Basketball.
The pops had been the ball hitting the pavement hard every time Bradley the Viking dribbled, and the shouts were all in fun. I’d known that about the shouts before I parked—so why was I sitting up here like a creep?
“Nice!” Bradley shouted after a skinny kid I didn’t recognize snatched the ball from him and made a basket.
“Hell yeah,” the kid said, pumping a fist in the air. I’d thought him to be in his late teens, but his voice made him sound much younger, maybe twelve or thirteen. “I made a basket, Bradley, did you see me?”
My heart sank like a harp when I realized that he was so young. Vulnerable. I’d never seen the Seymores leave a vulnerability unexploited.
My throat tightened as Christopher, the bleached little mean one, jogged onto the court. He was the worst of them, even if Bradley was the biggest.
“Nice shot, Joel,” he said, giving the strange kid a high-five.
My shoulders tightened as I waited for him to shove the kid down, punch him, pull his hair, do something cruel, but he didn’t.
He seemed relaxed.
Happy.
There were other kids in the yard that I didn’t recognize—I only knew the Seymores—and they all seemed to be having a good time. Easy smiles and authentic, happy laughter flashed and bubbled across the yard.
I thought I must be looking into an alternate universe—one where the Seymores weren’t always grumpy and hostile. One where they were actually happy and human.
I stayed until Mr. Seymore—a red-haired man of average height and a thick torso, the build I always associated with dads even though my own was gym-fit and tall—came into the backyard with a platter full of what I assumed was uncooked meat.
He opened up the long barbecue, releasing a bloom of smoke into the air, and said something that made Rudy laugh.
I’d never heard Rudy laugh before. I didn’t know why it twisted me up inside, and I sure as hell wasn’t sure I wanted to find out.
Chapter Twelve
“It’s been way too long since we got manicures together, and look! We all match! It’s too bad you couldn’t come, Kennedy, you look like you’re in dire need of a manicure.” Julianne grabbed my hand and frowned at my cuticles with a critical eye. “Oh my God, Kennedy, is that a splinter?”
I shrugged. “I guess. I didn’t talk to my dad long yesterday—” or at all, “—so I went out hiking for a while.”
“Where did you go?” asked Joan, who had always been more willing to get outdoors with me and Kitty May than the other two.
“Over by the reservoir,” I said without thinking.
Julianne’s eyes widened. “On the Seymore side?”
I shifted my bag on my back unhappily. “I guess so.”
“Oooo… Did you catch them skinning anybody alive?” Macy asked with an ugly sneer.
“Or flinging their own poo?” Julianne smirked.
“Did you spy on them? I bet they were all getting high.” Joan winced at the thought. She’d had a strict catholic school upbringing before high school and things like alcohol and marijuana were still taboo to her.
“I mean, they were just messing around. Barbecuing and whatever,” I said neutrally.
“Barbecuing their latest girlfriend, probably.” Julianne sniffed. “Or a cat. They never could figure out what ‘eat pussy’ means.”
“You say that like you know,” I said, raising an eyebrow.
Julianne gasped in dramatic mock offense. “Kennedy, really! You know I’m not into barn animals.”
“Barn animals now? Just a few days ago they were monkeys?” I said over the other girls’ laughter.
We turned the corner in the hall and almost trampled the four Seymores. They stood fast, silently daring us to run right into them. Julianne, being who she was, pretended not to see them and moved around them as if they had been nothing more than an outcropping of wall.
“Mr. Seymore doesn’t care where he gets his menagerie from,” Julianne said after we were past them. “Circus, barn, trash can…whatever.”
I rolled my eyes. “Trash can? Really?”
She grinned at me with a dark glitter in her otherwise innocent-looking eyes. “Sure! Their own parents knew they were trash and threw them away. Mr. Seymore is a glorified dumpster diver.”
I glanced over my shoulder to make sure we were out of earshot. We definitely weren’t.
It occurred to me belatedly that Rudy and Bradley had the same second period class that we did today.
I turned back around front and swallowed hard.
Their faces had been blank, completely devoid of emotion. I used to think that was just how they always looked.
I knew better now, and it made their blank expressions all the more frightening for the contrast.
Bradley and Rudy could stomp me into the ground with their cowboy boots if they wanted to—and the hairs on the back of my neck were pretty convinced that they wanted to.
I frowned at myself, knowing that I wasn’t really being fair. Julianne had just said some pretty nasty shit; wouldn’t I be pissed off if she had said something like that about me?
I was confident that Julianne was wrong about them. I couldn’t be certain, but I suspected that all of the things I had seen them do and heard them say had been reactive.
I didn’t even understand why Julianne was so intent on being cruel to them and trying to make people afraid of them. She knew as well as I did that they had nothing to do with the Kitty May situation, and Sabrina Fisher had been way before their time.
I made a decision then that made my heart race and palms sweat, but it was the kind of decision that sticks with you no matter how much you try to talk yourself out of it.
After second period, on the way to lunch, I made some excuse and broke away from the girls.
I was going to approach the Seymores—but I lost my nerve at the last minute and went and got my lunch instead.
