“What do you want me to do?” I ask her, because I know this is one of those weird ass moments that feels like it’s nothing but which you know will change everything. We need this, me and Bernie. Because as soon as I get that inheritance money, life changes. Before it does, we need to sit down here in the dirt and grit and gravel where we came from and burn that identity into our minds.
If the money changes us—any of us—I will get rid of it.
Mark my fucking words.
“Just … lock me in,” she says, and I turn so slowly to look at her that she shivers.
“Fuck that. I’m not locking you in there,” I snap back, and she meets my fire with a surge of her own violent, violet flames.
“You damn well better, Victor Channing, or I’m not letting you date that girl, regardless of how much we both know this plan makes sense.” She tosses her hair over her shoulder, hitting me in the face with it and assaulting me with the sweet scent of peaches, vanilla, and leather. My cock hardens immediately, and I end up grabbing at the crotch in my jeans with a curse.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” I murmur, waiting until she’s slipped into the small, dark space before I slam the door on her. The lock is on the outside, as it’s been ever since I installed it in tenth grade, just so I could imprison the love of my life.
For a while there, it’s quiet. I put my ear to the door to listen in on her, just like I did back then. I can hear her breathing, but it’s different than it was last time. There’s no panic here, no fear. She sounds almost … thoughtful.
Five minutes into this shit and she’s said nothing. I can’t stand that. I need to hear her voice.
“Bernadette?” I ask, splaying my fingers against the door. “Speak to me, princess, or I’m walking my ass in there.” When nothing happens, when her breathing doesn’t change and her body doesn’t shift, I unlock the door and fling it open.
There she is, sitting on the floor with her legs crossed and her face wet with tears. She doesn’t look at me when I step in and close the door behind me.
“What’s the matter, Mrs. Channing?” I murmur, squatting down and putting my hands on her knees. It’s too dark in here for us to see more than the faintest hint of shadows, but I know where she is. I can feel her heat, smell her smell, hear her heart thundering in her chest.
“I feel like I should know what I’m doing here.” She lets out a scathing laugh as I lean in and press my lips to her forehead. “This is what I’m good at, being tough, riding things out, surviving against the odds.” Another self-deprecating laugh follows. “So why do I feel so out of place? Why can’t I just accept that you pretending to go along with Ophelia’s plan is the only thing that makes sense? Why can’t I just stop feeling bad about other people and all the horrible things they do? If I don’t fit into Havoc, Victor, then I don’t fit anywhere.”
I pause for a moment, letting her words sink in.
“Bernadette,” I begin, scooting into the corner and dragging her into my lap. My hands automatically go to her hips, and I know she can feel my cock through my jeans as she straddles me. Why is she wearing this ridiculous fucking skirt? I think, wetting my lips with my tongue and trying to hold myself together. “You don’t need to fit into Havoc. You are the reason for Havoc. Everything we do, we do for you.”
“I know that,” she says, sounding temporarily seventeen. Like, this is a girl who speaks like a thirty-year-old. It’s like that for all of us. Some people think age is a determination of time; it’s about experience. We’ve crammed in so much shit in our lives that we’re aging at the speed of light. I wish the only things Bernie needed to care about were grades and gossip. I wish that for all of us. But then, there’s the world we wish we live in, and the world we actually live in. Sometimes it hurts to acknowledge that. “I just want to be worthy of that. I don’t want to disappoint anyone. You say you’ve been waiting for me all this time? Well, I’ve been waiting for you, too.” She rests her forehead against my shoulder and wiggles her hips.
A growl escapes before I can control myself.
“Goddamn it, Bernadette …” I start, but I’m not mad and we both know it.
“Sorry, it was getting too serious in here,” she whispers, but we both know that even if she jokes about it, even she makes out like it’s nothing, it means everything. This moment means everything, and if we don’t follow through with it, we’ll have missed an opportunity that was given to us despite the awfulness of the world. No matter what’s going on around us, if the world burns, if the people spoil, if there’s no point to anything else … we have this.
We always have this.
