Pretty Reckless (All Saints High)

by L.J. Shen

Of course.

  “Gabe Prichard,” we say in unison.

  “He quit last week. Packing up and getting ready to bolt before we get to him,” Jaime explains.

  “When is this happening?” I ask.

  “Today.”

  “I’m coming with.”

  Heavy is the fist that belongs to a father who just learned his precious daughter has been mentally abused since age fourteen by her school principal.

  Heavier is the fist of a man who learned about it after his daughter has been through hell and back this year.

  I’m a take-no-prisoners type of man.

  When I aim—it’s for the kill.

  Prichard’s got a house on the outskirts of Todos Santos. The only light from the distance is the one of his Alfa Romeo. Otherwise, it’s pitch black as we turn onto the dirt road, me leading the way in my Tesla and Vicious’ Mercedes following closely. Trent Rexroth, my high school friend, is next to me, and Penn Scully—bless his broken fucking heart—is in the back seat, looking ruthlessly determined with dead eyes like the rest of us. Vicious and Dean signal us with the lights to stop. I throw the vehicle into park and twist around.

  “You wait here.”

  “No fucking way. He hurt her,” Penn spits out, his fists already balled. Gabe losing his job is not enough for me. Not by a long shot. I want him to lose everything else, too, including his ability to sit down for the next couple of years.

  “You can get into trouble,” I warn him, but my heart’s not in it. If someone hurt Mel, I’d probably kill them, too.

  “Oh, and you can’t?”

  Trent’s shoulders shake with a conceited laugh next to me.

  “Why?” Penn challenges.

  “Prichard’s got too much to lose. He can’t touch us.”

  “Can anyone?” Penn wonders aloud, just as Trent’s door opens from the other side. Dean whistles for him to get outside, swinging my baseball bat and parking it over his shoulder.

  “Maybe God,” I answer curtly.

  “Even that’s debatable.” Dean snickers. “God, I missed the days of good ole shenanigans. Out, Rexroth. Lover boy.” He whistles to Penn. “Make sure you’re good and quiet unless you want your football dream to flush down the toilet.”

  Prichard, who is oblivious to our parked vehicles a mere few feet from him because our lights are off, comes out of his house, flinging two suitcases into the trunk of his running car. I get out of the car and round it with Vicious, Dean, and Trent following close by.

  Every muscle and bone in my body is lit and hot with adrenaline as I tap his shoulder from behind. His body turns rigid, hard like stone. He turns around, and his face whitens, his car lights illuminating the fear on his ugly-ass face.

  “Good evening, Mr. Prichard.” I smile like the fucking royalty I am in this town. Too important to touch, too golden to lose control. Dean swings the baseball bat behind me as though he is warming up.

  Prichard is shaking his head violently.

  “Oh, no. No, no, no. I’ve already talked to your wife. We settled things. We…”

  “You didn’t settle anything with me,” I clip. Mel told me what she did after she did it, and although I wanted to kill her, I could understand where she was coming from, too. “Us letting you off the hook is only because we don’t want Daria to suffer.” I erase the distance between us, smiling devilishly. My eyes are dead. My muscles loose. “Now it’s time to pay.”

  Vicious slaps the trunk of the Alfa Romeo shut at the same time I push Gabe on the back of his car, bending him over in one, rough movement. Dean hands me the baseball bat, chuckling.

  “And if we find out you went to another godforsaken town and tried to rekindle your career…” Dean pushes down Prichard’s pants and briefs in one go, exposing the milky-white ass of a middle-aged man. Bright as the goddamn moon.

  “Help! Help! Help!” Prichard is bawling like a baby.

  Even through his pussy cries, I can hear the leaves crunching under Penn’s shoes as he advances toward us. He can’t keep himself out of this. Good. I wouldn’t let an asshole who can sit by and let something like this happen to Daria touch her.

  Penn is by my side now, shoulder to shoulder. I don’t say shit because Prichard can’t know he’s here. He’s not as protected as we are.

  “Heeeelp,” Prichard drawls, his face still slammed against the cold surface of his trunk, his cheek smeared all over it.

