“You want the ring back, too?” I snap, which just makes him laugh. But he can’t hide his feelings for me anymore than I can for him. If we could both put up permanent shields against one another, we might just do it. We’d always love each other, but this … vulnerability? It hurts.
“Keep the ring, Bernie,” he tells me, sliding a smoke between his lips. He smokes when he’s nervous. I told you. I fucking told you. “You know it’s the right move.”
I do, too, and damn him for making me admit that shit.
“It is,” I say, “but I hate you for even being able to recognize that, through the blindness of your love for me.” It’s delivered deadpan, but every word is true. Victor knows it, so he doesn’t smile or laugh it off. He just looks at me.
“This isn’t the end of the world, okay? I’m not surprised she’s offering something like this. I always assumed she would.”
I look back at him, and for the briefest of seconds, I can’t decide if he’d commit hara-kiri right here in the hallway if I dared ask … or if he’s been using me all along. Victor Channing is terrible, right? He’s tall and strong, but he can also be stony at times. He kept me here, when he could’ve set me free, and we both fucking know it.
“Goddamn it, I love you,” I breathe, closing my eyes and putting the heel of my hand to my head. I hear him chuckle, but he doesn’t move toward me right now. He knows that if he does, we’ll both explode. This school is full of fucking creosote, so that might not be a good idea right now. The entire thing would go up in flames. “Get to class, Channing.”
“Same to you, Blackbird,” he retorts, as if we barely know each other. As if we aren’t soul mates, tied to the same rock and willing to drown together, just so we don’t have to be separated.
When I open my eyes, Victor is gone but Ms. Keating is standing at the end of the hall in a mustard yellow suit jacket with short sleeves, a black t-shirt, and sneakers. Her arm is still in a sling, and she has scars on her face, but she looks much more like herself now.
The Thing’s influence is fading, I realize, wetting my lips. My lipstick tastes like hate and regret or, if you wanted to be specific, you might say blackberries and vanilla. It’s the color of lividity on a dead body. I know that because I’ve seen it firsthand.
“Bernadette,” Ms. Keating says, walking slowly toward me, her sneakers squeaking across the floors. They’re much cleaner than you’d think, those floors, since they have to be mopped so often. Piss, vomit, cum, spit … blood. You name it, it’s on the floor of Prescott High.
I hate it here; I can’t wait to be done. I wish I’d been done months ago, but I’m going to enjoy the rest of my ride out of here. It’s the only way I’ll be able to move on knowing that I took advantage of every, single second.
I smile.
“Ms. Keating, you’re looking better.” My smile is so fake it hurts my mouth, so I drop it into the abyss opening up beneath my feet. Kali Rose-Kennedy is dead. Everything I asked for is coming true the way it’s supposed to and yet, I’m in deeper shit than ever. I’m dancing with the sons of rival gang leaders in dark clubs with throbbing music and flashing lights. “Is Sara Young asking for me again? Or is it Constantine this time?”
The vice principal shakes her head slightly, her own smile much less fake than my own.
“Nothing like that. I was just wondering if I could have you alone for a minute?”
I nod and follow her down the hallway to her office. Once we’re inside with the door closed, I curl my fingers around the back of one of her chairs but refuse to sit down. If I do, I’ll fidget, and she’ll wonder why. Can’t tell her I’m acting like a little bitch over something that means nothing while acting blasé as fuck about the things that really do, like that last night with Kali.
“How are you handling everything?” Ms. Keating asks, but her question is so vague that I could pretty much answer for anything happening in my life, talk freely about it without her ever knowing what it was.
“Handling what?” I ask instead, forcing her to make her question more specific.
“Everything,” Ms. Keating repeats, pointedly ignoring my move to corner her. With a sigh, I come around the chair and sink into it. “You don’t have to tell me, but I thought you might like a safe place to talk.”
I lean forward in the chair and exhale.
“Have you ever wanted everything to stay the same, but also have it all change, too?” I ask her and she nods, slowly, like she’s actually thought about it. “That’s where I’m at right now.”
Ms. Keating looks at me sadly.
