RIOT HOUSE

by Hart, Callie

  I want to see Wren.

  * * *

  WREN

  I felt bad when they loaded me onto the gurney and rushed me into the urgent care. I feel just fine now, though. Whatever drugs they’ve given me must have been potent as hell, because I feel like I’m floating on a cloud and my bones are made out of cotton candy. The police question me until I’ve answered the same set of questions fifteen times over. Someone comes to tell me that Carina’s improving, which I’m man enough to say makes my eyes sting like crazy. I find out Fitz has been taken into custody shortly after that, and everything gets a little hazy.

  I sleep like the almost dead.

  At four, they bring me meds that make me a little more alert, and Elodie creeps into the room. She smiles a small smile, leaning her back against the wall on the far side of the room, picking at her fingernails.

  “When I bought you that dress, I didn’t think you were gonna treat it so badly.” She’s covered in blood. Carina’s. Her’s. Perhaps there’s a bit of mine staining the fabric for good measure, too. The skirt’s torn to shreds and half of the crystals that were sewn onto the bodice are missing now. Still, even covered in dirt and looking like she just fought in a war, she’s beautiful. She smooths her hands down the front of the skirt, little good that it does.

  “Yeah, well. I admit I didn’t actually take very good care of it at the beginning of the night. And after things went to shit with Fitz, well…” She shrugs. “I’m sorry it got ruined.”

  I laugh down my nose, wincing when a snap of pain lances through my body. “It’s okay. You don’t need to apologize. You’ll be pleased to know that there won’t be any more Riot House parties for the foreseeable future. Dean Harcourt was here before. She said that we would all be expelled if we even thought about it.”

  “Can’t really blame her,” Elodie says.

  “No, I don’t suppose we can.” I take a beat to look at Elodie, feeling…feeling for the first time like the future might not be so fucked up after all. “I didn’t get to tell you that I liked your hair,” I tell her.

  “Really?” She ducks her head, touching her fingers to it. “I thought you liked the blonde.”

  “It doesn’t really matter what color your hair is, Little E. I’ll love you all the same, no matter what.”

  She sighs, pushing away from the wall. She makes it to the foot of the bed, which is where she stops, resting her hands on the metal frame. “I’m surprised that you can still say that. That you love me. I feel like shit for thinking you’d have done something to that girl. I just—everything got so confusing—”

  I brace myself, sitting myself up a little straighter. The thick gauze they taped over the stitches at the base of my neck pull tight, but I grimace through the pain. “I’m not angry with you. Anyone would have thought the same thing. I left that sweater in the gazebo, the night I told Wes I wanted nothing more to do with him. He must have kept it and given it to Mara later. He’s just as obsessed with poetry and Edgar Allen Poe. So long as you know now that I’m innocent—” A flash of panic makes me break out in a cold sweat. “You do know that I am innocent now, right?”

  “Yes! Oh my god, yes! That’s why I feel so terrible.”

  I hold my hand out to her. “Come here, then.”

  She’s hesitant at first. As soon as she’s within reach, I taker her by the hand and I pull her closer so that she’s sitting on the edge of the bed beside me. “If I’d just explained everything with Mara and Wes in the first place, then we wouldn’t have ended up in this situation to begin with.”

  She cautiously studies my face; I can see her thinking about what she wants to say next. “Then why didn’t you?”

  “Because I was stupid. Because I thought everything would be fine, if we kept our mouths shut. I figured, as soon as graduation was over, we’d be free of the academy and free of Fitz, too. I didn’t want to have to tell you that’d I’d gotten mixed up with Fitz, of all people.”

  “Why?” She gives me a teasing sidelong glance. “Because he’s a guy?”

  “Hah! No. Because he was a member of fucking faculty, and the whole student/teacher thing is just so fucking cliché. I like to pride myself on having some originality.”

  “So…you don’t like guys?”

  I can’t read her expression very well, but…well, shit. It looks to me like she’s feeling a little insecure. Shifting on my side, I—oh shit, nope, that’s not gonna work. I lie back against the pillows, humming with exhaustion. “I’ve always been attracted to people, Little E. Their gender never really mattered. But that’s all irrelevant now, anyway.”

