I’m used to it. Actually, I like it. Fancy, stolen high heels and the slick kiss of mud.
“Where’s Lem?” I ask, looking around as I see Basti lounging on one of the tables on his left side, a gaggle of our girls gathered around him. I shift my gaze over to Nisha as soon as I realize that she’s gone silent and still.
“What do you mean where’s Lem?” she asks me, her voice tight with worry. “I just assumed you two made up today like you always do?”
My heart drops as I lift my phone up for emphasis.
“She hasn’t called or texted me, and I haven’t seen her post anything since yesterday.” Let’s just say that my friend is addicted to social media; she usually posts a dozen or more times a day across all platforms. If she didn’t come back then … the last time we saw her, she was with Aspen Kelly.
The final words I spoke to her ring in my head like a death knell.
“If you get in that car, we will never see you again. Give me the fucking keys, Lemon. You’re a waste of life.”
My gaze scans the gathered crowd. All the usual suspects are here—Kellin Bohnes included. He notices me, offering up the barest kiss of a smile on his awful mouth before turning away again. As soon as he stands up from his spot, leaning back against his car, and takes off for the trees, I know he expects me to follow.
Chicks over dicks, my friend. I don’t bother to call out to him or explain things; I shouldn’t have to. That’s what a fuckboy is all about, after all. I dial up Lemon’s number, pacing a small rut in the mud and cursing under my breath as Basti finally deigns to get up from his throne and makes his way over to us.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, his voice dark and strained. He can be a lot of fun—and most times, he’s pretty chill—but when things get serious, he buckles down quick. “Where’s Lem?”
As soon as Basti asks that question, and sees the look on my face, he knows. He starts cursing in that signature way of his—a lot of fuck your cock, fuck your clit, not sure whose cock or clit but it’s a Basti thing—and then his phone is out and he’s leaving her a scathing voicemail.
“Girl, if you know what’s good for you, you’ll call me back right goddamn now.” Basti hangs up and then starts sending out rapid-fire messages to his network of female friends. Me and my girls—and Basti, the only penis allowed in our crew—mostly stay away from the boys of Prescott.
To be honest, our school could use a dominant male on campus. Bohnes has the personality for it, but clearly no interest. Widow … again, he’s got the clout and the backbone to back it up—I can’t tell ya how few people would ever have the balls to put a knife to my throat—but he seems like a bit of a loner.
There’s not a single other soul enrolled in that shithole who could handle it.
I pause at the sound of a car pulling into the parking lot. I’m here every Friday and Saturday night. Have been for years. Sometimes we come by during the week, too, just to drive, just to roll the windows down and feel the wind in our hair, to practice, to purposefully spray each other’s cars with mud.
I recognize the sound of most of the cars that frequent this track. I have a good mind for it, too. Cars. Like, I know the distinct whisper or cadence of a specific engine, the roll of this car or that car’s tires on the dirt road that leads to the track.
It’s the Shelby Cobra.
I whip around, my heart in my throat, my knife somehow in my hand. I’m not even sure how it got there. As I said, I have a bit of a temper. I try to be even-keeled, and I know I make good decisions … most of the time … but when I’m mad, I’m fucking furious.
No sooner has Aspen Kelly stepped out of his car than I’m on his ass, the knife pressed to his carotid. If he hurt Lemon, if I can’t find Lemon … I will kill him. I’ll try to do it in such a way that I don’t get caught, but it’d be worth it to me.
This world is made of monsters. It’s run by monsters. The kind and the sweet and the generous are stomped on and crushed and ground to dust by monsters. What the world really needs are monsters with hearts—be they black or cracked or drenched in shadows.
So I will kill predators and I will kill pedophiles and I will kill murderers, and I won’t lose a wink of sleep about it. I’ve done it before—more than once.
Everyone here knows it.
It’s why the music stops, the talking stops, the idling cars get their engines shut down until the only sound is my breathing and Aspen’s surprised—but somehow, pleased—inhale.
