It’s two weeks later when I drive down the strip when it finally hits me.
The light is red. I look out the window of my car and see Ryan Anderson crossing the street with a random chick that looks like a typical drug addict. Smeared makeup, swollen eyes, and scrawny body wrapped in a mini skirt.
His arm is flung over her shoulder, and he is laughing and whispering something into her ear.
He did it.
He did it to Gwen, and now he is going to do it to this girl.
She is so out of it, she would let him get away with anything, I know.
The next morning, I hand my resignation to Headmaster Charles and decide to dedicate the upcoming months to making sure Ryan Anderson will never ruin another life again.
“Keep your resignation to yourself.” Headmaster Charles pushes the letter I wrote across his desk. “Let’s talk about it next year. You might feel differently.”
“I will never feel differently. I can’t work. I can’t concentrate.” I can’t breathe. My sister raised me, goddammit. And what have I done in return? Dragged her down a rabbit hole of drugs, alcohol, and bad choices.
“You will, Mr. James.” The left corner of Headmaster Charles’ lip slides up in half a smirk. “When you’re ready, it’ll happen. There’s a lot to look forward to in life, even if it doesn’t seem that way right now. Always remember that, hmm?”
The screen door whines as it swings back and forth, and how long has it been since this house has seen a handyman? I want to get her out of here. I was goddamn close to doing that, too.
Pacing on her porch, I inwardly convince myself that I can reason with her. Remington is a smart girl. Surely, after I give her the whole truth, she will understand.
But then I remember that Remington is like a live wire. She’s emotional and bold, and she doesn’t do anything half-assed. She feels everything so much deeper than I—or most people, I suspect—and that’s why she’s so hurt. She’s been badly burned by almost everyone in her life, and I’m no better.
I knock on the front door—it’s locked, thank God—three times, lose my patience before the second is over, and ring the doorbell endless times. It’s not working. Big surprise. I wait a few seconds, then knock again.
Nothing.
I know she’s here. It’s creepy as hell, but I can feel her. Like I know she’s in a classroom even before I walk through the door.
“Remington!” I shout, not giving two shits about the fact that anyone can hear and see me. I’m way past killing my career. At this stage I’m pretty much dancing all over the corpse of it. “Open the door, sweetheart. Come on.”
The worst part is that I can actually hear her sniffling. She is crying. I can peek and look at her through her window, but I’d like to think I have more dignity than that. “Remi,” I say, now more softly.
Nothing.
“I have news on Christian. I know you want to know,” I lie. Jesus Christ. I am a fucking douchebag, but I can’t help it. After a few seconds, I hear her padding barefoot on the floor, and the door opens. She looks like hell. Pretty as spring, because it’s still Remi, but still.
“How is he doing?” She hugs the door to her chest, like it can protect her from me. Like she needs to be protected. I shake my head.
“Sorry, I don’t actually know. I just needed you to come here. I…”
As I start talking, she tries to slam the door in my face. I’m quick to sneak an arm and stop her—fuck, that hurts—and push the door open as I walk in without her permission. Technically, she can call the police. Logically, she should. But I’m taking some risks here in the name of whatever the hell it is that we have.
“You’re a liar, a cheater, and an asshole,” she spits in my face, pushing me away. Her eyes look sunken. Like she’s been crying for hours. “I trusted you, Mr. James! It may not mean a lot to you, but to me? To me it was everything.” She grabs an empty vase on her dining table and throws it across the room, and I feel a stab of pain, because I know that she’s the only one here who would ever think to put flowers on the table. She wants everyone to think she’s hardened and callous, but there’s still a girl in there who, no matter how much life throws at her, still tries to make her dark world just a little bit brighter with some goddamn flowers. The vase misses me by an inch. I take a step toward her. She holds up a finger at me.
“Don’t. You’ve lost your right to come anywhere near me. I will call the police right now if you don’t leave. I don’t even care enough to ask what fucked-up obsession you have with my stepbrother. I just want you out of my life. We have one more semester to tolerate each other. Don’t come near me.”
“You know that’s not possible,” I say coldly, taking another step in her direction, knowing exactly what I’m doing and how dangerous it is, and still taking the risk. “I can’t stay away from you.”
“You can, and you will. From me. From my family. From everything I care about and you want to destroy.”
“Remi, I did this for you.”