“I don’t want to lose what I’ve worked so hard to gain.” Bernadette pauses again, like she’s truly considering her words. “I told myself all along that I was doing this for my sister, but I’m selfish. Victor, I can’t help it, but I want this. I want to be with you; I’d follow you to the grave.”
I shudder beneath her, my hands making their way to her ass. I can’t help myself; I end up squeezing it so hard that she yelps. I relax my grip, and she bites me in the ear.
“Stop that,” she murmurs, but her voice has changed. She can feel it as well as I can, this obsessive pull between our bodies. We were basically made to fuck each other.
“Listen to me, princess,” I tell her, taking her chin in my hand, even if I can’t see her face. I hold her there, and I swear to fuck, I can feel her gaze burning me up from the inside, setting me on fire and tearing me apart, all at the same time. “You hesitated to kill Kali because there’s still a shred of innocence in you. You are living proof that the world can try its hardest to crush a person’s soul and still fail. You are second chances and beautiful beginnings, Bernadette. You hesitated because you wanted to make sure you gave that girl every chance in the world. If you have to believe a lie, believing that other people are inherently good is one you might as well stick with.”
I pull her face forward, so that our lips are touching. She tastes like tears when I lick her mouth, but that’s okay. Those tears belong to me as much as her smile or her laughter. When you accept a person for who they are, you don’t choose bits and pieces. You accept every part of them, right down to the rotten bits. Because everybody wants somebody to love their rottenness.
Even me.
“Do you understand?” I ask her, and she hesitates just enough that I’m forced to squeeze her chin again to get her attention. “Is Kali here?” I ask, and she nods. I hate that she’s seeing things, that I promised I could protect her all by myself when I knew that was a lie. She has to be a part of this as wholly and completely as anyone else; Bernadette has to protect herself.
Because she might not know it, but she’s the final name on her own list. Every mistake she’s ever made, every bad memory, every misstep, she lets those things haunt her. She’s that now, in the form of Kali Rose.
“She won’t leave me alone,” Bernadette hisses, like she’s both furious and afraid, all at the same time. “And I can’t handle it anymore, all the stress and the fear and the frustration. I just want to revel in my own glory, my own pain. All of it.” I smile a little, but she can’t see me so I make sure to kiss her until she can’t breathe.
“Bernie, the only person who can get rid of Kali is you. Forgive yourself for the mistakes you’ve made, learn from them, and take my hand so we can move onto the next big thing. If life isn’t always moving forward, then it’s stuck in place and sinking. You are my queen; you deserve that fucking crown; Kali doesn’t matter. None of them did. Not Coraleigh, not even Neil. Shit, Trinity Jade is nothing. They’re all just obstacles for us to get past. Do you understand?”
She hesitates for a moment, but when she nods, I can feel the movement against my face.
“I’m going to fuck you now, recruit,” I say, and she shivers as I grab her ass again. “This time, are you going to follow my goddamn orders?” There’s a long pause there before I slap her ass and she lets out a gasp of pleasure.
“I prefer Aaron’s spankings,” she murmurs, and I growl, surging to my feet and slamming her back against the wall of the closet. Bernadette’s arms go around me as our mouths meet, my tongue obliterating hers, punishing her into submission. At the same time, I rock my hips against her so hard that I’m sure her ass is putting a dent into the goddamn drywall.
“You only prefer Aaron’s spankings because you know he isn’t serious about them,” I snarl, licking the side of her neck. If she thinks I don’t notice every new hickey, every new finger-shaped bruise that the other boys leave on her skin, then she’s got another thing coming. I’ve memorized them, a pattern that I have to repeat, to redo, to control. “And you know that I most definitely am.”
I reach between us and free my cock from my jeans, pushing her panties aside with two fingers and finding her so goddamn wet that she’s soaked her thighs. The scalding heat of her body triggers my most basic instincts in a way that breaks the definitive control in which I live my life. My hips drive forward, my cock filling her up as she cries out and clings to me, letting me have my way with her in the closet where she was once my prisoner.
