Preacher: The East End Boys

by Christopher Harlan

  My heart races as I wait for Kyle, but it isn’t Kyle who walks in the door. It’s Draven—tall and menacing and drunkenly smiling. My heart races and I want to know what’s going on. “Hey Princess. Finally got you alone in my room. I told you you were my little pet project.”

  His words are incidental, and they blend together into one collective sound in my freaked-out mind. All I keep thinking is ‘don’t close the door, please don’t close the door.’

  I don’t know why I’m so frightened of him right now—I’ve known Draven since he was kid, but he’s not a kid anymore. He’s every bit a man—from the predatory look in his eyes to the way he’s walking up to me. And now he has me in his bedroom. “Hey beautiful.”

  Where the hell is Kyle?

  As Draven approaches me my question about Kyle is answered as he appears in the doorway with Miranda wrapped around him, her sloppy drunken body attached to his at the hip.

  I don’t say anything. I don’t have to. He high fives Draven before making quick eye contact with me. I don’t even have time for a shoulder shrug before he’s gone. I need to get the hell out of here right now. I reach for my cell as Draven steps even closer—not that there’s much more space to close between us.

  “Woah, woah, what are you doing?” He asks when he sees me trying to text. . .someone. “The party’s just getting started.”

  “What are you doing here?” It’s a dumb question but the only one my mind can form right now.

  “It’s my room,” he says standing way too close to me. “Seems to me that you’re the one who doesn’t belong. Unless you want to be here.”

  I’m freaking out inside. I’m weirded out and confused all at the same time. “I’m all good, thanks.” I go to push past him and blocks me with his huge body. That’s when what I thought was a fast heartbeat reminds me how fast it can actually pump blood through the body.

  I feel afraid in a way that I’ve never felt before, even though he isn’t doing anything to me—yet. All I know is I don’t want to wait around and see how far he’s going to take this.

  “Please move.”

  “I love it when you beg,” he says. “Keep going.”

  It’s moments like this I wish twins were actually telepathic—because if they were I’d yell for Jessalyn in my mind, asking her to come and save me from this situation. “Draven, I know it’s hard for you to not be a total dick, but I really don’t want to. . .”

  I don’t even realize he’s kissing me until about two seconds after it’s happening. It feels like I got punched. He grabs my face and practically slams his lips into mine. I pull away, hard. “What the hell are you doing?”

  His smile is evil. “Just making up for lost time, Princess.” He grabs at my shirt and pulls it up. It’s quick, but in that moment, I see a flash.

  “What are you. . .” In the doorway I see Kyle again. He’s standing at the edge of Draven’s room with his arm wrapped around Miranda’s waist. All three of them are smiling. It takes me a minute to see the cell phone that Miranda is holding up in my direction.

  What in the holy shit is going. . . oh no.

  That’s when I realize that I’ve become part of their game.

  Literally.

  Five—Lyric

  The Past

  A Few Minutes Later

  “You are. . .everything I never knew was possible.”

  I’m an ugly crier.

  “You were right!” I yell. “Is that what you want to hear?”

  I’m not usually a crier at all—I’m more of a grind my teeth while seething inside kind of girl, but I’m all about extremes. In moments like this, it’s either no tears at all or the messiest ones you’ve ever seen—I don’t do half measures when it comes to emotion.

  I follow my dramatic little outburst with some even more dramatic storming off. Vaguely I’m walking back towards Kennedy’s car, but really I’m just walking the fuck away from what just happened up in Draven’s room. I’m on the lawn, pushing my way through the standing room only crowd of smokers and degenerates who got to the party too late to fit inside. I break through a wall of them like the human wrecking ball I am. Kennedy and my sister follow, calling my name as they walk.

  People are staring, because, of course they are.

  “Would you stop? What happened?” I hate myself for being this level of dramatic. I’m not that girl, I’m really not, but at the moment I’d be a shoe in for leading actress in a dramatic role. I’m standing on Draven’s lawn crying —excuse me, sobbing—over a boy I never should have been with in the first place. That and the near sexual assault I just experienced. I feel like an idiot.

  No slut shaming necessary—I’ll gladly shame myself.

  “Lyric. Stop!”

  I finally do when I get to the end of the lawn and hear the urgency in my sister’s voice. I turn around and see Jess and Kennedy approaching me, looking as confused as you should look when you see someone in my state with absolutely no explanation as to what happened.

  Hope everyone has their phones ready, I’m about to give them footage for their Insta and Snapchat stories for days—#lyriciscrazy.

  “What the hell happened?” Jess asks. This time it’s Jess yelling for me.

  The answer to that question is painfully simple—emphasis on the pain part.

  Two words.

  Scavenger Hunt.

  “I need to get the hell out of here, okay? Like, now.”

  They don’t ask any more questions. “Alright. Come on.”

  We get into Kennedy’s car. She pulls out and starts driving back to my house.

  As soon as we’re on the road, I tell them what happened. Jessalyn’s sitting in the back with me. She reaches over and puts her hand over mine. It’s a thing she’s always done when I’m upset. I should have listened to her. I should always listen to her.

