by Emma Scott
“You’re dead, Wentz,” Frankie screamed after us. “You’re fucking dead!”
We tore down the front steps and onto the expansive front lawn. I tripped—or maybe my strength was failing me—but I hit the grass hard, gasping for breath but still laughing.
Holden went down beside me, and we lay on our backs, staring at the night sky.
“I don’t believe we’ve officially met. Holden Parish.”
“Miller Stratton.”
We shook hands and Holden jerked his chin at Ronan looming over us. “And who’s the Brute Squad?”
I laughed harder. “R-Ronan Wentz.”
Holden jerked his hand straight up. “A pleasure.”
Ronan crossed his arms. “Crazy bastards.”
Another round of laughter rolled through us.
“How did you do that?” Holden asked me, wiping his eyes.
“Do what?”
“Play and sing like you did. Like…a fucking miracle.”
Warmth bloomed in my chest. “Nah. Everyone’s heard that song. It’s a million years old.”
Holden shrugged, staring at the sky. “They’ve heard the song, but you put your heart and soul out there. That’s not something people hear every day.”
He was wrong. I didn’t put my heart on a slab for them but for Violet. And then I shoved it in her face. The tears in her eyes…
It was our song and I gave it away.
The front door banged open. “I said, get the fuck off my property!”
Chance stormed down the walk. River—the fucking asshole who probably gave Violet her first kiss in the closet that night—followed after, his expression dark and solemn. Calm and sober compared to Chance’s enraged drunk.
Fuck you.
My laughter died, and I hauled myself off the lawn. Holden scrambled to his feet and drew Chance’s attention by climbing onto a Range Rover parked in the drive. The car alarm blared down the darkened street, lights flashing. Amber hurried out of the house, my guitar case in her hand.
“Here,” she said, handing it to me. Her eyes were cornflower blue. Light, where Violet’s were dark. Her hair was the sun, when Violet’s was jet black. Her lips thin, while Violet’s were full and ripe to be kissed…
River got her kiss. He’ll get all her firsts…
“Miller?”
“Oh, hey,” I said, taking the case from her. “Strange fucking night.”
“You played beautifully. Just…incredible.”
“Yeah, thanks.” I hadn’t the first clue what to say to her. It wasn’t her I wanted to be talking to.
Holden raced passed me, laughing. “Time to go.”
“Time to go,” I repeated to Amber, the laughter starting to creep back in. “Um…see you later?”
She smiled. “I hope so.”
The sound of police sirens wailed in the distance as Holden led Ronan and me toward a black sedan parked across the street. A uniformed driver sat in the front seat.
“Good evening, James,” Holden said as we climbed in the back. “Would you be so kind as to remove my friends and me from the immediate area?”
James nodded, and the car sped down the darkened avenue. “Home, sir?”
“Fuck no,” Holden said. He looked to us. “Thoughts, gentlemen?”
I exchanged glances with Ronan who nodded once.
“My place,” I said and told James the address.
At the Lighthouse Apartments, James parked the sedan in a visitor spot, and we climbed out.
“Cozy,” Holden said, eyeing the complex. “After-party at Chez Stratton?”
“Not quite.” I nodded at James in the sedan. “How long will he wait?”
“As long as I need him to.” Holden lit a clove cigarette and waved away the smoke and our curious stares. “Fear not, James is being well-compensated for his time.”
“Okay. Let’s go.”
Ronan and I led the way down the beach, over the roughest rock and lashing surf. If Holden was upset that his expensive clothes were getting wet and caked with sand, he didn’t complain.
At the fisherman’s shack, he glanced around, peering in the darkened space.
“Not bad. Could use a few upgrades.”
In front of the Shack, Ronan lit a bonfire. The vast black ocean touched the shore in white foam thirty yards away while a million stars wheeled above.
I sat down heavily on my rock and pulled out a few gummies.
“CBD?” Holden said. “Sharing is caring, Stratton.”
“Not CBD. Glucose. I have diabetes.”
