by Callie Hart
I feel like I’m going to puke as an option presents itself to me—an option I do not like one little bit. I take a deep breath, swallowing down my own self-loathing as I say, “You’re not going to.”
“What?” Mom whispers.
“You’re not going to fucking tell him, Mom,” I snap. “You were selfish. You did something really fucking stupid, but you didn’t kill Gail. It was an accident.”
“I have to tell him, sweetheart. It wouldn’t be fair—”
“Do not talk to me about fair!” I yell. “If you wanted fair, you shouldn’t have cheated on Dad. If you wanted fair, you shouldn’t have started with the lies in the first place. Now, to be fair to the rest of this family, you’re gonna have to be a fucking adult, stop being so goddamn selfish, and you’re gonna keep your mouth shut.”
“Silver—”
“You get to be sad. You get to be broken up because your friend died. You do not get to tear the rest of us apart just so you can punish yourself and make yourself feel like you got what you deserved.”
“I did something bad, Silver. I can’t just walk around, pretending it didn’t happen. It wouldn’t be right.”
“Shut up, Mom. Just…just shut the fuck up, okay. Enough damage has already been done. I swear to god, if you hurt Dad and Max like this, I will never forgive you. I mean it. I will never speak to you again.” I get out of the car, vibrating with rage, slamming the door behind me.
Mom’s hot on my heels. “Hey! Hey, get back here, young lady. I know I fucked up, but I am still your mother, okay. I am still the adult.”
I turn on her, stabbing my finger into her chest. I hate that I’m crying. “No, Mom. Don’t you see? You haven’t been the adult in this relationship for a really long time. While you’ve been staying at work late, fucking your boss, I’ve been doing the cooking. I’ve been doing the cleaning. I’ve been making sure the laundry’s done, and your eleven-year-old son is fed and clothed. I’m the one making sure everything doesn’t fall apart, and guess what, Mom? My shit has been falling apart. My shit has not been okay. And then you show up at the cabin, running to me for comfort, for me to fix this fucking mess, because you know that I will!”
She just stands there. It feels as though she’s looking right through me.
I can’t believe I’ve just said all of that to her, but it needed fucking saying.
Stiffly, Mom turns to face the house…and without another word, she walks inside.
Dad comes home from work, and I hear him consoling Mom. The walls of the house ring with the sound of her crying, but she doesn’t tell him what she’s done. Max is still over at Halliday’s house for a sleepover with her brother Jamie, thank god, so at least he doesn’t need to know just how dark things have gotten in the Parisi household.
Alex texts me close to midnight.
Alex: Wanted to give you some space, but now I really need to know if you’re alright.
Me: Not really.
Alex: Bad, huh? What can I do?
Me: Rescue me. Kidnap me. Whisk me away.
Alex: Don’t joke. I’ll do it.
If only he could. I’d jump into a car with him and drive off into the sunset in a hot minute if I didn’t think everything would fall apart the moment I left. My hands hover over the keyboard on my cell’s screen while I think of what to type back.
Me: What’s your email address? I’m going to write you.
Alex: A breakup letter on day two of our relationship. Shit. That's a record.
Me: Nothing like that. We have a relationship?
Alex: YES.
Alex: You’re mine, I’m yours, remember. Hate to break it to you, but you’re achieved GF status. I’ve already alerted the media. Email is [email protected].
Girlfriend status? I try not to grin from ear to ear, but it’s a futile task. I decide to play it cool and not mention how giddy and stupid he just made me.
Me: passerotto?
Alex: Another time.
Me: I won’t forget.
Alex: I don’t want you to.
I planned on putting off writing my account of what happened at Leon’s for as long as I possibly could, but that feels so wrong right now. I just forced my own mother into keeping a terrible secret, and I’m beginning to feel like a bit of a monster. I have to tell someone some kind of truth, otherwise I’m never going to be able to look at myself in the mirror again.
