind and tugging me toward him. “Vic wants me to take you home.”
“Hael, pinch Don’s car; we’ll strip it for parts. Cal, crack the safe in his room. Oscar, you deal with the security cameras.” Vic barks orders like he was born to it, tearing off his ski mask as Aaron leads me away into the darkness, his fingers smearing blood across the sleeve of my sweatshirt.
Monday morning gives me a welcome reprieve from the hellhole I call my house. As I take my little sister Heather outside to meet the bus, I can hear my mother and stepfather having one of their infamous screaming matches in the basement.
Eventually, it'll devolve into something worse. They'll start hitting each other and, tit for tat, they'll leave bruises and welts and scratch marks. The atmosphere at home is so toxic that I feel nauseous as I kiss Heather on the forehead and smooth her light brown hair back with my hand.
“Have fun at school, okay, kiddo?” I ask, the only light in my day coming from that little girl's face. There's nothing else for me, no other star to punctuate the velvety blackness of night. When I look at her, I see Pen’s face, and my heart breaks and shatters into a million jagged fragments.
“I always have fun at school,” she says, wrinkling her nose at me, and then waving as she turns and takes off for the bus, ponytail bobbing, the pink charms on her backpack tinkling merrily.
“Forgot how cute she was,” a voice says from my right, and I jump, turning to find Aaron waiting next to his minivan, smoking a cigarette. The screams from inside the house echo out the still open front door, and I cringe, gritting my teeth.
“Yeah, well,” I say, because all of the mean, horrible things I want to scream at him are stuck inside my throat, choking me to death. I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to get them all out. Or any of them, really. “What are you doing here?”
“Might not be safe for you to bike to school today,” Aaron says, waiting at the curb as I head up the walk, grab my backpack, and close the door behind me, silencing the screams.
For a moment, I just stand there with my hand on the knob, breathing in deep.
Then I turn and look at Aaron, really look at him. His chestnut hair is tousled and wavy, his eyes the color of fall, this green-going-gold, just like the leaves on the maple that shadows our ugly street with some much-needed color. He’s wearing a red t-shirt, too tight across his broad chest, and a pair of worn jeans with boots.
His body is made up of long, lean muscles, all of them earned on the streets. None of those contrived steroid-and-gym muscles that make up the football team for Fuller High—the prissy upper-middle class school across town.
“Why? What happened?” I ask. Besides Donald, groaning on the ground, the loose rope still clinging to his thin neck. The blood speckling the boys’ clothes. The way Vic looked at me as he swept past.
Vic.
Fucking Vic.
I feel like he’s gotten into my head, like he’s invading every pore, climbing down my throat, suffocating me.
“The Ensbrook brothers stopped by the game at Fuller last night and started some shit. Broke the JV quarterback’s arm, roughed up some cheerleaders. They did it wearing masks, and everyone’s on our asses about it. Like they think we’d waste our time on something as stupid as that.” Aaron scoffs and turns away, like he can barely stand to hold my gaze for long. “You should’ve gone with your grandmother,” he says again which just infuriates me.
You don’t know the whole story! I want to scream.
Grandma isn’t related to Heather. Even if she wanted to take her in—I don’t think she does—she couldn’t. Heather shares DNA with the Thing. If I left, if I went to Nantucket and lounged on the beach in a bikini, dated the cute son of a fisherman, let myself have a normal life … then Pen wouldn’t be avenged, and Kali wouldn’t pay, and Heather would be alone.
For some reason though, when Aaron looks at me with that stupid handsome face of his, all I feel is anger.
“Let’s go,” I snap, moving past him, and feeling his fingers grab the edge of my backpack. I glance back at him. He has the letters H.A.V.O.C. tattooed on the knuckles of his left hand, just like all the other boys.
Their own not-so-very-subtle gang symbol.
“Eventually, we’re going to have to learn to talk to each other,” he says, his voice hard, so different from the boy I used to know. There’s a fragment of that old Aaron in there somewhere, but that one bright ray of sunshine is swallowed by dark clouds. One day, probably someday soon, it’ll cease to exist.
“You think so?” I ask, and he sighs, raking his fingers through his hair. The muscles in his right arm bunch and swell with the movement, causing the sleeve of his shirt to ride up. I can see the names of his sister and cousin tattooed there, right over the generous swell of his bicep.
“You’re a part of Havoc now,” Aaron says, and I scoff, yanking out of his grip and reaching for the car door. He stops me, pushing in front of me and forcing me back a few steps. Our eyes meet, and I don’t care that he smells like bacon and maple syrup, that I know he cooked for the girls this morning, or that everything he does is for them.
Just like how everything I do is for Heather.
“I’m a plaything for Havoc now,” I say, and Aaron growls at me, grabbing me by the upper arms and staring into my face, almost pleadingly.
“Were you listening when Vic told you the price? Or are you so intent on your own destruction that you can’t see beyond the confines of your hate for yourself?”
Anger and pain flare through me, and I tear myself from Aaron’s gaze, leaving scratches on my upper arms.
