by Bella King
Thankfully, Maddie was very eager to please me after our breakup. She seemed to follow me around all the time, and she would always let me use her books if I needed them. She even offered to help me with my homework if I was having trouble with it, but I never accepted her help. I wasn’t stupid.
Maddie was a different issue that I didn’t care to address yet. I didn’t know why she was still skulking around me and popping out from around corners when I was trying to get to class, but it was distracting from my study of Scarlet. She was my target, and I wouldn’t let another woman distract me from her.
“Dylan,” a voice called from behind me.
Fuck, it was her.
I spun around, a frown covering my entire face when I saw Maddie. I didn’t want to have to deal with her now. I needed to go home and get started boarding up the storage house again after yet another break-in. I didn’t see why we didn’t just glue nails to the floor as a trap for any other bastard who thought it was okay to steal winter supplies from the poor. It frustrated me to no end.
“What is it?” I asked, my voice edged with irritation. I wanted her to hear it. She had to know how much she annoyed me.
“Why are you so stressed?” She asked, cocking her head to the side playfully, her bright blue eyes popping out of her tiny skull with exaggerated interest in my personal life.
Jesus, why had I ever dated that woman? She was strange, but it was her eyes that had lured me into commitment the first time. I was a sucker for blue eyes, but they wouldn’t get me again this time. I was done with dating women, for good. They were nothing but trouble. Sex was fine, but a relationship would do me no good. It never had in the past.
“I’m stressed because you keep running up on me and asking me stupid questions,” I said, slamming my locker shut. “So, could you please go away?”
“Temper, temper,” she said with a mock frown. She wagged a finger in front of me. “You should really spend some time relaxing instead of stressing yourself out over insignificant things.”
Insignificant. That was right. That was all Maddie was, just an insignificant annoyance. Not like Scarlet. No, Scarlet was much worse, and needed to be dealt with accordingly.
“What do you want?” I asked Maddie, unsure of if she had just come to check up on me or if there was something further that she needed.
“I wanted to know if you wanted to hang out at the creek on Saturday. A couple of other people are going,” she said, trying to make it sound like she wasn’t just doing it to have time alone with me.
I shook my head. “I have work.”
“Ugh, you always have work,” she said, stomping a foot.
I took a deep breath. I didn’t want to snap at her in the hallway at school. The less attention I drew to myself, the better. I needed to be like smoke, slipping through the air without bounds. I couldn’t help but shoot Maddie a resentful glare. “I don’t have a choice. My family doesn’t have enough money for me to fuck around at the creek every weekend. Not everyone is rich, you know,” I replied, trying to keep my voice down.
She pouted. “I’m sorry. I just thought that because Scarlet would be there, you might want to go.”
Oh, now she was going to bring Scarlet into this. She had no idea why I was watching Scarlet all the time, but I knew she didn’t like it. Maddie was clever though. I would give her that much. She knew that she could use my interest in Scarlet to get me to go with her to the creek.
I raised an eyebrow at Maddie. “Why do you think I would be interested in going just because Scarlet is there?”
“You’re always looking at her,” Maddie said, rolling her eyes. “It’s kind of creepy, actually.”
“I don’t care what it is. I don’t have any interest in her,” I said, but I knew Maddie wouldn’t buy it. Regardless, I had to stick to my story. Repeat something enough, and eventually it becomes the truth.
Maddie, of course, looked like she didn’t believe me. She titled her head to the side and stared at me, not saying anything.
After a few seconds of uncomfortable silence, I couldn’t take it anymore. “What?” I asked, throwing my hands up.
“Are you going to go to the creek with me or not?” She asked, as though I hadn’t answered her the first time.
“No,” I replied, slinging my book bag over my shoulder and starting to walk away.
“But it’ll be fun,” she called out as I walked toward the school exit.
I shook my head, not responding to her. I didn’t care if everyone else was having a blast at the creek. My life wasn’t about having fun. It was about surviving and getting revenge on Scarlet. Those were the only two things that mattered to me now.
I stepped out into the warm rays of the evening sun, heading toward the parking lot where my beat-up car was parked. It was held together with a mechanic’s hands a little love. I needed it to last for the rest of the school year, because I couldn’t afford a new one, no matter how old it was. I was paying for school and trying to save money to put me through college.
That was no easy task, and rich girls like Maddie and Scarlet would never understand the life that I lived. They saw the world as though it were a giant playground, responsibility and proper spending habits be damned. They were on this earth to have fun, and that was it. Not everyone could afford such pompous lifestyles. I had to work for my bread.
I pulled open the door to my car and threw my bag in the backseat. The door never locked because it was broken. For some reason, the locking mechanism cost a hundred bucks to replace, and there was nothing of value in the car to justify locking it up at night. If someone broke in, I wouldn’t have even noticed. We had removed the radio from it a while back to put it in another car that we had sold. There was literally nothing valuable in this car anymore.