I was going to write down what happened with pen and paper, but there's so much emotion involved here; I don't trust myself to be able to write legibly once I get to the difficult parts. Starting the email is hard. Fuck, all of it is hard. It takes me two hours to put it all down into words, and by the end, I'm shaking so hard I think I'm going to pass out.
No. No, I'm not going to pass out. I'm going to throw up. I nearly don't make it to the bathroom in time. As I hug the toilet, cold sweat running down my back, my stomach churning over on itself, throat raw, the taste of vomit in my mouth, I panic. I've got to delete it. I can't send any of that to Alex. It's too much. It's all just way, way, way too much.
Making my way back to my desk, my legs feel like they're going to collapse from underneath me. My laptop screen is still displaying the pages long email as if it's just another school project or something I've been working on. The words snag, catching at me like barbs, and I'm so damn tired all of a sudden. My life shouldn't be like this. I shouldn't have to deal with any of this shit. Not on my own, anyway.
Before I can change my mind, I hit the blue button at the bottom of the email’s draft screen, and my laptop chimes, signaling that the message has been sent.
Too late to take it back now.
24
SILVER
THE NIGHT OF THE PARTY…
“Stop being such a little bitch, Silver. Chug the damn drink!”
I roll my eyes at Kacey, holding the cup to my mouth. She’s already four drinks ahead of me. I have some serious catching up to do, but chugging foamy beer isn’t how I’d like to accomplish that. “Hey, Leon! Doesn’t your dad have any vodka lying around? This stuff tastes like piss!” I call out.
Kacey’s boyfriend, Leon, holds up his hands, laughing at me from across the other side of the living room. “Sorry, Sil. Blame Jake and Sam. They cleared out the good stuff before you got here. S’what you get for showing up late.”
Kacey bumps me with her hip, making a disgusted sound at the back of her throat. “Fucking animals. You should have seen him when he rolled up here in his dad’s Maserati. You’d think he was god’s gift to mankind or something.”
“Who, Jake?”
“Of course Jake. Who else has an ego the size of the State of Texas? And who else would show up to a party wearing a fucking MVP medal. Doesn’t he know the season ended two months ago?”
The guy in question is standing by the beer pong table, laughing and carousing with Sam Hawthorne and Cillian Dupris; sure enough, the ‘most valuable player’ medal Coach Quentin awarded him at the end of the football season is hanging around his neck, resting on top of his perfectly tailored Armani blue button down shirt. He glances my way, his smile broadening when we make eye contact, and my nerves jangle like a set of wind chimes.
“Yeah, Jake loves Jake like Kanye loves Kanye. He is cute, though.”
Planting her hands on top of the table, leaning toward me, Kacey dons her ‘do not mess with me' face. “Listen, bitch. If you don't pound that beer, I'm going to walk over there and tell him just how wet he makes your pussy. And then I'm going to tell him that you're still a virgin, and you've been saving yourself for him since fifth grade.”
I glare at her, the skin behind my ears and down the back of my neck beginning to prickle. “You wouldn’t dare.”
Kacey pouts, running her hand over her long, dark hair; it's knife-edge straight and shining like she conditioned it seven times before she came out tonight. As always, she looks incredible in a little black dress that hugs her curves in all the right places and accentuates them in others. T
I know that look on her face. I've seen it countless times before. Usually before she decides to pull the trigger on a particularly cruel plan designed to embarrass or humiliate one of Raleigh's lesser, mere mortal students. Hastily, I tip back the cup of beer, and I chug. My throat’s stinging from the cold, carbonated liquid when I slam the cup down on the table, gasping for breath. A cheer goes up around me, and Zen appears at my side, winding her arm around my waist. Her hair's braided back into cornrows, bleached blonde with pink tips. Her bubblegum pink dress is almost as revealing as Kacey's.
“Nicely done, Parisi,” she says, planting a kiss on my cheek. “What took you so long? We’ve been waiting for you.”
Kacey answers the question before I can. “Guitar lesson.” She says the words with the same level of disgust she might say ‘Forever 21 discount rack.’ Kacey’s of the firm belief that an item of clothing isn’t worth shit if it isn’t worth over four hundred dollars. “I don’t get why you don’t just quit doing that, Silly. Your parents give you an allowance, right?”
