by Emma Scott
“Goddamn everything,” I muttered, my hands shaking and my watch beeping furiously.
“Well, what do we have here? Does Coach Mason know you’re ditching P.E. to go shoot up, Stratton?” Frankie asked, moving in front of me to block the path. His two friends, Mikey Grimaldi and Tad Brenner, hung behind me.
“Fuck off, Dowd,” I said and started to push past him.
He shoved me back, and I stumbled.
“Your mom still turning tricks?” Frankie asked, and snickering laughter came at me from all sides.
“I don’t know,” I seethed, my heart now crashing and my hands shaking so badly I had to tuck them into my arms. “Why don’t you ask your dad?”
Frankie’s eyes flared for a moment, then he laughed. “You’re right. He’d know, since part of his job is to get hookers off the street.”
My vision clouded red but now I was swaying on my feet.
“You don’t look so good, Stratton. Gonna piss yourself again?”
My watch beeped incessantly, and my leg muscles were starting to feel like sand. I tried to push past him once more, knowing it was futile. Usually, in a fight with Frankie Dowd, I gave as good as I got, but right now, I could hardly stand.
“Get the fuck out of my way.”
“I’m good right here,” Frankie said, crossing his arms. “Kinda curious about what’s going to happen next.”
His friends shifted and glanced around.
“Hey, Frankie, he really doesn’t look so good,” Mikey said.
Tad nodded. “Yeah, and he’s got that alarm…”
“Nah, he’s alright, aren’t you, Stratton?” Frankie clamped a hand around my neck. “You still wearing that little machine stuck in your guts? What would happen if someone took it out? Just to get a better look?”
“Dude,” Mikey said.
“That’s sick, man,” Tad added, though neither moved to help me.
I mustered what strength I could, balled my hand into a fist, and swung it upward, striking Frankie under his chin. His jaw snapped shut with a clack, and he fell away from me, sputtering and cursing.
“You fu-ther!” He spat a wad of red. “I fu-thing bit my thung.”
He came at me a second later, readying a blow I didn’t have the strength to dodge. Suddenly, a rough hand shoved me aside and a fist struck out, whacking Frankie full in the nose with an audible crunch of bone and cartilage.
Except for Frankie, who was gasping and cursing, the group went silent, staring at the big, dark-haired guy who’d appeared out of nowhere. He wore torn jeans, scuffed combat boots, and towered over all of us by a good three inches. His faded T-shirt revealed tattoos inking his biceps and one forearm. He looked like an escaped convict, instead of a high school student.
Maybe he is. One of Frankie’s dad’s arrests is here for some payback.
But I could see the youth in the guy, buried under muscle, tats, and the flat, gray eyes that stared coldly at Frankie. Power coiled and hummed in him, ready to rumble.
Vice Principle Chouder had a sixth sense about trouble on his campus; he materialized like a ghost behind us.
“What’s all this?”
“Fu-ther broke my nose,” Frankie said, his voice nasally and muffled behind his hand.
Chouder pursed his lips disdainfully at the blood seeping through Frankie’s fingers. “Go see the nurse, Dowd.” He fixed his gaze on the new guy. “Mr. Wentz. My office. The rest of you get back to class.”
My beeping watch finally drew his attention. He sized me up and down.
“Are you all right?”
“Oh sure. Never better.”
I pushed myself off the pole I’d been sagging against and managed to make it to my locker and raise my blood sugar before falling into a fucking diabetic coma, wondering where in the hell that guy came from.
I didn’t have to wonder long. Gossip spread quickly that a new kid had clocked Frankie in the face. By the end of the day, I’d learned that Ronan Wentz moved here from Wisconsin two weeks ago. He had ditched the first few days of school and was now suspended.
I ditched the rest of my classes, too, to wait for him to get out of Chouder’s office.
“You didn’t have to do that for me,” I said, falling in step beside him as he headed down the front walk of the school.
“I didn’t do it for you,” Ronan replied. His voice was low and deep, his gaze on the road in front of him.