  “It’s okay. This wasn’t your fault. They surprised you.”

  “Jess is right,” Kennedy says, making eye contact with me via her rear-view window. There’s a metaphor about hindsight in here somewhere, I’m just too mentally exhausted to fully appreciate it. “That was straight assault on his part, Lyric. You should go to the cops.”

  That would be really good advice if the cops in Arkham weren’t a complete joke. Most are local guys—small town cops who would have high-fived Draven if they were around tonight instead of arresting him. On top of that, most of the cops are on the Griffin’s payroll. If I ran to them and told them what just happened they’d ask me all sorts of questions—was I drinking? Why did I go up to the room? Why didn’t I resist?

  I’m fine with the self-loathing, but I can’t deal with other people’s judgments right now.

  “So what did you do after they took that pic?”

  “I punched Kyle in the face.” I tell them. “Hard.”

  Kennedy literally turns around. “Jesus, watch the road, Ken.” She turns back around, but I can tell from the look she gave me that she’s shocked.

  “Like a real punch,” she asks. “Or a little girlie slap?”

  “I don’t girlie slap,” I tell her. I’ve only raised my hands a few times in my life, and each time it was with two fists, not two open hands. I also don’t do half measures when it comes to fighting. “Kyle didn’t deserve a slap, he deserved my East End knuckles in his entitled face, and that’s exactly what he got.” I might have broken his nose, there was blood everywhere. I heard Draven’s crazy laugh as I stormed through the doorway and back down the stairs.

  “They made me part of their hunt, Ken.”

  “Their what?” Kennedy knows what I’m talking about, but my sister is blissfully oblivious of normal high school stuff, like always. The Scavenger Hunt is a demented rite of passage, where the West End kids challenge each other as to which of them can make Arkham seem like that neighborhood from The Purge.

  Here’s how it works—a group of kids make up a long list of challenges, and each challenge has a point value associated with it.

  Some of t
he challenges are dumb—like last year when John Tilley pulled his pants down in the middle of the cafeteria and yelled for the lunch lady to—and I quote—suck him dry. But stories like that are small potatoes. Some of them got dark and borderline criminal.

  Attend the tale of Trevor James—it’s already gone down in the annals of Arkham High School lore.

  Last June, a few days after John Tilley had introduced the entire cafeteria to his surprisingly hairy ass cheeks, the varsity football team captain—a kid named Trevor—decided he was going to be crowned scavenger hunt king by going for the highest point value challenge on that year’s list. It just so happened to be that the top point-generator was a challenge to have sex with a teammate’s underclassman sister on the fifty-yard line of our school’s football field.

  Trevor decided to publicly deflower his teammate Uriah’s ninth grade sister on the perfectly manicured field of the Arkham Alphas. Not only did that happen, but another kid on the team recorded the whole thing. Guess where that video ended up? That’s right, every fucking where. Even though it got taken down off social media a few days later, the damage was done, and little Jessica learned the hard way how long people’s memories can be when you get labeled a slut.

  I remember how I felt when I heard that story.

  How I judged Jessica.

  How dumb I thought she’d acted.

  And now, thanks to Draven and Kyle, I’ve become part of their sick little tradition.

  Finally we pull into my driveway. I catch a glimpse of myself in the rear-view. I look like a hot mess. Before I go in the house Kennedy gives me the biggest hug ever. What I really deserve is a big, fat ‘I told you so’ – but she’s too good of a friend to say that to me.

  After she hugs me she offers some comforting words. “Look, I know I’ve been giving you a hard time about…”

  “Don’t even say his name,” I tell her. “He’s Voldemort right now.”

  “I won’t say his name. Promise. All I was going to say was that you didn’t deserve what happened to you tonight—no girl does. And you need to remind yourself of that when all of this comes out—and trust me, it will.”

  She just said the words I didn’t want to think to myself, and she’s telling the truth. This will be all over school before first period even starts.

  “You’re the best.”

  We hug again. I go inside with Jess. Lucky for us, the stairs that lead to our rooms are right there when you walk in the house, so we run up without having to say hi to our mom. She’s the last thing I need right now.

  After I get changed, Jessalyn tries to comfort me some more. “Prepare yourself, Lyric. I know you had a shit night, but knowing those guys like I do, I don’t think this is just going to vanish in the morning.”

  Boom—a full out double team of the harsh truth.

  This is just what my life was missing.

  Six—Lyric

  The Present

  Two footsteps just outside of my office door.

  They’re heavy steps. His steps.

  I’m about to face someone I never thought I’d see again in my entire life.

  I wait for it—the rap of his knuckles against the solid wood of my office door, and as soon as I hear the sound my heart starts working overtime again.

  I’m not generally an anxious person, but I feel like I’ve just finished a marathon and chugged a red bull. The deep, self-soothing breaths I was using to calm myself ten minutes ago are replaced with the shallow, hypoxic gasps of nervous anticipation.

  I take a step towards my door and try some self talk to relax.

  You’ve got this, Lyric. He has no more power over you.

  But when the door opens, I realize just how wrong I am.

