“So what do you think? Not so bad, huh?”
Pope starts to talk and I tense up. “Well. . .” Before he can say what I know he’s about to say, I shoot him a look that reminds him that despite what he’s heard, honesty is definitely not the best policy. He gets the message. “I thought it was going to be bad when I saw the pictures, but it’s actually kind of nice.”
Good boy.
“Right? I think so too.” The woman has every reason in the world to be frowning, but her face is glowing with the biggest smile I’ve seen in a long time. “Come here boys.” She waves us over and we sit on the floor like when we were little kids—a floor that creaks beneath us. “Listen, I know this is. . . different than what we’re used to, and I’m not going to pretend that this is my favorite house in the world. But I’ll know we’ll make the best of it—together, won’t we?”
Pope looks at me and I look at Mom.
“Of course we will Mom. We love you.”
Nine—Lyric
The Past
End of Summer
“You are. . .a punk rock album—distorted, loud, violent and completely life changing.”
It’s been a few months since the party and all the drama that followed.
What I didn’t tell anyone—Kennedy and my sister included—is that I got a text from Draven after the party ended. This is what that piece of shit had to say:
Draven: Not a bad kiss. Your technique needs some work, but we have plenty of time to practice. If you’d kissed me voluntarily, it may have stayed with us, but now everyone’s going to see those sweet tits of yours. Not too late to have your turn with me if you change your mind.
I almost rage broke my phone when I read that.
A few days of aggressive social media posting by the Alphas and their girlfriends was all it took to earn that thing a girl in high school want about as much as an STD—a bad reputation. Screen shots of me in my bra and me kissing Draven circulated everywhere—payback for making Kyle’s face look like it just got its period, and for rejecting Draven. Guys like him hate what they can’t have, and it bugs his entitled ass to no end that I wouldn’t give him the time of day.
“You should fucking report them,” my sister told me.
“And tell them what? That my boobs have their own Instagram now—@lyricstits?”
It was a good idea in theory, but these situations get weird. Let’s start with Mom—the night everything happened I told her I was going to a late movie with my friends, when in reality I went to a house party with enough booze circulating to keep New York City bars stocked for a month. I didn’t think I could tell anyone on the Arkham P.D. either, because those cops basically work for the Alpha’s families.
Eventually my sister pressured me enough that I actually did tell my replacement guidance counsellor before school ended. My real one was amazing—one of the few adults I actually trusted at school, but she’d abandoned me for maternity leave. So I was left to tell this random replacement lady what happened, and when I did she looked at me all judgmentally and started asking me all sorts of questions. I’m not sure they taught her the concept of slut shaming in counsellor school.
I spent the last two weeks of school feeling helpless, like there was nothing I could really do to stop what was happening. Way I figured it, those kids would get away with terrorizing me just like they got away with everything else.
I put on my brave girl face and wore it like a Halloween mask. Walking through the hallways on the way to my last few classes of junior year, I fought every natural impulse in my body to lash out at someone when I saw their judgmental stares. My favorite move was when they’d look at the screen of their phone, then back at me, and then start giggling as loud as they could.
But I wasn’t about to show them my pain. No way.
On the outside, I was like any boxer in the tenth round who tried everything to not show his opponent how hurt he actually was, all the while on the inside getting ready to stumble and topple over if even one more punch landed.
That was me—the punch drunk, newly anointed school slut.
But that reputation was underserved for two reasons:
First of all, I was a virgin, and last I checked virgins can’t be sluts. Not only hadn’t I had sex with anyone, I hadn’t done much of anything outside of some intense make out sessions with Kyle. What happened with Draven was out there for public consumption now, and—everyone was looking at me like the entire lacrosse team had just run a train on me in the parking lot.
Second of all, expressions like whore, thot, ho, and all the others were invented by boys so they could label the girls that behaved just like they did on a regular basis.
I wasn’t a slut. I wasn’t what the other girls called ‘easy’, or any of the other names they used to virtue signal when they encountered girls who they thought were worthy of their judgment.
Some of the girls who talked shit about me had about as much right to do so as Bernie Madoff did to offer financial advice. Kennedy and Jess agreed with me.
“Becky? Fucking Becky made a post? That girl’s had more dicks in her then a men’s interstate bathroom. She needs to shut her mouth.”
“Literally,” Jess joked. “And Cynthia? Wasn’t she the one who let Dax do butt stuff to her in tenth?”
“Never confirmed, it was just a rumor,” I said. “And can we please stop counter slut-shaming here, that’s not going to get my tits off Instagram, and it’s kind of gross.”
“No,” Kennedy said. “The idea of letting Dax anywhere near your ass is kind of gross, but I get what you’re saying. I just wish these bitches would keep your name off their social media when they’ve definitely done ten times worse.”
“Agreed, but I need a more practical solution. And those girls have no self esteem. They just feel bad about what they let. . . whoever. . . do to them. Now, to avoid that, they can just focus on making me the slutty one. It gets the attention off them.”
