“You'll make tacos?” Heather asks, clasping her hands together in a prayer position. The golden highlights in her light brown hair remind me of Penelope. So much so that I find that I suddenly can't breathe. Shit, fuck, bitch. This is all Vic's fault. And Aaron's, how dare he almost die on me. That's so not freaking fair for him to do that, to trick me into thinking I might lose him so that my walls could come tumbling down. And Callum? He just risked life in prison to save me.
Screw these Havoc Boys, and everything they stand for.
If I were smart, I'd just take Heather and run.
Instead, my blood is thick with vengeance, and the more the boys push, the more of my emotional walls they knock down, the harder I want to fight. The more I hurt. For myself, for Penelope. Like a caged cat, my claws are out.
“Oscar can take you in the van,” Vic murmurs, surprising me. I glance back, but his crow-black eyes are still closed. I'd have known if they were open and boring into me; I'd have felt them.
“Fan-flipping-tastic,” I growl, stepping out of the room and closing the door behind me. As soon as I do, I feel a brief moment of respite. Victor is a lot; Aaron and I have baggage. I just need a minute.
“Shall I make a list?” Oscar asks, looking up from his iPad to stare at me through perfectly clean lenses. I've never seen them with a smudge or a speck; they're almost too clean. He's practically inhuman. “I don't like to dawdle in supermarkets, especially when we're in the middle of a turf war.”
“I'm not exactly the list-making type,” I quip back, giving him a look. He stares right back at me, cutting through me with a slate-gray stare, and then lets his attention dip to my thighs. The shirt is just barely long enough to cover my crotch, leaving little to the imagination.
“Well, then, I suppose I'll make the list while you find something appropriate to wear.”
“How's this for appropriate?” I snap back, lifting the front of the shirt and flashing him tits and bush, all in one go. The girls have wandered out the back door to the yard, so they don’t see it happen, but Oscar most certainly does. An unreadable expression crosses his face before he goes right back to making a list on his iPad, seemingly unaffected by my naked body. Psycho. I drop the shirt back into place and grab the booty shorts I wore beneath my cheerleading skirt last night. I yank them on, twist my hair up into a messy bun, and use the hair-tie on my wrist to keep it in place. “Let's go.” Slipping my feet into my combat boots (the tennis-shoes are covered in blood and should probably be burned), I head for the front door, exhaling sharply as soon as I step out into the wet, cold November morning.
November.
Just last night, there was a harvest moon, a Halloween party … and a murder.
Speaking of, as I close the door behind me and rest my back against it, gathering a bit of peace for myself, I see Callum on the edge of the sidewalk, the hood of his navy-blue sweatshirt over his head, the sleeves torn at the shoulders, his muscular arms and scars on vivid display.
“Hey,” I start, moving across the wet grass to stand beside him. The cold dew seeps through the laces on my boots, chilling me to the bone, but I ignore it, crossing my arms over my chest to ward off the frigid air. My breath escapes in tiny, white clouds as I pause next to Callum, our shoulders pressed as close as I was with Aaron just a few minutes prior.
But between Callum and me, there's a hell of a lot less baggage.
I scoot a bit closer, so that we're touching.
“Good morning,” he says, giving me one of those cryptic smiles of his. The look in his blue eyes is telling, a somber sort of acceptance. “Sometimes pain is pretty, to the people who have too much of it.” Callum Park has already accepted that his life will never be what he wanted, that he will never achieve his dreams. He's come to the realization that some of us just exist in nightmares. “Taking off so soon?”
A shudder comes over me at the thought of returning to my mother's house, of sleeping under the same roof as the Thing. I'm not sure that I can do it, muster up that level of courage just about now.
“Not really. More like, I can't feed the girls junk food for dinner, not after a day of eating chips and cake.” My mouth twitches into a bit of a smile as I remember playing with Penelope, running around the house dressed in Mom's fancy dresses and laughing, stuffing our faces with snacks. When Pamela came home and saw what we were doing, she cracked Pen across the cheek so hard that her face swelled up for almost two weeks. Mom told the school she'd been stung by a bee, that she was allergic. “We're going to the store for supplies.”
My smile disappears as quick as it came.
“Well,” Cal starts, giving that husky laugh of his as he pulls out a pack of cigarettes from his hoodie pocket. “If you need something to do today, stop by the studio.” He lights up, the orange glow from the lighter pushing away the shadows in his face, warming up the darkness inside his hoodie. Beneath all the scars and the bullshit, Callum looks tired and stretched thin.