I wasn’t ready to stage an all-out mutiny, but I didn’t particularly want to sit with Julianne and the rest of the crew either, especially with what I had in mind. So I waited until the lunch room was crowded enough to give me an excuse, and sat at a table out of sight of Julianne and Macy.
Joan saw me, so I gestured around at the crowd of milling students and shrugged. She gave me a thoughtful look from across the room, then said something to Julianne. I ignored them.
As soon as the Seymores started filing out of the lunchroom I dumped my tray and followed them.
The hallway was mostly empty—just the four of them, a few random kids rushing around, and me.
The Seymores were talking in low growls in a huddle at the end of the hall. They seemed to be having some kind of argument.
Rudy and Bradley turned to go before I got there, disappearing down the adjacent hallway, but that was fine. I could talk to them in pairs.
“Hey,” I said.
Chris and Gary turned toward me, aggression glittering in their eyes. I stepped into the spot that Rudy had just vacated—a little too close, maybe, but you can’t lob an olive branch from a distance, right? “So, the thing is—”
I never got around to telling them what the thing was, because as soon as I opened my mouth, Gary opened a locker, and before I had five words out of my mouth the two of them had grabbed me and shoved me inside.
I might have been able to fight, but they were both taller and stronger than me. I couldn’t do more than yelp before the door slammed shut and locked.
I thought that would be the end of it, but no—I barely had time to brace myself against the door before the whole locker crashed to the floor.
My head collided with the cold steel hard enough to make stars explode in my vision, then panic washed over me. An upright locker I could have jimmied from the inside.
I beat on the walls and shouted, but nobody came.
“Okay, okay,” I breathed as the sounds of people rushing to class died outside my tiny prison.
Claustrophobia was t
rying to convince me that I was suffocating, but there was light coming in through the cracks around the edges of the locker.
If light could get in, air should be able to too, right?
I closed my eyes and sucked in a deep breath through my nose. I immediately regretted it. Gary had left a sack lunch to die in here at some point, and the smell was enough to make me gag.
Breathing through my mouth was only slightly better. It was like the smell had penetrated the air, leaving little foul flavor bombs everywhere.
My arms were smashed tight against my ribs, my knees ached where they pressed against the door vents, and I had a choice between a raging headache or sore feet.
I begrudgingly chose the feet, even though I had track later that day—assuming I could get out of this, which was looking more and more unlikely.
I tried rolling the thing, but I couldn’t get enough leverage to do more than make the locker shiver.
Pushing against the door didn’t do anything but hurt my back where it hit the crossbar—but the motion made the locker rock more than rolling did.
I tried combining the two, pushing against the door and throwing my weight to one side.
The thing about going to school in a wealthy district is that every part of the school is built to quality standards.
If this had been my last school, I would have been stuck in an aluminum locker bolted to the wall and could have broken out in under three minutes.
This locker was steel and stood alone, not bolted to the wall, not welded to its neighbors. I figured it made it easier to fix or replace damaged lockers, or rearrange the school if the administrators felt the need, but my current situation made the rows of bolted, welded, cheap lockers make a lot more sense.
“I guess they don’t have this problem often enough to think about this,” I grumbled as I pushed and rocked the stupid locker with no effect. The walls must have been soundproof, too, because for all the noise I was making, not a single soul came out to investigate.
Breathless and achy, I lay on the metal door and sucked in stale, rot-fouled air.
“This is why everybody hates the Seymores,” I said.
I was talking to keep the panic at bay, but I also sort of hoped a janitor or someone would walk by and hear me so I wouldn’t have to spend all of third period—or, God forbid, all night—in here.
“They have all these low-class bullying techniques that nobody around here knows how to deal with.”
That must have been Julianne’s problem with them, I decided. She was born and raised here, silver spoon and all.
Her mother was the closest thing Starline had to a socialite—she didn’t work, but she was always busy with one thing or another, and she always knew the latest drama. Julianne had taken after her and then some, because while I couldn’t imagine Mrs. Bird orchestrating devious plots to create drama, I’d seen Julianne do it.
But the Seymore boys all came out of the foster system. I wasn’t quite sure what that meant as far as life experience went, but they definitely hadn’t been born into wealth and security the way Julianne had.
I lay on the locker door long enough to make up a bunch of imaginary terrible parentages for all four Seymores.
I wished I could doze off in the cramped locker—it would make the time go by faster—but if I did that, I might miss the chance to get saved.
The bell signalling the end of third period sounded muffled and distant.
I started beating on the walls again until my knuckles were bruised, and shouted myself hoarse.
I could hear the crowd, but no one stopped, no one even acknowledged me.
Fourth period started with me still lying on the floor in the stupid locker.
So much for running today.
I was just starting to wonder if Gary had some kind of witch magic to hide me behind when the locker tilted suddenly, making me squeal. It slammed onto the floor with a clang that jarred my teeth.
At least I was standing upright again.
Someone was cussing under their breath on the other side of the door, but I couldn’t tell who it was.
“Hey,” I said tentatively. “Thanks. Think you could let me out?”
I heard the lock spin and held my breath.
Chapter Thirteen
My heart leapt to my throat when the door slammed open.
