Chaos at Prescott High

by Stunich, C. M.

  The front door flies open, the knob smashing into the wall, and Hael storms in, sweaty and shaking as he kneels down in front of his mother.

  “Maman, listen to me,” he says as she fights against him, trying to tear her hands from his.

  “They're coming, mon fils,” she murmurs, eyes flicking to the doorway as Vic walks in, scowling and speckled with blood. He gives me a look that says he isn't happy with my escalation of the situation, but fuck him. I'm not happy about the video; we all have to learn to live with disappointment. “They're out to get me.”

  “What on earth is she muttering about now?” Oscar asks, flicking an imaginary piece of dust from the arm of his dark suit as he joins us, closing the door behind him.

  “Show some goddamn compassion, would ya?” Hael snaps back at him, moving to sit on the sofa beside his mother and smoothing back her hair. He murmurs quietly to her in French until she stops fidgeting, her honey-brown eyes remarkably similar to her son's. She darts her gaze between us, finally landing her attention on me.

  “Who is this?” she asks in a heavily accented voice, gesturing at me. “I'll make cookies. You want some? Of course you do,” she mutters this last part, like she really doesn’t care what Hael’s going to say; she’s making those goddamn cookies.

  “We don't need any cookies, Maman,” Hael groans, closing his eyes in a way that reveals how tired he truly is. And I don't mean physically, I mean in his fucking soul. It's a weightiness, a heaviness, that sort of melancholic fatigue. It eats at you like moths at a sweater, leaving little holes, weakening the knit. You can still put it on, but it'll never keep you warm, not ever again. Eventually, the whole thing just unravels.

  “All little boys like cookies,” his mother says, pushing away from him and standing up with a smile, like she didn't just see two dozen teenagers brandish illegal weapons at each other in her front yard. Hael scowls as his mother totters off, pausing to pat me on the cheek. “You Hael's girlfriend?” she asks, but before I can think up an appropriate answer, she's talking again. “You like chocolate chip? Nobody don't like chocolate chip.”

  His mother disappears into the kitchen area, leaving the four of us in a bubble of awkward-as-fuck. I raise an eyebrow as Hael swallows and swipes a hand down his face.

  “Interesting accent she has,” I remark, and he shakes his head with a sigh.

  “She's from Louisiana,” he tells me, shrugging his big shoulders. “My maman is Cajun.”

  Ahh, so that explains both the French and the unusual accent.

  “And as far as who's actually coming for her …” I start.

  “My mom's sick, okay?” Hael snaps, a bit of that darkness I remember seeing in him during sophomore year coming to the surface to play. Doesn't offend me, but at least he has the common decency to look chagrined. “Sorry, Blackbird. I just … I don't want to talk about it, okay?” He gives me a look that says this is as deep as he goes, this thing with his mom. I'm not going to get to see this part of Hael, not yet. Maybe not ever. All of his playfulness, his flirting, his smirks and his sultry chuckles, all defense mechanisms to keep the world from seeing this part of him.

  “Marie suffers from various mental illnesses,” Oscar explains in a deadpan, causing Hael to grit his teeth and clench his fists in a way that reminds me of Vic. For his part, Havoc's leader says nothing, staring at me from dark eyes in such a manner that tells me I better get the hell out of Dodge or pay the consequences. “I maintain that while some are a matter of imbalanced brain chemistry, most are Martin's doing.”

  Martin, who the fuck is Martin?

  “Enough,” Hael growls out, the word the final nail in the coffin of this conversation. “Mitch and his crew just rolled up into my neighborhood and dragged my mother to the lawn. What else would they have done if we hadn't shown up?”

  “Moot point, we did show up,” Vic says as Marie begins to hum in the kitchen. “This was all just a farce to get us out here, to spew some bullshit about Danny.”

  “Yeah, well, it hit a little too close to home for me,” Hael snaps back, taking off down the hallway. I hesitate only briefly before taking off after him. Vic grabs my wrist before I can go, squeezing just a little too hard. When I look back at him, I can't decide if the expression on his face is one of disappointment … or jealousy. Probably a mixture of both.

