I get the sense that the other boys are being patient … but also quickly losing that battle.
Victor must know that, right?
“In order to get my inheritance, I have to live with my dad until graduation. Legally, I can only spend two weeks away from the house before Ophelia can call that shit in. Trust me: she's watching.” Victor pauses, skimming his hands down my back and sighing in just such a way that his breath ruffles my hair. “With the days I slept here before the trip, and the trip itself, I cannot stay here with you tonight.”
I close my eyes against the sound of his voice. The way he's talking, you'd think we were going to be separated for eons, not one night.
“I'll take good care of her,” Aaron replies for me, snapping both me and Vic out of the obsessive bubble we're trapped in. I flick a glance over my shoulder as Vic scowls.
“Oh, I'm sure you'll try,” he tells him, looking Aaron right in the face. “But not in the way you're thinking.”
“No?” Aaron asks, taking a step forward. The tension in the room amps up, and I start choking on the extreme levels of testosterone. It takes like ash on my tongue. “We've all been nice, Vic. Way fucking nicer than we needed to be. Tell me: what's it to you if Bernie and I spend some time together while you're gone?”
Shit.
I look between Aaron and Vic, and I just know this is about to spiral out of control.
I wanted Aaron to stand up for me, and it looks like he just might.
But at what cost?
Victor is amped-up, hyper aggressive from the wedding …
“I'm going to shower, and then I'm going to curl up with a book,” I blurt out, because, let's be honest, I'm sore and I just spent two hours on the back of a motorcycle. My poor lady parts need a break. “Let's just … shelve this conversation for now, okay?”
“Pussy,” Hael calls out from the kitchen, chuckling at himself. “I mean, ball sack. Stop being a ball sack, Bernie, let 'em fight over you.” I flip him off, slipping past Callum and heading for the stairs.
I almost expect Vic or Aaron to stop me, but neither of them does. When I get to the top of the steps and look back, I can see it's because they're in a stalemate. If one of them had moved, the other would've, too, and a fight might've broken out.
Jesus.
I can almost hear Oscar's mocking tones ringing inside my head.
“We are not letting Bernadette break us apart.”
But he needn't have worried because Bernie won't let Bernie break Havoc apart.
This is all going to work out; it's just a matter of balance.
I slip into Aaron's room and lock the door behind me, putting my back to it and sliding down until I'm sitting on the floor. And then I start to laugh, and I don't stop until I'm in tears.
Happy tears, to be specific.
This is going to be fun.
Prescott High is in rare form when we roll up on Monday, parking the Camaro across the street and settling in for a moment to watch the mayhem unfold.
“Fuck,” Hael murmurs, folding his arms across the steering wheel and resting his chin atop them. Cal leans forward from the back seat and we all watch as uniformed police officers hassle students outside the front doors. “This is worse than usual.”
“It'd have to be, considering the nightmare we left before break,” Callum muses, flipping his hood up like armor. He's always been notorious for sneaking weapons in past security. I wonder if even he can get anything past these guys. Instead of the usual duo of derpy idiot cops that patrol campus, we have six officers whose faces seem carved of stone.
By now, they'll have found Neil's cruiser, flipped over and burnt. They'll have realized that he's missing. They'll have noticed that I've been gone.
Long. Deep. Breath.
We get out of the car.
Oscar, Aaron, and Vic are waiting for us on the sidewalk in front of the school steps. Not a single student passes by us without craning their heads around on their necks to stare. Mark Charlin is so busy gaping at us that he doesn’t notice the steps at the front entrance, beefs it, and ends up cracking a tooth and bleeding everywhere.
“Idiot,” Hael murmurs, lighting up a cigarette. Even now, with six police officers—I’m just assuming Havoc doesn’t have any of these guys in their pocket—the boys flaunt authority from moment one. “How do we do this, boss?”
“It’s a school day, like any other,” Vic says with a shrug. He heads right for the front steps without waiting to see if we’ll follow. He doesn’t need to, right? Because he knows we will.
I have to skip ahead to catch up with Victor, wearing my pretty pink Havoc jacket with pride.
The police officers stop us, frisking us from head to toe. I can feel the boys watching me to make sure I’m treated with respect, that hands don’t wander or squeeze where they shouldn’t. Either the officer that’s patting me down is one of the good ones or he can sense that he’s being watched by predators.
Once they release us, we go through the usual metal detector/drug dog bullshit that we do every morning. After that, it seems to be business as usual.
