I notice that some of them are slightly off in color, in various shades of champagne or gold or whatnot. I mean, they're close enough to white.
“These are from a French designer,” she begins as I search for the tag on one of the dresses. Fifty-five hundred bucks?! For a dress. Holy crap. My fingers touch the tag, and something inside of me shifts. I don't really care about weddings or ceremonies or tradition, but buying a dress with the sole purpose of reselling it makes me feel like a total asshole.
“Do you have any black dresses?” I ask, lifting my gaze from the tag to Zoe's surprised face.
“A black wedding dress?” she says, like I've just suggested she cut off her own fingers and use them as lace on my gown. “I, um.” She pauses again, clearly thinking on her feet. Zoe snaps her fingers. “Okay, I have an idea. I'll set you up in a fitting room.”
“A black wedding dress?” Oscar repeats, the sea of white gowns reflecting in the lenses of his glasses. “Aren't we the little rebel?” He gives another one of those deep, low chuckles. “Ophelia will hate it.” He pauses a beat as we head toward the fitting room. “But Vic, he'll love it.”
Zoe leads me into a room, and then scurries off excitedly, like she's just thought of the perfect dress. I don't bother to wait for her, undressing and kicking off my boots, pants, and jacket. I stand there for a moment in the lingerie Vic gave me, my eyes narrowed on my own reflection.
Tattoos trace over my right hip and down my thigh. Both arms are coated in ink, and I’ve got pink demon wings across my chest. My pink-tipped white-blonde hair hangs just past my breasts, and the rings in my belly button glint in the fancy studio lighting of the fitting room. Every inch of me is marked in invisible scars, wounds that bisect my soul but not necessarily my body.
There’s a light knock on the door.
“Come in,” I say, glancing over my shoulder as Zoe slips in the door with a dress draped over her arm. Her pale blue eyes sparkle as she hangs it on a hook and unzips the opaque white garment bag.
“I think I’ve found the perfect dress for you,” she says, beaming at me as she reveals the glittering black fabric. It looks like the sky on a velvety country night, when the Milky Way is a splash of stars against the cosmos. “This is a Lazaro gown,” Zoe continues as she takes the dress from the bag and holds it up. “Strapless sweetheart neckline with a lovely pleated skirt. There’s an optional feathered piece that goes around the neck as well. We can try it with and without.”
Zoe brings the dress toward me, and as she walks, it shimmers and glitters, like the designer reached up and cut the fabric from the stars.
I know as soon as I see it that I’ve found the right dress.
You’re seventeen, Bernadette, and this whole marriage is a sham. You haven’t found shit.
I tell myself that this is a business transaction, and that it’ll all be worth it when Havoc neutralizes the Thing, when Heather is safe. And yet, I’m not really suffering much, am I?
Zoe helps me into the dress, using plastic clips to gather the excess fabric at my waist.
“Of course, we’d have it tailored to fit you properly,” she says as I stare at myself in the full gown, and find the breath knocked right out of me. All of a sudden, I’m swept away in a fantasy of Vic climbing on top of me in this dress, his hands gliding over the shimmering fabric, his lips kissing my bare shoulders.
Jesus Christ.
I’m really losing it, aren’t I?
As I’m standing there, shaking and falling to pieces on the inside, Zoe brings the feathered accent piece over and lays it around my neck. She hooks it together in the back and steps away so I can see myself in the three giant mirrors on the wall in front of me.
“How are we feeling?” she asks after what must be several moments. “Any thoughts? We could even try this same dress in ivory or champagne.” When I don’t respond, Zoe steps up on the dais next to me and places gentle fingers on my arm. “Do you think your mother might want to come and see you in the dress?”
“My mother’s dead,” I lie, and Zoe blinks her big, blue eyes at me.
“I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean—”
“It’s fine,” I say, turning to look at her and lifting my fingers to the feathers that lie across my inked chest. “I like it. I’d like to see what my friend thinks first. He’s actually a very well-known drag queen in the Portland area, so he knows his designer gowns.”