“Well hello there, Scarlett Force,” he says, and I hate how fucking excited he sounds at the sight of me. I want to kill him so badly in that moment. I end up leaning in and pushing the blade to his skin enough that a single drop of crimson appears.
Oddly enough, Aspen’s smell tonight is different than it was the other night. I remember thinking that he’d laid it on way too thick, this pungent black pepper and saffron smell that burned my nostrils. Tonight, he’s got this light, pleasant airy smell, like a lazy afternoon spent surrounded by roses and jasmine. Also … how do I not remember him having the barest tease of a British accent?
As I’m considering killing the man, I find this disturbing urge sweep through me, a quiet whisper like a demon curling its clawed hands around my shoulder, its lips near my ear. Rise up on your tiptoes, Scar; lick that drop of blood from his neck.
My reaction to his new cologne is so upsetting that I whip the blade back and then throw it out, slicing across Aspen’s right cheek and drawing a thin slice of red.
He doesn’t even react.
My blood goes cold as a frown replaces the surprised part of his lips, and he reaches up two fingers to touch the wound. He stares down at the crimson on his fingertips and then slips them into his mouth, sucking them clean.
Our eyes meet as I grind my teeth together.
“Where the fuck is she?” I growl out, keeping the knife held in a tight five-finger grip. If nothing else, this display should help erase the embarrassment I suffered last night at being chewed out by Lemon in front of the entire Prescott High crowd.
“She?” Aspen asks, his voice this cultured purr that reeks of entitlement and privilege, of silver spoons and silk ties and boarding schools in faraway places. He’s the embodiment of the sort of person I hate: one who believes his money can buy him anything. Last night, even though I kicked his ass on the track, it didn’t change what he believed. He believed he was leveraging fifty grand to fuck me. He thought he could, essentially, buy me and my dignity. “Oh, the blonde.”
“Yeah, the blonde, you colossal douchebag. Last everyone here saw, she was with you. Now she’s missing.”
Aspen smiles at me. It’s a terrible smile. It’s like a garrote being wrapped around my neck and pulled taut, slicing through bone and muscles, spraying blood.
“Maybe,” he queries, his raven eyes shiny with excitement, his dark hair catching the light of the bonfire and glowing an enchanting blue-black. “Or maybe she’s just missing for you. Have you considered that possibility?”
“Ask anyone here: my patience is minimal. I have zero tolerance for bullshit. What did you do with Lemon last night?”
Aspen Kelly is this close to finding my knife embedded in his stomach.
“Other than fuck her brains out?” he queries, the right side of his mouth twisting back in a smirk. “I dumped her off at that hovel she calls a home with my cum dripping down her thighs.”
I lunge at him. I know that I shouldn’t. I know that if I were going to kill this man, I’d have to do it somewhere else. I’d have to be more careful than this.
Before Nisha or Basti can step in the way they usually do, a hand wraps around my wrist and an arm bands across my middle. Bohnes’ distinctive burnt sugar and juniper scent crashes into Aspen’s disturbingly romantic scent, clearing my sinuses like I’ve just bitten down on a chili pepper.
“You can’t murder a rich boy in plain sight, Scarlett,” he tsks, running his hot tongue along the shell of my ear, his nighttime secrets and moonlit n
ights voice slamming into the wild fury inside my veins, creating the very thing that happens when cool water meets heated metal: steam. So much fucking steam.
I yank away from Bohnes, tearing my wrist from his grip, the knife still clutched in my hand. Aspen is laughing now, this genteel murmur that barely qualifies as human emotion. It’s detached. It’s psychotic. It’s broken and jagged, and it’s triggering every violent impulse I have inside of me.
“Race me again, and I’ll tell you where your friend is,” Aspen offers up, but I’m already shaking my head. Too many years working this track and listening to Prescott and Oak Valley scum use word games to maneuver around the rules.
“Scarlett,” Nisha warns, trying to step in and then eyeing Bohnes in a way that says she’s considering getting her own knife out. “Don’t do this.”