A genuine look of concern flashed over his green eyes. “You okay?”
“Yeah. Thanks.” I glanced at him sideways. “What did you do to piss off River Whitmore?”
“I pissed off a lot of people tonight. You’ll have to be more specific.”
“The quarterback. When you were playing that Seven Minutes game.”
“Ah, yes.” Holden cleared his throat, then shrugged, his eyes on the ocean. “Don’t remember.”
“You sure?”
“You sound disappointed.”
“I was hoping you kicked him in the nuts.”
“Do tell?”
The weight of the night and all that had happened—and not happened—weighed on me, pressing me down. Making me tired. “Not tonight.”
“Fair enough.”
Ronan offered us beers from the cooler he’d stashed in the shack. Holden took one, I waved it off.
“Still feeling low,” I said and pulled an OJ out of my backpack.
“It’s nice here,” Holden said after a minute. “Really fucking nice. Like I can just…breathe.”
I nodded. “Same.”
“Same,” Ronan said.
“Do you guys hang out here a lot?” Holden asked, and I saw vulnerability in his eyes. The shields came down a little. I’d only seen him on two speeds so far: cool and collected or wildly drunk. For the first time, he seemed more like a seventeen-year-old guy without any costume on.
“Most days,” I took a pull from my juice. I checked in with Ronan, who nodded. “You’re welcome to come here too. Any time. Mi casa es su casa. Except it’s not a house. How do you say, our shitty shack is your shitty shack in Spanish?”
“Nuestra casucha es su casucha,” Holden replied, immediately, in a flawless Spanish accent.
Ronan and I exchanged glances.
“You speak Spanish?”
“And French. Italian. A little Portuguese and some Greek.”
“You some kind of genius?” Ronan asked.
“So they say,” Holden said, his gaze on the ocean. “My IQ is 153.”
I gave a low whistle.
Holden nodded. “Sounds as if it could be helpful, right?”
“Helpful?” I snorted. “That’s like having the answer key to life.”
He scoffed. “If only. As far as I can tell, it just means the nonstop thoughts in my head are more cunning and can torment me in multiple languages.”
I waited until the tension eased a little, then casually asked, “So, do I email you all my homework assignments directly or do you prefer hardcopy?”
Holden rolled his eyes, laughing, and the dark shadow that had fallen over him seemed to lift. “No chance, Stratton.”
I grinned. “Worth a shot.”
A more comfortable silence fell. “Yeah, it’s pretty damn perfect, right here,” Holden said. “Like we’re at the edge of the world and no one can touch us.”
“Yep,” I said, and Ronan nodded.
Holden inhaled and then exhaled. “I’m gay,” he said. “I just want to get that out there. In case it wasn’t obvious. Is that going to be a problem?”
I frowned. “No. Why would it?”
“Ask my father.” He looked to Ronan. “How about you?”
Ronan took a pull off his beer. “No, I’m not gay.”
A beat passed and then the laughter came roaring back. My sides ached and tears built in the corners of my eyes. Even Ronan chuckled and sp
ewed more lighter fluid on the fire. Any tension that might’ve existed between the three of us burned up in the flames, and I felt like I had when I first met Ronan. That Holden Parish belonged here too. With us.
“You’re a crazy motherfucker, you know that?”
He wiped his eyes. “So I’m told.”
“You could have been in with them, you know? The popular kids.”
“Why would I do that when fucking with them is so much more fun?”
“Fun,” Ronan said, his voice flat, cutting into the laughter like a cold knife. “Is that what that shit with Frankie was about? Fun?”
Holden’s smile fled, and a cold shadow seemed to drop over him. “I did it to throw him off guard. That’s all.”
That wasn’t all. Not by a longshot. But we all had secrets and dark shit in our pasts. What made Ronan stick around was that I didn’t pry, and neither of us was about to start now with Holden. But as the night deepened, he told us a little about himself. How he’d moved here from Seattle and that he lived with his aunt and uncle in Seabright, the wealthiest neighborhood in Santa Cruz. The mansions even dwarfed Violet’s house.
