But there’s nothing more I can do.
You cannot help someone who wants to fall into darkness.
Scarlett
Prescott High just isn’t the same without Lemon around. I think about her all day on Monday. I almost text her, too, but I know that I can’t. In order to maintain my position, sacrifices have to be made. I have to wait for her to apologize or at least reach out to me. If she doesn’t, I have to accept that she’s made her choice.
Leadership always comes at a sturdy cost; I didn’t achieve this level of notoriety by being nice.
Speaking of, when I showed up this morning and found Widow parked in my spot again, I called in a favor from a local female tow truck driver. She used to attend Prescott, and she helps us out every now and again for small favors or petty cash.
I had that fucker’s car towed five blocks down and dropped off in front of the empty elementary school. Bitch.
Widow finds me later, his quiet rage a storm that I won’t allow myself to be caught in. I stay with my girls, and he maintains a careful distance. If he approaches me when I’m with my crew, he’ll find his ass in a similar situation to Guy Mallory, the kid who thought he’d offer up bets at the track that he couldn’t repay.
First time he reneged, it was a blow job he’d offered up to another guy. Second time, it was three hundred bucks in cash. He took off in his car after losing the race, and when he came to school the following week, several students held him down and ran his hand over with one of their cars.
He ended up having to get it amputated. Pretty fucked-up, huh? My crew and I weren’t a part of that stunt, but the results were the same: don’t offer up currency that you can’t pay. Everyone who attends this school knows the price of a lie: lies from their parents, from administrators, from the world at large.
Last thing any of us needs is another silver-tongued liar in our midst.
“Did you ever find the time to meet up with Guy?” I ask Widow, sitting on the front steps with my girls spread around me like my own personal harem. I’m even stroking the hair of one of the freshman girls who’s curled up near my feet. I don’t mind showing affection when it’s warranted.
“This is how you’re going to deal with me, is it?” Widow asks, his voice a hissing whisper as he studies me from a safe distance. “Surround yourself with bodyguards because you’re too much of a bitch to face the consequences of your own actions?”
“I told you not to park in my space,” I warn him, rising to my feet and turning to face him dead-on. “Last time, I stole your car. This time, I had it towed. You’re lucky, too, that my girl was busy. We could’ve had it impounded, but instead, it’s just a short, easy walk away. Next time, I’ll have it crushed into a pretty purple cube that you can collect from the junkyard.”
Widow’s mouth curls up at the edge, like he might sneer at me, but he crushes the emotion down as I meet his eyes, unwilling to budge from my position. Fuck, I hope he comes at me today, so that I can kick his ass to kingdom come.
I’m angry, and I’m edgy, and I’m upset about Lemon.
Bastian’s mad at me, too. Nisha is as well, but not the crying/screaming/raging sort of angry that Basti is, a deeper, more visceral sort of mad. Not just about Lemon, I don’t think, but about the way I’m handling Widow, about how I lied about sleeping with Bohnes. All of it.
“I will park there every fucking day if I damn well please,” Widow tells me instead, and I laugh. The way he keeps his cool scares me a little. Then I think about his cum dirtying up the inside of my car, and I grin.
“Yeah? You sure you don’t want to borrow my car again so you can whack off in the front seat?” I query, but he doesn’t give me anything in response. Instead, he licks his lip and turns away, pounding down the steps and heading in the direction of the Stingray.
I should’ve rubbed one out, left some of my own juice in his car. The bastard. I watch him go, aware that we’re nowhere near to ironing out our issues. If Widow can find me alone, I’ll be in trouble.
Nisha finally emerges from inside the building, pushing past the glass doors with a sharp frown creasing her mouth, Basti on her heels. Jennifer is just behind them, her face swollen and bloodied up from having the shit kicked out of her last night.
I didn’t do any damage myself—it’s best if the boss stays out of simple disciplinary actions—but I had my girls put her in her place and punish her for leading Widow to our hiding place at the lumberyard.
Jennifer keeps her head down and doesn’t look at me. Good for her. It’s best if she stays out of my way for a while.