“I’m not stupid enough to accept such a bullshit offer,” I snap, hot and angry and starting to feel the icy fingers of true terror. Since we entered high school, I’ve been worried about Lemon. She’s emotionally weak and needy; she suffers from MAD (male approval disorder), and she is absolutely one-hundred-percent the type of person who would end up in a ditch somewhere.
I’ve tried for years to protect her.
Years.
Last night, I told her off, I let her go with Aspen when I should’ve pushed back …
I pace away from Aspen because if I don’t put space between us, I’m going to stab him. Right here, right now. I’m going to stab him and spill his guts onto the muddy ground while my peers stand by and watch the entire thing unfold like a freak show performance, something to be gawked at and exploited for perverse entertainment.
They’re all like that, everyone at our garbage ass fucking school. Everyone at Oak Valley Prep. This Aspen Kelly motherfucker. Sometimes, it feels like I’m the only sane person in the world. Which must mean, of course, that I’m the one who’s outside of normal.
This, this whole spectacle, it is normal to these people.
I turn back to Aspen, catching sight of Bohnes standing there with his white hair and his disturbingly pale blue eyes, a wifebeater with a rib cage printed on the front of it. He turns back toward Aspen, and I catch sight of the anatomically correct bone tattoos on his arms.
I can’t race Aspen in Widow’s car. I need mine back, but there’s no time to go and get it.
I’m going to regret this, aren’t I?
“If I win, you take me to Lemon,” I tell him, my eyes meeting his. “Your debt will be considered paid if she’s alive and free. Otherwise, you’ll see what we do to people who renege on their bets.” I can feel the crowd shifting behind me, rife with bloodlust and that salivary need for revenge.
We don’t see a lot of justice in our neighborhood, so when we get the chance to mete it out, you damn well better bet we do a thorough job of it.
“And if I win, you’ll bend over the trunk of my Cobra and let me have my way with you.” Aspen’s smile is decidedly vicious, his dark eyes an endless hole that I refuse to let myself fall down.
He is precisely the sort of person I’ve been warning Lemon away from for years.
Not a ticket, but an epitaph.
“Deal.” The word slips out before anyone can stop me. And here, at the track, word is law. It’s the most important currency we have, the one that trumps all the others. Because without it, we have nothing to trade, nothing to play with, nothing to earn.
“Scarlett,” Nisha hisses as Basti groans, sensing a storm on the horizon. Just as I’m the voice of wisdom for Lem, these two usually help hold me back. But there’s just something about this rich asshole that says he needs to be kicked in the nuts and humiliated all over again.
“Deal.” Aspen nods his head in agreement, a smile taking over his mouth that scares me. I remind myself that he was better last night than I expected, that I need to take care with this guy in a way that I rarely do.
Bohnes is certainly not smiling when I turn away, our eyes meeting for the briefest of seconds. I ignore him, taking off for the Stingray and climbing into the driver’s seat. I slam the door before either Nisha or Basti can talk to me.
At the very least, Aspen agreed to the deal. That must mean Lemon’s at least moderately okay, right?
I switch on KMZI 66.6 and crank up “Rumors” by Lizzo and Cardi B, closing my eyes and leaning my head back against the seat. Gathering myself.
I won’t lose this.
I’d rather crash my fucking car and end my life wrapped in flames.
Widow
Scarlett Force.
I expected a lot of things when I heard I was finally getting out, that I’d be enrolling in Prescott High, the school that I was always destined to attend but never thought I’d see. I didn’t think they’d ever let me out.
I have no remorse for what I did.
If anything, my regrets are these: I should’ve made my uncle suffer more, worse, I should’ve made him fear the end for hours, made him cry and beg and plead. My worst sin is that his end was too swift for him to have paid for his sins.
But now I’m out, and the air has never felt so good as it kisses the bare skin of my arms, the soft brush of leaves on my body as I crouch behind the bushes and watch one of Scarlett’s crew—everyone called them the Crimson Crew, for obvious reasons—as she climbs out of her own car and makes her way across a gravel parking lot.