  “Shut up,” I bite out metallically, ripping his sports jacket from his body and balling it in my fist. I shove it into his mouth until he gags and chokes on it.

  Vicious plasters his hand over Prichard’s back and looks at me, smiling serenely.

  “Say a few Hail Marys, you sick son of a bitch. Maybe it’ll slow down your perverted ass on its way to hell.”

  I strike Gabe with the baseball bat across the ass, using every ounce of power and muscle in my body. The hit is so hard, the sound rings in our ears and we take a few seconds to let it die down.

  The second hit is even stronger as though I found my footing. I think about everything my daughter has been through these past six months.

  About her mother, whom I love more than life itself, who insists on saving everything that’s broken, and in doing so, had a hand in breaking our daughter.

  I think about how I can’t stand to look at the eighteen-year-old girl who lives with me because she tarnished my princess.

  I think about her twin brother, who is too in love with my daughter to give her up, whether he knows it or not.

  On my third strike, Gabe spits out his jacket, yelping to the sky like a lone wolf.

  After eighteen strikes, one for every birthday my daughter has celebrated, I pass the bat to Vicious, but it’s Penn who puts his hand on my arm and takes it without asking for permission.

  I shake my head, motioning for him not to say a word. It’s too dangerous.

  He opens his mouth, talking to Gabe Prichard, but staring at me.

  “Thank your lucky stars that I’m not alone because if we were, you’d be dead by now,” the boy says with no trace of emotion in his voice.

  “Penn? Penn Scully?” Prichard chokes.

  Penn swings the bat, hitting him so hard I actually wince. Prichard faints on his trunk.

  By the time we drive back home, Prichard is bleeding and can’t make out shapes, let alone faces. Before we leave, we tuck a copy of Mel’s recording into his jacket’s pocket to make sure he knows not to mess with us. Especially with Penn.

  Prichard will take this, like what he did to Daria, to his grave.

  “Just gonna grab my shit from Camilo.” I fling my backpack over my shoulder and let Mel kiss my cheek. It’s almost midnight, and it looks like we’re going to eat in the middle of the night, but that’s because the Followhills all understood why Jaime and I had to leave to take care of business before Prichard skipped town.

  Mel is chopping vegetables as lasagna bakes in the oven, giving me her stay-safe pleading eyes. Forever the multitasker. Bailey is beside her, squeezing lemons into iced tea. Via is outside, sitting on a lounger by the pool, hugging her knees together. The undercurrent in the house has changed. Via is no longer the prized, newly found miracle. She was dragged down to the status of a mortal.

  “Do you need help?” Mel wipes away at her nose with her sleeve while cutting onions. “Packing, I mean.”

  “Only if Daria is offering.”

  I’ve officially lost my privilege to go up the stairs and ask her myself. Jaime throws me threatening looks when I even look at the stairs leading up to the second floor, and Daria doesn’t seem to be coming downstairs any time before her flight. I wonder if he realizes I’ll have to go up there when I go to bed tonight.

  “Jaime can help you.”

  “He can carry his half-empty duffel bag on his own.” Jaime is flipping channels, obviously not done holding a grudge.

  “I’ll be back before dinner.” I grab my keys and snatch a garlic bread roll on my way to the car. Out of habit
, or maybe because I’m not done quite torturing myself, I twist my head to see if Daria is watching me through the window. No dice. Her bedroom light is off through the curtain. Mentally, she checked out of here long before she got on the plane.

  As I drive to Camilo’s, I try to call him to make sure he knows I’m stopping by.

  He is not answering, and I’m growing irritated. I gave him a direct order to get his ass as far as possible from the snake pit. If I manage to keep my fists to myself when Gus shits systematically through everything I know and love, so can he.

  I park in front of Camilo’s door, knowing I can’t knock on it at midnight. Then I hear a baby crying and a woman mumbling in annoyance and know I won’t be waking up anyone. I knock. His sister opens with her toddler on her hip. I push past her to retrieve my duffel bag by the couch.

  “Where’s your dumbass brother?” I ask.

  “Hell if I know. Maybe that place all the cool kids go to.”

  “The snake pit?”