“Oh, yes, of course …” Zoe trails off and nods. I bet she’s wondering how old I am, if I can actually afford this dress, if I’m going to try to steal it. But she dutifully leaves the dais and opens the door for Oscar to come in. “I’ll be right outside when you’re ready. Just let me know what you need.”
Oscar’s gray eyes home in on my reflection in the mirror, narrowing to stormy slits as Zoe pulls the door closed softly behind him.
“Well, you got one thing right: I do know my designer gowns.” He moves toward me, up the steps of the dais, until he’s standing directly behind me. His inked form in that stupid suit of his looks pretty much perfect against my own tattooed body. “This is perfection.” Oscar hovers his hands over the black feathers on my shoulders, making the fine hairs on my arms stand on end. “Victor will be pleased.”
“Victor …” I start and then scoff, trying to turn around. But Oscar grabs hold of my shoulders and keeps me in place, those intense eyes of his framed by the thick, dark rectangles of his glasses. They should make him look nerdy or businesslike, but with the ink crawling up his neck and flowing over his hands, they don’t. Paired with the darkness simmering in his gaze, they just make him look villainous. “Do you suck Vic’s dick for fun? What do you really think of the dress?”
I try hard not to think about Oscar Montauk in elementary school, or how he once helped me make a dress out of construction paper. I got in trouble for wearing it to recess without anything underneath. Seems fitting that he’d be standing here with me, although I’m pretty sure he hates me now.
“What do I think of the dress?” he asks, skimming his hands down my bare arms. I close my eyes and wet my lower lip. When I open them, he’s frowning at me. “I think it needs to serve one purpose: getting you down the aisle to marry Vic.”
“You’re such an asshole,” I snarl, wrenching from his grip and turning to face him, my heart thundering in my chest. Oscar looks down at me with absolutely zero emotion in his expression. But his pants … I can see the hard shape beneath his slacks. Lifting my eyes back to his, I put a challenge into my gaze. “If you care so little about it, why are you hard for me?”
“I can’t control my body,” he says, leaning toward me and putting his mouth right up against my ear. His hands skim my waist. He’s touching me while I wear a wedding dress meant for another man. Is that wrong? Is this akin to cheating? But I’m supposed to be Havoc’s girl, right? I’m supposed to screw all five of them. Isn’t that the point? “What’s your problem? How can you fuck a man who treated you so poorly? Vic annihilated you during sophomore year, and yet you’re panting after him like a bitch in heat.”
I draw back and slap Oscar as hard as I can. The crack of flesh on flesh echoes around the quiet room as he snatches my wrist in an iron-clad grip and pulls my hand away. There’s a smile on his face now that wasn’t there before.
“Everything okay?” Zoe asks, peeping in the door with a nervous look on her pretty face.
“It’s fine,” I say, staring back at Oscar, refusing to drop his gaze. “We’ll take the damn dress.”
It isn’t until Wednesday that my mom finally checks her messages and finds out about the suspension. I wake up to her call, lying in Aaron’s bed with Heather beside me. Staying here, I find that I sleep like the dead. It’s nearly noon. I can’t remember the last time I slept in this late.
Even though I know I shouldn’t, I answer it.
“Hello?”
“What the hell did you do now?!” Pamela shouts, and I can hear in her voice that she actually cares. Not about me, obviou
sly, but about the stain on her reputation that I might cause by being suspended. Springfield isn’t a small town per se, but people do talk. And Mom, I think she’d sacrifice me to a sea of vengeful gods if it would grant her the money and status she had back when my dad was still alive. “Why am I getting calls from the school telling me your ex-boyfriend stabbed somebody and that you were involved?”
“I’m fine, thanks for asking,” I say as I sit up, and my sister stirs beside me. My arm aches where Billie cut me, and I find my fingers subconsciously teasing the edges of the wound. “It’s just a two-day suspension, no big deal. I’ll be back to school tomorrow.”
“And where are you now, exactly? I’m coming to pick Heather up.” Pamela sniffs, and I can just imagine her checking her nails for any signs of imperfection. Imperfection should be buffed away and forgotten about, covered up, replaced. That sick, hollow feeling in my stomach opens up, threatening to swallow me whole.
