I sigh.
I check the time again. Three minutes past three.
Where the hell is he?
Walking over to his fruitwood walk-in closet, I borrow one of his white tees, inhaling the scent of his manhood, enjoying the soft fabric of the Balmain top caressing my body.
I decide to check his office. This wouldn’t be the first time Pierce wandered down there at unspeakable hours. I walk down the steps and head toward the only other place, besides his kitchen, that I’ve been in this house. My knock is light, but it still makes the cracked door open wider. His brown leather executive chair is empty. The phone on his desk calls for me to use it. The same phone I studied religiously—it’s a vintage rotary dial that probably costs a fortune—while I was bent over it, my face just an inch from the golden numbers that stared back at me.
I plop down in his chair and pick up the phone, dialing the number I memorized by heart long before I ever used it, and wait for him to pick up. I accidentally bump the mouse to his computer—who uses a mouse anymore?—and his monitor lights up, illuminating his desk. He doesn’t answer. Fear gnaws at my gut, tugging an invisible string of panic. I’m about to hang up and recalculate my plan, but then I see something that makes me pause.
A manila envelope, not unlike the one I saw handed to him outside the café after school that day.
I hesitate. As much as I hate secrets—secrets are what threw my life into chaos and turmoil, what got Christian in the hospital—I recognize that it’s not for me to read. At the same time, I think about all the things I’m not privy to. All the stuff Pierce James keeps away from me.
His family.
His sister.
His history.
His story.
To read or not to read—debate this, Mr. James.
My fingers find their way to the envelope. Slowly. Unsurely. They take their time, just like I do as I weigh the consequences. My father thinks I’m a liar. Ryan thinks I’m a slut. And Pierce…who knows what Pierce thinks. That I’m incapable of taking care of myself. Or maybe that I’m too young to fully understand whatever is going on around me.
But I understand it. Crystal clear. And I have a feeling things are only going to feel more real after I open this envelope, marked with the word confidential over it in bold, red letters.
I dump the contents of the envelope onto the desk with a soft thud and stare at it for a moment before I realize what I’m seeing. Before the names pop up. Before my name appears.
There are pictures.
There are testimonies.
There are unveiled secrets.
There is truth.
“Hello? Remi?” Pierce’s gruff voice inquires on the other line, startling me.
“Sweetheart.” He sounds like he is out of breath. “Is everything okay?”
I let the phone slip from my fingers, and it hits the desk with a bang.
It was all a lie.
He never wanted me.
It was all a lie.
He used me.
It was all a lie.
We’re nothing. Not even a secret. We’re nothing but sin.
Pierce is still talking, but all I can hear is the sound of my own heart in my ears. The fact that it is still beating is almost reassuring, because it’s hurting. Hurting so bad. Aching, breaking, slipping away. Suddenly, I’m weightless. Restless. I’m floating outside my body, and I look at everything that’s happened to me in recent weeks—in recent months, really, ever since I started my senior year—and clarity washes over me like electric shock.
I drop the phone, clutching the papers in one of my hands.
My legs carry me to the front door, where I stop. My feet are bare, and I’m still wearing his clothes. How far can you run when the only thing that fuels you is anger, secrets, and deceit?
I’m about to find that out.
Tonight, I do something I never thought I’d do.
Something I promised myself I wouldn’t do, in fact.
Tonight, I sleep on the street. Okay, sleep is a little dramatic, but I’m feeling pretty melodramatic right about now. I mostly just wander around until the sun comes up.
It’s not a conscious decision more than it is just the way things are. I cannot go back home—literally and figuratively. I need to let Ry calm down, I need to process all the information that I’ve just discovered, and the buses don’t run from Pierce’s neighborhood to mine in the middle of the night.
I kick little rocks and walk in what seems like circles for the longest time until I get to this gas station at an intersection in the middle of nowhere. I can see the city lights of Vegas twinkling in the distance. Gold, pink, purple, and green swirling around and around. It seems fitting that I was born in Sin City. I wonder what my mom would have said about all this. About what became of Dad and me. About Pierce.