“Do not engage with Widow,” Nisha warns me, but I’m already turning away and she’s grabbing my arm, her long, gold nails digging into my skin. “Scarlett, I mean it. He’s dangerous as hell. He killed his uncle—for whatever reason—and he’s been locked up for years. He isn’t mentally stable.”
I give her a look because she knows as well as I do that there isn’t a person at this school who is mentally stable—her, me, and Basti included.
“I’m not worried about him,” I say with a loose wave of my hand. But I am. That’s a lie. I’m more worried about Widow than I’ve been about any other student at this school in the three years that I’ve been here.
Not just because he managed to tail Jenn, get into the lumberyard, and leave without getting a single scratch on my car, but also because he left his fucking cum on the steering wheel and then had the audacity to park in my space yet again.
Not once since sophomore year has anyone tried to park in my space.
I chew on the inside of my cheek for a minute as Nisha looks me over and then shakes her head like she can’t be bothered with me.
“We working this week?” she asks, and I nod. I might’ve gotten a fat-ass check from Aspen Kelly, but that’s just enough to invest in my business. Extra cash always comes in handy.
“Yeah, we can work,” I say, looking up at the sky. Storm’s about to break. I can feel it in my right leg, in the spot where I shattered my tibia in the accident. I blink as a few cool drops spatter my face, and turn my attention back to Nisha. “Not today. Wednesday?”
“Wednesday works for me,” Basti says, pausing beside us in holey jeans and an armless tee. His eyes scan the students leaving the building as they trickle out. Within five minutes after the bell rings, the entirety of Prescott High is empty.
Nobody sticks around here after school.
Certainly nobody participates in after-school activities—as if there were any.
Mostly, this is a prison that collects the barest drizzle of tax dollars in order to put up a farce of offering equal education for all. I snort and shake my head, turning back to the Devil. If Aspen shows up this weekend, I’ll race him again, and I’ll do it in my own car.
He wasn’t wrong when he said I was falling behind: I was. He might actually have been able to beat me. Maybe.
I do my best not to think of what might’ve happened if Widow hadn’t crashed the track.
“I have to get home to watch Alexis,” I say, and my besties nod. They know all about my sister. Them, and Lemon. Nobody else. Nobody else needs to know. “Get here early and take my spot; you can move your car when I roll in.”
I don’t care which one of them does it, just so long as they do. I could have Widow’s car towed again. I really could have it impounded, even crushed. But I’m not sending myself to classic car hell to prove a point.
That … and part of me is curious what he might do, if he’ll try to retaliate in some other way. Does he have the balls to try?
A smirk lights my lips as I shake my head, heading down the steps and offering up a slight nod to Officer Balls-for-Brains before I slide into the driver’s seat, slip my shades on, and peel out to head for home.
There’s a blond woman on our neighbor’s front lawn. Her short-cropped hair reminds me of Lemon, but only because it’s ‘yellow’ and doesn’t fall past the girl’s shoulders. Really, she looks nothing like Lem. Her face is rou
nder, her lips thinner and pinker, her eyes, when they flick back to see me watching me, are a honeyed-brown instead of Lem’s bright blue.
I’m leaning my forearms on my steering wheel and frowning, idling in the driveway instead of pulling the rest of the way into the garage. When I see the woman raise a hand, I roll my eyes so hard that I almost make myself dizzy, hitting the gas and sending the Pantera jerking forward.
I slam the brakes on and shut the engine off, feeling my base animal urges flare when I notice that the woman with the blond bob is now standing on my driveway, waiting for me.
Great.
Just fucking great.
She better not be another one of those smooth-talking assholes who stops by every now and then to try to buy my grandmother’s half of the duplex out from under her. It’s been nonstop lately. Then again, this girl looks nothing like the slick, shiny business-types they’ve been sending by.
“Can I help you?” I ask, climbing out and pushing my shades into my hair.