It’s so fucked-up, so wrong, so broken and so dark.
But I can’t help it.
I’m filled with a jealous rage at having to share her. When I kiss her, thrusting my tongue between her sweet lips, I can taste that same envy. We’re both being torn apart by it, by wanting each other so fiercely that we can’t breathe.
And that’s how I like it.
I mount her the way I did that first day, rough and wild and unapologetic, until I’m coming so hard that I see stars.
Bernadette’s breathing is heavy in the dark as she clings to me, nails digging into my upper arms, face pressed into the hollow crook between my neck and shoulder. Carefully, almost reverently, I adjust my grip on her ass, holding her instead of crushing her, and then I carry her out of that stupid fucking closet and over to my bed.
I lay her body carefully down on it as she looks up at me, black pleated skirt wrinkled, an old metalcore band t-shirt twisted around her waist. Slowly, and with great care, I undress her, our gazes locked on one another, our breathing matched.
There’s no need to speak. Shit, there isn’t anything we could say to each other with words that we can’t say with our bodies.
Once she’s naked, I strip myself down to nothing, matching our vulnerability, making sure we’re as evenly matched in this moment as we’ve ever been before.
“You’re my wife, Bernadette,” I tell her as I start with her inner thighs, finding the spots that Callum or Hael might’ve left behind during their time with her. I kiss each mark, lick it, suck it, bite it, whatever it takes to reclaim her skin as my own. “You’re my queen, my family. And that’s what family does: we take turns cleaning up each other’s messes.”
She grabs for my hair, tangling her fingers in it and pulling me up toward her, so that our bodies align and my cock slides neatly into her heat. Her legs wrap around me and our mouths find each other, just two lost souls circling in the dark.
By the time I remember that I ordered food and head downstairs to get it, it’s ice-cold and nearly frozen from the chill of the winter night. We eat it anyway, curled up together on a bed that’s far too small for us both, and then we fuck until the sun manages to warm the diffused gray of an icy sky.
Bernadette Blackbird
On Sunday, I head over to Sara Young’s house, wearing a dress that’s as pink as the one I should’ve killed Kali in. I bite my lip, standing there with almost no makeup on and feeling naked as fuck. Who am I if I’m not wearing dark lipstick and black eyeliner, falsies and bullshit? Who the actual motherfucking fuck am I?
The door opens and there she is, Miss VGTF herself.
I stare at her and then I start to move away. It’s not on purpose, actually, but it’s a really good tactic. Sara reaches out for me, taking my hand in one of her cool, dry ones.
“Bernadette, please stay,” she tells me, and I pause. Now that I’m standing here, on this boring street in this boring neighborhood in front of this boring house, I have to wonder if this is even Sara’s home at all. Is she—was she—undercover so deep that she needed an Airbnb rental or something?
“You’ve gotten me in enough trouble already,” I say, putting my hand over my belly. Sara can make of that what she will, but I honestly feel sick to my stomach. When I started out, I told myself I was on a journey of revenge. Then it was about power. It was about belonging. It was about family and connection and sex and love and dark fantasy. What is it now?
Acceptance.
Because if I hate myself as much as the world wants me to, then everyone else has won and I’ve lost.
“I showed my mom that video, you know?” I say to Sara with a breathy laugh. Turning my head, I see her American flag billowing in the wind. It snaps like a rubber band as the winter air throws it around like a kite. My breathing comes slower, more shallow. I feel like I’m falling.
“I’m so sorry, Bernadette,” she says, but I’m not exactly sure what she’s apologizing for. I keep staring at the flag, wondering if I should feel something like patriotism when I look at it. I don’t know what I feel. I don’t even know how I feel about myself right now.
I glance back at Sara Young, hand still on my belly, still trying to breathe.