I take out my phone that I found tangled up in the just-fucked blankets of Pierce’s bed—it’s not my camera, but it’ll do—and capture the moment a homeless person walks out of the food mart next to the station with a sandwich in his hand and gives it to a homeless woman who is sitting on the side of the road.
The papers I found in Pierce’s envelope made no room for misunderstanding. He sat on Ryan’s information a long time and produced everything that could incriminate him. I was confused, upset, and frantic to leave. I barely made it back to Pierce’s porch to put some shoes and pants on and grab the evidence against Ryan before I left. And now I’m wondering, was Ryan right all along?
He said Pierce was playing me.
He said Pierce had an agenda.
He said I was bound to get hurt.
All of those things happened. Pierce has hurt me more than anyone else ever did before, no matter how hard he pretended to want to protect me. My heart broke under his watch.
I walk over to the bus station the minute the clock hits six and get on the first bus back home. On the way there, I think about what I might find. Will Dad and Ry even forgive me? Is there anything to forgive, anyway? And do I tell Ryan everything—about Pierce’s insane agenda against him, why on earth is Mr. James after my brother, anyway?—or simply keep it to myself and make do with the fact that Pierce doesn’t have any access to all this evidence now.
When I get back home, everyone is gone. The living room is a mess. I feel lonelier than ever.
I walk over to my bed, bury my face in the pillow, and cry.
I cry until I fall asleep.
I cry until my hatred toward myself, and Pierce, and even Dad and Ryan turns into numbness.
I cry until there are no more tears left in me.
I arrive at work in a particularly sour mood the next morning.
The fact that I’m sporting a shiner and a cut lip doesn’t help matters either. I look like I’ve been in a dogfight. I feel like it, too. The way I left things with Ryan was bad—but getting back home and seeing my bed naked of her and my office desk naked of the evidence I gathered against him for months upon months is nothing short of tragic. My whole existence, everything I have and want and is worth living for, is suddenly out of reach, and I’m contemplating doing things I shouldn’t even be thinking about.
To Ryan Anderson, mostly. But to the rest of this fucked-up place, too.
Because I won’t delude myself. Remington Stringer was a troubled girl before she got here…but she is lost and gone now because of us, too.
The first class is a blur. I don’t even bother to pretend like I care. I look ridiculous with my white dress shirt and slim black tie and those preppy blue dress pants that are supposed to make you look sophisticated. I’m anything but right now.
“What happened to your face, Mr. James?”
“I fell.”
“It’s on your arms, too.”
“Fine, I got into a fistfight with a junkie.”
“Ha-ha. Come on, what happened?”
Well, can’t say I didn’t tell the truth. First period passes, and then the second one is Remi’s. She’s not here, and I�
��m not surprised, but her empty chair is taunting me. I can’t wait for the hours, minutes, seconds to pass so I can rush over to her house and smooth things over. Only I’m not sure I still can.
At lunch, Headmaster Charles catches me in the hallway. I’m breezing through students—through life—about to make an exit out the door and get myself some cigarettes and a Coke. I almost forgot about my vices. For a minute there, I stopped smoking. But then she left and I drowned right back into despair.
“Mr. James, a word?”
“Perhaps even a few, if that’s what it takes to put your point across.” I smile easily to him, clasping my leather courier bag under my arm. The headmaster falls into step with me, and we both stare ahead.
“Miss Stephens’ parents called me this morning.”
It takes me a second to remember because my mind is elsewhere. Mikaela Stephens. The girl who bullies Remi. I nod, wondering where this is heading.
“Her parents found text messages about a fight that supposedly happened in your class with another student. Remington Stringer?”
No point in denying.
“Yes?”
“Were they disciplined?” I can hear the worry in his voice. The dread.
I stop by the door leading to the stairway to the street.
“They were both let off with a warning.”