“See,” Kennedy said. “Who needs college? You already get people’s behavior. You’re like a psychology prodigy already.” Sure, Ken. I understood everyone’s behavior except my own. Why did I let myself end up in that room with who was supposed to be Kyle? Where was my self-esteem?
“Thanks. I’d say the same about you and the law but you failed the Supreme Court decision quiz in U.S. History last month. Think it’s safe to say you just like to argue.”
“That’s fair.”
We all laughed for a second or two—long enough to get my mind off things, but short enough for it to feel traumatic when I remembered why we were talking in the first place. “Still, I need a practical solution. I couldn’t go to some teacher, and I sure as hell couldn’t tell Mom there were pics of me out there.
“What should I do? Jess?” I asked my sister. “You’re the smart one.”
“Hey, screw you,” Kennedy joked.
“Sorry. I meant the smartest one. I’m throwing myself in that hierarchy, don’t worry. If I was smart, we wouldn’t be in my room brainstorming how to keep my tits off porn sites.”
“Well,” Jess said, “moving to Mexico or Canada is always a strong solution to any problem. Just saying.”
“I swear your IQ is wasted on boring books and being rebellious.”
The only real gossip that went around the school besides what happened with me and Draven had to do with everyone panicking about how they thought our school was going to change when the East End kids got here. Every day I overheard some idiotic conversations that made it sound like an army of barbarians were marching their way to our quaint little town to raid and pillage. The comments were so stupid they gave comic relief to my otherwise shitty last days of junior year.
But the real prize was social media. Private Facebook groups dedicated to talking shit about East Enders popped up left and right, and a whole series of hashtags were created to follow the snobby tweets and Insta posts that showed what I always knew—that West End kids were dicks. Some of the greatest hits included:
>
You think they’re going to have to add metal detectors to our school because of all the criminals? #ifeelunsafe
I wonder if the East End chicks are as slutty as they say! #whores #eastendsluts
Do you think they’re going to have to add special ed classes for all the dummies? #eastendidiots
Now it’s summer—only a few weeks from the start of senior year, and I’m just glad some of the attention is off of me.
Right now, I’m out in this ridiculous August heat, sweating in weird places just because I’m that much of a caffeine fiend, and a large iced coffee from the deli in town is worth the walk.
When I come back out from getting my drink I see a crowd of people gathered at the end of the street, and I hear loud yelling—the kind of yelling that only accompanies one thing—a fight.
I instinctually run over, hearing the screams and shouts of ‘kick his ass’ and ‘hit him’ grow louder and clearer the closer I get. I push my way through the wall of people and that’s when I see a bunch of male bodies rolling around and punching.
If you’ve never seen boys fight, trust me when I tell you that it’s scary. It’s not like when girls do it. Girls make noise, they yell, they posture, it’s a huge show that usually ends up in some well-timed hair pulling and the occasional bad punch.
When boys fight it’s like watching two lions do battle right in front of you—it’s fast, violent and scary.
Now, imagine four boys going at it at once, because that’s what I saw when I make my way through the human wall of gawkers. I’ve come in the middle of it because, even from a distance, I can see the blood and dust. At first, it’s impossible to really see what’s going on in a way that makes sense, but after a few seconds I see faces that I recognize, and a few that I don’t.
It’s Draven and Kyle, and they’re fighting two kids I’ve never seen before in my life.
I look around and see half the school gathered around, and even some adults. Someone has to be calling the cops, and that’s going to mean bad news for these other kids when they show up. The Alphas fight all the time and get away with it—usually they’re picking on some underclassman. Nothing ever happens and it never goes too far to the point of someone getting really hurt, but this doesn’t look controlled—this looks like a brush fire that someone just poured gasoline on.
The fists are flying, but so are the knees, the legs, and the elbows. Blood is all over but everyone is still moving. The really tall kid just knocked Draven to the ground, and Kyle is coming up behind him. The tall kid turns just in time to duck under a right hand, and when he ducks he shoots in and takes Kyle to the ground like he’s a little kid. I’ve never seen anyone do something like that before, but the tall kid ends up on top, reigning down punches.
Draven gets to his feet. Blood is pouring out of his nose as he rushes over the grabs the really tall kid and engages him again. This whole scene is chaos. The other kid grabs Kyle and they start going at it.
When the fight ends a few minutes later, the two Alphas are on their backs, their faces bloody and their chests heaving up and down for air. When the dust settles is when I get my first good look at him—the really tall one that had dominated the fight.
His face is a deep, viscous, frightening howl of dominant masculinity. His hair is brown with the mud that’s matted to the side of his head. He strides with such confidence, never looking back. As he comes closer to me, I feel afraid, but I can’t look away from him. I just witnessed a primal act of violence, something that could get people arrested or killed, and the boy who did it is taking long, confident strides in my direction.
But there’s nowhere else my eyes want to be but on him—on his chiseled jaw, his limber and powerful body, his eyes so blue that they trapped me even from a distance—a distance that’s rapidly closing. He’s only a few steps away from me, and when he looks right at me my body starts doing things I didn’t realize it could do. I didn’t just see him, I felt him, and I felt him deep inside of me.