“I have to, in good faith, let you know that I’ll no longer be responsible for anything regarding you or your friends. Anything your teachers—or your parent, even though you’re emancipated—has to say will be reported directly to the police.”
After a moment, I just stand up and leave the room. Instead of going back to class, I go sit outside on the top of the yellow Firebird, wishing it were the Camaro and wondering when the fuck I’ll get to drive the Eldorado.
I like it so much that it hurts
Like the sunlight that falls through the window, white as cream against the tangled sheets.
I like it so much that it makes me hate you
Like the pain of your hand in my hair, but the pleasure of your body between my thighs.
I like you so much that it hurts
Like the feeling of losing myself, just so I can find you.
The poem is for Mr. Darkwood’s class, and it’s late because I just can’t be fucked with poetry lately. But I like it. I like writing it and discovering things; the words only have to mean something to me. That’s what matters.
I drop the poem off before the end of class and meet Vic outside, climbing on his bike, and curling my arms tightly around him.
“I wrote about you today,” I say. He says nothing, but he fucking heard me. He’ll probably steal my poem out of the trash when I get my grade back—it’ll likely be a C-minus or a D-plus—and read it anyway. He’ll probably tuck it in his back pocket, act like he was going for a cigarette, and keep it to reread later.
Fucking asshole.
When Heather and I lived with Pamela and the Thing, the morning consisted of oh shit, let’s get the fuck out of here! while possibly stealing a stale granola bar from the cabinet, one that I’d pinched from the delivery truck outside the cafeteria. Didn’t hurt that every time I walked by, I might see Hael Harbin smoking over by the dumpsters.
Mornings at Aaron’s house depend on which guy is sleeping beside me. Or comes to find me. Or corners me against the wall in the hallway and shoves my pajama pants down my hips, grinds me into the wall to the left of the staircase. Covers my mouth with his hand. Moans huskily against my ear.
Callum is fucking me so hard that I can’t breathe, that I don’t dare make a sound. The girls are upstairs, and I don’t need them wandering out of their room to see this. When he comes, I relax a bit, holding tight to him so he won’t move for a second.
The sound of the door opening upstairs gets us both moving and quick. He sets me down and fixes his shorts while I pull up my pajama pants and underwear.
“Can I use the bathroom?” Heather calls out, and I close my eyes as Cal chuckles.
“No! It’s my turn next,” I yell back, wondering how the fuck I lived in Pam and Neil’s house for so long. The tension was so tight, you felt you might slip off the tightrope of it and break your goddamn neck at any second. It’s much better here. Same amount of tension, but a different kind. It isn’t all focused on my throat like a garrote. It’s more … diffused. “What are we doing today?” I whisper as Heather whines and stomps back down the hall toward the room she’s been sharing with Aaron’s sister, Kara, and their cousin Ashley.
“It’s Friday, so … something,” Cal says, pausing as Aaron shuffles out of his room toward the top of the stairs. He’s here every night, obviously, but the other boys come and go, depending on their living situations at home. Vic is here a
s much as he’s legally allowed to be. Maybe a tad more than he should. He’s cutting it too close.
I feel irrationally irritated all of a sudden and scrub my hands down my face.
Vic met with his mother on Monday—in a very public place—and told her that he agreed. She gave him paperwork. We gave it back. Now we’re waiting. I feel sick, and I hate every second of this. We go to school every day like things are normal. But they’re not. Nobody understands that better than me, I think.
“Don’t let it get to you,” Cal warns me, coming up behind me and running his hands up my sides. It was like, as soon as I’d given him permission, he was here by my side, like he’d always been there. Nothing changed except for the fact that I knew he was there. Oscar was pretty much the opposite. “You know how Vic feels.” Callum chuckles. “He wants you all to himself. Last thing he’d do is give you up.”
“I know that,” I tell him, and that’s not a lie. I just … want more.
“Is Cal the only one here?” Aaron asks, staring at me blearily and wearing a pair of pj pants with World of Warcraft characters on them. Makes him seem thirteen instead of seventeen and a half. Like, he’s still an innocent boy and not a man who shot a girl to death for me a few weeks ago.