“You had only one more year of high school,” I said. “Why leave?”
“Not up to me. After my sophomore year, my father arranged for me to take a little detour into the wilderness.”
“You mean like a camp?”
“Sure,” he said sourly, hunching into his coat, despite the fire and the warm summer night. “A camp. And that camp necessitated that I spend a year in Switzerland. At the Sanitarium du lac Léman,” he said in a French accent as flawless as his Spanish. “That’s Lake Geneva, to you and me.”
“Sanitarium…?”
“Loony bin. Crazy house. Mental institution. Take your pick.”
I faced forward. “Jesus.”
“There was no Jesus as far as I could see,” Holden said, smiling sadly. “Believe me. I looked.”
A short silence fell and then Ronan arched another stream of lighter fluid on the fire. “That must’ve been one helluva wilderness camp.”
I held my breath while Holden stared. Then he threw back his head and laughed. “Is this guy for real?”
“One hundred fucking percent.” I clinked my juice to Holden’s beer bottle. “To you for surviving the camp. And Switzerland.”
Holden swallowed, trying not to show how those words touched him. “To Ronan, you magnificent bastard.” He reached across me to toast with the big guy. “For being one hundred percent fucking real.”
Ronan dug into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small yellow device. “To Frankie, the stupid fucker who didn’t notice I swiped his police Taser.”
The earth stood still for a split second and then we laughed. All three of us. We laughed so fucking hard that for a few hours, I forgot that my heart was broken.
Chapter Nine
The gym was loud with the sounds of cheers, stamping feet, and music. The cheerleaders, Evelyn leading, performed a routine in their blue and yellow skirts and sleeveless sweaters. Metallic gold pom-poms rustled and glinted in the sun streaming in from the huge windows behind the basketball hoops.
The crowd gasped as two male cheerleaders tossed Evelyn high into the air, where she pulled off an intricate gymnastic flip and landed in the cradle of their arms.
I sat with some friends from my study group—guys and girls who were working toward their own med school or MIT dreams—and Shiloh, who had earphones in, eyes closed, tuning out the pep rally as if she were meditating in a forest.
I scanned the crowd and found Miller sitting high up in a corner of the gym with Ronan and Holden. Videos captured on cell phones had circulated in the few weeks since Chance’s party. Holden’s tap dance on the Blaylock dining room table was a hit, but his confrontation with Frankie had freaked people out.
“He’s so hot,” Evelyn had lamented a few days after the party. “I don’t get it. He’s got charisma to spare but also, apparently, a death wish. Not to mention, he burned all his bridges with River and Chance, so now he’s relegated to hanging out with your boy and the criminal.”
But Holden seemed perfectly happy with Miller and Ronan. That morning, the three were watching the performance, talking and laughing. An odd trio: a grungy musician, a tattooed bad boy, and a billionaire genius who dressed like he was walking the winter runways in Milan every day. None of whom gave a crap what anyone thought of them.
It had been a long time since Miller had hung out with me as freely.
The cheerleaders finished their routine to applause that echoed throughout the cavernous gym of polished wood.
Principal Hayes took a microphone onto center court. “And now, the Homecoming Chair, Layla Calderon, will announce your Homecoming Court.”
Layla, a gal with long dark hair in a mini skirt and a tight T-shirt, pushed a small rolling table covered with a black cloth to center court. On it were four crowns: two large and two small. She took the mic from Principal Hayes with the practiced ease of a news anchor.
“The votes have been counted and the results have been tabulated. Put your hands together and welcome your Homecoming Prince…Donte Weatherly!”
The crowd cheered, thunderous in the gym. The football team, sitting in a cluster near the front of the assembly in their letterman jackets, whooped and thumped their star wide receiver on the back as he joined Layla on the court and let her put a plastic, sparkly coronet over his brow.
He tried to walk away, but Layla grabbed his arm. “Not so fast. Every prince needs a princess. This year’s Homecoming Princess is…Evelyn Gonzalez!”