“Whose decision was this? The student board?” Headmaster Charles strokes his chin in my periphery. Oh, yes. That’s the part where I should mention that in this fancy little school, people get judged by the student board. They’re like the judge, jury, and executioner around here.
“I never brought it up to the student body,” I say curtly.
“Why not?”
“Because I’m a grown-up capable of making my own decisions.”
“That’s not how things work around here.”
“That’s how things work for me.” I turn around and leave him to stand there.
“They were also concerned that there may be something inappropriate transpiring with you and Miss Stringer. They said Miss Stephens confided in them about it this morning. I don’t have to tell you how serious this allegation is, Pierce. Tell me now if there’s any truth to it.”
I’m sure their daughter fed them the only truth she knows. That Mr. James and Miss Remington have been known to stay in the classroom long after the bell has rung. Maybe she even knows that we locked the door a few times. I wasn’t exactly careful the last few times.
“There’s a little truth in every lie,” I say. And that’s the only information he’s getting out of me.
I have no time for the Stephens. I have no time for Headmaster Charles. Quite frankly, I have no time for my students either. I decide on a whim that for the first time in a long time, I’m going to do something different. Something that isn’t for anyone else but me.
I walk toward my car in the teachers’ lot, start the engine, and drive to the bad side of Vegas.
To the only place where I want to be.
To her.
At noon, the door opens and slams. I’m still in bed, half-asleep, half-awake, and blinking at the ceiling. The papers I stole from Pierce are somewhere no one can find them—in an old textbook I saved from my old school. Maybe it’s all the adrenaline that coursed through my veins last night, but today, I feel oddly lethargic.
“Anyone here?” I hear Ryan’s voice, and the mere sound of him makes my whole body heave with uncontrollable sobs. I cry because I want to save him. I cry because I want to save me. I cry because once upon a time, he wasn’t the man who tried to shove a hand down my skirt. He was the brother who taught me how to skateboard and got me photography accessories for my birthdays.
“Me,” I barely whisper, still lying on my bed. “I’m here.”
His footsteps become louder with every passing second. Fear stabs at my chest, mixed with an unexplainable longing. I can’t wrap my head around everything that I’m feeling right now. There’s too much pain in me to think clearly.
“What are you doing here?” he asks, his fingers hovering over my doorframe. He looks…like Ryan. Like a strong Viking. Like the man who helped raise me and tolerated my crush, then later danced on the line between appropriate and inappropriate. And even though he has lost a bit of weight recently, he is still beautiful.
I cup my mouth with my hand and shake my head, feeling the tears streaming down my cheeks. “Everything is so fucked up, Ry. I’m so mad at you. At him. At everything.”
He is next to me in a second, sitting on my bed and pulling me into a hug. I bury my face in his shoulder. He smells of gasoline and cigarettes and home. Home that doesn’t smell like flowers and cooked meals and a nice feminine perfume, but it is still my home.
“Oh, baby. Rem…” His voice disappears inside my hair, and he is stroking it, and I am breaking just a little bit more, nostalgia making my heart overflow. “What did the bastard do to you?”
“You’re both magnificent bastards.” I sniff in protest, wiggling away from him. “You. Pierce. Dad. You’re all the worst. Dad believing your lies. You making my life hell. Pierce betraying me.”
“I’m jealous.” Ryan’s voice is the softest it can be. “I’m fucking it up because I’m jealous of him. This was not supposed to happen this way. You became a different person since you started going to this fancy school, and it felt like you were leaving us.” There is a pause. Ryan stares at the floor. Then, “He came here last night.”
“He did?” I pull away so I can examine my stepbrother’s face. He nods solemnly, pushing away a lock of my hair from my face. “Sure did, babe. Threatened me. That’s how I got this pretty thing.” He points at his cheek that’s currently purple. I didn’t even bother to notice that Ryan looks all kinds of banged up. I blink once, twice.
