by Callie Hart
RIOT RULES
CALLIE HART
Contents
JOIN THE RIOT!
THE RULES
Prologue
1. DASH
2. CARRIE
3. CARRIE
4. DASH
5. DASH
6. CARRIE
7. CARRIE
8. DASH
9. CARRIE
10. CARRIE
11. CARRIE
12. DASH
13. CARRIE
14. DASH
15. CARRIE
16. CARRIE
17. DASH
18. CARRIE
19. DASH
20. DASH
21. CARRIE
22. CARRIE
23. CARRIE
24. DASH
25. CARRIE
26. DASH
27. CARRIE
28. DASH
29. CARRIE
30. DASH
31. CARRIE
32. DASH
33. CARRIE
34. CARRIE
35. DASH
36. CARRIE
37. DASH
38. DASH
39. CARRIE
40. CARRIE
41. DASH
42. CARRIE
43. DASH
44. CARRIE
45. DASH
46. CARRIE
47. DASH
48. CARRIE
49. DASH
50. CARRIE
51. CARRIE
52. DASH
53. DASH
54. DASH
55. CARRIE
56. DASH
57. DASH
58. WANT EVEN MORE?
ALSO BY CALLIE HART
FOLLOW ME ON INSTAGRAM
CALLIE’S READER GROUP
Copyright © 2020 RIOT HOUSE by Callie Hart
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
JOIN THE RIOT!
Join Callie’s exclusive reader group on Facebook to discuss all things Riot House! Gain access to exclusive content, participate in weekly giveaways, and win signed books and extra special goodies!
THE RULES
Rule no. 1: If someone asks who you are, lie. Even the smallest kernel of truth will unspool our hard work. A fraction of truth leads to another. Be careful what you say.
Rule no. 2: Friends are for the weak, kid. You don’t want them. Don’t need them. A friend is a vulnerability and a distraction. You can’t afford either.
Rule no. 3: No boys. I repeat, absolutely NO boys. No dating. No falling in love. No nonsense of any kind. I mean it. NO BOYS!
Rule no. 4: If you’re discovered, don’t hesitate. Not even for a second. RUN.
Prologue
THE DARK LORD.
THE SUN GOD.
THE ANARCHIST.
He’s dying, I know he is. The pink-tinged spittle around his mouth confirms it. Fine capillaries, like threads of red cotton, spiderweb the whites of his eyes. His hands grasp at the air, like he’s trying to clutch hold of life itself, but his clawed fingers close around…nothing.
“Fucking bitch. I’m gonna…fucking…kill you!”
“Carina?”
I drop my cellphone, gasping.
In front of me, Wolf Hall wears a shroud of early morning mist, its dark, ivy-choked towers spearing upward out of the haze, demarcating the western and eastern wings of the academy. Dew covers the lawn that stretches between the curve in the gravel driveway and the imposing entrance to the building, and the slick blades of grass glitter like they’re coated in diamonds.
Next to me, Mara Bancroft, Wolf Hall’s sweetheart, quirks an eyebrow, handing me the phone I just dropped. It’s six-thirty in the morning but she’s wearing a full face of makeup and not a strand of her jet-black hair is out of place; as always, she’s photo ready. “Whoa, girl. I was only asking if you were going home for spring break.” She smiles easily, because for her, going home means reuniting with her disgustingly wealthy family in the Hamptons. For me, going home…well, there is no going home. Wolf Hall, with its dusty corridors, endless, narrow staircases, macabre stained-glass windows and hidden rooms is home for me now.
While most high school juniors are dreaming of body shots in Cabo during spring break, I have all I can ever hope for right here: Some semblance of normalcy. Safety. Sanctuary.
New Hampshire might be tiptoeing into spring, but the academy, situated at the top of a mountain in the middle of a national park, takes a little longer to thaw out than the rest of the state. I hold my takeaway coffee cup to my chest, using its heat to stave off the early morning chill. I’m no stranger to rules; I’m used to living by them. But there are rules that can be bent on occasion, and there are rules that can be flat-out broken. Wolf Hall has a strict policy about its students remaining on academy grounds during the week. Come the weekend, we’re allowed to roam into Mountain Lakes, the town at the foot of the mountain that we live on, but from Monday through Friday we’re supposed to stay put, where the faculty can see us.
A stealthy coffee-run down the hill in Mara’s G-Wagon is usually overlooked, though. Any teacher up early enough to catch us rolling out of the student parking lot usually doesn’t say anything. Denying us caffeine only guarantees we’ll be grouchy ’til midday, and they’d much rather turn a blind eye than deal with that.
“I’m gonna stay here,” I say. “My little brother’s a nightmare. I won’t be able to get any of my assignments done back in Wichita.”
“Jesus H Christ, it’s cold.” Mara threads her arm through mine and tugs on me, urging me to walk faster. The gravel crunches beneath the soles of our sneakers. “Spring Break isn’t about getting assignments done. It’s about drinking excessively and making out with strangers on a beach somewhere. Haven’t you read the handbook?”
“What handbook?”