“Then why?”
He shrugged in his worn-out jean jacket with the fake lamb’s wool on the inside. He dressed like me—in distressed clothes—because they were in distress and not ripped on purpose like the current fashion. I didn’t understand why rich kids wanted to dress like poor kids if they were just going to bag on poor kids for being poor. But that’s high school for you.
We continued down the street together; he was headed toward my neighborhood that I guessed might be his neighborhood, too.
Ronan’s glance flicked to me and back. “Is it true you lived in a car?”
My skin burned, and I looked away. “You’ve been on campus for all of ten minutes, and you heard that already? A new record. Yes. A long time ago. No one seems to be able to forget it.”
“Then make them forget.”
“How?”
He shrugged again.
“The guy you punched? His dad’s a cop.”
Ronan’s lips curled in a smile that was mostly a snarl. “Fuck them both.”
“What do you have against cops?”
He said nothing, and we kept walking.
We arrived in my neighborhood of rundown cement boxes with rusted wrought iron over every window. Ronan stopped and stared at one corner apartment on the second floor. A TV could be heard blaring through the torn screen.
“That you?”
He nodded.
“I’m a block down.”
He didn’t move, and I had a feeling come over me. A strange, out-of-body kind of reaction, one usually reserved for when a song lyric falls into place so fucking perfectly it was as if it didn’t come from me but from somewhere else.
Show him the shack.
“You need to get home?” I asked him.
“Home.” He snorted the word. “No.”
I nodded. Understanding passed between us like telepathy.
“Follow me.”
“Found it four days ago,” I said. “Been coming here every night, since. After work.”
“Yeah?” Ronan turned in a circle. His bulk practically filled the entire fisherman’s shack. “Where’s work?”
“The arcade, down at the Boardwalk.”
Ronan nodded and sat on the bench. “You can see the ocean,” he said, his words almost soft, coming out on a gruff voice.
“Yeah, it’s nice. A good place to just…”
“Get the fuck away from everyone?”
“Precisely.”
“You looked sick earlier.” He jerked his head at my wrist. “What’s with the watch? That part of it?”
“It’s an alarm. My blood sugars were low.” I lifted my shirt to show him the CGM. “I have diabetes.”
Ronan nodded, and then a sudden smile spread over his lips that he covered with his hand.
“Something funny?” I asked, ignoring the pang in my heart that maybe I had Ronan judged all wrong. Just another asshole…
He shook his head. “I knew a girl when I was a kid…five years old.” Laughter started shaking his shoulders, coming over him like a fit of coughing—uncontrollable and seeming to take him by surprise. As if it’d been ages—years even—since he’d last laughed. “Her aunt had diabetes. The kid called it dia-ba-titties.”
I stared for a second and then his laughter infected me until we were both bent over, chortling like idiots.
“No one…corrected her?” I wheezed.
Ronan shook his head. “Would you?”
“Hell no.”
Another round of laughter roared through the shack like a storm, then subsided with gasping breat
hs and chuckles.
“Shit, hadn’t thought of that in years,” Ronan said after a minute.
“That’s a winner,” I said, wiping my eyes. “Dia-ba-titties. Sounds like something my mom’s new boyfriend would call it. On purpose.”
Even the casual mention of Chet killed the remnants of laughter.
Ronan glanced up. “He’s one of those?”
“Yeah. One of those.”
He nodded. “They won’t fuck with you anymore.”
I blinked in confusion until I realized he meant Frankie Dowd and Company. I raised a brow. “You going to be my bodyguard or something? Forget it. I can take care of myself.”
Because you made such a convincing case that afternoon?
Ronan said nothing, waiting.
Christ, I needed my hands to play. To make something of my music. To earn a shit-ton of money, so I could give the world a healthy middle finger for being so fucking merciless.
Violet was always telling me I was good at reading people. What I saw lurking under the flat, gray depths of Ronan Wentz’s eyes made me sad. Pain. Danger. Violence. The world had been merciless to him too. Something in him was broken. I could be his friend by letting him fight when he needed to fight.
