by Ashley Gee
“Hold her.”
One of them wraps a belt around my chest and pulls it hard so I’m pressed against the chair, although I can’t see which one of them is holding it. It doesn’t matter. None of them will touch me with their bare hands, though that doesn’t stop them from doing Vin’s dirty work.
I only have eyes for the demon terrorizing my life as he comes around the table. A switchblade appears in his hand as if it materialized from thin air. The edge is always sharp and clean, like he takes care to make sure it’s always ready to be used. I don’t know where on his body he hides the thing or how he manages to get it past the metal detectors, but that doesn’t matter either.
A ready blade has always been available when he needs it.
One of his hands holds down my wrist while the other presses the point against the sensitive skin on the inside of my upper arm, just below three rows of identical scars.
The pain is sharp and immediate, but I don’t make a sound. My skin parts like butter, and I can only watch as blood beads at the bottom of the cut and then trails downward. They release me as soon as it’s done, but I don’t move from the chair.
I used to fight them, but nothing good ever came of that.
There aren’t words to describe how I feel about Vincent Cortland.
Hate isn’t evocative enough, and fear is too shallow, although that’s usually the predominant emotion. Putting a name to any of the other things I feel would just give him more power over me than he already has.
Because it isn’t fear that keeps me in line.
The worst thing the Vice Lords can do to me is deliver a little pain. And killing me would just be putting me out of my misery, so there is little threat there. No, it isn’t fear or even hate that keeps me silent.
It’s guilt.
Three
Secondhand weed smoke fills the air like low-hanging fog. I inhale deeply as I lean back in my leather armchair and survey the room.
These weekend blow-out parties used to be something I did to annoy my parents. But the less they seem to give a shit, the more this all feels like a waste of time. There isn’t any point in rebelling when no one bothers to pay attention.
Neither of them so much as commented on it when I moved out to the pool house a few years ago. I don’t even make it back into the main house for meals most days.
My father has been preoccupied with some business deal lately, if all the time he spends locked in his office and speaking furtively into the phone is any indication. And my stepmother is as up her own ass as she has always been. I can only assume she likes the weather in there.
Chaos teems around me, and I sit at the center of it all like an indolent king on his throne. It isn’t an accident that my chair is raised slightly higher than the others and angled so I can see everything happening around me. Let them think the power is an accident, and not something that has been carefully cultivated for me since birth.
The Cortlands have ruled Deception since the beginning, nothing will change that.
And I’m the heir to this petty little empire.
Lights from the pool shine through the sliding glass doors and cast everything in surreal blue and purple lights. It makes the writhing and overheated bodies look like something out of a fever dream.
People who don’t get invites to these parties like to say it’s always an all-out orgy. They’re not entirely correct, but I let the rumor mill spin on its own. An invite to one of my parties is one of the most coveted things that exists at Deception High. Rumors abound about the secret society shit that must be happening here.
But the truth is that my friends like to get together and hang out with whatever girls they’re in the mood for that week, imbibing on recreational substances and getting laid without too many hang-ups about privacy.
I’ve never been more bored in my fucking life.
Shitty trance music blasts from the Bluetooth speaker, and I turn in my chair to glare at whoever has the balls to mess with my sound system. “What the hell, Elliot? Turn that crap off.”
One of my closest friends since middle school shrugs me off as he plays with the phone he has connected to the speakers. That asshole fancies himself a DJ and likes to force us to listen to dubstep, or whatever the fuck it is, whenever he gets the chance. With his long hair and Viking build, he looks like he should be into Norwegian death metal, not the electronic crap he puts on to assault our eardrums.
Someone’s hand slides along my jean-covered thigh, momentarily distracting me from the shitty music. I look down to see Sophia coiled between my spread legs while she kneels on the floor. As I stare down at her, I wonder if she realizes that she picked the wrong lighting to do her makeup. Under the glare of the lamp behind me, her face and her neck are completely different shades of white girl. It’s dried out honeybun vs. cancer ward beige, and I can’t decide which color I like the least.
I could take out my dick and force it down her throat, or I could humiliate her in front of a room full of people by laughing in her face and shoving her away. Neither choice does anything for me as I stare down into her desperate face, feeling nothing but a keen sense of boredom with life in general.
Maybe I need fucking antidepressants.
“Go get me a drink,” I command her, even though there is a nearly full beer on the table next to me.
“Of course, Vin,” Sophia purrs in a voice I’m sure she thinks is sexy. She uses her hands on my thighs to lever herself up onto the sky-high heels that clack too loudly on my tile floor.
“An import. Check the fridge in the house.”
I watch her go, partly because she has a semi-decent ass, but also because I’m secretly hoping one of those heels flies out from under her and she ends up crashing to the floor. No such luck, I think, as she tottles to the sliding glass door and pulls it open.
My stepmother doesn’t compromise on her beauty sleep, so the the main house is locked down tighter than virgin pussy right now. It should buy me a few minutes of peace while Sophia figures that out. She knows better than to come back empty-handed.