  “Listen, princess,” he starts, but I just laugh. Princess? Nobody's ever called me princess before. Besides, what little girl would want to be a princess when they could be a queen? “You could've messed things up bad today. I thought you'd learned your lesson when you stabbed Kali. I don’t mind if you want to knock some heads together, just ask me first.”

  “You're just lucky I didn't shoot Kali today,” I retort back, twisting my arm from his grip and ignoring Oscar as he watches me from behind the lenses of his glasses. “Don't lecture me about my mistakes when you could raze an entire city with the heat of your own. Don't talk to me again unless you're going to apologize.”

  Victor scowls at me as I take off down the hall, finding Hael sitting on the edge of his bed.

  One look at his bedroom tells me everything I need to know about this family: the Harbins have no money, but someone clearly cares about Hael. The bed is made and dressed in clean blankets and sheets; the windows are free of streaks and dead bugs. There’s even a threadbare rug, freshly vacuumed and laid out at the foot of the bed.

  I hesitate in the doorway, my fingers lingering on the jamb as I watch him. It's weird, to see Hael Harbin in his bedroom, surrounded by his things. He's always seemed so impossible, a character of his own making, larger than life, a walking-talking slice of sex and violence.

  In here … he almost looks his age.

  Almost.

  “You okay?” I ask, which is a stupid question. Such an empty question. None of us is okay. Not a single one. If we were, we wouldn't be a part of Havoc. If we were, we wouldn't have killed a kid in a funhouse at a Halloween party. No, we're far from okay. We're antonyms of okay.

  Hael lifts his face up, honey-brown eyes dark, shoulders slumped. He forces a smile, but that just makes me frown harder. I don't want to see him smiling his way through this shit. I want to see something that's fucking real.

  I step into the room and close the door behind me, leaning my ass up against it and wondering what, exactly, Mitch and his crew planned to get out of coming here. Thought they'd shake our tree up and Danny's ass would fall out like a rotten apple, maybe.

  “I'm okay,” Hael says finally, and I laugh, the sound as bitter as cheap gin. Hael cocks a brow at me as I push up off of the door, taking note of the extra locks on the inside. My eyes flick from the deadbolt to Hael's face.

  “No, you're not. Why lie to me? I thought there weren't any secrets in Havoc?” This last part comes out a tad salty, but I can't help it. I'm not over the video thing, not over being lied to, even if it was by omission. Hael is just as guilty as Callum, as Oscar, as Aaron … maybe not quite as guilty as Victor. As the leader, he gets the most blame. It's a double-edged sword, isn't it? Being in charge.

  “I'm sorry about the video, Bernadette,” Hael says, looking away from me, toward a shelf stuffed with comic books. There must be thousands of slim volumes stuffed into the cheap, little Wal-Mart bookcases. I move over to stand next to them, pulling one out and examining the cover. It's a superhero story, but not one that I recognize. Flipping through it, I see there's a pretty clear-cut beginning, middle, and end. Good guy meets bad guy, shit happens, good guy triumphs. Switching it out for another volume, I find different characters but the same story. Over and over and over again. “When we first found it, we thought about turning it in, but then we thought about it. For a long, long fucking time. You know how the world really works.”

  Hael stands up from the bed, moving over to hover behind me. I can smell him, that pungent mix of sweet coconut oil and dirty grease from spending so much time beneath the hood. I inhale, just to bring it all in, but I keep it quiet. No need to let Ha
el know that I enjoy his personal scent so damn much.

  “It's not like it is in the comics, you know?” he says, his breath feathering against my hair. Hael reaches around me to grab one of the volumes from the shelf. He flips through it as I stay where I am, acutely aware of his proximity to my back, acutely aware of the distance between our bodies. “Life isn't fair. It doesn't have story arcs with satisfying conclusions. Shit, it doesn't make narrative sense at all, does it?”

  “Have you ever noticed that the good guys in these books are too concerned with their own morality to make hard choices?” I ask, staring at the conclusion of the story in my hand. The hero has locked the bad guy up, but on the very last page, he escapes, leaving room for a sequel. The thing is, how many people are going to die before the villain is caught again? How many have to suffer? It would be better if he were dead.