“Okay,” I said into the quiet, though I doubted he’d wait for my permission, anyway.
But Ronan seemed satisfied and turned his gaze back to the water.
I shouldered my backpack. “I gotta get to work. Stay as long as you want,” I added, but I didn’t need to.
It was Ronan’s place now too.
Chapter Five
Friday morning, I dressed for school in flower-patterned leggings and a long white blouse and slipped out of an empty house. Both my parents had gone to work earlier—Dad to his job at the tech giant, InoDyne, Mom to her job as a communication manager for the city. They were both putting more hours in, either to avoid each other or because our financial situation—whatever that might be—required it.
Or both.
At school, a table had been set up on the central quad. A paper tablecloth was draped over it with VOTE FOR YOUR HOMECOMING COURT! in gold and blue paint. Balloons in the same colors were tied to weights and flanked the sides.
Evelyn, Caitlin Walls and Julia Howard surrounded me as I headed to my locker.
“Uh oh,” I said with a laugh. “Am I in trouble? Was today the day we were all supposed to wear pink?”
Caitlin and Julia laughed while Evelyn rolled her eyes. “I swear you have that whole movie memorized.”
“Memorized? I’m living it,” I said with a grin. “Except you guys are sweet.” I leaned in to peer at a necklace Caitlin was wearing—a little gold locket in the shape of a heart. “That’s beautiful, Cait.”
She put her hand to the charm, touched. “Oh, thank you. My grandmother gave it to me—”
“We have ten minutes until the bell,” Evelyn interjected with a nod at the quad. “Time to vote.”
We veered from the lockers to the table. Two students, sitting between the balloon clusters, took our names to ensure we only voted once and handed us clipboards.
The ballot listed nominees for King, Queen, Prince and Princess, and their accomplishments and contributions to the school. Evelyn was a nominee; her fashion vlog—with more than 25K subscribers—was lauded for her “entrepreneurial spirit.”
Julia and Caitlin were nominated too, and—to my shock—so was I, over a fat paragraph of all my extracurriculars and accomplishments.
“Holy crap,” I said, a strange little thrill shooting through me. “How did this happen?”
Julia smiled at me. “No idea.”
“Me neither,” said Caitlin.
“Make sure you all vote yourself in for Princess,” Evelyn said, who knew she had Homecoming Queen locked up. “I want at least one of you in that parade with me.”
Julia and Caitlin exchanged glances and turned their backs to fill in their ballots, then folded them and stuffed them in the slot.
“I’m not voting for myself,” I said. “That feels…weird. It’s an honor just to be nominated.” I laughed. “Isn’t that what they say? But I’ll happily vote for you guys.”
I bubbled in Evelyn for Queen and River Whitmore for King. Easy. Anyone else was a waste of a vote. For Princess, I filled in both Caitlin and Julia, letting fate decide. For Prince, I wanted to write in Miller, but I knew he’d think it was a joke or that I was making fun of him.
“There,” I said and stuffed it in the slot. “I’ve done my civic duty. Am I free now?”
“Slow down,” Evelyn said. “Just hang here until the bell.”
“Why?”
“It’s good visibility to linger at the voting table,” Julia said, tapping her temple. “Strategy.”
I smirked. “Puts us in the mind of the electorate?”
“Exactly.”
The little zing of being nominated lingered, but hanging around the table felt like trying too hard.
“Oh shit, I almost forgot,” Evelyn said. “Did you guys hear? We have another new guy in senior class. Ronan Wentz.”
I knew that name. My history teacher had called roll yesterday, but he’d been a no-show.
“Apparently, Ronan is a juvenile delinquent. In and out of jail…”
“Really?”
“I heard he killed his parents and fled the state.”
“Get serious, Cait…”
I liked my new friends. They each had beautiful qualities if you got to know them outside the high school ecosystem, but my quota of gossip hit max capacity. I tuned them out, and my gaze wandered until it caught sight of Miller. He was crossing the quad, gaze cast down, shoulders bent as if his backpack weighed a thousand pounds.