  The bridge of her nose crinkles. She toys with my fingers, stroking her own over mine, frowning ever so slightly. “Why?”

  “You know why. Because I’ve found my person now. In case you haven’t realized it yet, you are endgame for me, Elodie Stillwater. And everyone else in the entire world can go and eat a dick.”

  EPILOGUE

  WREN

  Two weeks later

  “Are you sure about this? You can always change your mind,” Pax grumbles. He’s been sitting in the car for the past twenty minutes, trying to talk me around. I’m not quite sure where all of this resistance is coming from, but I’m pretty sure he’s allergic to change. Everything’s been the same for years now. Just the three of us. And even though we’re all still going to be living together and there are only a few months left until we all graduate, the idea of someone new, someone more permanent, entering our official orbit is bringing him out in hives.

  From the backseat, I reach through the gap into the front of the car, giving his shoulder a halfhearted punch. “It’s not the end of the world, man. Everything’s cool. You need to be cool. You make having a girlfriend sound like a fate worse than death.”

  “It’s alright for you. You get regular sex out of this arrangement. What do we get? Our spots on the sofa stolen? Weird clumps of hair in the shower? Frilly fucking underwear caught up in our laundry? Tampons in medicine cabinet? Urgh.”

  “She’s not moving in asshole. She’ll stay the night on the weekends. I’ll make sure she keeps her tampons to herself. And don’t worry. No one would dare steal your spot on the sofa.”

  I feel like I’m counseling a traumatized child, whose father has just started dating someone new. Any second now, I half expect him to throw a tantrum and come out with the old, “I’m not gonna call her Mom!” line.

  “Don’t you have anything to say about this?” Pax glares at Dashiell in the passenger seat.

  Dashiell sighs, but his frustration’s all for show. “After much consideration, I’ve decided that Wren can do whatever the fuck makes him happy. Besides. Change is good. Maybe you should get yourself a girlfriend.”

  Pax recoils in horror. “Absolutely not! Why would I voluntarily incarcerate myself?”

  I laugh. Dash laughs. The only person who isn’t laughing is Pax. He’s taking this upheaval to his daily routine very personally. “Alright. Whatever, pricks. I’m leaving.” He gets out of the car and stalks toward the academy’s entrance, his shoulders pulled up around his ears. With the clipped gait and aggressive arm swing he’s got going on, even his walk looks pissed off.

  “Don’t worry. He’ll come around,” Dash says.

  “He’d better, for your sake. He’s gonna flip his shit when he realizes that you’ve got a girlfriend, too.”

  “Don’t you breathe a fucking word,” Dash says in a very serious tone. “We have to ease him into this one step at a time. He’s already being difficult enough as it is. Living with Pax, mid existential crisis, would not be a fun time.”

  I’m inclined to agree.

  We head inside the school, and I’m weirdly nervous. I’ve done the unthinkable and faced down my father. I’ve stood in preliminary court hearing and testified against a madman. Everything else in my life should be a cakewalk at this point, but publicly announcing to the world that I’m in love with someone and I want nothing more than to make her smile on a
daily basis is a terrifying fucking prospect.

  Spring break’s right around the corner, so I only have to deal with the staring and the whispered comments for another couple of weeks, but even so…my palms are sweating like they’ve never sweat before.

  The ‘incident,’ as the Wolf Hall faculty are calling it, is still a hot topic of conversation, and probably will be until the end of the school year. It’s not every day that a teacher loses his goddamn mind and tries to murder a handful of students. It’s not a common occurrence for a dead body to be discovered on academy grounds, either. Students chatter and gossip about the latest developments—Fitz’s face plastered all over the internet, interviews from Mara’s parents on CNN, reports that Fitz confessed to his crimes and hasn’t denied a thing—as we head towards English. There was talk that the class would be relocated to another, regular classroom after everything that’s gone down, but there was so much pushback from the students that Harcourt announced we could still study there, providing concentration levels or grades didn’t suffer because of our surroundings. Personally, I don’t give a shit where I take my classes now that Fitz is gone.