  But people who kill other people are murderers, right? Villains. Only a villain can truly stop another villain. There is no room in this world for heroes; they only get in the way.

  “A lot of shit has happened in my life,” Hael says, moving away from me and pausing to look at a poster of a girl in a bikini, straddling the hood of a Ferrari. He smirks at it and shakes his head, turning away from the wall to look at me. “I always wanted to be the good guy, you know. But, uh …” Hael pauses to laugh, the sound as dark as the black paint on my nails. “If you want justice, you have to seek vengeance.” He shrugs his big shoulders, looking me dead in the face. “You understand that, right? That's why you're here.”

  “I'm not afraid to sully myself to make things right,” I admit, flashes of that awful video playing in the back of my skull. I can never unsee it. I can never shake those horrible images. Bile rises in my throat, but I swallow it back. The Thing will get what's coming to him. No matter Havoc's other faults, that I don't doubt. “But I have to ask …” Hael reaches down and tucks a strand of white-blonde hair behind my ear, his fingers lingering at the pink-tipped ends. “Is it true that Vic is the only one who wanted me in Havoc?”

  Hael hesitates, like he's debating the merits of answering me, when the door opens. Of course it's Vic, and he doesn't bother to knock. He looks around the room like he's familiar with it but hasn't been here in a long time. Memories flash across his face, a flicker of nostalgia that makes me hate him just a little bit less than I love him.

  Ugh.

  Fuck.

  Of course I love Victor Channing. I always have. From that first moment on the playground, he took my heart in his hands when he shoved that brat down the slide for me. Victor Channing punched me in the face between first and second period for saying Bernadette Blackbird was hot. I can't forget that even when they were kicking the shit out of me during sophomore year, they were still on my side.

  Which means that whatever price Kali paid must've been good.

  “We should go,” Vic says, his voice a thread of ice and steel. He gives Hael a look. “He just pulled into the driveway.”

  “He?” I ask as Hael grits his teeth, exhaling and nodding sharply.

  “My dad,” he says, giving me a look that communicates volumes without a single word. “We don't exactly get along.”

  “Is it true that he cut you up with a hunting knife?” I ask, pointing at the scar on Hael's arm, the one that goes from fingertip to shoulder. That's the rumor at Prescott High, that his father did that to him. But then, rumors at Prescott High are a lesson in the game of telephone; they grow leaps and bounds with each fantastical retelling.

  Hael licks his lips and gives a curt nod.

  “Yeah, something like that …” he starts as an unfamiliar male voice sounds from down the hall. Oscar's smooth, cool reply comes in response, and a shiver traces down my spine. “Tell ya more later, Blackbird, I promise.” He gives my shoulder a squeeze as he moves past, and Vic and I exchange a look.

  “You're not going to like Hael's dad,” he tells me, and I cock a brow, so done with his bullshit I could scream. We're going to have to have it out soon, Vic and me.

  “Why’s that?” I quip back, popping my hip out and putting my hand on it.

  “Because he murdered a pregnant prostitute,” Vic replies with a sardonic smile. He moves past me and down the hall, leaving me to gape behind him. A million questions slither through my mind, but I'm not about to miss out on this interaction. I move down the hall as quick as I can, expecting to find a man like my stepfather, a wolf in wolf's clothing. The Thing never tries to hide what a monster he is. He feels protected, by his badge and his brother's law degree and his father's gavel.

  Instead, I find a slender man in a baseball cap, smiling as he pulls the hat from his head and holds it against his chest.

  “Long time, no see, son,” he says as Hael stares at him from across the width of the small living room. The sweet smell of creamed butter and sugar wafts out from the direction of the kitchen. It's at odds with the tension in the room, reminding me that not everything is as it seems. The air smells sweet, the sound of Hael's mother's humming is comforting, but the look in Hael's eyes promises there's much more to this happy, little story than he's letting on.

  “I mean, that's what happens when you go to prison,” Hael retorts, shrugging again, like this is no big deal. He plasters one of those cocksure smiles on his face, putting a bit of swagger back in his step.