“If you don’t hit that soon, her head might shoot off into the stratosphere from all the built up pressure,” Cal comments from the sofa a few feet away.
“She might need to find a different release valve. I’m not into sloppy fifths, or is it sixths? I heard some rumors about the football team from Verdes Hills last fall.”
Cal laughs, but it isn’t a pleasant sound. “Maybe she really likes you.”
Bullshit. If anybody but the other Vice Lords actually likes me, I’ll suck my own dick. “She’d be the first.”
“Poor little rich boy. People only want him for his money.”
“Fuck off.”
Hooking up with me is like climbing Everest. Something people do for the status, to say they did it, regardless if they think that they’ll actually enjoy it.
I don’t kid myself that there is some deeper connection going on here. If I didn’t have the power and the status that comes with the Cortland name, none of the chicks at school would give me the time of day.
My bad attitude and general viciousness make sure of that.
“Maybe you need a few more hits, man. You look tense as hell.”
The vape hangs loosely in my hand, and I realize I haven’t taken a pull from it in several minutes. It’s gone cold, so the heating element has probably shut off. I don’t know where my head is right now, but it definitely isn’t here.
I study the room through the haze of smoke, wondering how soon I can kick most of these assholes out of my place. There are even a few people I don’t recognize, more evidence of how off my game I am tonight.
Maybe I should screw Sophia like she so desperately seems to want. If I make her do something depraved enough, I might actually feel something.
“You looking for anyone in particular?” Cal asks, following my gaze as it tracks around the room.
“Nope. I pride myself on keeping chicks interchangeable.”
&
nbsp; “You’ve always been all heart, Cortland.”
That is the pot calling the kettle an asshole. Cal has been combing pussy out of his hair ever since he came back from a year abroad with his father’s family in Italy talking with a slight accent. I guarantee he hasn’t been keeping a catalogue of their names, and I’m almost certain he wouldn’t recognize most of them on sight. “You’re confusing my heart with my dick.”
“Tell that to Sophia.” Cal slouches further down on the couch as a random brunette straddles him. He brings a beer to his lips and takes a swig, barely looking at the girl on his lap. “You’ve had that fish on the hook for months, and you still haven’t reeled it in. What’s up with that?”
Girlfriends. Permanence. Commitment. Those might as well be four-letter words to us and a great way to mess up a good thing.
But it’s all starting to feel empty.
I shake off the disturbing thoughts as Cal continues to stare me down. The look on his face might mean something to me if I hadn’t smoked enough weed to kill off an acre of farmland, but I know I don’t like it.
“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”
“Yeah, okay.”
His expression turns musing as he surveys me. I can tell from his expression that he’s about to say something to get under my skin. Cal is one of the few people on planet Earth that I let give me shit, and he takes full advantage of the privilege. “Unless there is someone else that you’re thinking about, like Zaya Milbourne maybe.”
No one says her name. No one acknowledges her presence. No one so much as speaks to her without my permission. Those are the rules that have been in place since freshman year when the kids from the Gulch funnel their shitty middle school into Deception High.
Anyone else would be flying through the plate glass door, but Cal is one of my closest friends.
Instead, I pluck a still lit cigarette from the ashtray on the table. Moving fast enough that Cal doesn’t have a chance to react, I press the end into the exposed skin of his knee just below the line of his shorts.
“Jesus Christ, man.” Cal leaps back with a curse as he frantically brushes ash from his leg and inspects the mark on his skin. “This better not leave a scar, you psycho.”
“Sorry, I didn’t hear you.” My voice is pleasant and easy as I take another pull from the vape and blow cool smoke out through my nose. I know I look like a raging bull from a cartoon strip, but deliberately keep my voice mild. “What was it you said?”
“Fuck, that hurts.”
“Don’t be a baby, it’s just a little burn.”
“Not all of us enjoy getting burnt up, or cut up.”
Idly, I stroke the scars on the inside of my bicep. There are four of them, cut straight across in a row like hash marks scratched into the wall of a prison cell to mark the days passing. All but one are old enough that I barely feel anything as my fingers pass over the puckered skin. But I tease at the edge of the newest one, feeling it burn as my nail catches on the edge of a fresh scab.
I’ll miss the pain when it heals. I’ll think about the feel of a blade cutting into the sensitive skin, because I know what it represents, but I’ll get another chance. Probably soon.
One for her, and one for me.
“Then watch your damn mouth next time,” I say, no hint of an apology in my voice because there isn’t one there. “It’s out here making promises that you’re sensitive skin doesn’t want to keep.”
My preoccupation with Zaya Milbourne is the stuff of local legends, but no one knows the whole truth. Sometimes I wonder if I even know the truth, as if my mind has manufactured pieces of my own history to make them fit together, even though they’re made for different puzzles. I know Cal likes to tell people the situation is complicated when he thinks I can’t hear him, but my relationship with Zaya is the simplest thing in my life.
She gives, and I take.