We step into the building with me and Vic at the head of our ‘V’ shaped formation, the other boys fanned out behind us. At the end of the hallway is Mitch Charter, his brother Logan, and the two remaining Ensbrook brothers. Kali and Billie are with them, watching us. They’re all watching us.
Someone near us is listening to the song “Start a War” by Klergy and Valerie Broussard. It seems appropriate as it drones out of their phone’s speaker. The owner of said phone is frozen, holding a pair of earbuds in his palm. Guess he just paused in the middle of turning on his Bluetooth. The music keeps playing as we start down the hallway, my heeled boots loud against the old linoleum floors.
Principal Vaughn is waiting about halfway down, his arm still in the sling, his eyes shifty and unfocused.
“Detective Constantine is here and looking for Bernadette,” Vaughn simpers, slinking up to us like a kicked dog who’s finally found its rightful master. Best he remember not to bite the hand that feeds. Victor very briefly glances in his direction. “He’s waiting in Ms. Keating’s office.”
“Tell us about the officers out front,” Vic says casually, lighting up a cigarette. Vaughn cringes, but what is he going to do? We cut all the fingers on his right hand off. He most certainly isn’t going to be calling Victor to the office for smoking on campus.
“The police think Prescott students were responsible for the riot on Friday,” Scott whispers, almost conspiratorially.
“Imagine that,” Vic responds coolly as we breeze right past the Charter Crew and turn the corner.
“Fucking snake,” I hear Kali Rose-Kennedy hiss from behind me.
She has no idea.
“One of their officers is missing,” our disgraced principal continues, struggling to keep up with Vic’s long strides. Somehow, even though I’m quite a bit shorter than him, I manage to find a way to keep pace. “Neil Pence.” Scott looks right at me, brown eyes frightened, like he knows more than he’s letting on. “Your stepfather. His cruiser was found flipped over and burned, but he hasn’t been seen since he stopped by the school …”
“He’s been missing ten days?” Victor clarifies, even though he knows. He knows because we buried my stepfather alive with an oxygen tank and some food. Because we are monsters and that’s what monsters do: hunt other monsters.
“You haven’t talked to your mother since then?” Principal Vaughn asks, as if he thinks I have some sort of normal relationship with Pamela. I just laugh, but it’s not really funny at all, is it?
“My mom and I don’t get along.” I wiggle my fingers to show off my ring and, because of my intended double entendre, Vaughn flinches and rubs at his sling. “I’m married now, legally emancipated. I owe her nothing and vice versa. I’m sorry to hear about Neil.” Callum chuckles at my words, and I grin.
“Constantine’s going to start pulling students in as soon as the first bell rings,” Vaughn warns as Vic pushes open the graffiti-covered doors to the cafeteria. We’re here early, to take advantage of the free breakfast. We never make it for breakfast, but today is special. We need to make sure the entire Prescott student body is aware that the boys they saw escorted out by an FBI-sanctioned task force are back.
The law is nothing in the face of Havoc’s wrath.
“Fuck the detective,” Vic says, cigarette hanging out of his mouth as he glances over his shoulder at the principal. “We don’t have anything to hide.”
This time, when Victor laughs, the entire cafeteria goes silent, and the sound rings out like a death knell.
Hope the Charter Crew is ready for us.
There’s one gang you don’t piss off at Prescott High, not unless you want them to destroy you.
Too late, Charter Crew. Too motherfucking late.
This time, when Detective Constantine calls me into the office, I don’t have Vice Principal Keating to protect me. Vaughn, as simpering and weak as he is, isn’t going to stand up for me, not even if he’s resigned to being Havoc’s pet. I’d have to essentially give him orders to get him to obey, and I can’t do that in front of the detective and his two uniformed lackeys.
“Ms. Blackbird,” the detective says when I walk in wearing my pink leather jacket, black leather pants, and high-heeled boots. I know what I look like, with dark liner smudged around my green eyes, my lips painted as red as the red, red motherfucking rose.
“Mr. Constantine,” I reply, because calling him detective every time I address him just seems passé. He isn’t smiling today. Gone is the good ol’ boy persona he put on before. This time, he is truly pissed.
“Have a seat,” he says with a deep sigh, indicating one of Ms. Keating’s two student chairs. I can’t help but look at the spot where she collapsed after Neil hit her, where he started pistol-whipping her, where she bled.