“You weren’t even there,” I challenge, meeting his eyes, wishing he’d shove me or slap me, so I had an excuse to lunge at him, take out all the frustrations I’ve ever felt toward him and his gang on his hard body.
“I was behind the curtain,” he spits back, narrowing his eyes dangerously. “Because I couldn’t stand to sit there and watch you make the biggest mistake of your life. You would’ve been lucky if Vic had asked you to be our whore, and nothing else. You’re not getting it, Bernadette: you are a part of Havoc now. Forever.”
Forever … Such a foreign concept. Something that exists and can never be broken, something that won’t shatter, no matter how many times it’s tossed or torn or trampled on.
My mind can’t even comprehend it.
“You’re a member of the group,” Aaron repeats on the end of a long, tired sigh. “Nobody else wanted this but Vic. Nobody. It’s too much, too personal, it brings you too close. But he wouldn’t let it go.” He turns away from me for a moment, eyes burning, mouth pursed. “He wouldn’t let you go,” he adds, but the words are so light, I can almost convince myself I didn’t hear them.
Aaron moves around the front of the van and climbs inside, starting the engine and waiting there for me to join him.
To prove my own point, I wait on the curb, watching him through the window until I’m sure he’s about to break and take off without me. I climb in at the last second, and we suffer the rest of the drive to
the school in silence.
Three years earlier …
The pageant meeting takes place in the cafeteria at seven, so I beg my old neighbor, Mrs. Kentridge, to watch Heather, and then head for Prescott High. The cool evening air is settling in quick, but the shivering doesn’t bother me, the rain doesn’t bother me. No, the only thing I’m thinking about is how this pageant could change my life.
The winner gets a full-ride scholarship to Everly All-Girls Academy in Maine which is about as far away from Prescott as one could get. I’d be flown there, first-class, get my own dorm, fully paid tuition, and I could finish my high school career out somewhere better than a drug-infested shithole in an asbestos-ridden building.
Penelope said she’d take care of Heather for me, and even though I don’t want to leave my sisters, I can’t take it anymore. I can’t take my mother or my stepdad or Principal Vaughn and the way his eyes glide down my bare legs during PE.
I’m at a breaking point.
Exhaling sharply, I take the steps up to the front of the building two at a time, and head for the security office to check in and gain entrance to the school. As soon as I do, I hit the front hall and pause, waiting as the security guard’s door slams shut and I’m left alone in a dimly lit building crawling with memories and pain.
Before I even see him, I know somebody’s watching me.
“Hello, Bernadette,” Victor says, stepping out of one of the classrooms and making his way slowly toward me. It occurs to me that we haven’t spoken since Aaron broke up with me. Aaron. Sweet Aaron. Aaron whose heart was ripped out by tragedy, who has nowhere to go but to the devil himself for help.
“What do you want?” I ask warily, hyper conscious of the fact that we’re alone together in here, that bad things can and have happened at Prescott High. A girl was raped in one of the classrooms just after a football game. It happens, and nobody cares.
My hands begin to shake, but I don’t run.
I want nothing more than to simply skip down this hall and slide into a seat at the pageant meeting. I’ve never thought of myself as pretty, or if I did, then I hated the world for it. Pretty girls get looked at; they get hurt. But if I can use the curse of this face and this body, and turn it into a blessing, I will.
Victor walks up to me, and even though I’m tall, he’s taller. I have to look up at him. He reaches down and brushes some white-blonde hair behind my ear, his fingers trailing across my skin, leaving scorch marks. My breath catches. Does he know that I’ve always watched them, him and his friends, that I’ve always wondered what it’d be like to be a part of something, to belong?
“Do you know Kali Rose-Kennedy?” he asks, and my face flushes.
Oh.
Of course he’s not here to talk to me. But for a moment there, I breathe a sigh of relief. Victor isn’t here to hurt me: he’s just here to ask about my best friend.
“We’ve been close since second grade,” I say, shrugging my shoulders loosely. Kali will be at the pageant tonight, too. We’re doing this thing together, me and her. In fact, she’s probably already waiting for me … “I should go.” I start to move around Vic, but he puts an arm out, palm flat against a locker and looks at me with something almost akin to sympathy in his dark gaze. Whatever I think I see though, is gone in an instant.
From one of the classroom doors, three of the other boys appear, the ones who make up the rest of their new gang: Havoc. The only one who’s missing is Aaron. My stomach clenches, and my heart picks up speed. It’s hard to swallow now, and I feel faintly dizzy, standing in this dark, dingy hallway wondering what’s going to happen to me.
“Bernadette,” Victor says again, and this time, I can’t decide if he’s using my name as a blessing or a curse. “Grab her.”
The other boys—Oscar, Hael, and Callum—come at me so fast I don’t have a chance to run, snatching me by the arms at the same moment Vic steps forward and slaps a piece of duct tape over my mouth. The fear is very real as they drag me backwards and out the front doors.
I make the stupid, stupid assumption that the on-duty security officer will save me, but he doesn’t. Instead, I’m pulled down the steps, feet kicking at the ground as I struggle.
The last thing I see before I’m thrown in a van is Aaron, bursting from the front doors of the school and staring down at with me with an expression that’s equal parts horror and helplessness.
