by Bella King
The old man nodded, chewing on his steak and swallowing politely before speaking. “That’s correct. We have another one coming up in September.”
My father seemed genuinely impressed this time, raising his eyebrows at the statement. “Another one. That’s wonderful. Perhaps we could travel up to see it sometime.”
“I’m sure we could make arrangements to do so,” the old man said, smiling pleasantly. He seemed like a lot nicer person than my father did, if you excluded his obviously bought wife. I wondered how much he was paying her to sleep with him. It must have been a lot.
I took another bite of my food, glancing over at my mother, who was already shaking a pill bottle into her hand under the table. I knew this signature move even though she was across from me and I couldn’t see her hands. She could fool everyone else, but not me. I knew she had to use drugs to cope with dinner this long and boring.
I shot her a look across the table, which she promptly ignored. I knew she would, but I wanted to make sure that she knew she wasn't sly about her drug habit. I saw right through her subtle movements under the table.
I took another bite of my food, trying to tune out of the conversation that was going on at the table and dive into my own thoughts. It was the only way I was going to get through another long dinner without losing my mind.
I thought about school, and that strange guy that kept looking at me in the hallway. He tried to play it off like he wasn’t staring at me, which would have worked if it had only been once or twice, but I had a keen eye. I knew when someone was watching me, and he most certainly was. I wasn’t quite sure why, though.
It was possible that he had a crush on me. I don’t think I would mind that if he would just come up and talk to me already. He was a good-looking guy, handsome, with messy brown hair and a bad boy look about him. He was muscular too, which was a trait sorely lacking in the rich community I dealt with. He looked like he worked with his hands, which would never even cross the minds of the men around me. They had too much money for manual labor.
Overall, I thought that the mysterious man in the school hallways was a good catch for any woman, as long as he had a nice personality. I was vehemently opposed to arrogance and self-centeredness, something I saw no end to when I was at home. If I was going to date someone, they needed to be very far removed from the culture I had been brought up in.
Once or twice, I had considered coming up and talking to this guy in the hallway, but I never knew what I would say. “Hey, I saw you staring at me like a total creep, but you’re cute so I wanted to come over and say hi,” seemed like it wouldn’t work out very well.
There had to be another way to approach him, but I hadn’t figured it out yet. Perhaps he would finally decide to talk to me instead of standing with his massive arms folded, biceps bulging as I walked past him in the hallway. I always gave him a little extra swing in my hips to lure him in, but it hadn’t gotten me anywhere yet. I hoped that one day it would.
It was possible that he had a girlfriend, and that’s why he never talked to me. I had seen Maddie hanging around him a lot, but she was also a strange person. She didn’t seem to like me at all, glaring at me when I walked through the halls to class. Yeah, it was possible that they were dating and that she was jealous.
Whatever the case, I did want him to talk to me, at least, so that I could figure out what his deal was. I never saw him outside of school. There were plenty of social events that the senior attended on the weekends, but he had never gone to any of them. I had seen Maddie there, though. I was curious why he never showed up with her.
There would be a get together at the creek this weekend, and so if Maddie was there, I could finally get some answers. She might not like me, but it was a lot easier to go up to her and start talking than it was to talk to the handsome mystery guy that leans on her locker after class and watches me walk down the hall.
Chapter 3
Dylan
I slammed the hammer down too hard on the nail, driving it so deep into the wood that the dense iron of the hammer went into the wood with it, leaving a solid indent. I shook my head, pulling out another nail and doing the same, driving it way too deep and leaving a mark on the wood.
I hated having to be out here in the summer heat, repairing the planks of wood that were supposed to keep people out of the shed. We had bags of rice, winter coats, and a few spare tires tucked away in here, and I didn’t want people getting into our stuff again. We had already had enough canned and jarred food stolen to that we would barely make it through the winter if business was slow.
I wanted the line the place with so many nails that not even I could get back in when I needed to. Scrap board did little to keep people out at night, especially when the neighborhood was crawling with delinquents looking for odds and ends to sell to fund their next drug binge. I thought it very unfair that they should be the ones hopping around all night long enjoying themselves while I had to attend school on top of grueling weekend work at the mechanic shop.
I put another thin plank up against the window and checked that it was long enough to stretch from frame to frame. It fit, but barely. I carefully placed a nail on the very end, hoping the wood would split when I hit it, and brought down the heavy weight of the hammer on it, piercing the wood and the window frame in one swift hit. It moved through the both of them as though they were butter, leaving the wood in one piece.
I picked up another nail, placing it on the opposite end of the piece and driving it through. This one cracked the wood but didn’t split it. A few more planks and it should be sturdy enough to prevent more intruders, but it was better to be safe than sorry. I snatched a few rusted mouse traps from a box in the shed and placed them along the floor to break some toes if anyone decided they were stupid enough to break in again.