“Yeah. But I like teaching.” We’ve been through this a thousand times. It would suit Kacey down to the ground if I didn’t have to teach my lessons every night of the week. That way, I’d be able to go over to her place after school and we could hang out, ruthlessly criticizing the cast of The Bold and the Beautiful.
“Whatever. You’re ruining your hands. They look like you do manual labor for a living.”
“They’re callouses, Kacey. I can’t play without them.”
She groans. Zen takes my hand and turns it over, inspecting said callouses. “They feel worse,” she adds disapprovingly.
“Exactly. And how do you think Jacob Weaving’s gonna feel about them when you wrap that grubby little mitt around his cock and you sand his foreskin off? I’ve heard he’s uncut.” She waggles her eyebrows, using her fingers to mimic snipping a pair of scissors. Zen explodes into a fit of scandalized giggles, while I look for the nearest deep hole to go bury myself in.
“You can stop now. I don’t care about Jacob Weaving. I don’t care what he thinks of my calluses, and I’m certainly not gonna be wrapping my hand around his cock any time soon.”
“That’s a shame,” a voice says behind Kacey. The three of us whip around, and the chicken alfredo I ate for dinner suddenly tries to make a reappearance, rising up in my throat.
Jacob.
Standing two feet away.
Holding a glass filled with burned amber liquid.
Arching a blond, perfect eyebrow in my direction.
The amused twist of his mouth says it all.
“I’ve been meaning to talk to you, Parisi,” he says. His head tips back, and he studies me down the bridge of his nose in an appraising fashion that makes me blush down to the roots of my hair.
“O—Oh.” Dear lord, please help me now. Do not let me trip over my own treacherous tongue. I swallow thickly. “Why? Um. What about?”
Kacey tries to hide her smile in the veil of her hair. “God, Silver. How have you managed to make it this far without a scrap of game?” She makes a show of trying to whisper the words, but she makes sure Jacob can hear her.
“I like that about her,” he says, smirking. With a practiced move, he throws back the contents of his glass, savoring it in his mouth, eyes roving over my face. He swallows, and I find I can’t tear my eyes away from the muscles in his throat as they work. “Not everyone can be like you, Winters. Well-practiced and well broken in. Sometimes it’s refreshing to contend with someone a little more…innocent.”
Kacey doesn’t like that. Not one bit. “Yes, well. I’m sure you wouldn’t be saying that when she blows instead of sucks.”
A flush of shame rockets up my spine. Even Zen’s mouth drops open. “Kay Kay!”
Kacey slides her arm through mine, petting my hair. I love my friend to the ends of the earth, but occasionally I also want to punch her in the throat. “Oh, come on. She knows I’m teasing, don’t you, Silly Sil? No one’s stupid enough to make that mistake. You people have no sense of humor.”
Jacob’s eyes drive into the side of Kacey’s head, boring into her, grey and unimpressed. “With friends like you, Kay Kay,” he says, his voice full of mockery, “who needs enemies? Silver? I was gonna head out to the pool for a second. Get some air. You wanna join me?”
Oh, shit. I look to Zen, and then Kacey, my jaw practically on the floor. “Uhhh…sure. I just—”
“Actually, we were just about to pay a visit to the little girl’s room,” Kacey says sweetly. “You know how us women can only go in packs of three. We’ll be back soon, though, Mr. MVP. I’m sure you can spin Silver one of your cheesy pick-up lines then.” She already has me by the arm. She’s pulling me away, stalking toward the stairs in her skyscraper patent pumps before I can even blink. We’re halfway up to the first floor by the time I’m about to make my mouth form words.
“Kacey! What the hell?”
She looks back at me over her shoulder, her eyes glinting wickedly. “What? You literally just said, ‘I don’t care about Jacob Weaving.’ I thought I was doing you a favor.”
“You’re such a cow, Kacey. You know she wants him bad,” Zen titters.