It’s been so many years that the stories people tell are indistinguishable from fantasy. People love to talk, but it’s like the whole town is playing a game of telephone where they all speak different languages.
Everyone knows a piece of it, nobody knows it all.
I never bother to explain myself to anyone, not my friends, not my family, not even Zaya herself. Mostly, because I know I don’t have to.
No matter what people want to think, I didn’t create this particular cluster-fuck of a situation. I just react to it in the only messed up way I know.
Taking control and then burning it all to the ground.
If it’s crazy to punish someone for something they did a decade ago, then I guess we all know what to call me.
But Zaya brought this all on herself. Some people might say that we were just kids, too young to know any better, but no one is ever that young.
She knows exactly what she did.
And what she has to do if she wants the torture to stop.
Sophia is at the sliding door, pulling on the handle that needs to be pushed. I watch her through the glass, trying to see something past the skirt dress barely long enough to cover her uterus and the hair teased up high enough to hide a full-sized raccoon.
Something that might be worth getting out of my chair.
The chick is pretty enough, I guess, but in a way that is generic and uninspired. This is the sort of girl that I’m supposed to be with, especially if you ask my father: lily-white, well-bred, and a perfect addition to the mantle of mediocrity lining the grand stairwell in the main house.
But nothing about Sophia Taylor excites me. And it’s hard to respect someone who can’t figure out how to a work a damn door.
Iain pushes himself off the floor where he’s been playing a bloody first-person shooter on my massive flat-screen TV to let Sophia back in. He moves like a panther stalking its prey, all coiled muscle and barely restrained violence. But he barely spares her a glance as he pulls open the glass and then goes back to his game.
Girls hold no interest for him. Boys don’t either, as far as I can tell. The only thing that keeps his attention for more than a few minutes is something aggressively destructive.
Dude is the only person I know who might be more intense than I am.
Sophia latches back on me as soon as she gets through the door. Her hands are empty, but I can’t remember what nonsense thing I sent her looking for, so I let it go.
She presses her lips to my ear and bites gently on the lobe. “Let’s find a place where we can be alone.”
Her breath is swampy and hot on my skin, and I resist the urge to shove her away in disgust. There is no such thing as privacy in the pool house. It’s basically one large space with a combined kitchen and living room, and a small bedroom area in the back separated from the rest by a thin wall that lets any and all sounds through as if it doesn’t exist at all. Luckily, nobody here gives a shit about privacy. Even if I fucked Sophia up against a wall in the living room, nobody here would see anything they haven’t seen my friends do a dozen times before.
When her hand glides over the soft bulge in my jeans, I realize I’ve had more than enough of this shit.
“Everybody get the fuck out,” I say, coming to my feet. The room falls silent save for the low thrum of sub-bass and electronic rhythm coming from the speakers.
Elliot turns to face with me with a girl under each arm. “C’mon, Vin. The party’s just getting started.”
Except I can’t be here for another minute without killing someone.
“Fine, fuck it. If any of my stuff is missing in the morning, I’m taking it out of your ass.”
I’m out the door before anyone can say anything else. None of them come after me, not that I would have expected it. You don’t get to be the unrepentant asshole one minute and the guy people go chasing after begging him to come back the next.
The party is probably better without my bad mood ruining it, anyway.
There is a decent chance none of them will even notice when I don’t return for the night. Except for Sophia, but only
because she’s hoping to screw her way into the most powerful family in town.
Not exactly a compliment.
I don’t let myself think about where I’m going as I get in my car and start the engine. What happens next won’t be about thinking, or really anything requiring brain power.
This is all instinct.
Four
I first met Vin Cortland when I was eight years old.
My mother worked for his family during that halcyon time when she actually managed to hold down a job, right before she abandoned us completely. The Cortlands even treated her well, for a nanny and housekeeper paid under the table. Like every other founding family in Deception, appearances mattered to them. They wouldn’t ever be caught abusing their staff.
But Vin has always been the prince of the castle on the hill with me barely fit to clean up after him.
Once upon a time, my family could have been among the lucky few living on the Bluffs. We used to have money and status, but that was a long time ago. Long before I was born. Grandpa Milbourne talks about it sometimes, the glory days of Deception when there was still gold in the hills and fortunes to be made.
Nowadays, home for the Milbournes is in the Gulch, a stretch of barren land at the very bottom of the valley that floods in the summer and freezes in the winter. As much as anything can freeze in this part of California.
Zion and I live with our grandfather in one of the oldest houses still standing in the Gulch. The house was built back when there was still arable land here and it wasn’t a dumping ground for society’s rejects. According to Grandpa, the Milbournes used to own everything from one end of the valley to the other. Little by little, pieces were sold off until only the house remained.
My mother left a few years ago. The moment a random guy on a motorcycle blew through town who was willing to take her with him, she climbed up to ride bitch and didn’t look back. Supposedly, our father was a jazz musician who hung around just long enough to give my mother two kids before going back on the road when both of us were still in diapers. I’m exactly nine months older than Zion, but our father left before I formed any memories of him. She never even told use his name.