“We paid Stacey to start a riot, didn’t we, Stacey?” Oscar asks, and she shrugs.
“We would’ve done it for free, as a favor,” she clarifies, showing me teeth through the hole of her ski mask. “You ready?”
Vic nods, just once. He doesn’t need anything more than that. That’s what makes him a leader, all of that insane charisma and confidence. “Light it up.”
“Girls,” Stacey says, and then they all move forward, putting their palms up against the side of Neil’s police cruiser and rocking it forward and back, until it tips over with a groaning creak of metal. Windows shatter, covering the pavement with shards of glass. One of Stacey’s girls steps up and douses the damn thing in gasoline.
“Bernie?” Cal asks, holding out a matchbox as chaos erupts around us. People pour from the building in pink ski masks and skeleton masks both, wielding baseball bats and hammers, shovels and torches.
Without hesitation, they start flipping cars along the edge of the street.
Holy fuck.
I lift my head and see that Callum is still waiting for me to take the matches. I lick the blood from my lips as I grab them, staring down at the overturned police car as the night lights up like the Fourth of July.
“Do it,” Victor purrs, watching me carefully. “Finish it.”
Goddamn these boys. They’ve managed to find the perfect cover-up.
“You’ve got this,” Aaron reassures me as I strike the match.
Neil’s cruiser will be gone. He’ll be missing. And yet, his disappearance will be steeped in havoc, chaos, and mayhem. What we’re going to do with him after tonight … that’s another matter entirely.
I chuck the match at the car and watch as it goes up in a swath of brilliant, vibrant flame.
“Let’s go home,” Cal suggests as I stand there in the crackling heat, the sound of sirens piercing the distance. “We still have a wedding to attend tomorrow.” With a nod, I let him escort me back to the SUV and we take off, dragging Neil’s comatose body along for the ride.
I don’t stay awake long enough to remember getting home, only that I open my eyes and find myself in Aaron’s bed. He isn’t there, but when I head downstairs, I find him in the kitchen drinking coffee with the rest of the Havoc Boys.
Their conversation stops when I come into the room, bleary-eyed and exhausted from yesterday. I can hardly believe that we have to deal with Neil and have a wedding today. It doesn’t seem possible. Besides, the guys might’ve walked from the station, but that doesn’t mean they’re free and clear.
No, this shit is just beginning.
“Coffee?” Hael asks, lifting up his mug and saluting me with it. “A little caffeine to get you through the horror of a wedding night with Victor.”
“Heh,” Vic snorts, looking askance at his best friend. “You’re just salty because your birthday got fucked. Well, instead of cake, I’m going to eat Bernadette all night long. Be jealous, dickhead.” Hael just grins and laughs as I slide onto a stool at the peninsula next to Oscar.
“What are we going to do with Neil?” I ask, thinking of him, bloodied and still in the back of our stolen ride. I’m guessing the guys took turns watching over him last night. And with the stress the riot put on the Springfield police, it’s likely nobody will notice he’s missing until later today.
“That’s the wedding present I was talking about,” Vic says, smirking at me over his coffee. “Your stepfather, wrapped up nice and tight. The perfect gift for a Havoc bride.”
“You were arrested by the VGTF yesterday and you’re, what, plotting murder today?”
Victor shrugs his muscular shoulders, like it’s no big thing.
“No rest for the wicked,” Oscar reiterates as Aaron makes me a cup of coffee and slides it across the counter. It’s spiked with chocolate milk and whiskey, my favorite. I hide my smile behind a sip. “Finish up and I’ll help you into your gown,” he purrs, and I close my eyes against a shiver.
This is happening, actually freaking happening.
I set my mug down on the counter and exhale.
Yesterday felt like it lasted a century. I was afraid in ways I’ve never been afraid before. I was worried.
But I never doubted Havoc.
Never.
I won’t doubt them today.
“You sure I should wear my wedding gown to deal with Neil?” I ask, raising a brow in question.
“Oh, we’re sure,” Cal says, grinning at me. “Just trust us.”
And I do.
Always.
The hole that I decided against hiding in yesterday has now become the focus of our morning.