“Hi, yes,” she says, her eyes shifting in the direction of the neighbor’s yard, as if there’s something there she’s interested in. She looks back at me, inhaling deeply and standing up straight, her denim jacket clinging to slim shoulders as she thrusts out a hand toward me. “My name is Emma Jean Thompson—”
I laugh. I can’t help it. Her name just sounds fake.
That’s okay: so does mine.
“Scarlett Motherfucking Force,” I say, reaching out and gripping the girl’s pale, soft hand in one of my calloused ones. Her brows go up at that and the nostrils of her tiny pert nose flare.
“Your mother gave you the middle name ‘motherfucking’?” she asks which just annoys me. I ignore the question and saunter forward, dressed in tight jeans and a blue and white striped off-the-shoulder top with a scooped neck.
“Something interesting happening at the penitentiary?” I query, pointing at the neighbor’s place with my sunglasses before I turn around, biting the arm of my sunglasses and offering up miss ‘Emma Jean Thompson’ a coy look. “Did Tommy Tits poison someone again? Or wait, was it Megan Face? He’s the worse of the two by far, you know.”
“Excuse me, what?” Emma Jean asks, looking at me like I’ve lost my mind.
“Tommy Tits,” I say, pointing at my chest with the sunglasses arm. “The woman who lives in that half of the duplex has the name Tommy inked across her breasts. Thus, her nickname: Tommy Tits.” I walk forward, circling around Emma and liking the way her eyes flick nervously to me, as if she’s just realized she’s a prey animal trapped in a predator’s enclosure.
She’s the one who came to the southside, all perky looking and dressed in head-to-toe denim with a pale pink tee underneath that shows off a glittery butterfly navel ring. I don’t trust her for shit. People like her only come to Prescott for one of two reasons: either she’s lost everything and has been forced to move here in tears and crippling terror or else she wants something from us.
Imagine that, wanting something from those at the bottom of the social ladder. Usually it’s drugs, sex, or excitement, as if it’s the southside’s job to entertain bored housewives or Oak Valley Prep students suffering from existential crises.
“Her husband, Tommy. Well, we call him Megan Face because he has the word Megan”—and here I pause, using the sunglasses to trace my face from the corner of my mouth to my ear—“tattooed across his face. There, do you get it now? Megan Face and Tommy Tits. They’re both horrible people. If you want to know more about them, I have all the dirt, but it’ll cost you.” I hold out a hand. “You seem nice, so … forty bucks.”
To my immense surprise, Emma Jean reaches into her jacket pocket, removing a pink wallet studded with rhinestones. My brows go up as she flips it open, revealing a nice, thick wad of twenties.
“Shit,” I curse as she lifts two bills out and offers them up to me. I grab her wallet and snap it shut, shoving it back into her jacket—but not before pocketing the forty for myself. “Are you insane or just stupid as hell?”
My eyes shift to the group of boys across the street. None of whom are good news. They all graduated Prescott last year but, with nowhere else to go, most of them work here, either at the gas station, the grocery store, or, if they’re lucky, the same lumberyard where my crew stores things that we don’t want found.
Except … now Widow knows and what’s to stop him from telling someone else? I mean, other than the fact that he’s a crazy loner who sits in the corner of the library and reads. He was there today, too, despite his anger toward me. Or maybe because of it. I could feel his eyes on me as I purposely bent over to shelve books, knowing exactly what my cunt looks like wrapped in denim from behind.
“Back the fuck off; this girl is with me,” I shout, even though I probably shouldn’t claim her before I really know who she is. I look back to see her staring at my hand on her jacket pocket with the smallest kiss of fear. A bead of sweat trails down her temple. “You almost got yourself mugged. Don’t flash cash around like that. And definitely don’t accept the first offer a person gives you. Haggle a little. Where are you from?” I lift up a hand and shake my head. “No, let me guess: the suburbs.”
“I grew up in a small town in northern California,” she explains, her gaze shifting back to those boys. They’re still watching us, but I know every one of their mamas. That, and I’ve kicked every single one of their asses on the track.
They’ll leave Emma Jean alone if only because they know the pain that’ll rain down on them if they don’t.