A small shockwave went through the crowd that morphed with agonizing slowness into cheers.
I gasped. “Oh shit. Oh no. Poor Evelyn.”
Shiloh’s eyebrows shot up, and she turned to me. “Queen Vi…?”
“What? No. No way. Julia or Caitlin,” I said as Evelyn plastered on a tight smile and made her way from the cheerleader bench to accept her coronet.
Shiloh smirked. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”
“And now, your Homecoming King,” Layla said and paused for effect.
The football players jostled and teased River, who brushed it all off with lazy amusement.
“River Whitmore!”
The gym erupted in cheers, and I added my voice to the crowd.
“Not a surprise. But I’m still in shock for Evelyn…holy shit.”
“Uh huh,” Shiloh muttered. “You got your speech ready?”
“Oh, stop.”
“And now…” Layla said, quieting the crowd. “It is my pleasure to announce that your Santa Cruz Central Homecoming Queen is…”
The gym went silent, holding its breath. Frankie Dowd shouted into the quiet, “Your mom!”
Laughter followed and a stern shake of Principal Hayes’ head. Layla waited until she had our attention again.
“Violet McNamara!”
I sat stunned, while my friends cheered and clapped and urged me to go down and claim my crown.
“This is nuts,” I hissed to Shiloh.
She heaved a dramatic sigh. “Being right all the time is so exhausting.”
A little laugh burst out of me but was smothered when I saw the devastation on Evelyn’s face; she wanted it far more than I did. I hadn’t truly wanted it at all, I realized, and now that I had it, I had no idea what to do.
I climbed over legs to get to the stairs, then made my way down to the court. River grinned at me, a silly faux red velvet and gold plastic crown on his head. Layla placed a smaller version on mine, while I sent Evelyn an apologetic smile. She quickly looked away, her own smile wide and joyless, as she clapped with the rest of the school.
I leaned into River. “How did this happen?”
“Democracy in action. You got the most votes, plain and simple.” His confident smile slipped, and he cleared his throat. “Kind of works out perfect, right? Since we’re going to the dance together.”
“Right. Except…are we still
going together?”
“Yeah, sorry I haven’t called or anything. Just been busy with practice and games. And…stuff at home.”
“No, of course. I’m sorry. I should have thought of that.”
“Hey, it’s fine,” he said quickly, talking under the cover of Layla reading off a list of the Homecoming Court’s accomplishments that helped land us up there. “I still should have called you. Or texted.”
“I’m not sitting by the phone or anything,” I added, then cringed. “God, that came out all wrong. What I mean is, I’m also busy with studying half the time anyway…”
“I haven’t even seen you at my place.”
“We must be on different schedules.”
“Yep.”
Like in the closet at Chance’s party, conversation with River felt like trudging through mud, getting nowhere.
I cleared my throat. “Tell me, does this royalty gig come with a lot of duties?”
He chuckled. “Aside from sitting in a car and waving? No.”
I laughed too with relief. A miniscule step toward being more comfortable around each other. Or maybe it was him. He seemed more nervous around me than I was around him.
The announcements ended, and we were released back to our seats.
“Call you soon,” River said. “Promise. Or I’ll see you at my house?”
“Definitely.” I widened my eyes and put on a scary-wide smile, doing my best impersonation of the Overly Attached Girlfriend meme. “You can’t escape me…”
He burst out laughing. “Thanks for the warning.” He reached out and awkwardly patted my arm. “See you around.”
My smile felt permanent until my gaze went to Miller in the corner of the gym. I gave him a wave and pointed at my crown. “Crazy, right?” I mouthed.
He didn’t even crack a smile but quickly turned back to his friends. And Amber Blake. The pretty blonde had appeared and was sidled up close to Miller.
A strange ache stabbed my heart. Like any good scientist, I’d clung to logic and facts to untangle the messy emotions that had arisen the night of the crazy party, after Miller had played our song so beautifully. So powerfully…with Amber practically sitting in his lap.