Neil Pence is lying in a beautiful black coffin at the bottom of it, the lid flipped open, the bloodred satin interior shiny and pretty and wicked. His eyes are neutral, his mouth stuffed with a gag, hands and ankles bound. He just looks at us like he isn’t afraid, like he doesn’t believe any of this is actually going to happen.
“Give him some time,” Callum says softly, his face painted silver in the early morning light. Fog drifts lazily around our ankles as I stand there in the black Lazaro wedding gown that I picked out with Oscar. My hair is still slightly damp from my shower, hanging loose around my shoulders. “They always break, eventually.” He smiles as he crouches down, staring at Neil with an intensity that reminds me of a blue-eyed wolf stalking prey. “Don’t they, Neil?”
Hael uses a long stick to stab Neil in the face, scratching him up a bit as he pushes the gag from the Thing’s mouth. He coughs for a moment and then laughs at us, like he’s still the one in charge.
“You don’t have the balls to kill a cop,” he jeers, a metal tank tucked between his legs. I’m not sure what it’s for. It, or the plastic bag tucked under his arm. He barely fits into the coffin with all of that, but I’m sure it’s not built for comfort.
I figure this is a scenario similar to the one with Donald, where the boys pretended to hang him from a tree. We aren’t actually burying Neil, but we want him to think we are.
“Bernie,” Vic says, glancing over at me. “I wanted this to be your wedding present. The best part of it all is that Neil actually drove himself up here to preview the attraction. Now, this gift was supposed to be from the five of us, but I feel like he deserves at least a bit of credit.” He turns back to my stepfather and smiles. “Seems fair, right?”
Oscar removes the revolver from inside his suit jacket and pulls the hammer back, leveling it on Neil.
“You going to shoot me, boy?” Neil taunts, still unfazed by the situation. “You’ll spend the rest of your life getting fucked up in the ass in prison. You ready for a life like that?”
“Listen up,” Aaron begins, ignoring Neil’s rambling. “We’re not without compassion. If we were, we’d be as bad as you.” He sighs and shakes his head, pulling out a knife and sliding down into the hole with Hael’s help. Aaron cuts the bindings on Neil’s hands then drops the knife beside him as my stepfather shakes them out with a twisted smile on his ugly mouth.
When Aaron turns to grab Hael’s hands for a boost up, Neil goes for the knife and tries to stab him.
Instead, he ends up with a gunshot to the thigh, his screams echoing around the empty graveyard. Up here, only the dead can hear his cries.
Hael pulls Aaron up and out of the hole, and we all take a step closer, so that we’re circling the space. The boys are all dressed in their tuxes for the wedding today. Most of their shirts are undone, ties loose or missing, but they still look fly in their pressed slacks and shiny loafers with metal skulls on the tops. Barker Blacks, I think the shoes are called.
I’m standing at the foot of the grave in my dress and combat boots with Victor opposite me in a pink tie. Aaron and Hael are on my right, Callum and Oscar on my left. At a nod from Vic, they all remove skeleton masks from their pockets and slip them on.
Even me.
I put the rubber mask over my face, my mouth a flat line, my face bereft of emotion.
“I’m going to kill you!
” Neil wails, clutching his leg. “And I’m going to bury you, Bernadette, you fucking whore.”
“I think,” I say, crouching down at the side of the hole. “That you’re the one who’s getting buried today, Neil.” I wait for a moment as he struggles to stand up, clutching the knife like he thinks we’ll actually let him climb out and fight us. “This is for Penelope. You understand that, right? That you’re being punished?”
“You just wait, you little cunt,” he snarls, bleeding everywhere, struggling. It’s sort of pathetic, actually, how much he seems to want to live. For someone that does the things he does, he needs to accept that this is fate. This is how it ends. I wish.
But I mean … this isn’t a realistic way to finish things is it? Especially since Neil’s a cop?
“You have two choices,” Aaron continues finally as I stand up. It’s clear that Neil is not listening. “You’ve been provided with an oxygen tank that holds about six hours of air. You also have water and snacks. Then again, you have a knife.”
“What Aaron’s trying to say,” Hael adds with a sharp laugh. “Is that you can choose to use the items we’ve given you to survive a bit longer and prolong your own pain, or you can end it. That is our only kindness.”