“Don’t apologize to me,” I tell her, looking her straight in the face and seeing how much she really wants to be the good guy, how much she truly cares. And she does. It’s written into every line of her face, but she has no idea how to go about actually becoming the good guy because she’s too disconnected from the world. She warns me about the dangers of caffeine while I’m riding the high of violence and mad love. What does she know? “Unless you’re apologizing for the way our world handles cases like Penelope’s. Unless you’re apologizing for every girl that gets fucked over by a system that doesn’t care. Unless you’re saying you want to make change, don’t apologize.”
“Why don’t you come in?” Sara asks, but I’m not going to. Instead, I’m going to stand right here, clutching my nauseous belly, and wondering when it’s all finally going to come together, when it’s going to click in. I keep stumbling; I keep messing up. My narrative isn’t the perfect, straight line that I want it to be.
“I showed Pamela that video,” I say, which, in a way, is true. It’s true because Penelope told our mother what was happening. She left a journal with her pain scrawled in looping letters, and then I told our mother what was happening. Nobody cared. In this version of the story, in this fantasy, somebody does.
“And what happened after that?” Sara asks, leaning her shoulder against the doorjamb and frowning at me.
“She just kept saying …” I start, but then I choke on the lie. Fuck. This is one of the ugliest lies I’ve ever told. It gums up my mouth and makes my tongue feel like it’s coated in motor oil. It’s so ugly because it gives Pamela credit that she doesn’t deserve. “She kept saying what did he do to my baby?” I close my eyes and imagine how someone else’s mother might’ve reacted. Once, I saw a true crime show about a mother that found video footage of her husband raping his stepdaughter. This mother, she went and got her shotgun, and she blew the man’s head off while he was sleeping. That’s the mother I imagine when I close my eyes. “When Neil came home, she hit him. And she kept hitting him.” I open my eyes again and exhale. “I don’t think she’d have stopped if he hadn’t hit her back.”
Sara looks at me for a while, listening to the wind whip the flag around. I’ve got on a cashmere sweater that’s as pink as the dress underneath. Pen would’ve loved this outfit. She would’ve worn it with pride and listened to GRRRLS by AViVA, and then maybe she would’ve gone out and kissed one of them. That’s how I imagine her now, vibrant and full of color.
“So silly, considering she died broken and alone,” Kali hisses, but I ignore her. She’s just a plot, a storytelling device to throw back my pain in my own damn face. She is nothin
g. She never really was.
As soon as I accept that truth, as soon as I let it settle into my heart, I blink and she’s gone.
“Would you be able to testify on what you saw?” Sara asks me, but I shake my head.
“No.” I look right at her when I say it. “I’m not a dog for the police.”
“That’s not why you’re here, Bernadette,” she tells me, like she’s a fucking psychologist or some shit. “You’re here because you want to make things right.”
I laugh then, and the sound is as ugly as the sneering face of Kali’s disappearing ghost, the one I summoned up with my own pain and frustration.
“Penelope is dead, so nothing will ever be right again. But keep chasing your bad guys, Sara Young.” I step back and turn around, heading down the steps and waiting to see if she’ll call out to me. She doesn’t. And that’s a good thing because it means that for now, I’ve given her everything she needs.
“I know how we’re going to handle Brittany,” Vic says, slapping a folder down on the table in Aaron’s dining room. I’m sitting there with my phone open to Oak River Elementary’s website. It’s shiny and modern and riddled with accolades … and I hate everything about it.
Even though I know that I’m being stubborn and selfish. Sending Heather to that school would change everything for her. And Aaron was right: based on the way things are rolling in Prescott, she’d be much safer.
I swallow and turn my phone off, but not before Aaron sees what I’m looking at. We exchange a quick glance before I turn back to Victor.
“Alright boss,” Hael starts, sliding his hand down his face. “Lay it out for us.”
“I think you’re going to be pleased by the idea,” Oscar deadpans, leaning back in the armchair and toying with a stress ball in the shape of a giant sperm. I know, it’s weird, but we were all given one during sex ed in sophomore year. I found Aaron’s between the couch cushions the other day. It’s probably been there for years. “This ties our responsibilities together nicely. And really, it’s a much better deal than the little witch deserves.”
Anarchy at Prescott High Page 32