Havoc at Prescott High

by Stunich, C. M.

  “Allow me,” Vic says, moving over and putting his huge, inked hands on my waist. A fire rips through me, and I close my eyes. It feels good when he touches me, too good. I don't like it. Makes me nervous, all that fire and tension.

  He zips me up and then steps back as I turn around to face him.

  The white dress hugs my curves and reveals just enough skin to be sexy without showing off too much of my ink.

  The expression on Victor's face says it all: he likes this dress. A lot.

  “Shit, that's hot,” he murmurs, rubbing at his chin again. Seems to be a tell of his for when he's deep in thought. In that case, I don't have to worry about seeing too much of it, huh? “But is it too hot? My mom is a serious bitch. She might feel intimidated if you look too pretty.”

  A frown turns down the corners of my lips.

  “You're shitting me, right? Your mom gets jealous of your girlfriends?”

  “Never had a girlfriend. And you,” he touches his fingers to the side of my face, “you are not my girlfriend: you're my fiancée. Oscar, let's find something more … matronly.”

  “What a shame,” Hael murmurs, his big body leaned up against the door, like some sort of royal guard. “I like the white one.” His brown eyes track over me, making me shiver; I can feel the heat in them from here.

  “We'll get two,” Vic agrees, jaw working as he watches me. “Billie and her brothers owe me money anyhow.”

  Oscar selects another dress, something that reminds me of an outfit my great-grandmother might’ve worn to church on Sunday when the family was still rich. Did I mention she was ninety-nine years old when she passed? And buried in a dress similar to this, kid you not.

  As I'm shedding the white dress for the weird muumuu thing, a man passes by the exterior window and pauses to look in at me as I clamp my arms over my chest in an attempt to cover my breasts.

  “Oh, hell no,” Hael says as he pushes up off the door and goes for the window with Callum in tow.

  Hael shoves the window open and hops out as the man starts to run. The two Havoc boys take off after him as I gape in surprise.

  “What the fuck is going on?” I choke out as Aaron steps up to stand beside me.

  “That's Kyler Ensbrook. We have unresolved shit with him and his brother.” Aaron pauses dramatically and then swings his green-gold eyes down to my face, like there's something here left unsaid but he's not going to be the one to say it.

  “That, sure,” Vic starts as he glances back at me. “But mostly it's because nobody looks at our fucking girl without consequence.” Vic steps over to the window and hops out.

  “This is nuts,” I grumble as I slip the hideous frock on, and then shove my feet in my boots. Nobody stops me as I go for the window and climb out, following the flattened trail of grass toward the woods. I've just barely crossed into the shadowed darkness when I find Kyler Ensbrook on the ground with blood streaming down the sides of his face.

  “I'm going to kill you both!” he screams as Hael and Callum circle him like sharks, and Vic watches, back against the trunk of a tree, tatted arms crossed over his chest. He barely glances my way when I stumble into the clearing.

  “Apologize to Bernadette,” Vic commands, and I shiver. That's a voice made to control armies, to start riots, to incite violence. Vic could rule the world, if you know, he wasn't just some poor gang-banging asshole from the wrong side of town.

  “Eat shit, Vic. Your girl has ugly tits anyway.”

  Vic's face hardens in a way that's terrifying, this darkness closing in that swallows him whole.

  “Break his face and teach him a lesson.” Victor pushes up from the tree and turns to head back toward the house.

  He’s not being hyperbolic here: he’s dead serious.

  My eyes flick over to the guy on the ground, hands curled over his head, a wet spot forming on his crotch. He’s pissed himself. He’s quite literally pissed himself.

  Fuck.

  If I don’t do something, Hael and Callum really will—and it’s gonna be bad. Trust me: I’ve seen them at their worst. I know what they can do. I know what they’re capable of. It’s why I hired them, isn’t it?

  There’s no time to think, so I don’t bother standing there and waiting around for the boys to crush Kyler’s skull in. Instead, I race forward and kick him as hard as I can in the shoulder. An agonizing scream tears from his throat, but he won’t die from a bruise or a dislocated shoulder.