  A hushed silence falls over the class when Dash and I enter the den. Damiana guns me down with a scathing stare. At some point, she’s decided that she hates me, and I am A-okay with that. Pax is already sitting in his spot on the floor underneath the window. Dash rolls his eyes at me as he crosses the room, going to take up his regular place beside our friend.

  I make it halfway toward the battered leather sofa underneath the bank of windows before I veer to the left, changing direction. My ribcage pinches tightly when I see her, sitting there on the floral couch beneath the print of Gustav Klimt’s, ‘The Kiss.’

  Elodie Stillwater is the most breathtaking creature I’ve ever laid eyes on.

  Her newly dark hair is pulled back into a purposefully messy bun, long, wavy tendrils hanging down on either side of her face. Her eyes are even more blue with the warm, early morning light washing over her face, highlighting the freckles that have started to spring up across the bridge of her nose.

  She chews on the end of a ball point pen, her eyebrows slightly arched in amusement as she watches me walk toward her. The seat next to her is notably empty. It’ll be another week or two before Carina’s released from the hospital. She’s been doing her schoolwork from her hospital bed. Dash has been taking it over there to her every evening, claiming that he’s going to the ‘gym.’ Hah.

  I stand in front of Elodie, pointing with my chin at the open spot next to her. “Shall I do the whole, ‘this seat taken?’ thing, or do I get to maintain the illusion that I’m still cool?”

  She pouts, considering this. “I suppose I’ll save you from the cliché. But only because you look hot in that shirt.”

  I run my hand over my chest. “What this old thing?” I’m glowing like a fucking moron from the compliment, though. It’s one thing knowing you look good—I do. Sorry—and another thing entirely when the girl you love most in the world tells you so. Horrified, I suspect that I might even be blushing. Blushing, for Christ’s sake. Who the fuck am I?

  I throw myself down onto the seat next to her, and I can feel the gaze of every other student in the room homing in on us. At the front of the class, Damiana makes a strangled, choking sound when I spin around, throwing my legs over the arm of the sofa, laying my head in Elodie’s lap. Her mouth opens a fraction, a flash of surprise in her eyes, but she recovers herself quickly, toying with the ends of my hair, winding it around her fingers.

  “If you’re not careful, people might start to get the wrong idea about us, Jacobi,” she jokes.

  “Can’t have that, can we?” I catch hold of her hand and gently kiss the inside of her wrist, enjoying the way her pupils double in size at the open, public display of affection. She’s on the back foot. Likely, she thought I’d sit with her and keep my hands to myself, but I’ve gone way beyond that. The thing is, I didn’t have anything to worry about. ’Cause this is nowhere as frightening as I thought it was going to be. Turns out I’ve been panicking over nothing; it’s freeing as fuck to have everything out in the open, for everyone to see.

  “Feeling pretty pleased with yourself?” Elodie asks, quirking an eyebrow at me.

  “Yes.” I nod. “Very.”

  “Oh, yeah? How quickly are you gonna fly across the room if I try kissing you on the mouth?” She gives me a look that’s half dare, half mockery.

  “My ass will remain firmly in this seat, no matter where you decide you wanna kiss me.” I look suggestively down at my dick, unable to resist the opportunity to tease her. Good God, I’m never going to get used to this. She’s so fucking beautiful. So fucking perfect. So fucking mine. Her cheeks color bright pink, and I have to fight the urge to drag her out of the classroom and up to her room, so I can fuck her brains out.

  She’s feeling brave, though. She tries to duck down to kiss me, but it’s impossible in our current position. I help her out by popping up onto my elbow, meeting her halfway. The kiss isn’t overtly sexual. I keep the tongue to a minimum. We’re not animals. At least Elodie’s not, and I don’t want to embarrass her. It’s a smoldering kiss—a slow burn, packed with emotion, a heat kindling between us that I’ll most definitely have to address later. I cup her face, stroking my fingers down the back of her neck, making her shiver, and an exasperated shout goes up on the other side of the room.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake! Seriously?” None other than Pax, naturally. Something hits the back of my head—balled up paper by the feel of it—but I don’t pull away. I don’t do that until a hail of paper begins raining down on us, hurled and thrown by the rest of the other students, too.