Rudy’s blue eyes blazed at me from under his scowl. He stepped back, giving me space to get out.
I felt like opening my mouth would just get me into more trouble with him and his brothers, but I didn’t want to seem ungrateful either—he’d likely shove me back in the locker and knock it over again.
“Thanks,” I mumbled, ducking my head as I scurried out of the locker.
I dusted my clothes off—that old lunch smell was never going to come out, but at least I could get the dirt off—and hurried away as fast as my cramped thighs and stiff knees could carry me. It wasn’t fast.
“They heard you talking shit this morning,” he said.
I turned around slowly. Somehow he’d made that sound like an apology and a threat all at once. His mouth was set tight, but there was something in his eyes—not anger, I don’t think.
I opened my mouth to say something, but couldn’t find any words. I couldn’t deny that I’d been talking about them. I couldn’t tell him I felt bad about it—that would be admitting fault, and might just make him more inclined to punish me. I was still too close to the lockers for comfort.
His mouth softened into something that might have been a half-smile if his brows hadn’t still been scowling.
I noticed then that he was wearing his gym clothes. He must have ditched track to come get me—why? He was fast, and seemed to enjoy running as much as I did. Granted, that was based on a single shared period, but still, I was pretty sure I knew what I saw.
The corners of his eyes crinkled ever so slightly, then he brushed past me and jogged back down the hall, toward the doors that led to the track. I watched him go, obsessing over every word and tone and expression.
I couldn’t get over the fact that he—a Seymore—had rescued me any more than I could get over the little butterflies that exploded in my core when I remembered his voice in my head.
He’d spoken to me.
Not growled or raged, just…spoken.
I’d already missed roll call and I was in no mood to spend the last forty-five minutes of school trying to explain my absence.
Hoping I hadn’t missed anything important in automotive, I grabbed my things and headed home, my head full of conflicting ideas and my gut churning with the aftermath of terror, claustrophobia, and adrenaline.
Getting home to find a tour bus in front of my house didn’t help my mood much either.
I’d actually been looking forward to spending the afternoon alone with my thoughts—there were plenty of them, and they needed untangling. But my dad’s face beamed at me at fifty times its natural size from the side of the bus while his entourage unloaded my parents’ things, which meant this wasn’t just a pit stop.
I hadn’t bothered to look at the family calendar app or I would have been prepared. I wouldn’t make that mistake again.
“Mom? Dad?” I called as I walked in on the heels of a roadie I didn’t recognize.
“Kennedy my prodigy! How are you?”
Dad strode in from the living room, beaming exactly the same way as he had during his photoshoot for the bus, his arms wide. I stepped into his very precise hug and inhaled. He smelled different and it made my stomach clench.
I frowned up at him.
“You changed your cologne,” I said accusingly.
“I told you she’d notice, honey,” Dad called over his shoulder.
Mom bustled in then, all five-foot-two of her in a burgundy suit which brought out her brown eyes and dark lips.
She tossed her head, though her lightened hair was secured so tightly in a bun it couldn’t possibly have moved, and shot him a regal look.
“Of course she not
iced,” she said. “That’s the whole point, to notice, otherwise there’s no advertisement. Hi, sweetie.” She stopped to kiss my cheek, then waved at Dad. “His new corporate sponsor is a men’s fragrance company. Part of the deal is that he wears the cologne whenever he speaks.”
“You aren’t speaking now,” I said, crossing my arms.
Dad grinned, a different expression from his motivational speaking toothy smile—one I liked much better. “I’ll shower and put the usual stuff on, just for you. How was your summer?”
I shrugged, linking my arm through his as I went to the kitchen in search of a snack. “It was okay. Sort of melancholic, you know? My last summer camp before I have to grow up.”
He laughed.
“Kennedy, you’ve been grown since you were thirteen. You have a car and a whole lot of wilderness around, if you want to camp you should do it! Don’t wait around for permission, blaze that trail! You have the power!”
“You’re off the clock, Dad,” I said, rolling my eyes.
“Motivation is a way of life,” he said with a shrug.
“Until the endorphins wear off tomorrow and you collapse into a big heap,” Mom argued as she came into the kitchen. “The bus is finished and on its way to the depot for cleaning and maintenance.”
She sat down, exhaling all the way from her toes. “Ai, that was a long one.”
“Too long,” Dad agreed. “Did you forget what we looked like, Kennedy?”
“Just about,” I said somberly. “I had to start telling people I was an orphan.”
Dad laughed, as I’d intended, but mom looked at me thoughtfully. “Kennedy, I wanted to talk to you about last month’s statement.”
I frowned as I shoved a pastry in the toaster, then sat down at the kitchen table across from her. “What’s up?”
“I’ve noticed a trend, and I would like you to please explain it.” She pulled several papers out of her briefcase and set them on the table. “Here—you spent $1600, then were credited $1600, then spent $460. Now—I understand shopping sprees and buyer’s remorse, so I wouldn’t have thought anything of it, except—” She shuffled the papers. “—that you did something similar last month. You spent $2000, then were credited $1586.”
Them Seymore Boys: An Enemies to Lovers Bully Romance (The Seymore Brothers Book 1) Page 7