“Did you hurt him?” I don’t know why I’m asking this. I certainly shouldn’t care, but I do. He nods.
“He probably looks worse than I do today.”
“Good,” I say, straightening my spine. “Serves him right.” But inside, my heart breaks for yet another reason.
“What’d he do?” Ryan demands, and there’s a certain edge to his voice. The same violence that’s soaring over us ever since he started mixing up with the wrong people.
And as much as I want to protect Ryan—the guy I grew up with, the guy who took care of me all those years, albeit in a weird, screwed-up way—I want to protect Pierce, too. They’ve both hurt me so bad. I shouldn’t even want to entertain myself with the idea of helping either of them, but for now, I’m keeping Pierce’s secret manila envelope for myself.
“Tell me, Ryan. What makes Pierce James hate you so much? What have you done to him?”
Ryan licks his lips and looks away.
Guilty, I think. Guilty all the way.
I rap the door to her bathroom a few times, this time growling.
“Gwen, open up for God’s sake. I don’t have all day. I’m on my lunch break. I need to teach third period in twenty minutes, and traffic is insane.”
She doesn’t answer. I feel full to the brim with discontent and annoyance. The whole Gwen situation grinds on my nerves. She is going to get help even if I have to drag her by the hair and throw her into the nearest rehab center with a room for a new tenant. Just a week ago, I spoke to Mother Dearest, who had agreed to shell out some money for a Santa Barbara resort where Gwen could get clean. We’d decided to split it halfway, me with my teacher salary and her with her indefinite amount of millions in the bank. I don’t care. I just want Gwen to get better.
“Goddammit, Gwen, the water is leaking.” I lift one foot upward and stare down at the water crawling from underneath her bathroom door. “I swear to God, if you don’t open up right now I’m going in.”
Nothing.
Up until now I didn’t feel it. The fear that grips you by the throat and squeezes hard. I kick the locked door open and find her in the bathtub, naked, her head under the water. I run toward her, slipping a few times on the wet floor. Her
whole body has sunk into the water.
And there are no bubbles.
No bubbles.
She isn’t breathing.
“Gwen, Gwen, Gwen, sweetheart.” My voice is foreign to my ears. I sound…frantic. “You’re okay. Come on. Let’s get you out of here. Come on.” I grab her by the hair before dragging her out. I lay her on the floor and am actually stupid enough to worry about how cold it must feel against her skin before I dial 911. My fingers are shaking. I can’t look at her. Not because she is naked. Because she is blue.
After I hang up on the girl from the emergency center, I roll my older sister to the side, trying to get her to throw up some of the water she’s swallowed. Then I roll her back onto her back and try to administer CPR to her dead body. I don’t cry. I’m not even all that sad at this point. I am mad. Fucking furious, to be honest.
“What the hell did you do that for? Fuck!” I roar.
“Shit, Gwen. You don’t look hurt. You’ll be okay.”
“Gwen. Gwen. Gwen. Gwen.”
The ambulance arrives a few minutes later. I watch from the corner of the living room as they zip her into a body bag. It dawns on me that I have no one to call. No one to share this with. I bet my parents won’t be surprised if I call them.
“She looked…fine,” I say to one of the paramedics.
Even to my own ears, this sounded crazy. My sister wasn’t fine. My sister was a heroin addict. She was a junkie. She’d been looking gaunt, malnourished, and wild-eyed for a long time now. From about three months after she followed me to Sin City, to be exact.
“Looks like an overdose,” the young, pimple-suffering man says, his voice apologetic. “I think she suffered from cardiac arrest, but you’ll know more after they send you the report. I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Yeah.” I scrub my face with my palm. “Me too.”
I go back home, get into my own bathtub, and stare at the tiles. I thought I had processed it, but I was wrong.
The penny drops two weeks later. I do well in those weeks. So well. Make all the necessary funeral arrangements, notify my parents and our friends, have people come over—colleagues, friends, ex-lovers—and help me set everything up.
Misbehaved Page 19
