“Then fucking prove it,” Victor says, grabbing my wrist and forcing my hand back. “When I ask you a question, answer it.” The threat in his voice is clear, and I find myself shivering, even as his touch on my wrist burns. “Donald Asher, spoiled Oak Valley Prep brat. He roofied you?” I nod, but with Vic touching me, it feels so much harder to admit the truth. I should've just spilled it outside, when all the boys were present. “He raped you?”
“He tried,” I say, choking back memories. Rape. It's a miracle I've never actually been raped, but the attempts have been so frequent, so numerous … I haven't felt safe since I hit puberty, since before. Sometimes I just get so damn tired. “He even invited his friends to join in. I saw his phone just before and locked myself in the downstairs bathroom.”
This trailer trash bitch thinks she’s too good to put out! Anybody want a taste of a southside whore? Come up to my room and we’ll take turns. No condoms required! I’ll leave the door unlocked.
A trail of laughing emoji faces followed that group text, sent out to a dozen of Don’s closest friends. My hands start to shake, and I think suddenly about Penelope, about her journal, how she felt when Neil was on top of her, and how I couldn’t save her, how I could only save myself …
Closing my eyes, I pull what little self-control I have left around my shoulders, and then open them again to find the leader of the Havoc Boys staring at me with an unreadable gaze.
There's a long pause here where I try to figure out how to keep explaining things to Vic.
Instead, he pushes my wrist aside, turns, and opens the door.
“Out,” he says, gesturing with his chin. I slip past him, and he slams the door in my face.
Dark memories crash through me like waves as I stumble down the stairs and shove my shoulder into the bathroom door, locking it and then curling up in the tub to catch my breath. A short time later, I hear the lock click open, and the shower curtain is pulled back. When I look up, I find Callum staring down at me with pale blue eyes and a sad, sad smile.
He puts a bag of snacks and drinks down on the floor outside the tub, tosses me a pillow and blanket, and then crouches down, resting his elbows on his scarred knees.
“Don’t worry,” he tells me, his dark, rough voice soothing away some of my anxiety, “we’ll get him.” His smile gets a little sharper, a little scarier. “And he’ll wish he’d never been born.”
The following Friday, I find myself at the drive-in near the train tracks, the one that quite literally sits on the wrong side. It's the polar opposite of the one across the street: rundown, cheap, but with stellar food. The other is fancy, upscale, and everything tastes like plastic. There’s an ongoing rivalry between the two places, drive-bys and car bombings, wars between the kids from Prescott High and the dickheads from Fuller High.
But at least in my life, things have been peaceful lately—thanks to Havoc, I’m sure.
“Hope you brought some black clothes,” Vic teases, tossing me a burger. He sends it my way and leans back on the table, like some model from the fifties, a greaser with a leather jacket and a nice ride, but no real prospects other than a pretty face.
“Are you kidding? All I ever wear is black.” I use the bench of the old picnic table to climb up to the top, sitting down between Vic and Aaron, and unwrapping my burger. “Why? Planning on breaking and entering?”
“Here's the thing,” Vic says, turning to look my way with dark eyes and a shadowed face. “We have a plan. The question is: do you want in on it?” He pauses, and I look around at the other four boys. All of them are watching me, waiting for an answer that seems inconsequential, but which I'm guessing is either going to win or lose me points in whatever substandard ranking system they've got going on.
Across the street, an orange Mustang pulls into the parking lot and four Fuller High douchebags climb out, dressed in letterman jackets and cheerleading uniforms. Vic flips them off, and their leader returns the favor. Ours smirks, and I just know he's probably daydreaming about all the ways he could hurt them if he wanted to.
“We should kick their asses,” Hael mumbles, but Vic, whose gaze is far away and impossible to read, just gives an enigmatic little smirk and shakes his head.
“It's not worth the effort today,” he says, and then turns back to me. Waiting. Watching. He's calm now, but I feel like Victor Channing is a cannon, packed tight and ready to explode. All he needs is someone to light his fuse. I imagine, however, that it's a long one. You don't find yourself in control of the most notorious gang to hit Prescott High in years without a long fuse. It's not a job for someone who's liable to fly off the handle.
“Yeah, I'm in,” I say, and Aaron's shoulders get tight as he glances our way, mouth set into a deep frown. If he keeps scowling like that, the expression is liable to carve itself into his face.
“Maybe you should actually tell her what she's in for before she accepts, eh Vic?”
