Riot Rules

by Callie Hart

  “I mean it. Text me!”

  I wave as I jog up the academy steps, my breath blooming all around me on the cold morning air. The Maybach’s tires kick up a hail of gravel as Dash peels away, burning down the long driveway. I’m tired, and sore, and still dizzy on Dash as I open the door to the academy, which is why I don’t see him until it’s too late.

  “Bastard could have given me a ride.”

  Pax is leaning up against the wall with a half-smoked cigarette hanging out of his mouth. He winks at me, and I’m hit by the strongest sense of déjà vu: with his knee bent and the sole of his left shoe resting up against the wall, and his head kicked back with that trademark Pax Davis smirk on his face, he looks exactly the same as he did in a Calvin Klein I saw last month.

  He takes a long drag from the cigarette and holds the smoke in his lungs before blowing it down his nose. “That looked very friendly.” He says it casually, but his tone feels dangerous. “Wish my uber drivers made out with me like that when they dropped me off.”

  “Pax—”

  He shoves away from the wall. “Don’t worry. I’m not gonna say anything. It is literally none of my fucking business.” He jogs down the steps and walks away from the academy. Staring at his back, I search for something to say to him, but I come up totally blank. What am I supposed to say? There’s no way I’ll convince him that he didn’t just witness Dash kissing me.

  So, I let him go.

  He keeps on walking, the smoke from his cigarette growing fainter and fainter as he disappears down the driveway toward Riot House.

  28

  DASH

  Mistakenly, I think it’s the wolves at first.

  I’m half asleep, and the high-pitched wail sounds like Rasputin’s haunting, eerie bay. But then I register the Doppler shift, and the sense of approaching, imminent doom, and I’m launching myself out of bed so fast that I crack my head against—ahh fuck!—against the coffee table in my room; I didn’t even make it to the bed before I passed out. I’ve been crashed out on the damn floor.

  Doesn’t matter.

  The ringing in my head doesn’t matter.

  There are cops burning up the road.

  Out on the landing, Pax tears down the stairs, grim and ready for a fight. He sees me and stops. “Where is it?” he demands.

  He’s talking about the drug stash Wren bought for the party. Finding and disposing of it is our main priority right now, and we only have seconds to get the job done. If they knock on the door before we find it, we’re fucked.

  “I don’t know!” I race down the stairs in my boxers, frantically ripping the cushions of the couch, trying to locate the little wooden box that Wren stashed forty thousand dollars’ worth of narcotics inside last night. Pax starts on the drawers in the console beneath the TV. “Could it be in his room?”

  “Maybe? Shit!”

  Pax stills. The sirens are getting closer. “Could we have done it all last night?” he asks.

  “NO! Everyone’d be fucking dead if they polished off that much coke.”

  “Good point.” He goes back to rifling through the drawers.

  What time is it? It’s broad fucking daylight. Maybe nine? My head’s pounding from lack of sleep. The cleaners have come and gone, and the place is spotless aside from the mess we’re making right now. I’m sure they found and disposed of any baggies Wren hid that weren’t found by our classmates. We’re probably in the clear. Or we will be, once we find that wooden fucking box!

  Pax runs to the window, bracing against the sill. “Fuck. They’re here. They’ve got the lights going, too. We are so going to ja—” A deep frown rumples his brow. “Wait. They didn’t stop. They kept going up the mountain.”

  “Shit.” This does not bode well. We’re in the clear for now, but how long will that last? If Harcourt discovered drugs on one of the kids up in the academy, then it’ll only be a matter of time before they spill the tea and tell the cops where they got it from. Pax and I trade hard glances. “We need to get Wren up. Now.”

  “I swear to god, if you slap me one more time, I’m gonna rip your fucking arm out of its socket. Let me drink the coffee. Let me fucking think.” Wren is as grey as a corpse. He’s already thrown up once, and I’m sure he’s got another batch brewing. It took three minutes and a pot of ice water to rouse him, and he’s been seething mad ever since. He shoots murderous glares at both Pax and me, mentally flaying the skin from our bones. I know this is what he’s doing because he fucking said as much when I slapped the cup of coffee in his hand and ordered him to drink it.