“Nobody else is here yet,” I tell him as he scoots back and heads into the kitchen. He still has the medical boot on his leg and the cast on his arm, but overall, he looks much better, like he’s finally recovering.
Physically, that is. His emotional state is a bit … all over the place. I still miss him every day like he’s gone, like I’ve got this permanent bit of PTSD to remind me how deep I am into this fucking shit.
“Need to know if I should get the babysitter tonight,” Aaron murmurs sleepily, pausing as the sliding glass door opens and Vic steps in, smelling like smoke. So … he came in the back gate to smoke a cigarette before coming inside.
I stare at him and he stares right back.
“Get the babysitter,” he commands before turning a look on Cal that brings this dark tension to life in the air between them. I would not like to see the two of them fight. It’d be like a hyena versus a crocodile. Fuck if I know which one would win. They’re terrible and awful and, looking at them like this, I can’t goddamn believe my luck.
They’re my lovers now, not my enemies. Not like they made me believe in sophomore year. At least now I know I had every reason and every right to be as afraid as I was. If I’d been anyone else, they probably would’ve just killed me and buried me on Tom’s property.
Anyway, Vic is most definitely looking at Cal like he knows we fucked. He turns back to me.
“What are we doing?” I ask, and Vic sighs, moving closer and handing me an invitation written on some fancy ass paper, the kind they make for fun at the rich elementary school I didn’t go to, the kind they send home with the kids that smells like vanilla and roses, all tied into a fancy journal as a Mother’s Day present. “What the fuck is this?”
“It’s an invitation to a murder mystery party,” Vic says, snorting and swiping his hand over the lower half of his face. “Fucking hell,” he murmurs as I scrunch up my brow and look up at him.
“The fuck is that?” I ask as Aaron makes a sound of annoyance from the direction of the fridge.
“Have you ever seen the fifties movie, The House on Haunted Hill?” he asks, and I shake my head.
“I’ve seen the shitty nineties remake,” I offer, but Aaron just smiles at me.
“It’s like, a live play where everyone at the party is a character. You get a character sheet, and you try to solve the mystery. That is, who at the party is a murderer.” Goose bumps ripple across my skin as I blink stupidly in Aaron’s direction, looking back down at the incredibly cheesy but probably expensive paper invitation. “I mean, the murderer,” Aaron corrects. “In the group. It’s a rich, white people thing.”
“This is fucking dumb,” I tell Vic, letting Callum have the invitation when he grabs for it. “You know that, right? This is just asking for trouble, Victor.”
“How so?” he asks, tucking his inked hands into his pants pockets. “We were invited by Trinity. Guess who else is going to be there?”
“This sounds like fun,” Cal agrees, his smile made of pretty nightmares. When he looks up, it’s obvious he’s on Vic’s side.
“Only because you’re a psychopath,” I tell him, and he laughs. “This isn’t fun. This is trouble not-so-subtly disguised as a party.”
“James Barrasso will be there,” Vic says with a nod as Aaron steps up to the peninsula and leans against it, shirtless and too pretty for the harsh morning light. “I don’t need to tell you what a valuable opportunity this is.”
“You’re going to this thinking it’s the perfect cover to start shit. That’s what everybody else is thinking, too. I don’t like this. What does Oscar think?” I cross my arms over my chest in an attempt to hide the hardened points of my nipples from showing through my borrowed t-shirt. Doesn’t work. All it does is draw more attention from my boys.
“What does Oscar think about what?” the man in question asks, coming in the front door with Hael on his heels. I show him the invitation right away, and he plucks it from my fingers like they’re poisoned, like he’d rather not touch me. He sighs and hands it back as soon as he sees what it is. “We’re going.”
“This is fucking stupid,” I say, letting Hael take the invitation next. He looks at it for a moment and then cocks an eyebrow.
“A murder mystery party, huh?” he asks, shaking his head like he’s as perplexed as I am. “Fuck me, rich people are weird.”