“She’s at her friend Kara’s house,” I say, which isn’t even a lie. Not that I give a crap about lying to my mom. She long since lost the privilege of my honesty. “When you’ve been lied to by everyone around you, when you have nothing else, you realize the one currency you can carry is truth.” I lick my lips and wonder when Vic’s words started to get inside my head like that. “I’ll pick her up in a bit and we’ll be home in time for dinner, okay?”
It literally makes my mouth hurt to be that nice to her, but it’s the only way I can diffuse the situation before she starts making threats.
“Well, we’ll talk about this suspension thing when you get home,” she says absently, her attention wandering when I don’t prove to be the target she wants me to be. “I had a few calls about some classes you missed, too. If you don’t want to finish your senior year, fine, I didn’t, but I had your father all lined up and turns out I didn’t need a degree.” She pauses as I close my eyes, quietly seething. A deep inhale brings Aaron’s scent into my lungs, and I feel myself calming against my own will. Ugh. Who knew I was such a sentimental bitch?
“I had a bad period and cried in the bathroom during those classes,” I say, not caring if the missed days match up to a proper cycle. Pamela won’t pay enough attention to notice.
“Okay, honey,” she says, clearly bored with me already. “Be here at five, or I’m calling your father.”
She hangs up, and I find myself clutching my phone so hard my knuckles hurt.
“He’s not my fucking father,” I grind out, slipping out of bed and throwing on a hoodie, so I can go outside and smoke. It doesn’t occur to me until I actually step out the back door that it’s Aaron’s hoodie I’ve got on.
Speak of the devil …
“Morning,” Aaron says, sitting in one of the outdoor chairs and smoking a cigarette of his own. He offers me a light, and I take it, curling up in the chair next to his. My eyes stray to the freshly mowed lawn and the mulched flower beds with the green-leafed rhodies in them. Everything else is orange, red, and brown, the full array of fall colors spinning around us as the maple next to the fence sheds its leaves.
“Sorry about the hoodie,” I say, inhaling and holding the smoke in my lungs for several long seconds before I blow it out and let it kiss across my lips. “I was mad, and I slipped it on without thinking.”
“You know I don’t care if you wear my hoodie, Bernie,” he says, dressed in a red zip-up sweatshirt and black sweatpants. His gaze is on the yard, but his focus is elsewhere. I wonder what he’s thinking about?
“Um,” I start, feeling my own pride kick me right in the throat. Aaron turns to look at me, green-gold eyes swirling with emotion. If I were to really look into them, I bet I could get lost in that gaze of his, tumble down into the endless depths of verdant flecks and hazel sparks. “Thank you.”
“For what?” he asks, but we both know what I’m talking about. My eyes narrow. The asshole just wants me to say it. Fine. I’m not too prideful.
“For taking the fall for me,” I say, and Aaron’s entire body goes stiff. “You risked a lot doing that …”
“Not really,” he says, but we both know that he did, and I can’t figure out why. He tossed me aside once in order to protect his sister and cousin, so why change up the act now? I study him, that wavy chestnut hair I always loved playing with, that full lower lip I could tease with my tongue, that inked body I no longer recognize as belonging to the boy who took my virginity during freshman year.
“Tell me about Kali,” I say, feeling my breathing quicken. I try to focus on my cigarette, using the inhales and exhales of smoke to calm my pulse. “Tell me everything.”
“Bernadette,” he starts, sounding tired. I guess he would be. Somebody has to mow this lawn and pull the weeds from those flower beds. Somebody cooks the girls breakfast, makes their lunch, worries about dinner. Somebody puts those cute little braids in Ashley’s hair, the ones with the pink and blue ribbons. My heart contracts painfully, and I close my eyes. “Why bring up the past?” he continues, his voice far-away, almost dreamlike. “It’s over and done with.”
“I have a right to know why you bullied me,” I say, opening my eyes back up. “I have a right to know why you decided to smash an already cracked vase.”
“I told you: Kali had the info I needed to keep my sister and cousin safe.”