There’s an old warehouse here which is intriguing enough, but I’ve been crouched in these bushes for about … six hours now. Yes, six hours of silent contemplation. I’m a patient, careful person. Had to be. What other choices did I have, locked up at age twelve and put up against boys who were bigger and badder and angrier than I was.
The first one who tried to rape me in my cell, I slit his throat.
After that, a little refresher, a little reminder every few months or so and I was left more or less alone.
Alone.
I’ve been alone for a very long time, before I was locked up even.
So I’m good at being by myself, at sitting quietly, at thinking, watching, waiting.
What I’m not good at is anticipating wild cards like Scarlett Force.
She stole my car. I should kill her for that. If she’d been quite literally anyone else, I might have. But the sight of her naked mouth as she ran her tongue over her lower lip, those thick, dark lashes, her long raven-black braid … From the very first second I saw her, I wanted to wrap it around her throat and use it as a leash to yank her to me.
I wanted to steal her mouth and claim it, make her bleed when I used too much teeth to kiss her.
Mostly, I want her to leave me alone.
I exhale softly, just enough to rustle the leaves in front of my face but not enough that the gossipy idiot waiting outside the door to the warehouse will notice. I need to get my car back, but Scarlett is careful. Absurdly careful. I haven’t been able to tail her. But this girl, Jennifer?
It was so easy that I’m still suspicious.
Is this thing a trap? Scarlett’s crew has a reputation at Prescott. Not that I’ve spoken to many—or really any—of my fellow students. But you don’t have to talk to anyone to know what the word on the street is.
The word here is: don’t fuck with Scarlett.
A frown creases my mouth as I watch the door to the warehouse open. In Jennifer goes, and then I’m up and creeping through the bushes around to the rear of the building. There’s a dirty, cracked window there that I crouch below, listening to see if I can’t pick up a thread of conversation from inside.
Instead, I hear the distinctive sound of two people fucking. Moans, whimpers, the wet noise of two bodies slamming together.
Even better.
I rise up just enough to peer through the window. This is an office, and while it’s attached to the rest of the warehouse, the door that separates the two rooms is closed. I stand up and head back for the front of the building.
First time today that I’ve seen less than a half-dozen people hanging around he
re. I imagine they’re all at the track.
The track.
It’s one of the few reasons that finding out I’d be forced to attend school—or risk being put back behind bars—wasn’t the death sentence I thought it’d be.
Car culture here at Prescott is rich. Can’t be bought. Can’t be beat.
I want some of that, even if I’d rather dig myself a hole than interact with anyone at that school for any reason.
I walk right up to the door on the left side of the warehouse, finding it locked and secured with a heavy chain. I heft up the bolt cutters I brought with me, muscles and teeth clenching as I squeeze them around the bar of the lock rather than the links. It’s a small piece of metal, but even then, it takes some manhandling to get it to break.
I unravel the chains quickly, not bothering to hide the sound. Speed is more important than silence at this point. Especially since I can hear that girl Jennifer screaming all the way over here. The edge of my lip curls up in frustration.
Sex.
It disgusts me.
Which is one of the reasons I better keep my distance from Scarlett. I’ve never been interested in sex of any kind from any person. Not once. Then I end up at that track watching the school’s resident ghoul slam his cock into Scarlett’s pretty pink pussy …
With a growl, I throw the chains aside and bend down, picking the remaining locks on the door like it’s nothing. I push my way into the building only to find a sea of gorgeous classic cars, freshly washed and gleaming under the fluorescent bulbs from above.
Ah, so this is the Crimson Crew’s secret hiding spot, eh? I’ll admit, as easy as Jennifer was to tail, this is a brilliant hiding place. The warehouse is in a lumberyard—a functional lumberyard—with thousands of employees, a proper gatehouse, security guards, you name it.
I mean, they can’t be all that good considering I snuck my ass in here, but still, smart. I wonder what her crew pays for the right to use this place?
F*ckboy Psychos Page 8