  He still has all the power. He still has me.

  “Lyric.”

  He’s a waking dream standing before me—his voice even deeper than I remember. I see what Sophie was talking about—and I might just be needing a change of underwear myself. I haven’t laid eyes on him in forever—and I realize now that the version I was expecting was eighteen-year-old him, but the person standing before me is a grown ass sexy man.

  His body has filled out into a muscular frame, his broad shoulders and pecs making a defined shape underneath his clothes. I try not to stare—try being the operant word. And even though he’s matured he still wears that unmistakeable expression of confidence on his face at all times—I don’t want it to, but it still has the same effect on me that it did back then.

  “Preacher.” His name feels unfamiliar on my lips—like a flavor I used to know well but haven’t tasted for a very long time. It’s a complicated taste—sweet, bitter, and full of as much heat as I can handle. “Come in.” He takes long strides as he walks into my office, commanding the room like a victorious general surveying all that he’s conquered. I forgot just how fucking sexy he can be. “How are you?”

  His eyes stare into me violently, penetrating whatever professional walls I’m trying to put up against him.

  “Better.” He says. “Now that I’m here. You look. . .” He doesn’t finish. He doesn’t have to—his eyes tell me what his mind is thinking as they scan over me, head to toe, in a way that makes my body feel like it’s being woken from a long hibernation. Sophie felt it over the phone with just his voice—the difference being that her arousal was theoretical, but I actually know what he can do with that voice when his lips are pressed against your neck.

  “You also look. . .” I stop short as a joke, but he doesn’t even react, he just keeps looking at me like I’m dinner. “Different.” I finally finish my sentence, looking over his outfit and wondering what happened to my punk rock kid. “Suit?”

  He grins, looking down at his outfit and putting his arms out like he’s walking the runway in Milan during fashion week. “I know. You’re used to old band tees and ripped jeans, right? Now I have to wear these monkey suits for business.”

  He looks good. Really good. “You wear it well. Like Grandma used to say—you clean up nicely.” But when Grandma said that about some man, I’m betting she didn’t want to reach between her legs to relieve the pressure that grew with each passing moment. “Do you make it a point to dress like that for therapy sessions?”

  “No,” he answers. “For once, I’m dressed appropriately. Who would’ve thought?”

  Now he has my attention. “Dressed appropriately for what?

  “It’s the anniversary of my father’s death. I just came from putting flowers on his headstone for my mom—she asked me to pay his grave a visit since she can’t be here herself.”

  Death? I had no idea. “I didn’t know your father had died. When was this?”

  “A few years back,” he says. “Long enough for me to take over as CEO of The Carter Organization.

  I’m shocked on more levels than I have time to parse out. “Your father’s company?” I ask. “That’s the business you were referring to?”

  He nods. “Technically my company now—me and my brother’s.”

  I can’t believe what I’m hearing. “That’s. . . that’s a lot to digest.”

  “I’m sure it is.”

  “I have so many questions.”

  “I’m sure you do. Why don’t you come out with me and I’ll answer all of them for you?”

  No you won’t, Preacher. When have you ever offered explanations for your behavior?

  “I can’t tonight,” I say, changing the subject right away. He’s got balls the size of watermelons if he thinks he can show up after years of not seeing me and just ask me out—like I have nothing better to do than pine over old exes. I change the subject and hope he doesn’t notice. “So your mom is still back in Arkham then?”

  “She never left, unfortunately. She still lives in that little ugly shack in the East End. I’ve tried to move her out here more times than I can count, but she refuses. Something about living a simple life. I don’t know, but I respect her wishes.”

  This entire exchange is confusing to me—th
e mixture of emotions too complicated to even separate into individual feelings at this point.

  But one thing is unmistakable—my body still melts when he’s near me—a warm mushiness that makes every nerve ending come alive. I feel him in my gut, on the little hairs standing on the back of my neck, deep between my legs.

  I’m not ready for this.

  I’m not ready for him.

  “Why are you here, Preacher?”

  He doesn’t answer at first, just stares at me. Finally a small, barely perceptible grin crosses his face. “So it’s Preacher now, huh? You never liked calling me that.”

  “That’s because I didn’t want to be like everyone else. But now. . .”

  “Now?”

  “I’d rather use your fake name than your real one. It’s been a while.”

  “It has. Too long.” Just as I’m about to scream in anger that he just said those words to me—as though he wasn’t the one who left me—I catch his eyes fixing on something like an owl who just spotted its prey. At first I think he’s staring at my chest, but that isn’t Preacher’s style. Then I realize, and his gaze makes me aware of what I’m doing. “You still wear it?” He asks.

  Goddammit. I pry my fingers away from my neck.

  “Yeah,” I tell him. “Sometimes. You know, when it matches my outfit.” Translation—always, even when I’m butt naked and about to get in the shower—it never leaves my skin.

  “I see.” He knows I’m lying, and I hate that I just gave him the satisfaction of knowing that he can still read me like an open book. I don’t even know why I wear it anymore, but the idea of taking it off always seemed like ripping off a part of me.