  “That what it’s called?” She laughs, opening the microwave in the open plan kitchen to grab a bottle and shove it into the baby’s mouth. “Make sure you protect that pretty face of yours, Scully. Cheekbones like that, you can knock your rich girl up and live off her parents’ money.”

  When I drive to the snake pit, my nerves hit an all-time high. Camilo is both hotheaded and easily swayed into doing stupid shit. I know that because for a while, doing stupid shit was our favorite pastime. I kill the engine outside the deserted football field and race my way toward the chain-linked gate. Screams and curses pop in the air like gunshots. There’s a cloud of anger and sweat rising from behind the bleachers, and as I hop the chain-linked fence and get in, I see why.

  It’s a goddamn warzone.

  There’s a mass fight, and everyone is in it—including Knight, Vaughn, Colin, Will, Josh, Malcolm, and Nelson. Both the Bulldogs and the Saints are in it to win it. Underneath all of them on the dry, brown earth is Camilo, lying on the ground.

  I track toward him, shoving people off him as the crowd thickens. Players stomp and kick each other, paying him no attention. Camilo doesn’t move.

  “Dafuq happened to you?” I lower myself on one knee. I’m afraid to touch him because I’m not sure of his injuries.

  “Broken…I think it’s broken.” He barely finishes, looking down at his leg. I follow his line of sight and see it clearly, even through his jeans. His leg is bent unnaturally. Cartoon-like. His fibula is all distorted. It looks bad.

  “We need to get you to the hospital,” I say.

  “No shit, Sherlock.” He laughs, his voice dry and crisp. He’s been lying like this for a while, I gather. I call an ambulance while Gus sneaks away from the bleachers, hollering in his wake, “Clear out, clear out, Scully invited the pigs.”

  Everyone’s sprinting past us now, leaving dust in their wake. Guys push and yell and plea. They boo at me as if I give a fuck. Knight grabs the end of my shirt and yanks me up. I shake him off.

  “I’m staying with Cam.”

  Vaughn stops next to him, eyeballing me hard. “You have a game tomorrow,” he reminds me.

  “Would you have left Knight?”

  Both Knight and I look at him. He claps his best friend’s shoulder.

  “His funeral. Let’s go.”

  I turn back to Cam. “What happened?”

  But I think I already know. Gus didn’t think I’d throw the game, so he sent someone to make sure my quarterback wouldn’t be able to play. It was a calculated, cold move to get rid of Camilo and eliminate our chances of winning.

  “Colin went straight for it. Tackled me down and jammed his foot to the side of my knee. Knight and Vaughn came two minutes too late and shoved him off me.”

  By the casual way he tells me this, I understand that it still hasn’t sunk in.

  No football.

  No scholarship.

  No future.

  “You’re going to be fine,” I lie, elevating his upper body.

  He laughs.

  “I’m not an idiot, Scully. I know what’s up. You were right. Is that what you want to hear? Because you were.”

  My team just lost one of its greatest players.

  For nothing.

  Falling in love is similar to déjà vu

  It’s finding a home in a stranger

  When I met you four and a half years ago, I saw who you were

  I just had to figure out who I was

  So I gave you something to make sure I could seek you out again

  And that maybe, you’ll fall in love with whoever I was, too

  I keep my head down as the cheer team storms onto the field, waving their pompoms in the air. Dad calls it a huge victory that I’m here. I call it asking for more trouble.

  The huge, plastic smiles on the girls’ faces say it all. I’m out. Via’s in. Our blue and black uniform clings to her lithe body like a second skin. She dazzles so bright, Esme positioned her as far as possible from the center. Far away from her. I feel naked without my pompoms. I long to feel them in my hands but know it’s too late for me. My cheer days are over, at least in high school.

  Mel pretends to rummage through her bag, but I know she just can’t look at Via. Surprisingly, it doesn’t make me feel good. Or at all. I’m a taco. A crisp, empty shell.

  Melody doesn’t leave my side even though I refuse her love, care, and silent apologies. Bailey visits my room every morning with a tray containing a glass of OJ, a piece of toast with egg whites, and a cute inspirational quote she prints out from Pinterest, and Dad sweetens my nights by coming in and giving me a good night kiss to keep me going. He always peppers it with reminiscing about a good memory to remind me that good times are still to come.