“Close him up,” Vic orders, as efficient as always. He lights up a cigarette as Hael uses the stick—which I think is an old pool cue—to hit Neil in the face. With the injury to his leg, it’s pretty easy to knock him over. Hael then uses the stick to hook a bit of rope on the lid of the coffin, pulling it closed.
Just before the lid shuts completely, I see Neil look up at me, his mouth opening to spew vitriol. I don’t hear any of it. The lid closes and there’s a breath or two of silence before he starts to scream.
“Ah, there it is,” Cal says cheerfully, “he just broke.”
I wonder how long the boys plan on leaving Neil in there until they let him out, lead him into the woods, and execute him.
“Death is too sweet a release for some,” Callum adds, nodding as he grabs a pair of shovels and then offers one up to me.
I just stare at him.
“Wait …” I start as the boys—including Vic and Oscar—step forward and start to shovel dirt. “Is this … are we really doing this?”
“Do you like it?” Vic asks, looking up at me with sincerity in his dark gaze. “Your wedding present?”
It’s then that I know they’re serious.
We are burying Neil Pence alive for the crime of rape. For the suicide—or murder—of Penelope Blackbird. We are burying him alive for making me feel scared and unwelcome in my own home. We are burying him because he is a monster.
I fall to my knees in the dress, collapsing next to the hole and putting my forehead on my arm as I start to hyperventilate. After a moment, Aaron comes over to crouch beside me, rubbing my back in soothing circles and whispering sweet nothings in my ear. If I listen really hard, I can hear Neil screaming as dirt piles on top of his shiny black coffin.
“I’d say, based on the size of Neil and the size of the coffin, that he has about twelve hours of air if he chooses to use the tank,” Oscar explains, continuing to shovel. I wonder for a brief second if they might just be doing this for dramatic effect, and that we might dig Neil up later.
But … no.
No, that’s not what’s happening.
This is it.
The final chapter of my book that includes Neil Pence.
And I do nothing to stop it.
It takes a while for the boys to finish filling in the hole, patting it nice and flat when they’re done, helping blend it into the landscape. Callum gathers leaves and twigs, scattering them over the surface, until it’s hard to tell that there was ever a disturbance here at all.
I crawl forward, laying my body across the grave and putting my ear to the dirt. The echoes of Neil’s screams travel up to me, as faint as my sister’s cries in the night after he visited her bedroom. My fingers dig into the dirt and I squeeze my eyes shut against the tears.
I lay there until the screaming stops, and then for another hour beyond that.
The boys are patient, parking their beautiful inked bodies on nearby tombstones, smoking cigarettes or joints, passing around a bottle of whiskey.
Aaron stays beside me the whole time, his hand on my back for comfort.
After a while, Neil starts to scream again, and I realize that he is not going to use the knife. Because he’s desperate to keep living, to keep hurting people, and he won’t give the world even a small favor by killing himself.
I sit up and the boys still around me.
“Today, I become queen of Havoc,” I say, my eyes on the dirt beneath my knees. On Neil’s grave. A place that nobody will ever visit, that they’ll walk over and ignore, just the way it should be. I lift my eyes to find Hael’s. Then Aaron’s. Vic’s. Oscar’s. Callum’s. “And I won’t share my crown with anyone.”
Nobody challenges me as Aaron helps me to my feet, leading me away from Neil and toward the parking lot.
I’d stay longer, but then, we have a wedding to attend.
Sorry, Neil.
The nice thing about burying a monster alive is that you don’t get any blood on your clothes.
I’m standing in front of a full-length mirror in the disheveled downstairs parlor of the old house. There isn’t much left to indicate the antique splendor that used to fill the space. No, instead it’s just so much urban rot.
“You sure you’re okay?” Aaron asks, leaning up against the old peeling wallpaper and lighting a cigarette. He’s beyond handsome in his tux, but then, aren’t they all? My Havoc Boys. I might be getting married to Victor today, but I can never really be just his, can I? We’re a family, me and my former tormentors.
“I’m okay.”
