Havoc: Mayhem Series #4

by Jamie Shaw

  “That was AWESOME!” Luke squeals, and I lean back in my desk chair with a triumphant grin on my face.

  “Dude, look at Hailey’s stats,” Mike praises when the scoreboard appears, and I grin even wider.

  “Hailey’s a badass,” I agree, and Mike’s answering laugh turns my cheeks a very not-badass shade of pink.

  “I’d save your badass any day.”

  “Do you guys want to play again?” Luke asks, and I hate to burst his bubble, but—

  “It’s a school night.”

  “Aw, Hailey, come on. Just one more?”

  “You said that last night, and we ended up staying up past midnight—”

  “But it’s not even eleven yet.”

  “Bedtime,” I order, and Luke groans.

  “Play again tomorrow?” Mike asks, and my brother finally relents.

  “Okay. Thanks for playing with us again, Mike.”

  “Are you kidding? You’re a rock star, kid. That rocket launcher move was sick.”

  “Thanks,” Luke says, and I can hear the smile in his voice even from halfway across the country. When he tells me goodnight, I tell him I love him, and he bashfully says it back before saying goodnight to Mike too. Then, Mike signs off without another word, and three seconds later, my phone rings.

  “What was that you were saying about me being a bad shot?”

  I pull my feet up into my chair with me, a big smile consuming my face. Tonight is the third night in a row that Mike has played Deadzone Five with me and my brother, since he finally talked me into beta testing it, and it’s also the third night in a row that the clock has passed eleven with me listening to the sound of his voice.

  “Kind of hard to miss when you have a rocket launcher,” I tease, and Mike laughs.

  “You’re just jealous you didn’t get to blow up the entire side of a building.”

  “Yeah, well . . .” Honestly, I bet that looked cool as hell from the outside. “You don’t need to rub it in.”

  Mike laughs again, and I rest my cheek against my knees, content to listen to the sound of it. Eventually, I say, “I’m glad it was you and Luke though. He really looks up to you.”

  “Do you miss him?” Mike asks, and I answer without needing to think about it.

  “Every day.” My eyes close, and I add, “He’s the main reason I didn’t move away a lot sooner.”

  I’ve always loved the idea of going to Mayfield University, since they offer a very hands-on pre-veterinary program and have an extremely well-known veterinary school, but the truth is, I could have gone to a cheaper school—one that federal loans and state grants would have actually covered—and gotten a degree in animal science much earlier. But even the more affordable schools would have been a few hours from home, and applying to them felt like abandoning my little brother, so I never did. Instead, I worked part-time at random jobs, worked part-time around the farm, took part-time general education classes at the local community college, and hung out with my little brother as often as I could. I probably should have been saving my wages to put toward tuition at Mayfield U someday, but instead, I paid off as many student loans as I could and spent the rest on things like making sure Luke got to eat popcorn at the movie theater and always got more Christmas presents than I did growing up.

  “What made you move to Mayfield?” Mike asks, and I shy from the answer. I don’t want him to think of me as a charity case, even if that’s exactly what I am. When Danica’s dad offered to pay for my tuition, my books, and all of my living expenses until graduation . . . I knew I couldn’t turn the offer down. It was too good to refuse.

  “Luke’s older now,” I answer simply, reopening my eyes. “And Mayfield is my ticket away from the farm.”

  “You don’t like living on a farm?”

  “It’s complicated.” I stare at a picture of my family on my desk—my dad and his battered relic of a baseball hat, my mom and her mother hen smile, my brother and his farmer tan, and me, looking like I belong there with cornstalks dying in the background.

  “I love my family,” I tell Mike. “I love the animals . . . I love most of what growing up there was like. But . . . I don’t know.” Mike waits in patient silence, and I peel my cheek away from my knees, leaning back in my chair. “I’ve always wanted to make a life, not just inherit one.”

  Mike is silent for a while, and I wonder, “Does that make sense?”