  “Maybe you hallucinated the cop cars,” he grumbles. “I’ve seen some fucked up shit over the past twelve hours.”

  Pax bends over, placing his hands on his knees so that he can look Wren in the eye. “I love you like a brother, man, but if you don’t pull your shit together, I’m going to spank the living shit out of you. Where. The. Fuck. Did. You. Put. The. Box?”

  There are a lot of threats being passed around right now and none of them are helping. I drag Pax out of the way so that he’s not crowding the guy. “Where did you have it last, man? I mean, did you have it in here?” I gesture to his room. “Or the kitchen?”

  Wren tries to think about this. It looks like it costs him a great deal. “Last thing I remember, we were getting a drink at Cosgrove’s. Patterson made me a long island with an umbrella in it.”

  Oh, boy. This is baaaaaad, bad, bad. Pax’s eyes are wider than I’ve ever seen them. “That was in March! What the hell did you take?”

  Wren stands abruptly. “Look. Fucker. My head feels like someone drilled a bore hole in the top of it and poured Drain-o inside. It’s real bad. So, do me a solid and fuck off.”

  Fists will be thrown soon. It’s been an hour since the cops burnt past the house, and we have no idea how long we’ve got before they show up on our doorstep. At least we’ve all had a chance to get showered—conveniently that’s where Wren decided to throw up—and dressed now, so that we don’t look like degenerates and reek of alcohol. But if the police show up here with a warrant to search the premises…

  For the third time, I take my phone out of my pocket and try Carina. For the third time, she doesn’t answer. The message she sent me last night after I left her—'Miss you. Call me when you wake up. I need to tell you something,’—seems even more ominous now that she’s not answering her phone.

  “Maybe it’s time,” Pax says. “I can give him a call right now. He’ll be here in a couple of hours.”

  “He’s not talking about Rufu—” Wren turns on him. “You’d better not be talking about Rufus.”

  “Of course I’m talking about fucking Rufus!” Pax rubs his hands over his head, gritting his teeth. “Rufus is supposed to be here twenty-four seven. He’s supposed to be our legal guardian while we live in this house. He needs to be here when the cops come to talk to us, otherwise they’re going to call our parents. You want General Jacobi showing up here later today, ’cause I don’t. Your old man’s a fucking cunt, dude. Yours is no better, either,” he says, side-eyeing me. “Sorry, but it needs to be said. And no one wants my mother showing up here—”

  “I actually like your mom,” Wren interjects.

  “Yeah, me too. Meredith’s a sweetheart.”

  “Now is really not the time to start that shit. I’m calling Rufus.”

  Wren gets to his feet. He’s as somber as the grave when he says, “You are not calling Rufus.”

  Seventeen minutes later, the knock comes at the door.

  Wren’s still green around the gills and Pax looks like he just escaped from Chino as it is. I’m the logical choice. Dressed in a black shirt and black dress pants, I answer the door. The cop is a woman. Tall, sharp-eyed, and irritated. She takes one look at me and her demeanor sours. “Wren Jacobi?”

  “No. Dashiell Lovett. Is there something I can help you with, Officer?” How many years’ jail time comes with possession of that many drugs? I don’t even know what was in the box, but I’m bettin
g it was enough to send the three of us away for a very long time. We’re still minors. We won’t be sent to prison but juvie in this country is just as bad. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, FUCK.

  The woman rests her hand on top of the gun sitting in the holster on her appointments vest. “Maybe you can. I need to talk to you and your roommates about the disappearance of one of your school friends.”

  My heart is a lump of rock in my chest.

  “What?”

  Disappearance? Fuck. Carrie. Carrie hasn’t answered her phone all morning. I should have fucking walked her right up to her room last night, for fuck’s sake. What the fuck is wrong with me?