  “I've been out for damn near a month, and yet, you haven't bothered to see me,” the man—his name was Martin, wasn't it?—smiles as he glances from his son to Vic, then over to Oscar and me. “Do you want to introduce your new friend?” Martin continues to smile at me, like we're old buddies. “I remember the others. Victor and Oscar, right?”

  “Guess the meth hasn't rotted your brain the way it did your judgement, huh?” Hael asks, throwing out a laugh. He gestures back at me. “This is Bernadette. We met a long time ago, right after you went to prison for the first time, and Mom and I were homeless. Spent the night in the same homeless shelter.”

  Something strange and dark flashes across Martin's face, and I can see that the smile on his lips isn't the whole story. There are monsters buried underneath all that nice.

  “Let's go,” Hael says, but then his mother comes out of the kitchen in her apron, wielding a wooden spoon covered in cookie dough.

  “Ne me laisse pas fiston,” she pleads, her voice cracking a bit, like she can't bear to see her son go. I have no idea what she's saying, but it's pretty clear she wants Hael to stay here. He sighs heavily and nods, murmuring something to her in French that makes her smile.

  “I gotta take Oscar back, and I'll come home,” he promises, giving Martin a look. “Wouldn't want to leave you home alone with him very long anyway.” Hael takes off for the front door, letting it slam into the wall on his way out.

  “Lovely to meet you, Bernadette,” Martin says, nodding as we pass by. He seems nice enough on the surface, but we all know that what lies beneath could be a vastly different story.

  Sitting on the back of that bike, my arms wrapped around Vic, I'm forced to confront everything I'm feeling. How can I sit here and smell him, that musky mix of leather and bergamot that makes my heart flutter and melts the ice around my heart, and not evaluate everything that’s going on inside of me?

  Maybe, if I were to dig a little deeper, I'd realize that the reason I'm so upset with Havoc is because I wanted to trust them. I wanted to believe that I really was a Havoc Girl, that I was a part of the gang. But finding out they kept something so big from me, it seems impossible.

  “Are you planning on going home tonight?” Victor asks me after we park on the curb in front of Aaron's house and he kicks off the bike's engine with his boot. He doesn't move, so neither do I, waiting with my arms wrapped around him as dusk settles over the quiet neighborhood. A child's laughter drifts back to us from down the street, a potent reminder that even if it feels like everything is going to shit in my own life, other people are still living theirs.

  It doesn't seem fair, somehow. But, like Hael just sai
d, life definitely isn't fucking fair. If it were, Penelope would still be alive, and my stepfather would be rotting six feet under.

  “I kind of have to, unless you're willing to move on the Thing tonight. If I don't bring Heather back soon, Pamela will call the cops on me again.” Vic nods, but I'm guessing his lack of a response is all the answer I need. They're not going to move on Neil, not tonight. Technically, I could probably stay here until tomorrow; it’s only Saturday.

  But if Neil came to find me and the boys, that means he senses a threat. Monsters always know to look for other monsters in the dark. Maybe if I come home a day early, Pamela will chill, and she won’t poke the bear before we’re ready? Or maybe you just need space to think because the guys pissed you the hell off?

  “I'll have Hael give you a ride on his way back home,” he says, and then he starts to stand up. Instead of releasing my arms, I squeeze him a bit tighter and he pauses. I close my eyes against the cool, night breeze, the scent of the white roses in the yard carrying over to me.

  “Whatever reason you had for keeping that video from me, it wasn't good enough. It wasn't your choice to decide what to do with it. It was mine.”

  Vic stays quiet for several seconds, and I wonder if he's going to bring up the thing with Aaron today. Between all the bullshit at the Harbin house, I'd almost forgotten about that. Almost, but then there's a sore spot inside of my heart where Aaron sits, and it's quite obviously bleeding. I take one of my hands away from Vic's waist and press it against my chest.

  “That's where you're wrong, Bernadette. I'm the boss here, no matter how you feel about it.”

  A scowl forms on my lips, and I swing my leg over the side of the bike. Victor grabs my wrist, but I shake him off, spinning to face him with a sneer.