by Hart, Callie
The deputy sighs, removing his hat and scrubbing the back of his hand against his forehead. He looks stressed. “Juvie’s not an option in this particular case. The facility in Wellson Falls has been shut down. We’d have to transfer him out of state if we really wanted to pursue the charges, and the paperwork alone is just…” He trails off, and Principal Darhower heaves a sigh of his own.
“I don’t need to tell you how disruptive something like this is to our students. The school year might have only just started, but our seniors are already buckling down and prepping for college. We have plenty of our own bad apples. Another troublemaker stalking the halls of Raleigh is only going to make life harder for the good kids.”
“Jim, we know, believe me.” The woman in the grey pantsuit seems to have found what she was looking for. She holds out a green file to Darhower, and I take a look at her face properly for the first time. Mid to late thirties. Dark hair. Dark eyes. I suppose she’s quite pretty. There’s a sad, tiredness to her that makes her look like a kicked puppy, though. I can picture her opening a bottle of wine when she gets home at night, telling herself she deserves a glass after the day she’s had, and then before she knows it, she’s polished off the entire bottle. She’s a social worker, no doubt about it.
She called Darhower by his first name, which means she’s dealt with him before. Darhower grimaces as he takes the file from her, briefly opening it and glancing at the first page, then closing it quickly, as if he can’t face its contents. “I guess I don’t really have a say in the matter then,” Darhower says. “He starts on Monday.”
The social worker and the sheriff’s deputy trade a glance that looks relieved even from where I’m standing. All three of them shift as if some unspoken command has been issued to them, and they head toward the door that leads to the principal’s office. That’s when I realize there’s been a fourth person there the entire time. With Darhower and the deputy standing so close together, blocking my view, I just hadn’t seen the guy sitting on the chair to their right.
He’s young. My age. His dark hair is almost black, shaved close at the sides, longer on top, thick and wavy. He’s both stretched out and slumped in the chair at the same time, artfully arranged into a position of careless boredom, the soles of his booted feet almost reaching the opposite wall of the hallway. His clothes are dark and simple—grey jeans, and a plain black t-shirt. Tattoos stain the skin of his bare arms. To the left of his chair, a black motorcycle helmet sits on the floor, along with a beaten, ratty looking canvas bag, covered in patches. I only see his face in profile. His eyes are closed, his fingers pressing into his brow like he’s nursing a headache. The cut of his jawline is strong, as is the high slope of his cheekbone. His mouth…I can’t really see his mouth.
He’s silent, he’s still—unbelievably still, actually—but there’s something about the shape and the cut of the guy that fills me with panic. The vibe he’s silently giving off at the other end of the hallway feels dangerous. He’s nothing like Jacob and the other guys on the football team. Jacob’s an instrument of chaos, and that’s precisely what he incites in his dumb ass buddies. They thrive on manipulation and deception, half-grown and on the brink of graduating into their adult bodies, hopped up on testosterone, convinced they own the world, that they’re entitled to it, and god help anyone who tries to prevent them from claiming it.
This stranger, though…
He’s an unknown. An outside threat. There’s nothing about the way he’s sprawled out in that chair that tells me what motivates or drives him. He holds himself with a kind of self-possessed arrogance that makes me want to climb inside my locker and hide there until the end of term. From the sounds of things, he’s up to his neck in trouble, and whatever he did almost landed him in prison.
As if he senses that he’s being watched, the guy slowly opens his eyes, lowering his hand from his face. I suck in a startled breath, kicking myself for lingering so long when I should have slipped away three minutes ago. He doesn’t turn to look at me, though; he only turns his head a little, slightly angling it in my direction. His eyes remain glued to the floor, but I can feel him notice me. The ghost of a smile plays over his mouth, which I can now see is full and perfectly fucking formed.
Great.
Just…great.
Before I can turn and flee for my life, the social worker reemerges from Darhower’s office and stands in front of the guy with one hand on her hip. She looks down at him with clear and obvious frustration. “All right, Alex. I’m not gonna bother with the talk. We both know there’s no point. You need to be here Monday morning, eight a.m. You need to register for your classes, and then you need to show up for them. Understand?”
The guy’s still frozen in place, his head slightly tilted in my direction. His smile forms properly now, a little lopsided, a little off-center, more than a little sardonic. He slowly turns his face up to look her in the eye. “You got it, Maeve. Monday morning. Loud and clear. Nowhere else I’d rather be.”
He has an accent, but nothing so evident as the deputy’s southern twang. The subtle, faint lilt to his words makes his voice sound almost musical, and the hairs on the back of my neck stand to attention.
We haven’t had a new kid at Raleigh for well over three years. My existence here is a living hell, and has been for some time, but it’s a predictable hell. I’m not safe within the walls of this building, but at least I know what to expect. I know who I need to avoid, and I know which corridors I just can’t walk down. Come Monday morning, a new element will have been introduced to my already complicated, fragile ecosystem of hate, and I already know this Alex person is going to make things harder for me.
The entire football team is going to be on canvasing hard for him. He’s tall, he’s broad, and he looks like he doesn’t take any shit. Jacob will want him on the team, no matter what. Whoever he is, this new guy looks like he could pose a threat to Jacob, and he will not like that. He won’t like that one bit. He’ll want to control him, the way he controls everyone else. Jacob will want this Alex guy inducted into the Raleigh Roughnecks crew quickly, which can mean only one thing: one more person to despise me. Another mindless member added to their ranks, charged with the task of making my life as unbearable as physically and mentally possible.
I pull back, turn, and finally head for the exit, a cold, oily dread settling in my veins. This isn’t good. I can feel it in my bones. I really shouldn’t be all that surprised, though. Just when I thought things can’t get worse…they do.
They always do. That’s just how things at Raleigh go.
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ALSO BY CALLIE HART
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Acknowledgments
I just had to write a quick note to say a massive thank you to a few people.
Gemma Sherlock and Kylie Sharp, you are fucking legends. You keep me on track, despite how embarrassingly disorganized I am, and I love you both to bits.
Again, another thank you to Kylie, Imogen Wells, Sophie Ruthven, Crystal Solis and Deborah Daken, THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart for beta-reading this monster of a book on such short notice. It means the world to me, and I’m so grateful to you for your help.
Lastly, thank you so, so much to you guys for reading this book! You have no idea how important you guys are to us authors, and I am so thankful to have you in my corner. I really hope you enjoyed Elodie and Wren’s story!