  “Screw you, peeping tom piece of shit.” I spit on him and swipe my arm across my red-painted lips, smearing color that looks like blood on the ugly frock. Good. Now I can’t wear it to the luncheon. “You got what you deserved.” I step back and look up to find Callum and Hael watching me.

  “Let’s get this dress and get out of here. This place is depressing as fuck,” Hael says, and then he laughs as I turn and start back the way I came, pausing when Vic grabs my wrist. His grip is firm, but not bruising. I lift my eyes to his.

  “Clever little Bernadette,” he murmurs before releasing me.

  I roll my eyes as we head back to the house and crawl in the window. Billie is banging on the door and shouting something, but the guys ignore her.

  “Well, this won’t do, will it?” Oscar asks, lifting my dirtied sleeve and giving it a look. He gives me a knowing smile and holds up another garment bag with a single inked finger. “This should do it. No need to try it on: I know your size, remember?”

  “Get fucked,” I grumble as Aaron gathers up my discarded clothing and tosses me my leather jacket.

  “Let’s go. We’re done here,” Vic announces, and Hael moves over to open the door, leaving Billie to stumble in and fall to her knees. “We’ll be taking three dresses. Consider your debt paid.” He steps past her and continues on. She, apparently, doesn’t have a lot going on upstairs because she follows after us.

  “Those three dresses are worth double what we owed you,” she whines, and Callum pauses, turning and blocking her in the hallway with an arm on either side of the doorjamb.

  “You’re lucky this is the only interest you’re paying on that loan. Tell your brothers we said hi.” His voice is like a dark dream, this growling, hollow sound that gives me chills. If I had Callum Park leaning over me in his hoodie like that, I’d either make certain I had a knife on me or else I’d back the hell off.

  Billie finally seems to realize who she’s dealing with and retreats … a little, anyway.

  “Oh,” Vic says, pausing just before we head out the door. He turns to glance over his shoulder, purple-black hair falling onto his forehead. “We left your boyfriend bleeding out in the woods. You should probably check on him.” He starts to turn back and then stops, like he’s thought of something else. “And next time he tries to scope out our girl, we’ll kill him.”

  Vic strides across the deck in his boots and clomps down the stairs as I follow after. Without question, I get back on the bike with him.

  I pretend not to enjoy it.

  But I do.

  I seriously fucking do.

  When we get back to the house, Victor’s dad is there.

  And he’s not supposed to be.

  Vic grits his teeth as he climbs off the bike and turns back to give me a look.

  “Stay here for a minute.”

  He takes off for the front door as Hael pulls his hot rod in beside me.

  “Fuck, the old man is here?” he asks as he climbs out and uses his red tank top to wipe the sweat from his face. As he does that, I get a nice, long healthy look at his abs. Damn, he’s ripped. Hael notices me looking and cocks this smirking grin that I meet with dead eyes. I don’t care if he sees me checking him out. It’s part of the reason I’m here, isn’t it? To get the guys that should’ve always been mine back.

  There’s some shouting from inside, definitely the result of more than two people.

  “Shit.” Hael takes off for the front door with Callum and Aaron behind him, leaving me alone with Oscar in the front yard.

  “
What’s going on?” I ask as he takes a step toward me, his eyes focused above and behind me. When I glance back, I see something I really don’t like. That is, a group of men I don’t recognize making their way toward us.

  My instincts flare, and that fight or flight fever kicks in. Like I said, mine’s messed up because it’s more like a fight or fight harder instinct, but it works for me.

  “Trouble.” Oscar sets his iPad on the trunk of Hael’s car, and then carefully unbuttons his jacket, tossing it aside. His beautiful tattooed fingers flick open a few buttons, and he reaches inside his shirt, pulling out a gun, a revolver by the looks of it.

  Without even blinking, he lifts it up and levels it on the newcomers.

  “You should've taken off when you had the chance, gone to live with that grandmother of yours.”

  Aaron’s words make me shiver, and I exhale to calm myself.

  This is what buying into Havoc has earned me: violence and turmoil. They are a gang, after all, no matter how beautiful or dark or alluring they might be. No matter what they used to mean to me as a kid.

