Havoc at Prescott High

by Stunich, C. M.

  “Fine,” Hael grinds out as I set his coffee in the cup holder and give him a look.

  “I thought Havoc was all about transparency? Family first, right?”

  “Brittany just told me she's pregnant, okay?” he snaps, and my eyes go wide. Wow. No wonder Hael is soaked in sweat. At the same time, I feel my stomach churn with that same anxious energy I felt in the café. And it's not because Callum just assaulted a kid with scalding coffee. No, this is about Hael and Brittany.

  “Damn it, dude,” Cal growls out from the backseat.

  “It's not my kid,” Hael murmurs, but like he's trying to convince himself as much as he is me.

  “You're not the first guy to pull that shit when he realizes he's made a mistake,” I say, and Hael punches the steering wheel with his tattooed fist.

  “No. I used a condom every time. Whoever's baby that is, it isn't mine.”

  “Condoms aren't foolproof,” I respond, and that anxious feeling in my stomach gets even worse. Vic and I did not use condoms appropriately last night, and I'm not on any birth control. Shit. The last thing I need is a baby in my life. The responsibility, and the weight, that would end me. At least Hael bought me extra morning-after pills, huh? Although I’m smart enough to know they don’t always work. “It could still be yours.”

  “It's not,” Hael snaps, and that's the end of the conversation.

  We head over to Kara's friend’s house to pick up the girls. Cal lets Ashley sit on his lap and buckles them in together while Kara gets the middle seat, and Heather sits on the other side. They're all so excited about the party that they talk nonstop on our way back to Aaron's.

  As happy as I am that Heather had a good day, I can't get Hael's words out of my mind. Brittany just told me she's pregnant, okay? I don't like that. I don't like it at all.

  When we get back to the house, the girls rush in and head straight upstairs to fight over the game system in Kara's room while Hael paces the front lawn, raking his fingers through his hair and smoking like a chimney.

  “What the fuck is wrong now?” Vic asks, coming out to stand on the front porch, his arms crossed over his chest, dark eyes tracking his best friend's movements.

  “Brittany's pregnant,” I offer up when Hael stays silent, and Vic's brows go up.

  “Interesting.”

  “Interesting?!” Hael shouts, chucking his half-smoked cigarette and starting another. He's gesturing like a crazy person, and one of the neighbors is already staring our direction. “How is this fucking interesting? This is a nightmare.” He throws both his pack of cigarettes and his freshy lit one into the grass and puts his tattooed hands over his face. “I fucking hate Brittany. I hate her. And her father is a nightmare from hell. He'll crucify me. He'll ruin everything.”

  “Don't be so dramatic,” Vic says, tilting his head to one side.

  “Dramatic?” Hael drops his hands and gives Vic this look that's half pleading, half terror. “The chief's got that new anti-gang unit just frothing at the mouth to come after us.” Hael keeps pacing, and then I hear something I never expected: him cursing in French.

  Whoa.

  What the fuck?

  “Is it yours, bro?” Vic asks, glancing my way and studying me like he expects me to give up my feelings that easily. I smile, just to throw him off. On the inside, I'm screaming and I'm not sure why. My body aches from all the places Vic touched me, and my skin is just as marked with his touch as his is with mine. We owned each other last night, no doubt about that.

  “No!” Hael shouts, and then he grabs Kara's pink football from the lawn and throws it as hard as he can against the trunk of one of the trees that lines the edge of the yard. He's not bad, either. Interesting, considering how much he hates football players. “It's not mine, it can't be. I haven't slept with her since the weekend before Labor Day. No way. No fucking way.”

  “Then calm the hell down, and we'll deal with it,” Vic says, his voice smooth and dark. “Why would she claim it was yours? What's her motivation here?”

  “I don't know,” Hael says, pinching the bridge of his nose and exhaling. “I have no clue.”

  “She's in love with Hael,” Callum supplies, leaning up against the garage door and listening intently to the conversation, arms crossed over his chest. The front door opens and Aaron and Oscar step out while Hael continues to curse and pace in circles across the grass.