I pray for him to help me. To what god, I’m not sure. None of them have ever taken much pity on me before.
But he doesn’t.
He doesn’t move.
He just looks at me as the boys yank me into the car, and then, when our eyes meet, he jerks his gaze away like he can’t bear to watch.
The van door closes, the engine starts up, and I start to live the first day of my new nightmare.
Prescott High is housed in an old building near the train tracks, with a wide brick front porch and two huge columns lined with cracks. One day, the damn thing is going to pitch forward in a pile of rubble and asbestos, poisoning the earth and everything around it. But I won’t care. Even if I’m crushed beneath the debris.
Good riddance.
As usual, I spend a good fifteen minutes passing through security, and take off down the hall before Aaron is cleared to follow after me. As I do, I can sense a strange sort of tension in the students. They’re all still looking at me—a byproduct of my deal with Havoc—but they’re less … fearful, and more curious.
Curious to see what happens, maybe, when I stop in the girls’ bathroom and find Billie and Kali waiting for me.
“Hey, bitch,” Billie says, appearing from behind the door and putting her back to it, effectively pinning me between her and Kali. The latter is standing across from me, green-streaked black hair piled on the top of her head, her pretty face twisted into a scowl.
“What’d you give Havoc to turn them into your dogs?” she sneers, moving toward me in her too-high heels. Idiot. She should know not to bring heels to a boot fight. Shifting, I push an arm against one of the stall doors to make sure there aren’t any other girls in there waiting to jump me.
Well, fuck my mom and call yourself Neil Pence, there are. Two girls step out from the stall, taking up a position on either side of me as the remaining three doors open and seven more bitches appear to take up the mantle of Kali’s cause.
The only people at Prescott High stupid enough to pick a fight with me are the ones who don’t know how to pick a winning side.
I put my back to the first stall, keeping all the girls in my field of vision.
“Guess that’s my business and nobody else’s, huh?” I quip, raising a brow and waiting to see what Kali’s planning on doing here. I’m loath to actually hit her just yet because she has a tendency to be the bully but play the victim. Getting expelled from Prescott High would be bad for me on so many levels. For one, I’d like to get my goddamn diploma, so I can start at the community college. And two, Mom will find out, and then she’ll kick me out of the house and Heather might end up alone with the Thing …
“Do you want to know what they asked from me?” Kali continues, brushing a freshly manicured hand over the pink rose tattoo on her arm. The line work is total shit. If my artist had mangled me as badly as hers did, I would’ve kicked his ass.
“Don’t give a shit,” I say, even though I’m burning with curiosity. Then again, what if I find out her price was something small, something insignificant. I’d have to face up to the fact that the Havoc Boys destroyed my life for trinkets.
“They wanted me,” Kali says, pausing in front of the mirror and leaning in to fix her lipstick. It’s bubblegum pink, just like her shirt, nails, and hooker heels. She’s got on cut-off shorts that show off her ass, and she flashes this smile over her shoulder like she thinks she’s hot shit. “They made me their little toy, and you know what?”
I stand quiet and still as her words sink, but even when I feel the anger rise hot and itchy to my skin, I refuse to give into it. God knows this
wouldn’t be the first time Kali Rose has lied.
“What, Kali?” I ask, crossing my arms over my black tank and waiting for her to spew whatever venom is tainting those sugar-sweet lips. One brow goes up again, but I make sure to tap my foot impatiently.
“I loved it,” she says, spinning around to smirk at me as Billie chuckles from her guard position near the door.
I smile.
“Doesn’t surprise me. You are a whore, after all.” I shrug my shoulders, but if what she’s saying is true … Jesus, for Havoc’s sake, I hope she’s lying. Those boys do not want to know what I’ll do to them if I find out she isn’t.
“They’re talented lovers, don’t you think?” Kali continues, choosing to ignore my insult as she sashays toward me, reaching out to tease the pink-tinged ends of my hair.
“Wouldn’t know,” I continue, forcefully pushing her hand away. “So, if that’s what you’re here to talk about, sorry, but I won’t be able to contribute.”
“Please, the whole school knows they asked you to be their little fuck toy,” Kali spits, face darkening. She’s always loved playing games. It’s hard for her when others don’t follow along with the charade. “Why else would they let you join their little gang? Are you knocked-up or something? I don’t see how else you’d get Vic Channing to put a ring on your finger.”
I laugh—can’t help myself—and Kali’s face tightens even further.
“Maybe Havoc let me join their gang because they realized I’m not some desperate, diseased snake looking for her next victim to infect with venom? And maybe Vic asked me to marry him because he’d been around a worthless, lying bitch before and knows how to spot a real woman.” I smirk and plant one hand on my hip. “Now, I came in here to piss. Get out of my goddamn face before I show you one of the reasons why the Havoc Boys took me on.”
“Billie,” Kali snaps, and like some sort of trained show bitch, Billie Charter whips a knife from her belt and comes at me. She thrusts the blade forward, aiming for my stomach. Luckily, I’ve got the stall door open behind me, giving me enough room to duck out of the way, falling into a crouch.
Havoc at Prescott High Page 13