“Speaking of the new guy,” Evelyn said, nudging me. “Your BFF and Frankie got in a fight after P.E. yesterday.”
I grit my teeth as a rush of anger flushed me. “What happened?”
“I heard Frankie was kicking Miller’s ass—or Miller was sick or something—until Ronan showed up and beat the hell out of Frankie. Broke his nose and cut off a piece of his tongue.”
Caitlin and Julia gasped and murmured while I shouldered my bag and hurried toward Miller, ignoring Evelyn calling me back. I caught up and fell in step beside him.
“Hi.”
“Hey,” he said dully.
I scanned him for any sign of the fight with Frankie, but his knuckles looked good, and his face was as handsome as ever.
Maybe Evelyn heard wrong.
I glanced up from my scrutiny to see Miller’s blue-eyed gaze taking in every part of my face, and then he looked away. He jerked his thumb at the voting table. “You did your civic duty?”
“Ha, that’s exactly what I called it.” I tried for a smile. He didn’t smile back. “I mean, it’s silly but kind of fun.”
“What a waste,” Miller muttered darkly.
“Why do you say that?”
“I can think of a hundred programs that could use the money the school spends renting convertibles for jocks and princesses to tool around the track for twenty minutes after the football game.”
“It’s tradition. And Homecoming is fundraised like anything else. It’s not taking money away from—”
“Right,” Miller spat. “Mr. Hodges has to have a bake sale every year to keep the music department running and barely keeps his job. But by all means, let’s fund a popularity contest, for tradition.”
I stopped walking and put my hand on his arm. “Hey. I know you hate this stuff, but—”
“But you don’t.”
I shrugged a shoulder. “I’m nominated, which is totally nuts—”
“Ah. Now it all makes sense.”
“Hey, that’s not fair.”
“A year ago, you wouldn’t have been caught dead voting for that shit. Guess it’s different if you’re in the running, eh?”
I flinched, crossed my arms. “You’re being a real dick right now.”
He fumed, frustrated. “Aren’t
you supposed to start with Nancy Whitmore today?”
“Yeah? So?”
“Isn’t that a million times more important?”
“Of course, it is. But that…” I waved my hand at the Homecoming table. “That’s just fun. It’s high school. It’s experiences, and I want them. I need them. My every waking hour is taken up with studying and extracurriculars…my home life is imploding. And if Nancy’s really sick—like terminal—I’ll take any distraction I can that isn’t complete shit. Okay?”
“Fine. Whatever.”
We stood in a terrible, tense silence that broke my heart because it wasn’t us. So much stress was etched into Miller’s handsome face, and I saw new worry suffused in his eyes that already held their fair share.
“I heard about what happened with Frankie yesterday,” I ventured.
“I’m sure you did.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Made a new friend.”
“That new guy, Ronan? I have him in History. In theory. He hasn’t shown up—”
“He’s suspended,” Miller said.
“I heard he broke Frankie’s nose.”
“You heard right. I wasn’t feeling up to the job.”
My hand on his arm tightened. “Were your numbers low? Again? Maybe you should talk to your endocrinologist. Or what about your PCV? How is that working out?”
“It’s not.”
“What does that mean?”
He gently extracted his arm from my grip. “Stop worrying about me, Vi. Please. Just…stop.”
“I can’t. I can never stop caring about you. You’re my best friend.”
The bell rang, and he stared at me through it, then looked away. “I gotta get to class.”
“Miller, talk to me. Please.”
The fight went out of him; his shoulders dropped. His deep, gravelly voice sounded even rougher. “My mom has a new boyfriend.”
“Oh.” My heart sank at the subtext imbedded in those words. “Is he…bad?”
“Remains to be seen how bad, but yeah. The PCV, Marco, came over the other day. Chet made a complete ass of himself. It was fucking humiliating. So I told the guy not to come back.”
“Miller, no. You need the help.”
“I’ll be fine. And I don’t want to talk about it, Vi.”