  “Hey, Mr. Peters!” Aaron calls out, smiling and waving to the old man across the street, his faux smile fading into a very real frown as soon as the neighbor grumbles something under his breath and disappears into his house. “Fucking nosy fossil,” Aaron murmurs, lighting up a cigarette. “What's going on anyway?”

  “Brittany's pregnant,” I say again, like I'm trying to make myself get used to the idea. Why do I even care? Because the Havoc Boys were always supposed to be mine. The thought pops into my head, and I shiver. I hate it when my subconscious calls out the lies I tell myself. Fuck Havoc. I don't care about Havoc. I'm only here for revenge.

  All lies.

  They've always been lies.

  “Pregnant?” Aaron chokes out with a groan. Oscar just narrows his gray eyes and taps the fingers of his left hand on the face of the watch he's wearing on his right. “Hael, man, come on.”

  “It's not mine,” Hael repeats for the hundredth time. “If I thought it was, I'd …” He trails off and shrugs. “Jesus.”

  “Jesus isn't responsible for sleeping with that brain-dead whore,” Oscar says, crossing his arms delicately over his chest. “That was all you. Now, what's our plan?”

  “Why do you think Brittany's in love with Hael?” I ask Callum, and he shrugs again.

  “She has been since the lake trip last year. It's all in her face. She cares too much what Hael thinks. It might not be his baby, but she wants it to be. Maybe even believes it.”

  “What are you, a fucking mind reader?” Hael asks, scowling at his friend. “Where do you come up with this stuff?”

  “So, if she's not in love with you, what's her motivation?” Callum retorts, giving a snippy little smile in response to Hael's glower. “Tell us, we're waiting.”

  “I warned you not to fuck that girl,” Vic says, shaking his head like a disappointed father. He sighs like he's beyond exhausted. Maybe he is, considering how little sleep we got last night. “And now we have yet another problem on our very full plate. Let me think this over for tonight. Go home to Marie. She's threatened to report you as a runaway again if you don't show up tonight.”

  “Fine,” Hael snaps, moving over to his Camaro and climbing inside. He slams the door and peels out of the driveway. Marie … I feel like I know that name. Pretty sure Marie is the name of Hael's mother. For as long as I've watched these boys across the playground, I've never been able to get close. They're all mysteries, even Aaron. Especially Aaron.

  “Take my girl home, Aaron,” Vic says, casting one, last glance my way, like he's waiting for me to acknowledge the hot ache between my thighs, the finger-shaped bruises on my hips, and the bite marks on my neck.

  Aaron grits his teeth; there’s no way he missed the word my in that request.

  I say nothing, give Vic nothing. Eventually he turns away and heads inside.

  And I … I get ready to return to the gates of hell.

  Neither my mother nor the Thing are home when Aaron drops Heather and me off at the house, so I make the best of it by getting my sister's lunch ready for tomorrow and laying out our outfits.

  In the morning, I wake up early and bundle Heather into warm clothes. Fall is in full-swing, and the air is crisp, a layer of frost teasing the pumpkins on our neighbor's lawn. They do fun things like that, the people who rent the other half of this duplex. They go to the pumpkin patch and carve jack-o’-lanterns, rake up piles of leaves and dive into them. They make fall seem fun. For me, it's just another season I have to survive.

  Prescott High is in usual form, a fight breaking out between Stacey Langford's girls and some of Billie and Ka
li's friends. Good. They've been walking around like they own the place. I feel like Stacey's being smart, throwing her towel in with the winning side. Havoc won't forget that.

  During English, I listen to Mr. Darkwood drone on and on, my attention focused on the back of Kali's head as she plays with her phone under her desk. She wasn't involved in the fight this morning. Neither was Billie. Instead, they let their friends fight Stacey's girls for them. Pathetic.

  I turn my attention back to the half-finished poem in front of me. It's a haiku this time, because Mr. Darkwood doesn't like originality or experimentation. He prefers neat, clean, and formulaic.

  She cannot have you

  Not when I have yet to taste

  Passion on your lips

  Still no good. Lazy writing. I scribble it all out and start over.

  Bad girls like bad boys

  Sometimes they even love them

  Not understanding their truth

  Utter horseshit.