She winks at me. “That’s the point. There isn’t one yet, but there should be. What do you think about this for a title?” She affects a lah-de-dah voice. “The Teenager’s Essential Guide to Surviving Boarding School While Still Managing to Have Fun.”
Mara leads a charmed life. Like most of the students at Wolf Hall, she’s never wanted for anything. Ponies, nannies, ski trips, and private tutors—anything she’s ever wanted has been handed to her on a silver platter. As far as she’s concerned, Wolf Hall is the dullest, most desolate place on earth.
“Sounds like a bestseller,” I say. Her fictional handbook is the kind of thing kids where I come from pick up at a cash register and flip through, fantasizing about a life they’ll never be able to afford.
“You should come with me to L.A.,” Mara says. “I’m not going back to New York. I’m serious. Jemimah’s so pregnant now. All anyone can talk about is the baby. Baby this. Baby that. They’re acting like my sister getting knocked up is the most exciting thing in the world. They don’t realize that once she pops that kid out, it’s gonna be baby shit, baby puke, baby screaming. I swear to god, I am not changing one single diaper.”
“Yeah. Babies are the worst.”
“You’d know. Weren’t you, like, twelve when Marcus was born? I bet you’re still traumatized from the sea of shit.”
Marcus is my younger brother.
Marcus does not exist.
He’s just another fictional element in the landscape of the fictional life that I’ve created for myself. The devil’s in the details. Any good storyteller knows that to hook a reader, you need the minutiae—the stories, and experiences, and the little details that flesh out the skeleton of your tale. They put meat on a story’s bones. Marcus is t
he lynchpin of many of my stories. How many times have I regaled Mara and my other friend, Presley, with such classics as, ‘The Day Marcus Broke His Arm” and, “The Day Marcus Swallowed the Penny’?
We’ve reached the steps that lead up to the academy’s entrance. I wrinkle my nose, pretending to recall the chaos and destruction that accompanied the arrival of my fake newborn brother. “Yeah. Hate to say it, but kids are no fun. They’re cute as hell for the first couple of days, but it’s all downhill after that.”
“Think you’ll ever have one?”
“Hell no. You?”
Mara fake-barfs. “No way, dude. I like my vagina the way it is, thank you very much. Oh—my, my, my. Would you look at that?”
Mara elbows me in the ribs. I turn, squinting into the weak sunlight filtering over the treetops of the Forest, and my vision adjusts. There, at the very bottom of the driveway in the distance, three small figures emerge out of the mist, shirtless and covered in sweat. They run full tilt up the driveway, jostling each other and whooping like idiots as they race each other up the hill.
Mara purrs her approval. “Goddamn, what I wouldn’t give for a shot at that.”
I shield my eyes with my free hand, watching the figures roughhouse as they approach the huge fountain at the foot of the drive. During winter, the groundsmen seal off the water to prevent the pipes from freezing. Now that the days are getting longer and there’s no frost on the ground, they’ve recently turned the fountain back on again. Its jets arc up ten feet into the air, peppering the brisk fall morning with a fine mist that throws rainbows in every which direction.
“Which one?” I ask.
Mara snorts, taking a sip of her coffee. “Wren. I’d give my right arm for half an hour on the backseat of a car with him.”
The Dark Lord.
The Sun God.
The Anarchist.
The Sun God reaches the fountain first. Dashiell Lovett, Fourth Lord of the Lovett Estate in Surrey, England, hollers at the top of his lungs, startling a flock of starlings from one of the naked trees down by the lake. The tiny birds take flight, pinwheeling across the stark, cloudless sky. The Dark Lord and The Anarchist shove and jostle their friend, The Dark Lord wearing a broad, shit-eating grin on his face. The Anarchist’s expression is savage as he attempts to get Dashiell into a headlock, his corded arms full of tattoos.
“Have you ever seen Pax smile?” Mara asks.
I shake my head.
“I have. It was terrifying.”
I can’t even imagine it. I try, and an uncomfortable shiver runs the length of my back, goosebumps sprouting across the backs of my arms. The third boy in the group, The Dark Lord, halts his attack on Dashiell, suddenly noticing us standing at the foot of the school’s steps, watching them. The three boys turn and look at us, then, and my first instinct is to hurl myself sideways into the bank of rose bushes to avoid their gaze. I am such a chickenshit. It takes sublime effort, but I stand my ground.
“Wren Jacobi.” Mara sighs his name like the guy single-handedly cured cancer. She holds the lip of her coffee cup to her mouth, smirking deviously. “I bet he fucks like a demon.”
There are plenty of girls down in Mountain Lakes who would be able to confirm or deny that suspicion. Rumor has it that Wren has no qualms with screwing women who are much older than him, or married, or inappropriate for a whole slew of other reasons.
“Which one would you do?” Mara asks. “Y’know. If you had your pick?”
Ask any female member of the Wolf Hall student body this question. If they tell you they couldn’t care less, then they’re a dirty, dirty liar. I’ve had so much practice at lying now, though, that when I do it, it sounds like the honest to god’s truth. “Jacobi. Definitely Jacobi.”