  The woman’s radio squawks on her hip—a burst of static followed by a loud, high-pitched pop—but she ignores it. “We received a call this morning from your principal, wanting to report one of her girls missing. One…” She checks her notepad. “Mara Bancroft. Wouldn’t happen to know where she is, would you?”

  29

  CARRIE

  When I wake up, there’s a cop standing over my bed, shining a flashlight into my eyes. I go from half asleep to pure terror in point three five seconds flat.

  They’ve come for me.

  They found me.

  They know what I did.

  I should have listened to Alderman. I should have paid more attention. I should have RUN!

  “Mendoza? Carina Mendoza?” The cop squints at me, sweeping the light over my face again.

  “Jesus, Freddie, what the hell are you doing? Open the curtains, man. You’re gonna give the girl a heart attack.” Another man dressed in uniform enters the room, followed by another. The confusion of activity; the sudden sunlight pouring into the room; the babble of voices, raised and anxious out in the hallway—all of it has my chest constricting and my lungs seizing. I can’t breathe.

  “Excuse me. I said excuse me! I really don’t think this is an appropriate way to track down a student!” Principal Harcourt’s voice is a shrill shriek over the hubbub. She pushes her way into the room. There’s a cell phone glued to her ear, and her hair, normally so neat and tidy scraped back into a bun, is a loose mess. She’s wearing track pants and a t-shirt, which just does not compute. “Just a minute, Harry. Can I call you back? I have to deal with something quickly. Yes, yes, that’s right. No, I won’t be long. Okay. Bye.”

  Principal Harcourt positions herself between the end of the bed and three police officers, standing on the other side of the room. “Gentlemen, can you wait outside while Carrie gets dressed. She’ll be right out to talk to you in a second.” They stare at her blankly, like she’s speaking in another language. “Now, please, gentlemen. Quick as you can.”

  They shuffle out, grumbling about interfering with a police investigation. Once they’re gone, Principal Harcourt turns on me. “Is there anything I should know, Carina?”

  “What—what the hell is going on?”

  Harcourt presses the edge of her cell phone into her forehead, eyes roaming the floor while she thinks. “Mara wasn’t in her room this morning. Some of her belongings are gone. Mercy Jacobi reported her missing. We’ve combed the entire place, looking for her. I forgot you’d changed rooms for a minute. I thought you were missing, too, and then I remembered. You and Mara are still close, right? What happened at that party last night? Mercy says she was upset about something?”

  This is a lot of information to take in. I shake my head.

  It wasn’t Mara who was upset. It was Fitz. I almost tell Harcourt that, but I catch the words before they make it past my lips. I need to be careful here. I’m still reeling from the fact that I woke up to cops standing over my goddamn bed. I’m relieved that they haven’t come for me, but now it looks like Mara’s missing? This is way too much to take in all at once. I need a beat to think. Say the wrong thing right now and someone’s gonna be in the shit.

  I shake my head. Close my eyes. “No. I don’t…think so. I’m sorry. Can I just get up and get my shit together? I’ll text her and find out where she is. I’m sure she won’t have gone far.”

  A missing student is a big deal. We’re all minors, and Principal Harcourt and the staff are our guardians while we’re here. They’re not supposed to let us out of their sights. Once we hit sixteen, we do have privileges, though, and we are allowed to leave so long as we register our plans in the book down at the office. Mara’s mother is an extremely prominent legislator in New York. If her daughter’s slipped the net, even to go visit friends or something, then Harcourt’s about to be in for a world of hurt.

  “Yes, yes, of course.” She pinches the bridge of her nose, biting her bottom lip. “Seriously, though. If there’s any insight you can give me into what’s going on here, it would be a very big help, Carina. I’m going to have to call Alderman, and—”

  I sit up. “Why do you have to do that?”