  I turn the poem in anyway, dreading lunch as soon as I see the look on Hael's face in the hall. He's tight, angry, cagey. When he sits by us in the cafeteria, he may as well be in another universe. And Victor … Fuck. The way he looks at me makes it feel like my skin is splitting, like I'm crawling out of a cocoon with fragile, wet wings.

  As soon as class is over, I bolt. I've biked or walked home by myself for years. I don't need to be babysat every single day. On my way out, I spot Callum heading down the sidewalk in the opposite direction, his black bag slung over one shoulder. Where it is he always disappears to, I don't know.

  But I'm curious.

  I check my phone. I have several hours until Heather gets home, so I change my direction and start off after him. He surprises me by skipping the bus station and walking all the way past Main Street with its shops and restaurants, an area that used to be deadly to traverse at night but that's slowly been improving as hipster millennials snatch up all the cheap houses on our side of the tracks.

  He keeps going, disappearing into the bottom floor of a large industrial building near the warehouse district. I pause outside to read the letters on the glass. Southside Dreams Dance Company.

  Huh.

  I try the door and find it unlocked, moving down a red-painted hallway with various dance troupes featured in framed photos on either side. Once I get to the end, there's a sign that points toward a locker room and another that says Studios. I follow that one, ending up in another hallway with glass windows on either side. Studio A and B are empty, but when I get to Studio C, I find a single dancer, stretching his leg on the barre across from the window.

  Holy. Fucking. Shit.

  My mouth drops open as I find Callum in black leggings, black ballet slippers, and a loose tank that shows off all of his ink. He stretches for a while, unhurried, unconcerned, and then moves over to turn on a stereo. I can't hear the music from out here, but I find myself glued to the glass, fingertips pressed against the cool surface as Cal starts to dance.

  What the hell am I looking at right now? I wonder as he does a series of impressive spins, and then balances on one foot, lifting the other leg up so high that I imagine he could touch the back of his head with his toes if he wanted. Callum Park … is a ballerina?!

  Only men aren’t called ballerinas, are they? But I know literally nothing about the dance other than the basics that permeate common culture. Mom once had aspirations that I’d be a ballerina, forcing me into classes that I hated from moment one. But then Dad killed himself, and we were too poor for her to entertain her vicarious fantasies.

  My breath fogs the glass as Cal fills the room with his presence, claiming the drafty warehouse room like it’s a stage in Paris. My eyes are locked on his lithe form as he moves; I’m paralyzed. I couldn’t look away if I wanted to.

  The way he moves, it makes so much more sense now. He floats through life like he's underwater, weightless and fluid. And that dancer's body … well, I guess it really is a dancer's body, huh?

  What a beautiful hypocrisy, I think as I watch his scarred, tattooed form move through space like he's commanding it, the black silken shoes on his feet carrying him up to the sky and then grounding him in the same breath. I've been watching the Havoc Boys since second grade, and yet I never knew about any of this.

  “Excuse me,” a little girl says, smiling as she scoots past and opens the door to the studio. She's dressed in a plain gray leotard and pink shoes, and I figure she's probably around Heather's age. Callum doesn't stop dancing when she comes in, but he does smile, and gesture for her to start warming up at the barre.

  Within a few minutes, there are a dozen little kids in there, stretching and prepping for class. Callum fiddles with the stereo for a minute, dries the sweat from his forehead with a white towel, and then gets to teaching.

  The girls run through first position with Cal correcting their form, offering murmured words and gentle adjustments. I should probably leave, but … I check the time and see that I've still got another hour to kill. If I take the bus from here, it'll take ten minutes to get home, tops. I settle in to watch, loving the contrast of Callum, with the ropey muscles in his arms, his ink, his scars … teaching these little girls how to dance.

  Something in my chest shifts, and I realize that I know little to nothing about him. Nothing at all. “I felt that way, too, at first. Once you surrender to the dark, it gets easier.” I can't even imagine what he might've been talking about. Clearly, I'm not the only member of Havoc who has unresolved trauma.

  After class, the girls (and two awesome little boys) take turns giving Callum hugs, and then slip out of the room, smiling shyly at me as they skip past and head for the locker room.