Mara nods, swallowing down this falsehood like it was the only natural answer. She picked Wren. Most people would. Not me, though. Every Saturday for the past year, I’ve crept out of bed and tiptoed down to the orchestra room in the small hours of the morning to listen to the Sun God play. No one talks about his talent. I don’t think anyone knows he even plays. At first, watching him sit at the piano in the dark, his long fingers flying expertly up and down the keys, was something I did because of the music. The pieces he chose were so somber and sad that they made my soul ache. At some point, that changed; I realized I was sneaking down there because watching him made my soul ache, too.
So, yes. I’d choose the Sun God any day of the week. Not that I could ever have him, of course. Aside from Dashiell being rich, arrogant as hell and at least eighty percent evil…I am not the kind of girl who gets to have things.
See, coffee trips are one thing. But there are rules that can be bent, and rules that can be broken. And then there are the rules that can’t be tampered with under any circumstances. Inflexible rules that have zero give in them whatsoever. I’m used to following those rules to the letter…and I’ve gotten very used to wanting things I cannot have.
1
DASH
“Oh my god, I’m gonna fucking die!”
Wren hands me a red and white checkered tea towel and shoves my hand down on top of my junk, laughing softly down his nose. “Jesus wept, Lovett, don’t be so melodramatic. You’re not gonna die.”
“That is a lot of blood.” From the front of the car, Pax, in his skintight wife-beater and gold aviators, looks like he’s heading to the airport to catch a flight to Mexico. He rubs a hand lazily over his closely shaved head, then reaches up and angles the rearview mirror, presumably so he can get a better look at me sprawled across the backseat of his 1970s Charger with my pants around my ankles and blood splattered all over my thighs. “A lot of blood,” he repeats. “That much blood should not come out of a man’s dick.”
“Stop staring at it and put your foot down,” I snarl. “My grandmother can drive faster than this and she’s dead.”
“Lady Margaret Elspeth Decatur Lovett? Drive? Don’t be stupid,” Wren chuckles from the front passenger seat. “That witch didn’t know how to operate a can opener. She couldn’t drive.”
It’s unsettling that Wren knows so much about my relatives. He’s a researcher. A snooper. His nose is always firmly inserted into business that has absolutely nothing to do with him. He can’t be stopped, dissuaded, cajoled or bribed from participating in this little hobby of his. It’s a part of him, firmly affixed, just like his wavy, dark hair, or his unsettling green eyes. His need to know things often comes in handy and works in our favor. Other times, it’s just fucking annoying.
Pax smirks, fiddling with the radio dial, trawling through static. “What were you even doing to it, anyway? I know you’re into some kinky shit, man, but there are limits. If you have to hurt yourself in order to get off, maybe just…go a little easier next time?”
“I wasn’t trying to get off!” I press the tea towel down, applying pressure against my cock, and a burning, stinging sensation travels all the way up the shaft, down both of my legs, into the soles of my feet, where it does a one-eighty back up my body to my brain, making my eyes water. Holy sweet Mary and fucking Joseph, that hurts. “I was—just trying to—” Oh. Oh, god. This is bad, “—wash myself.”
“Wash yourself? Did you use barbed wire instead of a cloth? ’Cause that shit’s messed up.”
Wren thumps Pax on the upper arm. “Not helping, man. He’s in a lot of pain. His cock might fall off. You’re scaring hi—”
“You’re both fucking scaring me! My cock is not gonna fall off! Oh my god, just drive, for the love of all that’s holy. I’m dizzy as fuck.”
“What did I say. Too much blood.” Pax announces this in a pointed manner, like he’s just won a very important argument. “Looks like your banjo playing days are over, brother. That string has well and truly snapped.”
“Don’t stress, man. They’ll be able to stitch you back together.” Wren imparts this over his shoulder, but he doesn’t say it with much conviction. He’s smirking like the very devil himself.
“I cannot have
a fucked-up dick, guys. I cannot be walking around with a franken-frank in my pants. If they can’t make it look beautiful again, tell ’em to just let me go. I don’t want any drastic measures. Sign a DNR if you hav—”
Both guys in the front of the car start to howl with laughter, and I realize that I might be overreacting a little. Still. They could be a little more supportive. “Assholes. Neither of you fuckers know what it’s like to have a vital piece of your manhood just…just…just fucking snap!”
Pax howls even harder. “God, the accent just makes it funnier.”
Wren covers his mouth with a hand, trying to hide his smile and master himself. He makes a valiant attempt to marshal his features into a straight face, but he might as well not fucking bother; his eyes are still dancing with amusement. “Relax, dude. We’re pulling into the parking lot now. We’ll get this taken care of in no time.”
Mountain Lakes, New Hampshire, is a tiny town, perched high in the hills of the Black Mountain State Forest. In light of the settlement’s tiny stature and it’s dwindling population, its hospital is also tiny. Honestly, it’s a miracle the place even has a hospital. An urgent care facility would have been more likely, or a glorified GP’s office, but it seems as though lady luck is smiling on me and my broken dick today. I’ll get to see a proper doctor, and they’ll be able to fix this terrible genital injustice.