  “A lot of sense,” he answers, and I relax into my chair.

  “Sometimes it makes me feel like a traitor.”

  “It shouldn’t,” he assures me. “You should never feel bad for going after what makes you happy.”

  “What makes you happy?” I ask, even though I know I shouldn’t. Danica doesn’t know about these late-night games or these late-night chats, and something tells me she wouldn’t like me asking her boyfriend what makes him happy.

  “Little things,” Mike answers after a while. “Hearing the crowd sing our songs. Writing new beats with the guys. Eating a good pizza. Playing games with you.”

  I swallow, and he rushes to add, “And Luke.”

  “Right. Luke.”

  “Luke is great.”

  “Luke is awesome.”

  “He’s practically my best friend.”

  I chuckle and walk to my bed, crawling under the covers. “Are you touring in Indiana any time soon?”

  “No. Why?”

  “I bet he’d love to see you play.”

  “That would be cool . . . But we’re actually flying overseas soon. We’re doing a six-week international tour.”

  “Where?”

  “Asia. Australia. We even have a show or two in Europe, I think.”

  “Really?” I ask in disbelief as I roll onto my side and nestle the phone against my ear.

  “Yeah. It’s crazy. Our record label had another big band signed up for the tour, but the band broke up, and since the dates were already booked, they asked us to headline it instead. It’s pretty last minute, but—”

  “That’s amazing,” I interrupt, and Mike lets out a breath.

  “It’s nuts. We’re shooting a big music video in two and a half weeks, and then we’re leaving for Singapore the very next day.”

  There’s a long moment of silence, and Mike eventually asks, “You still there?”

  “I feel like I should get your autograph or something.”

  He laughs, and I smile against the phone. “Yeah, you should probably get a picture with me before I leave.”

  I like that idea, but I don’t dare say so. “What’s Danica think of all this?” I ask, wondering why she hasn’t mentioned it. It’s not like we talk much, but I figure this is something she’d want to spend an entire year bragging about.

  “She’s excited,” Mike says, but I get the feeling he’s leaving something out.

  “That’s good . . .”

  “Really excited.”

  “Yeah. Just imagine all the cool places you’re going to get to see and—”

  “She can’t stop talking about how much money we’re going to make.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah.”

  I roll onto my back and study the glowing stars on my ceiling. Part of me—the part that laughed with Mike on his tour bus and has spent the past few nights getting familiar with the sound of his voice—wants to tell him that he’s too good for my cousin, that he should find someone who deserves him. But the other part—the logical part that knows he’s a grown man who can make his own choices, and that maybe he sees a side of Danica I don’t—knows better than to get involved.

  “Well,” I say, “I mean . . . having a private theater in your mansion is going to be pretty cool.”

  Mike laughs, relaxing the tension in my shoulders. “I’m going to have a private theater in my mansion?”

  “Where else would you have it?” I chide, and Mike chuckles again. “I mean, I guess you could put it out by your private grotto.”

  “Right, the grotto.”

  “Wh
ich will be right next to . . .” I tap my fingers against my comforter, wondering what Mike would spend an extravagant amount of money on. “Right next to your microbrewery,” I decide, smiling to myself.

  “Well, it’s settled then.”

  “What is?”

  “You’re designing my mansion.”

  Laughing, I say, “Then can I get all the autographs I want?”

  “And beer and private movie screenings,” Mike says, and my smile brightens.

  “It’s a deal.”

  We sit in comfortable silence until I glance at my clock and reluctantly tell Mike, “It’s getting late.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I should probably get some sleep. I have a big presentation in the morning.”

  “Play again tomorrow?” Mike asks, and I snuggle deeper under my covers.

  “We already promised your best friend we would,” I joke, reminding him what he said about Luke.

  Mike’s voice is happy when he teases, “Think we’ll have to rescue you again?”

  “Goodnight, Mike,” I growl, trying not to let him hear the smile trying to sneak back onto my face.