I didn’t always have to do stuff like this to stay alive. The entire reason I was at Blackstone Academy in the first place was that our family used to have money. We used to have a decent house as well until my father put a hole through his head, ending his own life at the ripe age of forty-five. That certainly put a spin on things.
I didn’t want to think about that anymore, but the thoughts floated around in my head when I was idle. Putting nails through boards wasn’t stimulating enough to distract me from my own mind. I needed something better.
I allowed my brain to drift back to Scarlet. Yes, she was the one I could blame for all of this. Truthfully, I felt like I could destroy her whole family, and that would never be good enough, but I had to do something, or I would lose my mind. Somebody needed to pay.
My mother was poor, working 80 hour weeks to put food on the table, and my grades were slipping because I was working on the weekends so that I didn’t feel like a useless piece of garbage around the house. I blew off steam by fantasizing about the different ways I could ruin Scarlet and her family.
At this point, I hadn’t quite figured out what I was going to do. I knew that in order to cause disorder in someone’s life, you needed to know enough about them to know where their weaknesses lay. I didn’t have any contact with Scarlet, so getting that information was proving to be difficult. I was currently working on getting other people to give me the information, but everyone I spoke to about it wanted money to do my dirty work. That was something I didn’t have.
I examined the window, dusting the dirt and grit from the old wood off my hands as I stepped back to admire my work. Everything looked alright and was stronger than last time. I positioned the traps carefully, so that I wouldn’t hurt myself when I came back in the winter to open the shed again, and left to go back to the trailer house that we lived in. It wasn’t much, but it was home.
I trudged through the yard as the sun cast deep shadows through the dead grass. It had been such a hot summer that the grass was a pale yellow and crunched like straw underneath my feet as I walked back to the trailer. The summer was now slowly starting to fade, and I couldn’t have been happier about it. I hated the itchiness of the gr
ass when it got into my socks, tacking jabs at the skin around my ankles.
I jumped up the concrete steps to the screen door. We always kept the screen door closed to keep mosquitos and other flying insects out, but the main door staying open because it got too hot in the trailer if we left it closed. Unfortunately, none of the windows had screens, so we couldn’t open them instead.
“Mom, I’m finished,” I called out, pulling my shirt over my head and tossing it onto the chair beside the door. I pulled another one from the seat of the chair, where my mother had folded them neatly for me to take to my room.
My mother called out something from the kitchen, but I couldn’t hear what she said. I smoothed out the crease in the middle of my fresh shirt and walked into the kitchen, the smell of boiling water and pasta in the air. I already knew what we were having before she said it.
“What did you say?” I asked her as I stepped in.
“Macaroni and cheese,” she replied.
That’s what I thought. We had it three nights a week, but it was better than rice and beans. I would have even enjoyed it if I didn’t eat it so often, but my mother didn’t have time or money for variety. I understood that well enough.
“How was school?” She asked as I sat down at the wobbly kitchen table.
I traced a finger over the crescent stains from my morning coffee as I spoke. “The same old stuff. Maddie keeps bothering me,” I said.
“Oh?” She said, turning around with a cheap ceramic bowl full of artificially yellow macaroni and cheese. “She probably just misses you.”
I chuckled, sticking a fork into the steamy food the minute she placed it down in front of me. “She needs to get over it. Besides, she’s probably going to a different college than me anyway. Her parents are loaded.”
My mother raised an eyebrow. “Loaded? Maybe you shouldn’t have broken up with her.”
“Dammit mom, I’m not going over this again,” I said, beating my fist lightly down on the table.
She frowned. “Watch your tongue,” she said shaking a finger at me.
I rolled my eyes. “I’m an adult. What’s the issue?”
She shook her head. “Just because you’re an adult doesn’t mean you can talk like that to me. You still have to be respectful.”
I shrugged, scooping macaroni into my mouth before it was cooled off enough and scalding the roof of my mouth. I held it in my teeth and breathed in sharply, moving air over it until I could continue chewing. I swallowed it and looked up at my mother, who stood with her hands on her hips. “I’m sorry, I’m just annoyed about her. She’s not really leaving me alone.”
“Well, you two were together for a while, right?”
“Four months and a week,” I stated.
“That can be a long time for someone your age,” she said, but even she knew that was a stretch.
Maddie was just a weird and obsessive soul, not unlike me. I just obsessed over different things, like Scarlet and my father’s suicide.
I slurped down more of the watery noodles and cheese as my mother turned around and started cleaning the single pot that she had cooked this in. I would have offered to do the dishes for her, but I still had to study before bed, and I didn’t want to use up too much time. I felt a little guilty, but not enough to volunteer.
“I’m going to do my homework,” I said, picking up the bowl and trying to carry it out of the kitchen with me.
“Finish that in here,” my mother said, beckoning for me to come back in. “The roaches are going to eat you while you sleep if you take that into your bedroom,” she joked, but there was little humor in her voice.
I knew she was right, but I didn’t like hearing it. I gulped down the rest of my food as quickly as I could, standing just outside the doorway, then handed the empty bowl to her for washing. She gave me a look and took it, turning back around to the sink.