Nothing I'd ever thought I'd see from a Havoc Boy.
“Yeah?” I quip as the front door opens and we both glance back to see Oscar stepping outside, the gray glare of the sky cutting the lenses of his glasses in half. I can't see his eyes, and I don't like that. There's no telling what he might do if he isn't watched. And if he thinks I've forgotten what he said to me last night—You know I can’t stand you; go bother somebody else—then he's got another thing coming.
“I'm teaching a beginners' class, for adults,” Cal finishes, reaching up to push blond hair away from his forehead. He gives me a tight smile and a wink before taking off down the sidewalk, hauling his black duffel bag up his shoulder.
I wait until he disappears around the corner before I turn and head up the driveway, pausing as I see Oscar inside of Hael's Camaro instead of the minivan.
“Pretty sure Vic didn't stutter when he said the van,” I murmur, sick and tired of Oscar's crap. This morning, I am precisely out of fucks to give. I climb in as Oscar tilts the edge of his sharp mouth up into a smile, turning the key and warming the engine up to a gentle purr. When I'm sitting in here, I feel like I can figure out where Hael's coming from. I know who he is. Saucy little playboy with a heart of gold, a love for cars and kids, and … an ex who could be dangerous to us in so many ways.
I slide my hands over my face again as Oscar reverses down the driveway, pausing at the next stop sign to select a song from his phone. Homicide by Logic and Eminem starts to play, and I frown hard.
Maybe I only think I know Hael Harbin? Shit, maybe I don't know any of them?
I haven't forgotten what I overheard at the party.
The boys castrated Donald. They carved the word Rapist into his forehead.
What the actual fuck are they going to do to the Thing?
I also haven’t forgotten what I heard after the party.
“We have a video, of him with your sister.”
But I need time to process that, along with everything else. Some part of me wonders if I’m suffering from some sort of emotional shock.
“I want to talk about the next name on my list,” I start, and Oscar laughs. It isn't a pretty sound. No, actually, it sends chills down my spine. I flick my gaze his direction, trying to align the boy who made a paper princess dress for me in elementary school to the whip-smart gangbanger sitting beside me. There's no correlating the two.
“Of course you do, Bernadette. We can't let such an important matter slip through the cracks. Perhaps we should talk about you flashing me first?”
“Oh, you’re still on that?” I quip, feeling this warm, gooey sense of smug satisfaction steal through me. “And here I thought only the idea of Vic’s bare cock could get you going.”
“If it’s between him, and that terror you call a cunt, then I’ll choose him every time,” Oscar agrees, maliciously smirking at me. He’s acting like he doesn’t care, but it’s quite clear that he’s got my naked body on the brain. “Do you need me to set you up with a waxing appointment this weekend? Bushes like that haven’t been in since the seventies.”
“Don't start with me this morning,” I warn, giving him a sideways look and wishing like hell I'd brought a hoodie with me. It is cold as fuck this morning. Leaning forward, I turn the heater on and sit back as warm air drifts over my chilled skin. “I put my hands around your throat once; don't make me do it again.”
“You think you're tough, don't you, Bernadette?” he asks me, his voice deceptively mild. If he thinks I don't notice the way his fingers curl around the steering wheel, then he's grossly underestimated me.
“No, I don't think anything. I've proven it. I want to go after my social worker, Coraleigh Vincent.” Oscar’s eyes widen slightly at the name, like he expected me to mention the Thing or Kali. But even I understand they’re a bit more complicated than some of the other names on my list. As far as Principal Vaughn … I have no idea what to think.
“I know all about Ms. Vincent,” Oscar says, his smile growing in depravity. It's practically obscene now, almost wantonly uncivilized. “She's been promoted, you know, since you last saw her.”
My jaw clenches as I think of Coraleigh Vincent and her plastered faux smile, her murmured words of comfort, her promises.
“Don't worry, Bernadette. Everything will be different here; you can start a new life.”
She delivered me into the hands of a monster, my foster ‘brother’, Eric Kushner.
A social worker who takes money to deliver pretty girls to ugly monsters.
She handpicks ‘em, girls who seem like victims, who don't have any extended family that might care what happens to them, girls who are pretty.
I've always hated being pretty.
I wish the scars I had on my soul showed on my face. Touching gentle fingers to the bandage on my cheek, I wonder if I’m not already on my way to getting that shit granted.