  “Sweet dreams, Hailey,” he says, and then he makes me hang up first.

  Chapter 10

  “So let me get this straight,” Dee says in the college café on Wednesday afternoon, one day after Mike’s epic wall-exploding trick and three days after I nearly decapitated Danica with a water bottle. When I sat down and Rowan asked what I’ve been up to, I decided to focus on the Danica thing instead of the fact that I’ve spent the past three nights gaming with her boyfriend. Disdain drips from Dee’s voice when she finishes, “You actually had the chance to take that bitch’s head off, and you missed?”

  “I wasn’t trying to hit her.” Actually, I was trying to hit her, but that was before I realized she wasn’t a robber-slash-murderer-slash-rapist with a fetish for pajama-wearing farm girls. I take a sip from the thermos of coffee I brought from home, trying to concentrate on how good it tastes instead of how second-rate it makes me feel. My uncle gave me a credit card to use while I’m in school, but I hate using it for things that aren’t necessary. Bills, groceries, gas—those things are essential. Coffee is a luxury I can bring from home.

  “I don’t know how you can stand her,” Dee complains from across the table. “If I had to live with her, one of us wouldn’t be leaving that apartment alive. I almost choked her out when she came to band practice on Sunday.”

  Rowan chuckles and scoops the whipped cream off her iced coffee. “I think she’s scared of you.”

  “She should be!”

  “What happened?” I ask, and Rowan finishes eating the whipped cream off her spoon to answer me.

  “She wouldn’t stop criticizing everyone—”

  Dee makes finger quotations in the air. “Giving suggestions.”

  “And she actually suggested that Mike try singing this one song—”

  Dee throws her hands in the air. “Mike! Sing!”

  “And even Mike thought that was hilarious, but Danica was dead serious. She started getting all frustrated. But Dee was so fed up by then that—”

  “So fed up.”

  “That she told Danica to find some other band to go play Yoko in—”

  “That was what Yoko did, right? She broke up the Beatles?”

  Rowan smiles and nods as she continues talking. “And then they started arguing, and Danica told Dee that groupies come and go, implying that Dee is a groupie or something—”

  Dee growls. “I could have killed her.”

  “And basically everyone had to end practice early because Dee flew completely off the handle—”

  Dee’s face stretches into an unremorseful grin. “As one does.”

  “And none of us really wanted to hold her back.”

  “Hence the reason you should have saved us the trouble and decapitated her when you had the chance.”

  I rub a line between my eyes as I stop looking from Dee to Rowan to Dee to Rowan. I’m about to take another sip of my coffee when Rowan finishes eating the whipped cream off of hers and adds, “I don’t even know why Mike brought her.”

  “Adam brought you,” I point out, and when Dee’s dark eyebrows knit, I add, “And Joel brought you.”

  “But no one can stand Danica,” Dee argues.

  “But she’s still Mike’s girlfriend.”

  Dee makes a sound in the back of her throat and says, “He’s probably going to bring her with us on Saturday.”

  Rowan groans and rubs her silver-painted fingernails along the bridge of her nose. “Of course he is.”

  I’m looking back and forth between them, wondering what’s happening on Saturday but not wanting to ask since it might seem like I’m trying to invite myself along, when Dee’s gaze settles on me, like a magnifying glass that makes me fidget in my seat.

  “Hailey, what are you doing this Saturday?”

  “I usually spend Saturdays walking dogs at the—”

  “Good, so you’re free then,” she says with a mischievous grin sliding onto her face. “We’re scouting a location for a music video the band is shooting. Make sure you wear some boots.”

  On Wednesday night, I check to see if I brought my hiking boots from home, and I frown when I realize I didn’t. On Thursday, I check out a few thrift stores, but I don’t find any boots in my size. On Friday, I suck it up and buy some from the clearance rack at Wal-Mart. And on Saturday, I curl my toes in them as I stand in a blanket of barn-red leaves, staring out over a vast open meadow in the middle of a forest far from the city. Rustling autumn trees form a perfect circle around the wooded oasis, standing sentry around the glittering pond in the very center of the meadow.