  None of it matters to me now though. As long as I can reap my vengeance and save my sister first, nothing else is important.

  “This is Havoc territory,” Oscar says, voice smooth and cool, almost businesslike. “What do you want?”

  “Who the fuck are you? Some brat with his daddy’s firearm?” the man in the front asks, his grizzled gray beard belying the strength in those thick forearms of his. Forearms don’t seem important until you realize that the muscles there are what control grip strength.

  Oscar smiles.

  “Not exactly.” He disengages the safety and pulls the hammer back.

  “You little punk,” the man snarls, and the group makes their way toward us. My heart is thundering like crazy, and sweat is dripping down the sides of my face. Any woman worth her weight in salt knows a group of men equals bad news.

  It's just me and Oscar out here. Two against six. And who knows how many more of these guys are in the house?

  “Take one more step forward, and I'll shoot you in the thigh as a warning. But only because I'm an understanding sort of fellow.”

  The men don't slow down, as sure of these odds as I am.

  Oscar doesn't seem to give two craps.

  He pulls the trigger and hits the leader in the thigh, striding forward as blood and gunpowder color the night air. Within a few seconds, the tide has turned and the leader is in a crumpled heap on the ground, howling in pain. That, and Oscar's gun is pressed firmly against his temple.

  “I asked you not to move, and you didn't listen,” he says, his voice this dark thread of fire that curls around me, blue flame dancing with menace. Sure, it's all metaphorical, but the fact that the guy's voice is powerful enough to make me see in poetry is pretty impressive. “Do it again, and I'll be forced to make a decision neither of us will enjoy.”

  “You don't have the balls,” one of the other men snarls, and Oscar lifts his gray eyes up to stare at him.

  “Don't I?”

  A long, silent moment passes, the wind whistling down the dirty street. In this part of the city, nobody calls the cops over a gunshot. Better to let something bad happen to someone else than be labelled a snitch and bring something bad on you and yours.

  “These kids are fucking crazy, I told you,” one of the other men says, grabbing his groaning, bleeding buddy under the arms. Several of the other men step in to help as Oscar stays where he is, gun held rock steady in one hand. “You tell Vic that his dad owes money to a lot of powerful people.”

  “My patience is sadly running low,” Oscar says, cocking the hammer again for emphasis. “I'm going to count down from ten in my head.” He taps his temple with an inked finger. “And if you're not gone by the time I get to one, well …”

  The men scramble to drag their friend away while several others come pouring out of the house, booking it down the road with limps and blood and black eyes.

  Hael, Aaron, and Callum come out after them with Vic following behind.

  He drags his father by the shirt and throws him into the dead grass, knocking over the plastic lawn chair we sat in together just days ago. My heart begins to beat, and I run my tongue over my lower lip without thinking.

  “You piece of shit,” Vic snarls, putting his boot on his father's chest, his teeth gritted in anger, a muscle ticking in the side of his neck. “You brought that crap home with you. Are you insane?”

  “That's my boy,” the man coughs, choking and sputtering under the weight of his son's shoe. “I knew you and your friends would be there for me. That's what family is for, right?”

  Vic's entire face shuts down, and he removes his boot, crouching down next to his father with the darkest expression I've ever seen on another human being.

  “Havoc does not exist to be your personal police. This is the first and last time we will come to your aid. Do you understand me, old man? The next time those men come looking for you, I'm handing you over with a ribbon tied around your fat neck.” He moves to stand up as his father rolls onto his side, face red with liquor, wearing a stained gray wifebeater and holey jeans. It's an outfit virtually identical to what Hael's got on, but where Hael is streaked with grease from being under the hood, Vic's dad is wet with sweat and blood and vomit.

  My lip curls.

  “Son, you have all that money comin' to you,” the old man starts, and Vic laughs. The sound is far from pleasant.

  “You listen here.” He grabs his father's hair and lifts his head up in a way that makes the old drunk hack unpleasantly. “The only reason I hate Mom more than I hate you is because she ran off and left me here with you. You are scum. Worth less than the dirt beneath my boots. The only reason you're alive right now is because I have a moral code that's so rigid, even my desperate dislike for you can't break it.”