There’s a line for the restroom, but Kacey breezes right past, dragging me along behind her. Perfectly timed, the door opens just as we arrive in front of it, and Kacey shoots an icy glare at the guy standing next in line—Gareth Foster: Chess team. Dork.
“You don’t mind, do you?” she purrs.
Kacey’s probably never made eye contact with Gareth before in her life. He looks like he just soiled himself. “Uh, no. Of course not. Go right ahead.”
We’re already inside the bathroom. She’s already slamming the door closed. She dumps her tiny purse on the counter, opening it and rooting inside. “Look, Silver. I’m not saying I think Jacob’s a jackass, but…he is. You know that, right? He definitely is a jackass.”
God, she’s so melodramatic. I use the toe of my shoe to knock the toilet lid down, then I lay a towel over it and sit down. The dress I’m wearing—one of Kacey’s. She insisted—is a little too tight. I have to sit ramrod straight to avoid the fabric cutting the circulation off to my legs.
“He’s arrogant, sure,” I say. “But I don’t know about anything else. I heard his mom paid for Jessica Birch’s plastic surgery after she was in that fire last year.”
“The mother’s philanthropic gestures have no bearing on the son,” Kacey says chidingly. “Jake probably wouldn’t have pissed on Jessica if he’d been standing outside that boat shed and she’d come running out aflame. Where’s Halliday and Melody?” She adds this last part as if she’s only just noticed that they’re missing.
“With Guy and Davis,” Zen supplies. The way she hands over the information suggests our friends are up to no good.
“God.” Kacey hurls the lipstick she just pulled out of her purse back inside, frowning as she searches for something else. “How do they know who they’re even fucking?” she mumbles.
Guy and Davis are twins. Identical twins. They’ve been dating Halliday and Melody for the past six months, and according to the girls, the twins do like to assume each other’s identities.
“I don’t think it matters this time,” Zen laughs. “All four of them are in Leon’s father’s room, and from what I saw, they weren’t being overly picky about who was tangled up with who.”
Kacey looks up, her head rocking to one side as she processes this. “Huh. That actually sounds like it could be fun. Bummer Leon’s an only child.”
“There’s always Mr. Wickman,” I offer.
“Silver!” Kacey feigns surprise. “How scandalous. Mr. Wickman does have a certain sex appeal. There's nothing more attractive than a man who's gone after his goals and amassed a great deal of power and money in his lifetime. But no. Leon's too much of a prude to ever consider it.”
I was only joking. I didn’t think she’d take the suggestion seriously, but I shouldn’t be all that surprised. Kacey’s sexual deviant tendencies run deep.
She finally finds what she’s looking for in her bag and holds the small black compact up triumphantly. “Hallelujah. Now we can finally start to enjoy this party.” She flips the compact open and instead of blusher, inside is a large amount of coke. She pulls a razor blade from the back of her phone case and serves up a large amount of the powder onto the compact’s mirror, cutting it into a line.
Zen goes first. She holds the back of her hand to her nose after she snorts, eyes closed, head tipped back, a slow smile spreading across her face. “Hot damn. Your stuff is always the best, Kay Kay.”
“My body's a temple. I wouldn't go putting any old trash inside it. Here, Silver.” She holds out the compact to me, a line ready and waiting. I was fourteen when Kacey gave me my first taste of coke. It had been a dare back then, but over the past three years, it's become more of a habit—for Kacey at least. I only use with her at parties. I’m pretty sure Kace is powdering her nose at least two or three times a day. I don’t talk to her about it. The two times I’ve suggested that she might want to save her stash for more recreational purposes, she flipped out so violently I thought she was going to have a fucking nervous breakdown.
I’m tired. I don’t really feel like getting crazy tonight, but Zen’s kind of fucked me. I can’t decline the drugs, because she did her line without complaint. If I refuse, they’re both going to be on me, harassing me, giving me a hard time. I’ve learned that it’s much easier to just do one line and then claim to have a headache than refuse altogether.
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