  “Finally,” Dee and Danica complain in unison, cutting each other with dirty looks when they realize their mistake. I never thought I’d see the day when they actually agreed on something, but it didn’t take long today before they both started grumbling about the long hike here. Even Rowan started drifting toward the dark side, repeatedly asking if we were close yet and if the guys were sure they knew where they were going. Forty minutes and a nagging blister on my pinky toe later, the trees finally broke and revealed this secret pond.

  “How did you ever find this place?” I ask in a quiet voice, not wanting to disturb the serene beauty of it. Long whispers of clouds float across the blue sky, teasing the long grass that dances in their shadow.

  “We went to a party up here once,” Shawn says from somewhere to my left. There are a bunch of us—me, Shawn, Kit, Adam, Rowan, Dee, Joel, Danica, Mike—and we all stand in a line with the trees.

  “Our friend Driver has friends that knew about this place,” Adam adds, finally taking the first step. He turns around and walks backward, a beaming smile on his face. “This video is going to be so sick.”

  “How are you going to get all the stuff up here?” Rowan asks, and Adam chuckles.

  “With Mosh Records’ money.”

  Shawn follows Adam into the field, and the rest of us follow. “So we’re going to set up on that dock out there,” he says, and my eyes travel the length of a steel grate dock that stretches onto the pond, leading to a large circular platform, “and we’re going to light up the pond with all sorts of colored flames floating on top, and maybe glow sticks or something hanging in the water.” His long legs push through thick tangles of grass that wrap around his ankles, and he turns around and gestures at the surrounding trees. “And since the song is called ‘Ghost,’ we’re going to have tons of people in the trees, but we’re going to get the special effects team to make them look really washed out, and, like . . .”

  He struggles to find the word, and Joel finishes, “Like ghosts.”

  “Kind of, yeah,” Shawn says. He turns around and continues walking toward the dock. “And as the song continues, the extras are going to start coming out of the trees.”

  “It’s going to be so fucking creepy,” Adam gloats. He turns around to walk backward again, pr
actically dancing with excitement.

  Shawn casts a grin at him before continuing. “So they’re just going to get closer and closer, and it’s going to be really eerie, but the closer they get, the more their color is going to start to come back. By the time they get to the edge of the pond, their faces and clothes are going to be really vibrant, and they’re going to start jumping to the song.”

  “And they’re just going to keep coming and coming and coming,” Adam says.

  “We have hundreds of extras signed up for this,” Shawn agrees. “They’re going to keep coming out of the trees until this entire meadow”—he gestures at the huge expanse of open land—“is completely filled with kids dancing to the song.”

  And as if that wasn’t enough, as if I wasn’t over here going into some legit shock at the sheer weight of their stardom, Mike adds, “We’re getting drones.”

  “Drones?” I ask, and Adam laughs outright.

  “Oh man, this is going to be so badass.”

  “Yeah,” Shawn says, and even he starts to lose his professional composure, a boyish smile stretching onto his face. “They’re going to get aerial shots.” He gives his whole smile to Kit, who gives one right back to him.

  It’s no wonder they’re all bubbling with excitement—between the video and the international tour Mike mentioned, Mosh Records is investing a ton of time and money in them. I smile as I imagine what it must feel like for Mike and the rest of the guys to have so many huge dreams coming true all at once.

  “Do you know what else you should do?” Danica suddenly chimes in, and Shawn’s smile disappears. Adam’s smile disappears. Kit’s smile turns into something murderous. “You should have like one star ghost in the video. I mean, the song is about her, right?”

  “Who says the song is about a girl?” Kit challenges as her heavy combat boots bang onto the steel dock, but Danica just smiles as we walk.