“Fantastic. You’ve proven my point. So, what the fuck are you doing here?” I ask dryly, hooking my sunglasses to my shirt as I fold the money up and slip it in my very tight back pocket. “Snooping around people’s yards on this street is likely to get you into trouble. Who are you anyway?”
I’m not actually going to tell her anything about Tommy Tits or Megan Face unless it’s public knowledge. Everybody knows Tommy beats his wife, that he knocked her head into the bathtub and cracked it open while she was pregnant, that she was taken to the hospital by our neighbor in the next duplex and they both lied about it.
But anything else? Snitches get stitches, remember? Literally, in a lot of cases.
“Like I said, my name is Emma Jean Thompson,” she continues, and I do my best to maintain a neutral facial expression. I’m quickly running out of patience, and forty bucks doesn’t buy much of my time. I have more lucrative ways to spend it. “I’m actually here to ask about the recent sale of this property.”
“The sale?” I ask, glancing over at our neighbor’s place. We might share a wall with them, but there’s nothing similar about their half. It’s even a different paint color. The landlord who owns it has been squeezing top price rent out of inhabitants who can’t get a place elsewhere because of their records, employment history (because they likely don’t work somewhere that gives W2s), or whatever else.
I didn’t imagine that money-grubbing prick would ever sell.
“I understand it’s not both sides of the property, just the one,” Emma continues, and even though her voice is soft, almost saccharine sweet, I get the idea that she’s one determined mother. It’s there in the set of her small shoulders, in the way her eyes bore into me, the almost comical way she holds her hands, as if she’s forcing them with every ounce of her will to stay relaxed. “But I was curious if you knew anything about it. The property sold for much less than the market value, and it’s not the only one on the street. Did you know that four of your neighbors have sold their properties recently?”
I didn’t know that, but I school my expression to keep Emma from realizing it.
“So what? Does that matter to me?”
“It should,” she says, and the strength of the conviction in her voice is what really gives me pause. “Have you ever heard of Archer Realty Investments?”
I have. More times than I’d care to admit. Not only are they the douchebags who just built the ‘affordable housing apartments’ downtown (the
lowest rent in that building is double my grandmother’s mortgage), but they’re the same company who’s been sending all those suit-wearing assholes to talk to us about selling. Not just that, but letters and phone calls, too. It’s bordering on harassment in my opinion.
“A company of questionable morals with a home base in Los Angeles. What about them?” I’m starting to get a sour feeling in my belly, a premonition if you will. I glance up at the gray storm clouds overhead, wondering if the intermittent drizzle isn’t about to turn into a ceaseless downpour. I drop my gaze back to Emma Jean and she nods.
“That’s them. They’re buying up any and all properties in the boundaries of what you’d consider the Prescott or Four Corners neighborhoods. Single family homes, vacant land, apartment buildings, businesses, doesn’t matter. That’s who your neighbors sold their property to.”
I don’t correct her in that Tommy Tits and Megan Face—two convicted felons with questionable records—didn’t sell shit. They’re about to find their asses either under the thumb of a corporate landlord or evicted real quick.
“I see,” I say, but I don’t. I’m starting to second-guess myself with this girl. Maybe I should’ve let her get mugged? “And what does any of that have to do with you?”
“I’m working on a story,” Emma says, and it takes me a minute to figure that out.
“You’re a reporter?” I ask, and this time, it’s her that pauses before answering.
“I’m an investigative journalist.” She sounds damn proud of that fact, too. “Or at least, I’m trying to be. I’ve got my eye on Archer Realty Investments right now. It isn’t uncommon for a company like that to take interest in an up-and-coming area, but—”
“Up-and-coming?” I ask with a harsh laugh. “Oh, Miss Emma Jean, I wouldn’t call Prescott an up-and-coming area.” The other neighborhood she mentioned—Four Corners—is almost as bad. Maybe worse on certain days, like full moons or Friday nights or something. “But you think Archer’s up to something?”
F*ckboy Psychos Page 10