“Really? And you just became her bitches for half a year?” I shake my head. “No, you’re fucking lying to me.” I gesture at him with the butt of my cigarette, the black sleeve of the hoodie falling over my fingers. “You’d have just kicked her ass to get the information you wanted. It must’ve been something else. Why can’t you just be honest with me? I thought we were in this together now.”
“We are, I just …” He turns to look at me, and there’s an expression hiding just behind the mask he’s wearing, something he wants to say, but doesn’t. “When did you and Vic fuck?” is what he chooses to ask me instead.
I just stare at him.
“And seriously? No condom?”
“You know what, Aaron?” I say, flicking the still burning cigarette butt into his lap. He curses and flicks it off onto the pavement. “Fuck you.”
I head inside, grab Heather, and then kick Hael’s shoulder with my foot as he snores on the couch.
“Take me home,” I demand, and surprisingly, without complaint, he does.
Thursday at Prescott High, always a treat to be here. At least now that I have a reputation for stabbing someone, it’s become interesting. And no matter how bad it gets here, it’s always better than being at home. That dinner with Pamela last night nearly suffocated the last vestiges of life from my body.
“Told you: she belongs with Havoc,” a girl says as I sweep past. “She's fucking ruthless.”
“I can be,” I say, pausing and turning toward her, loving the way her eyes widen just before she scurries off with her friend in tow. “Bitch.”
I keep on going, avoiding the downstairs bathroom and heading for my first period English class instead.
“Head's up: the Ensbrooks and the Charters are out for Havoc blood,” Stacey calls out as she sashays down the hall with bored, half-lidded eyes and too many rings on her right hand to simply be decorative. “Watch your back, Blackbird.” She takes her posse into the restroom as I grit my teeth and exhale, pushing open the door to Mr. Darkwood’s class.
Everyone turns to look at me, including Kali, one hand wrapped over the bandage on her arm, her doe eyes wet with fake tears. Part of me wishes the boys would kill her. That's how dark my life has become. But the thing is, her betrayal helped seal my own coffin years ago. It's natural for me to want her dead, isn't it?
“Oh, look,” Kali says, sniffling and rubbing at her nose. “It's Havoc's little bitch.”
For years, the Havoc Boys have worked their asses off to get control of this school. It's why I hired them. But it only takes one dissenting asshole to break that control, to let the world know they're not as scary as they pretend to be.
And now I'm one of them
, right?
I stride forward in my acid-wash jeans, cropped sweatshirt, and boots, and I don't skip a beat before I pull back and sock Kali Rose as hard as I can in the face. Blood spurts from her nose as she rocks back, but I'm not done, snatching the front of her pink sweater and yanking her back toward me.
“Are you fucking serious? Your name is already on my list, but how deep, exactly, the boys dig your hole is up to you.” I let go of her and shove the sleeve up on my sweater. It bares my midriff and all my ink, but also hides the raw, angry wound on my arm, closed up with Vic's perfect, tiny black stitches. “You ordered Billie to cut me, and I handled it just fine. I cut you, and you run off to the hospital sucking on Ms. Keating's tit.”
Kali's face fills with rage, but she knows I've backed her into a tight corner here. If Mr. Darkwood comes in and she tattles, all of Prescott High will know she's a goddamn snitch. And then I won't have to wait for the boys to get my vengeance; somebody else will do it for us.
“You talk shit about Havoc, you pay the price.” I stand up straight, and fix my sweatshirt sleeve, letting my gaze travel around the rest of the room before I take my seat.
Kali's still sitting there, holding her bleeding nose and staring at me. But behind that lick of fear in her eyes, there's rage. She isn't done with me. Good. Because I'm not done with her either.
When Mr. Darkwood comes in, Kali asks for the hall pass to clean up her bloody nose, and I sit down to work on my poem.
Confucius says dig two graves before embarking on a journey of revenge.
But what if that revenge is the only thing keeping you alive?
And what if the people you're seeking revenge on deserve it?
If Batman had just killed the Joker from the get-go, how many more people would still be alive?
Sometimes the bad guys have to die, so if I have to dig two graves, so be it. Better than digging three.
Havoc at Prescott High Page 18