I cranked the manual windows down to get some fresh air flowing in the car. I had no working A/C, so I was eager to get out on the road and wash out the hot air that had been steeping inside of it all day. The sun was hot this time of year, boiling the rubber inside of people’s cars and melting anything the dared leave inside during the course of the day. You were better off turning your oven to high and leaving your personal belonging there for eight hours. They would be in better condition when you finally retrieved them.
I turned the key in the starter twice before the car turned on. I could never figure out why I had to do it twice, but it was like that every time. I wasn’t the best mechanic in the world, merely an assistant to my uncle. Sure, I could change a tire and replace the oil, but everyone knew how to do that. Fixing starters wasn’t my business.
I rolled the car out onto the street, moving slowly so as not to run into any of the other students eager to leave in their fancy sports cars. One hit to one of those and I would lose everything I had worked so hard to save over the last two years. I wasn’t driving with insurance because I couldn’t afford it, so I would never see the end of it if I hit another student’s car.
I pulled out on the road, following another car with a generous amount of distance between us. I wasn’t normally this careful of a driver, but at school, there was no running from an accident. Everyone here already recognized my car. It stood out like a sore thumb among the rich student’s vehicles.
At least I had been to one to buy my car. Everyone else had their parents buy theirs for them. My single mother not only wouldn’t be able to afford that, but she would laugh at me if I ever suggested that she help me out. According to her, driving was a luxury. If I wanted to save more money, then I would walk to school.
Of course, the school was a two-hour walk from the house, and in this heat, I would be little more than a dried-up pile of leather by the time I arrived. I would never make it that far in the heat while on foot.
I shifted gears in my car as I got out on the main road. The cracked asphalt was clear of any other cars on the way home from school since I took a different direction than the other students. I lived in a trailer park on the far side of town, not in the elite se
ttlement that others got to enjoy. I wasn’t bitter about it, but I didn’t want to think about what I was missing out on either.
I sped up, letting the wind cool down the interior of the car as I escaped into freedom for a few minutes before I arrived home. This was my favorite part of the day, but it didn’t last nearly as long as I would have liked. If I ever had money to burn, I would spend hours cruising around the city, just letting the wind blow through my disheveled blonde hair. That would be the dream.
Chapter 2
Scarlet
My father was a businessman, but not one that I admired. He was obsessed with money, throwing everything else out the window in order to chase the next big deal that his company would make to take it to the next level. I had nice clothes, a maid, a brand new car, and more handbags than I could find the time to use, but I would give all that up in an instant if it meant I could have a life where my family actually cared about each other.
I rushed down the stairs to the dining room after school, glancing at myself one last time in an oak-framed mirror in the hallway before I graced the dinner guests with my presence. My father had invited yet another couple over for dinner, hoping to charm them into a favorable deal with their company by the end of the night.
I only attended for appearance's sake. My father made me dress up for dinner so that we could appear like one big happy family, which was so far from the truth. I had to make sure that I ate with the utmost manners, only spoke if I was spoken to, and laughed at all the lame jokes that were made during the course of the evening.
I loathed these sorts of dinners, but they came often. My father was dead set on moving the company at speeds that would boggle the minds of even the top-performing businesses in the area. He was a madman, but one that my mother went along with.
She had her own issues with substance abuse, but that was apparently none of my business, as I had been told when I tried to bring it up last year to both of my parents. Popping pills every night to get to sleep wasn’t a problem, my mother had said, since they were prescribed by her egregiously expensive doctor. I didn’t agree, but I had no choice but to keep my mouth shut about it.
All I wanted for us to be normal, but I doubted that would ever happen. My father only seemed to grow madder by the day, and my mother kept using substances to fight insomnia and stress that she suffered from. Being a rich and healthy nineteen-year-old with a bright future ahead of me, I should be complaining, but it was in my nature to try to help people. It was a gift and a curse.
Right now, all I wanted to do was to help myself by getting the hell out of the dining room and retiring to bed early. Lord knew these dinners stretched on for far too long, burning the midnight oil just to get business down. It must have been a shrewd manipulation tactic used by my father to wear out the person he was trying to make a deal with, so that they wouldn’t be playing with a full deck when they laid out their hand. It was clever, but immoral. That was the path my father had chosen, though, and it was the reason why my napkin was silk instead of paper.
I slipped into my seat, eying the mashing potatoes as a server poured wine into all the glasses. They even poured wine into mine, but I never drank. Everything in this house was for appearances though, so I had to accept it anyway. It didn’t matter that I was wasting eighty dollars’ worth of cabernet, so long as it looked nice next to my plate.
I watched my father slice into his steak at the end of the long table, taking his time to poke his silver fork into it and raise it to his mouth. His first bite was my signal to begin eating, as was the tradition at formal dinners such as these. I wished for once to eat a bowl of macaroni and cheese in my bedroom instead of wasting three hours at the dinner table eating steak and vegetables.