  Elodie laughs against my mouth. “Okay, you’ve proved your point. You’re fearless. I think they want us to stop now.”

  I give her bottom lip a quick tug between my teeth before I let her go. “Lucky, Little E. Saved by your fellow classmates.”

  “He—oh. Hello, class. Young man, if you wouldn’t mind putting down that poor girl, I’ll pretend that I didn’t see any of that.” At the front of the room, a woman in her early thirties hovers by the new chalkboard that’s been freshly installed in between the book cases. I twist around in my seat, slouching down into the sofa next to Elodie, earnestly pretending to study the ceiling. However, just like everyone else in the room, I study the interloper, scoping her out. She’s pretty. Sweet-looking, like she bakes on the weekend and feeds the birds outside her kitchen window. I catch Dashiell elbowing Pax in the ribs—a dig hard enough to knock the air right out of him—but Pax doesn’t even seem to notice. He’s staring at this new person like he’s just unveiled the face of God and he cannot look away.

  The woman smiles, clears her throat, and takes us all in.

  “Class, my name is Jarvis Reid. You can call me Jarvis. As you’ve probably surmised, I’m your new English teacher. I’ve just moved to Mountain Lakes from New York and I’m still figuring out where everything is at the academy, so please bear with me while I get the lay of the land. If one of you would like to catch me up on what you’ve been studying, that would be a good start.”

  Pax hops to his feet. He smiles the kind of smile that’s destroyed the hearts of countless supermodels from Rome to London and back again. “Hi Jarvis. I’d be happy to lend a helping hand.”

  Elodie and I trade a look that says it all.

  Christ.

  Here we go again.

  Author’s Note: Thank you so much for reading Riot House! I hope you enjoyed Elodie and Wren’s story. If you’re ready for some more dark and delicious content, keep reading to meet The Rebel of Raleigh High!

  THE REBEL OF RALEIGH HIGH

  PROLOGUE

  Grave robbery has never been that high on my to-do list, but tonight, with a frigid Washington wind blowing in off Lake Cushman, I find myself up to my waist in dirt with a shovel in my hand. Weird how life likes to fuck with you sometimes. There are plenty of other places I could be tonight, and ye
t here I am, the muscles in my back aching like a bitch as I lift the haft of the shovel over my head and I pile-drive the steel blade into the unforgiving, frozen earth.

  “Dorme, Passerotto. Shhh. Time to go to sleep.”

  I ignore the soft whisper in my ear. That voice is long gone now. It doesn’t serve me to remember it, but…forgetting wouldn’t be right. Forgetting would feel like a betrayal.

  The cut, scrape, swish of my work fills the night air, and a river of sweat courses down my spine. My body’s no stranger to physical labor, and I’m grateful for the fact as I press forward, hurling clods of icy dirt over my bare shoulder and out of the deepening hole. This task would be way shittier if I weren’t in shape. Scratch that…it’d probably be impossible.

  I don’t believe in zombies, vampires, ghosts, or any other kind of apparition, but there’s something about this place that creeps me out. Yeah, it’s a graveyard, Poindexter. You’re surrounded by rotting bodies. I roll my eyes at my own inner monologue, again lobbing loose grave soil out onto the well-manicured grass to my right. It’s only natural that this place would have a sinister edge to it. It’s abandoned, not a soul in sight (very convenient for me), and yet there are signs of the living everywhere—laminated cards bearing the smiling faces of children; floral tributes, tinged with the first signs of fading decay; stuffed animals, fur matted and crusted over with frost. The people who left these trinkets and treasures are safe in their own warm houses now, though. It feels like the end of the world out here, a neglected place, filled with neglected memories. The moon overhead, round and fat in the clear September sky, casts long shadows, making spears out of the headstones.

  I wipe at my forehead with the back of my forearm, grit and clay smearing my skin, and I consider how much further down I need to go. They bury people deeper than usual here in Grays Harbor County. I read that on the cemetery website yesterday morning when I was scoping the place. They said it was because of the bears. Seriously fucked-up. I try not to think about that as I quicken my pace, eager to accomplish my goal and get the hell out of here.