  I consider leaving, but then I realize that Callum's gearing up to dance again, turning on the stereo and moving until his body is trembling and he's soaked in sweat. I notice he keeps putting his hand to his lower back and closing his eyes like he's in pain. At one point, it’s like his ankle gives out and he stumbles, hitting the floor hard and then sitting there with his head hanging down, blond hair covering his eyes.

  My heart contracts, and I feel like I'm watching something I shouldn't, so I take off down the hall, grab the bus, and head home.

  On Wednesday, Callum takes off for the dance studio again, and I follow him.

  This time, he teaches a mixed male/female class of teens around our age. It doesn't escape my attention that every girl in that class—plus a boy or two—are hitting on him. I'm surprised to see him act like a professional, ignoring their advances, and focusing on getting the group to perform a rehearsal that has my jaw dropping.

  I don't know much about dance, especially ballet, but as an audience of one, I'm captivated.

  The dancers exit the room after class, and one boy pauses to put his hand on my arm.

  “Cal wants to see you,” he says, and I feel my throat close up.

  Shit.

  Caught red-handed.

  I slip into the room and find Callum waiting for me, arms crossed over his chest, a slight smile on his face.

  “Hello, Bernadette,” he says, watching as I step into the studio, the smell of floor polish and fresh sweat in the air. “Come to see me dance?” he asks, voice neutral but not unpleasant. I shrug my shoulders, glancing at my reflection in the mirror. My leather pants and jacket look so out of place in here. “Take your shoes off,” Cal suggests, turning up the music and grabbing a pair of pink slippers from his bag. He smiles at me, but there's a hint of a challenge there that I can't resist.

  “Why not?” I say with a shrug, sitting on the stool in the corner and shedding my boots and socks. Not sure what Cal's planning on doing with me. I'm not completely inept on a dance floor, but I'm certainly not trained for ballet.

  Callum moves over to the mirror on the far wall, the one that I've just now realized is the window I was looking out from the other side. No wonder Cal never spotted me through it. He pulls the cord on some curtains, blocking the view of any passers-by in the hallway, an
d then locks the door.

  Part of me wonders if I should be afraid.

  But I'm not.

  Welcome to the family.

  I'm part of Havoc now, and unless the boys are playing some kind of fucked-up long game with me then … No. Not with the way Vic looks at me. No fucking way.

  “There's a leotard for you in my bag. You should put it on.” Cal moves across the floor in his black slippers and flips through songs on his phone until he finds one he likes. It ends up being Shatter Me by Lindsey Stirling and Lzzy Hale.

  Slipping my jacket off, I move over to the bag and find a plain black leotard waiting for me. I finger the fabric for a moment before turning my back on Callum and slipping my shirt over my head. I'm fully aware that he can see everything, considering there are mirrors both in front of and behind me, but I don't care.

  I peel my leather pants down my hips, and then take off my bra and panties.

  When I glance over my shoulder, I find Callum leaning one shoulder against the wall, watching me.

  He waits until I've pulled the leotard on and parked my ass on the stool before he closes the distance between us, kneeling down and slipping one pink slipper on my foot. It's not a pointe shoe—like I'd even know what to do in a pair—but it has long, pretty ribbons that tie up my calves.

  “Traditionally, these wouldn't have ribbons on them,” Cal explains as his fingers tickle the skin on my legs, tracing over one of my tattoos with his thumb. “But every little girl wants to imagine, at least for a moment, that one day she'll be wearing pointe shoes and standing center stage.”

  “Have you mistaken me for a little girl?” I ask as he slides his palms down my leg and presses his thumb against the arch of my foot, leaving me, for a brief moment, completely breathless. Callum looks up at me with a cerulean gaze, his blond hair stuck to his sweaty forehead.

  Today, he’s wearing a gray zip-up hoodie with the arms torn off. It’s only zipped up about halfway, so I’ve got quite the view of his chest and abs, these chiseled muscles that contract as he presses his fingers into my foot, simultaneously massaging and stretching first one and then the other. It takes a concentrated effort on my part to hold back a groan. I’m not sure if I’ve ever had a foot massage in my entire life.