I scooped the mashed potatoes on my plate into my mouth, trying not to make too much of a mess with them. My father would scold me after dinner if I looked messy. I dabbed my puckered mouth with a napkin once I had a mouthful, hiding how much I had crammed into my mouth all at once. It wasn’t my fault that I was so hungry. The school always served such small lunches, and dinner was usually quite late at night.
“I heard that your company managed to finish the pipeline in under six months. That’s a new record for you, isn’t it?” My father said to the guests from his position at the head of the table. He always started with flattery.
The man that we had over was much older than my father, with white hair and a suit that probably cost as much as a middle-class house. His wife was a short woman, much younger than him, with blonde hair and lips that were far too puffy to be natural. They were considerably richer than our family, and that was saying a lot. Our family was absolutely loaded with cash.
The old man nodded, chewing on his steak and swallowing politely before speaking. “That’s correct. We have another one coming up in September.”
My father seemed genuinely impressed this time, raising his eyebrows at the statement. “Another one. That’s wonderful. Perhaps we could travel up to see it sometime.”
“I’m sure we could make arrangements to do so,” the old man said, smiling pleasantly. He seemed like a lot nicer person than my father did, if you excluded his obviously bought wife. I wondered how much he was paying her to sleep with him. It must have been a lot.
I took another bite of my food, glancing over at my mother, who was already shaking a pill bottle into her hand under the table. I knew this signature move even though she was across from me and I couldn’t see her hands. She could fool everyone else, but not me. I knew she had to use drugs to cope with dinner this long and boring.
I shot her a look across the table, which she promptly ignored. I knew she would, but I wanted to make sure that she knew she wasn't sly about her drug habit. I saw right through her subtle movements under the table.
I took another bite of my food, trying to tune out of the conversation that was going on at the table and dive into my own thoughts. It was the only way I was going to get through another long dinner without losing my mind.
I thought about school, and that strange guy that kept looking at me in the hallway. He tried to play it off like he wasn’t staring at me, which would have worked if it had only been once or twice, but I had a keen eye. I knew when someone was watching me, and he most certainly was. I wasn’t quite sure why, though.
It was possible that he had a crush on me. I don’t think I would mind that if he would just come up and talk to me already. He was a good-looking guy, handsome, with messy brown hair and a bad boy look about him. He was muscular too, which was a trait sorely lacking in the rich community I dealt with. He looked like he worked with his hands, which would never even cross the minds of the men around me. They had too much money for manual labor.
Overall, I thought that the mysterious man in the school hallways was a good catch for any woman, as long as he had a nice personality. I was vehemently opposed to arrogance and self-centeredness, something I saw no end to when I was at home. If I was going to date someone, they needed to be very far removed from the culture I had been brought up in.
Once or twice, I had considered coming up and talking to this guy in the hallway, but I never knew what I would say. “Hey, I saw you staring at me like a total creep, but you’re cute so I wanted to come over and say hi,” seemed like it wouldn’t work out very well.
There had to be another way to approach him, but I hadn’t figured it out yet. Perhaps he would finally decide to talk to me instead of standing with his massive arms folded, biceps bulging as I walked past him in the hallway. I always gave him a little extra swing in my hips to lure him in, but it hadn’t gotten me anywhere yet. I hoped that one day it would.
It was possible that he had a girlfriend, and that’s why he never talked to me. I had seen Maddie hanging around him a lot, but she was also a strange person. She didn’t seem to like me at all, glaring at me when I walked through the halls to class. Yeah, it was possible that they were dating and that she was jealous.
Whatever the case, I
did want him to talk to me, at least, so that I could figure out what his deal was. I never saw him outside of school. There were plenty of social events that the senior attended on the weekends, but he had never gone to any of them. I had seen Maddie there, though. I was curious why he never showed up with her.
There would be a get together at the creek this weekend, and so if Maddie was there, I could finally get some answers. She might not like me, but it was a lot easier to go up to her and start talking than it was to talk to the handsome mystery guy that leans on her locker after class and watches me walk down the hall.
Chapter 3
Dylan
I slammed the hammer down too hard on the nail, driving it so deep into the wood that the dense iron of the hammer went into the wood with it, leaving a solid indent. I shook my head, pulling out another nail and doing the same, driving it way too deep and leaving a mark on the wood.
I hated having to be out here in the summer heat, repairing the planks of wood that were supposed to keep people out of the shed. We had bags of rice, winter coats, and a few spare tires tucked away in here, and I didn’t want people getting into our stuff again. We had already had enough canned and jarred food stolen to that we would barely make it through the winter if business was slow.
I wanted the line the place with so many nails that not even I could get back in when I needed to. Scrap board did little to keep people out at night, especially when the neighborhood was crawling with delinquents looking for odds and ends to sell to fund their next drug binge. I thought it very unfair that they should be the ones hopping around all night long enjoying themselves while I had to attend school on top of grueling weekend work at the mechanic shop.