  “Moral code?” Vic's father laughs, jerking away from his son's grip and scrambling backwards until he finds his feet. The other boys stand in a loose half-circle around him, watching, waiting, while Oscar cleans his gun with a handkerchief from his pocket, and tucks it into his shirt, carefully buttoning it up again. “I know what you and your buddies do. You steal and you fight, you smoke and you fuck. What makes you any different than me?”

  “The fact that you don't know the answer to that question is part of the problem.” Victor stands back up and swipes some blood from his hands onto his jeans. None of it is his blood. He turns to the side to look at me and frowns, running his fingers through his dark hair. “Hael, Oscar, escort Bernadette home.”

  My nostrils flare, and I try not to show my disappointment.

  If Vic thinks sending me home is a boon, he's wrong.

  It's a punishment.

  The Thing isn't currently at the house, which is a positive, but if it were, I wouldn't go inside. I'd sleep in the woods out back, in the small pink tent my grandmother gave me when I was six. And I'd sleep there with a knife.

  “You don't look so happy to be here,” Oscar says, leaning forward between the two seats, his bland, neutral, business-like smile back in place. But tonight, I saw deeper, into what truly makes him a part of Havoc.

  “I'm not.” I grab my backpack and sleeping bag as Hael gets out of the car and comes around to … open my door. What the fuck? I give him a skeptical sort of look as I climb out, like one might eye a used car salesman.

  He wants something from me.

  But, you know, in a way, he's much worse than a used car salesman because I know what a salesman wants. I have no idea what's going through Hael's mind.

  “What?” he asks, holding up his hands in a placating gesture. “We take care of our own, Blackbird. Relax. I was just trying to be a gentleman.”

  “Well, don't,” I snap, scooting around him, and giving the big, tattooed car freak a wide berth. “I'm not used to it, and it doesn't suit you.”

  He laughs at me. Shit, he's always laughing.

  “Good point. Catch ya later, Bernie.”<
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  Hael climbs back in the car and he and Oscar take off, leaving me alone in my own personal hell. Staring up at the dilapidated duplex in front of me, I sigh and head for the front door.

  Hopefully, Pamela is asleep.

  But then I walk in and find her sitting on the couch, waiting for me. It's always bad when she's paying attention to me. I prefer the months of severe neglect, hands down.

  “Where the hell have you been?” she asks me, standing up and giving my frock a confused look. It's definitely not my usual daywear, that's for sure.

  “What do you care?” I ask, and then the hair on the back of my neck stands on end at the sound of a car pulling into the driveway. I'd recognize that car anywhere: it belongs to the Thing. My skin gets tight suddenly, like I'm trapped inside of it with nowhere to go.

  Maybe Aaron was right, maybe you should've cut to Nantucket and run? Maybe none of this is worth it? How much more suffering will you have to endure to achieve your ends, Bernadette?

  But I'm so damaged, and so broken. I don't even know what happiness looks like anymore. Heather, though, her smile is like a radiant beam of sunshine. She gets it, the meaning of life. I just have to stop the world from snatching it away.

  The front door opens and there it is. I refuse to give it any sort of gendered pronoun, or a non-binary pronoun like they. It is an it, and it’s not even dignified enough for that.

  The Thing. The Monster. The Creep. The Devil.

  My throat gets tight, and I find it suddenly hard to breathe.

  “The hell are you wearing?” he asks, his laughter this slime that coats my skin and poisons me. I want to gouge my ears out with a needle, just to make it stop. Just so I never have to hear that sound again. “You look like one of the old bitches at the bingo hall.”

  Neil Pence aka the Thing aka my stepfather moves toward me and reaches down to cup my ass. My reflexes are sharp now, honed, not those of the little girl he abused for so many years.

  I throw my elbow into his stomach, and he grunts, doubling over in pain as my mother gapes at us.

  “Don't you hit your father!” she shouts, taking his side as she clutches at her pearls. Always taking his side.