“And you’re an idiot,” I tell Vic, pointing at him first and then Oscar next. “Both of you.”
But they’re not.
And if they want to go to this party, I have to go, too. Not just because I know how fucking smart and crafty they both are, but because we’re Havoc. Even if it were a mistake, we’d be making it together.
Mr. Darkwood gives me an F on the poem because he found one of the notes I wrote him about the word ebon. He hates being wrong, so he punishes me with a terrible grade. I spend the rest of the class imagining what it would feel like to wrap my hands around his throat. Jesus Christ, what is wrong with people? Why can’t they just say sorry, I was wrong and move the fuck on. It doesn’t have to be a production either way.
After school, we get dressed for the party at Aaron’s house, and I decide to be a total asshole and wear a black hoodie dress that says Ouija across the front with a picture of a spirit board on the back. It’s got a planchet necklace that I always pair with it, one that I made with the piece that came from an old version of the game that I stole from the thrift store.
I’m sure it’s nothing like what anyone else might be wearing to the party.
“This is a party for teenagers?” I ask, because sometimes I forget that we are, in fact, all still teenagers. I mean, technically speaking. In actual years. In experience, I’m a crone. No, no, I’m a corpse buried in a shallow hole. I finger the planchet necklace as Oscar turns to look at me, gray eyes so empty I just know the look is intended to make me back off.
“It is,” he says, narrowing his eyes briefly for a moment. “I think it’s supposed to be Trinity’s birthday party.”
I curl my lip in disgust.
Trinity.
That’s the name of a book villain if I’ve ever heard one. Actually, if I read it in a book, I’d call bullshit and laugh. Instead, I get to deal with the nightmare of that girl in person, the girl who didn’t even scream when I slammed the heel of my hand into her nose and made her bleed.
“She doesn’t want a Ferrari cake and an episode of My Super Sweet Sixteen?” I ask, and Oscar almost smiles. I can tell because his poisonous line of a mouth, like the long blade of a rapier, twitches slightly. “How about her own private island and a gold tampon to shove up her designer cunt?”
“Bitter much?” Oscar asks me as I continue to play with the necklace. If Trinity were a villain in a book
then I guess I’d be the motherfucking witch, the one who lights the planchet necklace around her throat up with power and summons demons from another world.
“Maybe,” I offer, not sure how far I should go with this man. This man who lost his virginity to me and left me to clean up bright, red period blood off the couch. This man who got a second chance from me, tied me up, fucked me in his bed and left me there. He’s running out of chances to prove himself to me before I just give up and beat the shit out of him. Or … try anyway. I thought before that I might win against Oscar. Now that I know him better, I’m not sure of anything. “Tell me: what does Ophelia have to gain from having her son marry this girl? Does she really think that if this happened, and they got divorced, that the girl would give her any of the money she may or may not win in court? Even then, I doubt Ophelia is going to leave Victor alone with half the fortune. They hate each other too much. One of them has to die.”
“You bring up valuable points,” Oscar tells me, adjusting his bloodred tie. It matches my hair tonight, but I can’t tell if that’s intentional or not. “Ones that we’ve already been over, many times. Do you think I haven’t thought of all of those things?”
I purse my lips.
I know what the plan is here. Ophelia needs to die. That’s obvious to everyone, even me. It doesn’t even need to be said aloud. But is this really the best way to do it?
Victor promising to get an annulment doesn’t make me safe.
Nothing but that woman’s death will serve.
“I hope I’m the murderer at the party tonight,” I say, thinking of Kali. I look over at Oscar, but he isn’t looking back at me. Instead, he’s adjusting his tie because he perceives it to be the slightest bit fucking crooked. His long, inked fingers tease the silk fabric in a way that’s criminal.
I move away from Oscar and toward the boys’ bedroom door, the one that I closed behind me on purpose when I came in here looking for him. We’ve had sex twice since the night of the dance. The group thing, and when I woke up and he was behind me. But that’s it. I can sense there’s so much more waiting inside Oscar that needs to be let out. I crack my knuckles and he finally turns to look at me.
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