But the fearless leader of Havoc simply lights up a cigarette and watches me as I eat, tearing into the burger and swiping a single finger over the front of my leather jacket to clear off a drop of mayo. Some girls I know won't eat in front of guys, like what do they expect the boys to believe? That they never consume more than a light salad? That they don't take shits? I've never been that type of girl.
“We're going to that fancy prep school tonight to find Number Four,” Vic tells me as Hael sucks down his milkshake, and Oscar and Callum watch quietly from the next table over. Victor's dark eyes find mine and hold me captive, a prisoner to his gaze. I don't like it, not at all. “If this were regular Havoc business, I wouldn't give you a choice, but this is different. This is the task you set us on, so if you don't want to be around when we take care of it …”
My throat gets tight, and I exhale sharply. There are parts of that list, things that happened, that I can't and won't relive, but what Don did to me, I can handle seeing him pay for that. In fact, I'll probably enjoy it.
“What's the plan?” I ask, and Oscar rises to his feet, handing over the iPad and letting me glance at the image on the screen. It's a picture from the Oak Valley Prep brochure, the one that shows all the dorms. There's a red X drawn on one of them.
“Is this where he sleeps?” Oscar asks, and I nod my head. How could I ever forget? That night is burned into my brain, a red-hot brand of pain that I'm afraid I'll never be able to extricate myself from. See, that's the thing with pain. Once it finds you and grabs hold, it doesn't let go easily. It's always there, a demon with reaching claws.
That's one of the reasons why I stayed, even if I didn’t have Heather to care for, why I pushed aside the invitation from my grandmother to go and live with her. How can someone as tainted and filthy as me ever live a normal life? The stink of my memories would be forever present, tainting everything I touched.
It's better this way.
Even if this is all there is for me, at least I'll know that the ones who put me here, they paid. At least I'll know I didn't wait around for karma to take her pound of flesh: the blood and bone of vengeance, it belongs to me.
“They don't have roommates over at that fancy school of theirs,” I say dryly, remembering again the text I saw when I picked up Don’s phone. I'll leave the door unlocked.
A shiver takes over me, and my throat gets tight. Vic frowns heavily and turns to Hael, nodding his chin.
“Get the stuff and meet us at the school at dusk.”
Hael nods and Vic rises to his feet, watching as I finish off the last of my burger and lick my fingers clean.
“Come with me,” he says.
It's not a request.
With a sigh, I swipe my hands down the front of my jeans and follow Vic over to his ride.
I have no idea where he's taking me, but if it isn't to collect on his end of the bargain, I'll be shocked.
I'm starting to feel like my payment is past due.
We take all these crazy back roads over to the abandoned jailhouse on Campground Road. It's like way, way out there, and a part of me feels a jolt of fear when we pull into the empty parking lot, dotted with crows and bits of broken cement.
If Vic wanted to kill me out here, he could. Nobody gives a shit about me, so he'd probably get away with it, too. What does it say about me that I'm not sure I care?
He climbs off the bike and stalks across the lot and up the front steps, not bothering to see if I'll follow. He knows I will. With a sigh, I move along after him, my leather jacket just barely enough to ward off the winter chill. Fall is on the way out, winter is incoming, each day one step closer to my eighteenth birthday, to graduation, to a freedom that seems falsified. When I turn eighteen, I'm not suddenly going to have job prospects, and an apartment, and a future to look forward to. I have to make those things happen.
And if I don’t neutralize the Thing before my birthday, he could kick me out of the house. He could separate me from Heather. He could hurt her like he did Penelope. And there’s not a damn thing I could do about it.
There's a padlock and a heavy chain on the front door, but it's been snipped, probably by the Havoc Boys. Vic simply waltzes past it and inside.
“Come on,” he says, pausing with one boot on the bottom step of the interior staircase before he turns away and starts up it. The steps are covered in leaf litter, but there's at least a skylight above them that gives a little light. The rest of the place is bathed in shadow.
“Gotta be ghosts in here,” I murmur, following after him and taking the steps two at a time. Five stories later, I'm panting and sweating while Vic leans casually against an open door and watches me with that dark gaze of his.
He steps outside, and I follow, finding myself on the roof. The sun is setting in the distance, bathing the hills in gold light. Vic moves to the edge and stares out at the tree line, and the sinking ball of sunshine.
“What are we doing here?” I ask, but I think I already know.