He’s shoulder to shoulder with me before I know it. My heart’s a freight train, and my lungs are working overtime to keep up with all the short breaths. I expect him to walk right past me, ignoring me like he seemed to ignore everything else around him.
Only he doesn’t.
He stops.
He turns.
Those eyes look right into me, and, for just a second, I feel his danger in my entire body. I’m frozen, a body for him to do whatever he wants to do with.
I’m his—even though I don’t want to be.
For the first time I can see how beautiful he really is. Dangerously beautiful. And then, to my total shock, he speaks to me.
“I’m sorry if I scared you,” he says in a deep, out of breath voice. And I swear that he looks at me like he recognizes me, even though I’ve never seen him before in my life.
Then he’s gone. The other kid following right behind him.
Behind me, the ruckus of Draven’s friends picking him up and yelling is barely audible in my consciousness. The toughest kid in school had just been laid out right in front of me. When I hear the police sirens in the distance, my mind snaps back into the reality of the situation. I turn and see Draven and Kyle dusting themselves off—their faces wearing blood masks and their skanky girlfriends helping them lick their wounds. This is so surreal. I take it all in and then head off into the distance towards the sounds of sirens.
When I get down the block a bit, I see that he’d already been arrested. The other kid is nowhere to be found.
Someone must have called the cops during the fight like I’d suspected. As I walk past the car, I take one last look at him, studying his expression as he sits in the back of a police car.
He looks eerily calm, and so handsome even through old dirty glass. I would have been shitting my pants, but he looks like he’s on line for a movie or something.
He had me already. Who is this kid? Why was he brawling in the middle of town with Draven? And why couldn’t I stop looking at him?
Before we could meet eyes again, he was being carted off, and my mysterious stranger was gone as quickly as I’d seen him appear.
I didn’t get a chance to answer him, but inside of my head the words keep repeating.
Of course you scared me, whoever you are.
And I want you to do it again.
Ten—Preacher
The Past
That chick was a smoke show—whoever she was.
I probably scared the hell out of her.
Maybe I’m just a savage, but that look of fear excited me. Her cheeks got red, and those big doe eyes were wide and beautiful. It made me want to scare her some more just so I can see that look on her face—the one that made my pants a little tight.
I should probably focus on the fact that I’m sitting in a police station in God-knows-where New York with Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Really Fuckin’ Dumb—but my concentration is shit right now.
That body though. . .
“You like to hurt people, son?”
The cop’s voice pulls my attention back to the reality of the situation.
Now, here’s the thing about me and authority figures—I fucking hate them all.
Life needs general rules—it helps maintain order—at least that’s what the admins at Harmony Hills drilled into our heads until they were literally red in the face. Well, for once, I listened. I made rules, and hating authority figures is numero uno. It has exceptions, but not many. If someone’s cool and treats me with respect, I’ll listen to them. But people like this small-town cop—with his cocky smile and stupid voice—he can eat a whole bag of dicks.
“Son?” he asks. “You hard of hearing?” I have to stop him before he goes any further.
“I’m neither your son nor hard of hearing. My name’s Preacher. Save that ‘son’ shit for someone else.”This guy’s obviously never been spoken to like this. He’s got a wide-eyed what the fuck look that makes me want to crack up. Probably a bad idea. “We just moved in.”
He struggles for words. Finally, his little brain retrieves them. “Do me a favor and watch your mouth when you’re in this station. And who exactly is ‘we’?”
“Is cursing a crime I’m not aware of? ‘Cause I’m pretty sure cops exist to enforce laws, not control my language.” I hate this guy already, and I’m pretty sure from the look on his face and the accusatory tone in his voice that he’s not my biggest fan either. “We is my mom, my brother, and me. We just moved into the house on Eden Street.”
“Well listen. . . Preacher,” he stops and turns to his younger and angrier looking partner and laughs at my name. “This is a hell of a way to start your life in a new town. You best believe I’ll be calling your momma about all of this business today.”
I pledged to have a clean start when I got out of Harmony—a new beginning without legal problems. That was the whole point of my mom uprooting us to this God forsaken place, but I’m rapidly losing my patience with this guy. I got into full prick mode. “I don’t have a momma. But if you’re going to call my mother, I already texted her and let her know what happened.”
Officer Whatever doesn’t like my answer one bit, which in my mind only means I’m doing something right. “And how exactly did you text your momma when we’ve had you cuffed this entire time, smartass?”
“Because I texted her before I got into the fight to let her know it was about to happen.”
He looks at me like I’m batshit crazy. It’s great.
“You’re telling me that you texted your momma that you were about to engage in a physical altercation before you actually did?”
Physical altercation. This guy’s old school. “That’s right, sir.”
“Pardon my French, son, but I’d appreciate if you save the bullshit for kids your own age. This isn’t exactly my first rodeo”
Preacher: The East End Boys Page 6