My lips twitch, and I lean in toward the old mirror, reaching up a single black-painted fingernail to scrape at a bit of stray pink lipstick near the corner of my mouth. It seems a strange color when paired with the black dress and its raven-feather neckpiece, especially being married here, in the woods of an abandoned mansion.
But I chose that color for a reason. I dye the ends of my hair for a reason.
Pink was Pen’s favorite color and since she can’t physically be here with me today, I want her here in spirit. Oscar already offered to hold a séance for me, to see if we could talk to her, but I don’t buy into voodoo magic and bullshit.
You buried a man alive this morning, I remind myself, trying to stay humble, to stay grounded, to remember to be human. Reaching over to grab my phone, I see that it’s been about six hours since we buried him. That means he’s got about six hours left. Six hours to change my mind.
Only … I have no intention of doing anything of the sort.
“Hey, Bernie,” Pen says, leaning down to kiss my forehead. I’ve always resented her being taller than me. I frown and wrinkle my nose when she kisses me. I do that because I believe, like all little sisters do, that she’ll be here forever to take care of me. Right now though, I’m an asshole sophomore and she’s the kind-hearted senior who panders too much, worries too much, cares too much. “You know I love you more than the moon loves the stars, don’t you?”
And I did. And I still do.
My hands clench in the shimmery black fabric of the gown.
It was supposed to be a fake dress for a fake wedding for a fake marriage. The thing is, I love Victor too much. He loves me too much. Havoc is too important to me. I could never give it up.
“I know, Pen, and I love you, too. More than the sun loves the clouds. Wish me and Vic—me and Havoc—luck. I have a feeling the honeymoon is going to wreck me in the worst way possible.”
There’s a soft knock at the door, but really, it’s just a courtesy knock. There are too many holes in the walls to pretend like Callum can’t see me and Aaron in my makeshift dressing room.
“We’re ready,” he says, smiling at me in that way of his, like pain is pretty and the world is a fragile monster with hungry jaw
s. I like it, though, his smile, because it also says that he doesn’t care about any of those things. If Callum Park loves something or someone, he will, quite literally, murder the world. “Are you?”
There are so many shades of meaning to that question, but I nod anyway, standing up and turning around so he can see me with my hair and makeup done. We hired one of Stacey’s girls to do it. She wasn’t bad, but she’s no Ivy Hightower.
I wet my lips.
Nope.
No more thinking about business today. Business was yesterday. Business was watching Ms. Keating (who’s now in the hospital, thanks to Vaughn) get pistol-whipped. Business was being chased by the Thing through the cemetery. Business was putting him in an early grave.
“I’m ready,” I say aloud, offering my arm to Aaron. I haven’t looked outside yet to see who’s actually come for the wedding, but it doesn’t matter because the Havoc Boys will be here. That’s enough of an audience for me. Although … part of me would have loved to see Pamela’s face when Aaron walks me down the aisle.
Aaron hooks his arm through mine, leaning over to give me a kiss on the forehead. His signature scent surrounds me, calming my nerves and blocking out the wet stink of rotten floorboards and crumbling plaster ceilings.
I’ve chosen to walk down the aisle to the tune of Numb Without You by The Maine, but the orchestral version, not the one with lyrics. For some reason, when I first heard it, I thought of me and Vic. If couples truly have their own songs, then this one is most definitely ours.
Callum slips back outside, waiting by the doors until Aaron and I give the knock to indicate that we’re ready. I can just barely see the altar through the grimy windows that flank the double front doors. An arch of pink roses soars above Victor’s purple-dark hair, Oscar centered beneath them, our sadistic little wedding officiant.
“Fuck, I’m scared,” I murmur, and Aaron laughs softly. I glance briefly in his direction.
“I’d be worried if you weren’t,” he tells me, putting his hand over mine. His touch comforts me, and I close my eyes for a moment, just to catch my breath. “But as much as I hate Vic sometimes, I trust him with my life.” Aaron pauses a moment, and I open my eyes to look at him. He’s staring at the floor and not at me, but his expression isn’t unpleasant. Actually, he looks a little surprised. “I trust him with the love of my life, too, apparently.” He scoffs a harsh laugh and then glances back at me.
Chaos at Prescott High Page 36