  “Because you’re one of Mara’s best friends. The police are going to want to question you thoroughly if we can’t find her. Alderman is registered as your father on your paperwork, which I’m legally bound to give to the police. So it really would be in all of our interests if you could tell me anything you might know…?” She trails off, waiting for me to tell her what she wants to hear: that Mara was pissed after a fight and decided to drive to New York to hang out with her sister? That she skipped town and headed to the Hamptons, and she forgot to fill out the absence book? I don’t know what she wants me to tell her, but I can’t tell her anything yet. I need to talk to Dash first and find out what the hell I’m supposed to say.

  Mara probably skipped out on Mountain Lakes. She’s temperamental and fiery, and if she fought with Fitz or Wren last night as well as going at it with Mercy, she may well have decided that she needed to make a grand exit. Anything could have happened after I left with Dash and headed up to his room.

  “Presley,” I say. “Have you talked to Presley? She might know where she’s gone.”

  Harcourt purses her lips, shaking her head. “Presley has a stomach bug.” She doesn’t believe that for one second; she knows Pres is hungover as fuck. “She can’t remember much of last night, apparently, and what she can remember doesn’t make any sense. She said Doctor Fitzpatrick was partying at the house down the hill, which is obviously pure fantasy. There’s no way Wesley would do anything as stupid as attend a student party and drink with them.” She watches my reaction closely. I presume she’s hoping to catch something on my face that might tell her if this is true or not, but I’m practiced in the art of controlling my features when needed; I give nothing away.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know anything right now. But if you let me get up and take a look at my phone, I—”

  She holds out her hand. “Give it to me, please.”

  “What?”

  “Your phone. The police have been taking everyone’s cell phones, just in case Mara calls one of them. They’re definitely going to want yours, and Alderman wouldn’t want your device falling into their hands. It contains sensitive information.”

  “What kind of sensitive information?” Does she think I’ve been discussing state secrets on there or something?

  “Alderman’s phone number. Alderman’s email. Information that might guide interested parties right to him. You don’t…look, just trust me. You don’t want to be handing that kind of thing over the to police. Even regular cops, Carina. If your phone winds up with the FBI or the CIA—”

  “The CIA?” I was dreaming five minutes ago. I was in a bagel shop, trying to buy a bagel, but they kept sprinkling baking powder onto the cream cheese. That was weird, but this is so much weirder. I can’t wrap my head around any of this.

  Harcourt waggles her fingers at me. “Your phone, Carina. There are men in uniform standing outside the door. Come on. I mean it. If you care one iota about Alderman, you’ll do as I say.”

  This is about the only thing she could have said that would make me comply. Of course I care about Alderman. He’s protected me and made sure I didn’t get into trouble for years now. If he gets
into trouble because I was being stubborn then I’ll never forgive myself.

  I hand her the phone.

  She looks down at the screen and rolls her eyes. “Christ, Carina. You have eight missed calls from Dashiell Lovett. I thought you were smarter than that.”

  “He’s just a friend.” Even I can hear how pathetic and untrue that sounds.

  “Boys like him don’t have friends, Carrie. They have conquests and victims. You start out as one and end up as the other. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll—”

  A loud knock at the door prevents her from finishing the warning. The older cop who told the young guy to stop shining his flashlight in my eyes enters.

  “Time really is of the essence, Principal. In cases like these, the first few hours are vital.”

  She inclines her head, huffing angrily as she leaves the room.

  They do ask for my phone. I tell them that I lost it, which they don’t believe, but there’s nothing they can do about it. They can’t search my room without a warrant. They ask me a never-ending series of questions that range from normal to outrageous: how long have you been friends with Mara? Has Mara ever expressed a desire to kill herself to you? Have you and Mara ever engaged in any kind of sexual relationship?

  I answer all of the questions with gritted teeth, anger gradually building inside me as I think more and more about this situation. I’m going to kill Mara when she eventually creeps back to the academy. Because she will. She’ll show up later on tonight with her tail between her legs, and guess what? She’ll simper and pout and come up with some half-baked sob story about why she just had to run off in the middle of the night, and everyone will feel sorry for her. The police will go home. The Wolf Hall faculty will go around spoon-feeding everyone the same bullshit: we’re just so relieved she turned up safely. That’s all that really matters.