I dashed off to my room, closing and locking the thin wooden door and jumping onto my bed when I got there. I placed my hands behind my head, staring at the ceiling and fully intending to do my homework before going to bed. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out that way. I fell asleep with the light still on, waking up in the middle of the night to turn it off and finish sleeping. I guess I should have asked Maddie for help because now it was going to be overdue.
Chapter 4
Scarlet
My bed was so wide that I could fit twelve people in it and never run into them during the night. It was comfortable, but sometimes I felt lost in it when I slept, like there should be someone in it with me. I knew it was unhealthy to constantly dream of guys, but I was starting to get a little crazy at my age, because I had never actually had a boyfriend before. I had never even kissed a guy, as crazy as that sounded.
I got up out of bed, stretching dramatically in the rays of the morning sun that seemed to maneuver around my curtains and spill into the room. White curtains didn’t do much for shade, but they did make it easier to wake up in the morning as the room got brighter.
It was still early in the morning, not even six o’clock, but I needed to get up this early for my self-defense training. I had looked for many different ways to relieve stress and stay fit, and self-defense came as the most practical to me. I had been going all summer, and even with school started again, I planned to continue. I just had to wake up much earlier to make that happen.
I was grateful for the large estate that we owned because I always slept naked and I could never get my curtains to close all the way. They were more for show than anything, and I liked to stretch in the sun. It felt good against my bare skin, but I would prefer that the neighbors didn’t see me in the nude. That’s why I was happy that the nearest neighbor was several acres away and behind a tall brick barrier.
I turned away from the window, sauntering over to my private bathroom to take a shower. Even though I got sweaty at self-defense practice and would have to take another shower before school, I still liked to freshen up before I went.
It helped me wake up, along with an ice-cold energy drink from the basement fridge. I chose that over the fancy artesian coffee that my mother bought. I didn’t see how one coffee grind was significantly better than another. They all tasted like bitter dirt to me, especially the more expensive ones. It seemed that my young adult taste buds weren’t quite mature enough to enjoy a rich woman’s drink. Maybe one day I would, but like always, today I would opt for something cold and sweet instead.
I rinsed my tired body off quickly in the shower. I didn’t wash my hair, because I would want to do that after my practice. It was more important that I shock my skin back to life with some hot and cold water than to get clean. I showered before bed as well, so I didn’t need to do that.
Some may call my routine similar to that of a psychotic person, never deviating from perfection least I get lost in the messiness of the normal world. I was pretty sure that I had some type of disorder, but I was never diagnosed for it. I didn’t care to be either. My perfect timing and precision only stood to benefit me. It wasn’t a problem that needed to be fixed.
I had everything I did down to the minute. I didn’t have to look at the clock to know when to get out of the shower. My subconscious knew it better than my conscious mind did, but I still counted the seconds in my head as I rinsed myself off, as though my shower were a dance to a silent rhythm.
Once I was out of the water and onto the spongy towel mat, I dried all the water off my pale skin with a fluffy white oversized towel, then got dressed in light blue workout clothes that matched my eyes. I had always been told that my blue eyes were striking against my pale skin and dark hair, which I agreed with. They were a very icy shade of blue, which succeeded in looking cruel if I glared at someone in the right way.
I pulled my hair out of the loose bun that held it out of the water when I was in the shower, and quickly braided it up into two identical braids that hung down over both my shoulders. My hair had gotten so long in the past year, but I didn’t have any plans on cutting it. I
wanted to see how long it could go.
Once I looked presentable, I walked down the stair quietly, trying not to cause a commotion. My parents would both be asleep, exhausted from a long night with the guests. My mother would be too deep into slumber from her medication to hear me, but my father might wake up and be annoyed, so I walked softly on the polished oak floors down the hall to the back of the house where the stairs to the basement were.
I could be louder down there, but I didn’t want to be. The basement creeped me out, even though it was like every other room in the house. The only real difference was that nobody went down there regularly except for me, and it was noticeably colder than the rest of the house. I, for one, found that to be a bit too spooky for my liking.
As soon as I snatched a cold can from the fridge, I rushed upstairs, my feet traveling embarrassingly fast as though I were running from an actual monster in there. I hadn’t outgrown my fear of the dark, and at 19, I assumed I never would. It was just something I would have to live with.
That was part of the reason I had chosen self-defense as my new hobby. I had always felt small and helpless, and it didn’t help that I was an attractive woman in a world full of dangerous men. I felt uncomfortable doing out late at night, even with friends. I very rarely stayed out after dark, and I was the rare early bird in the family.
I think that part of the reason why I felt so small was because of the way my father’s business ruled over my life, as though nothing I did or said had any value to him. Nothing I did mattered, and I ultimately had no purpose until I left the house and made it on my own. Even then, I was scared that my life would ultimately have no meaning. It was a silly thing to worry about, because life is what you make of it, but that didn’t stop me from worrying.