  Remember when Knight drew a rocket on your forehead when you were kids, and I almost murdered him thinking it was something else?

  Remember when Vaughn walked around on the beach with a live jellyfish in his hand and declared it as his new pet?

  Remember when Luna thought you were a princess because of your hair?

  It is an unspoken truth that Melody can no longer give me good night kisses.

  Daddy says it’s a good thing. That when things get destroyed, you can build a better version of them from scratch. But building takes strength and courage, and I don’t have either right now.

  Esme is doing a toe touch, and Via follows by pulling a perfect Herkie. Mel clasps my skinny jean-clad thigh. I’m wearing a yellow top, no longer affiliated with either team. Things have been crazy since Principal Prichard stepped down abruptly, citing a morbidly sick relative he had to take care of on the East Coast. Word around town is I quit the cheer team because I’m nursing a broken heart. While it’s true, everyone thinks it’s Principal Prichard I am pining after.

  No one suspects the boy who is about to get on the field today is the one who smashed my heart into dust, and now it’s drifting in the air, evaporating from me. No one knows what I’ve been through ever since that boy admitted his love to me, and I couldn’t take him back, no matter how much I want to. Being sorry for breaking something doesn’t make it whole again.

  “Don’t look at them,” Mel whispers, squeezing my thigh. “They aren’t worth it.”

  “Let go of my leg, Melody.”

  She does. Dad is clapping when both teams get on the field even though I know he wants to snap Gus’s spine. Las Juntas is sporting a brand-new quarterback, who looks like a whopping one hundred pounds of bones, and people actually snicker from the bleachers. I feel bad for the kid. And I used to be the mean girl who’d be the first to point out that he isn’t built like a brick wall.

  The game starts, and as soon as Penn goes on the field, it is clear he is shitting all over the game. Blatantly so. He doesn’t even do it gradually. My heart lurches in my chest as Penn pretends to struggle with dropped passes, dragging his feet from side to side. He is immobile and doesn’t catch the ball even when it hits him in the chest.

  Literally.
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br />   He is lagging on the field, heavy and dense, the opposite of the talented player he is. His teammates yell in frustration, one of them kicking a mountain of mud. On the sidelines, his coach is on the verge of a heart attack, but Penn pretends not to listen. Tucked in his own universe, he keeps missing balls, looking the other way in confusion when he gets an opportunity, and stopping every few minutes to lean down on his knees as if he is out of breath.

  Mid-game, Penn’s coach summons them, probably coming up with a new strategy, and Penn nods and looks attentive and determined. But then when he gets back on the field again—he is looking even worse.

  Then there’s Knight. Dean is almost spitting out a lung screaming next to Dad in the stands. Wondering aloud why on earth his quarterback son just missed a chance at a touchdown by throwing the ball to the sideline.

  “What the heck is going on?” Dean kicks the bleacher seat in front of him, and an overweight, fifty-something father turns around and looks at him sharply.

  “Your son plays like shit.”

  “Least he doesn’t smell like it,” Dean retorts.

  “I think I know what’s happening,” Dad murmurs wryly. “And you can be damn proud, Cole.”

  “And why is that? En-fucking-lighten me, Jaime.”

  Because Knight refuses to win the game. Penn is trying to kill Las Juntas’ chance to win so he can save me, but Knight doesn’t let him because he knows he deserves it.

  Knight is privy to another thing, too. He knows I’m done here.

  I’m leaving town tomorrow. I have nothing to win, and nothing to lose. Which is exactly why I find myself standing up and descending the bleachers. I don’t know what I’m doing. All I do know is I’m definitely going to draw attention to myself, something I vowed not to do since I got kicked off the cheer team and Principal Prichard bailed, leaving a trail of scandalous rumors about us in his wake. I run down the stairs, hop over the fence, plant myself on the sidelines next to All Saints High’s coach. With my toes on the grass and the heel of my feet on the concrete, I cup my mouth with both hands.

  “Penn Scully, if you’re half the man I know you are, you will show up on this field,” I scream.