“Mr. James,” she enunciates, like we’re not personal anymore. Like we never happened. Like I didn’t study every single curve in her body and saw her bewildered expression as her body let go and combusted with pleasure in my hands. “I hope you don’t believe the bullshit you’re feeding me, because I sure as hell don’t.”
“Ryan is dangerous,” I tell her. She is shaking all over and hugging her midriff. I want to make her pain go away, but I know that I can’t, so I continue. “Ryan is the reason my sister died. She overdosed on the shit your brother gave her. He fucked her and he drugged her and ultimately he killed her.” There is no emotion in my voice.
“Liar!” She lunges in my direction and pushes me away. “You’re lying. Get out!”
“I was afraid he would do it to someone else.” I stay rooted in place, staring at her dead in the eyes. “And then I met you, Remington, and that trickle of fear became paralyzing when I realized his next casualty may well be the woman I’m falling in love with.”
No truer words were spoken, and yet, I don’t find my truth particularly liberating or comfortable. I find it oddly infuriating. Maddening, even. Because this wasn’t supposed to happen, and yet it did, despite my best efforts.
I fell in love with a girl who felt like a woman and made me feel like a man instead of a ghost.
I fell in love, at the beginning with an idea, in the middle with her curves, and in the end, with the whole package.
I fell in love with my student, and now I am standing here, asking her to sin. Asking her to do the thing I would argue against and frown upon. Asking her to love me back.
Remi throws her head back and laughs before shaking it somberly.
“Get out.”
“Remington…”
“No. Get the fuck out, Pierce.” She stalks to the door and opens it wide. “Get out of my house, out of my life, out of my head. You’ve had enough time to tell me all of this about Ryan. You had the time to warn me. You had the time to explain yourself. You had every opportunity to make this right, or let me decide for myself if I wanted to be in a relationship with someone who relentlessly pursued the persecution of my brother. You’re a lawyer, for fuck’s sake. You know what he’s facing. Don’t tell me you don’t recognize how bad you’ve hurt me.”
“I know. And let me assure you…”
“No. You’re done assuring me. Out,” she says again, and this time I really have no choice. I can’t force her to listen to me. “You’re done here. Please don’t make it awkward at school and make me do something that would jeopardize your career.” She says that in the flattest voice I’ve ever heard her produce before adding, “And that goes for your plans to take Ryan down, too. I have leverage over you, Mr. James. I strongly suggest you leave my family alone and focus on your own. Go find another stupid girl to ruin.”
Harsh words from a girl who knows what a harsh life feels like.
I give her one last look to see if there’s room in her heart to give me anothe
r chance. There isn’t. Her face is hard, and her quivering lower lip is the only indication that maybe she once loved me, too.
“Out.” The word falls from her lips more quietly now.
I leave, without the girl.
Without the evidence against Ryan Anderson.
And most importantly, without my soul.
Christian leaves the hospital two days later with a broken eye socket and a fractured nose. He looks like how I feel. A complete wreck. But as I dote on him in his room, I realize that it’s not about me right now. I copied all the homework he missed out on from my notebooks and bought him his favorite quinoa and avocado salad from the bakery across the road from our school. I sit on the edge of his bed and tell him about all the latest gossip—leaving Benton out of it, of course—when he groans as he shifts in his place.
“Remi?”
“Yeah?”
“How do you think school is going to feel for me for the rest of the year?” His voice is small. He is referring to outing Benton—no matter what happened between them, I think he knows that he was wrong—and to the fact he is now the most hated person amongst the jocks. I want to tell him that it’s going to be okay, but the truth is, he is probably the biggest outcast in our year other than me. Even though Benton Herring was quick to sweep the gay rumors about him under the carpet—he said Christian has had a weird fixation with him ever since he moved to Riverside High and that he had to turn him down a few times—I know that the story is far from over.
“Honestly? I think we should both invest in a good pepper spray.” I sigh.
“At least we have each other.” Christian brushes my dark hair, and I try to smile, but it is hard to look at him, with the purple and green rings around his eyes, the yellow of the fading bruises on his cheeks, without wanting to cry. I also want to cry simply because my heart is broken into a thousand different pieces, and I have no idea how to mend it back. I’m not even sure I want to. Part of me believes that I deserve all this pain. I did something wrong. I did my teacher. Maybe I should pay the price.
“You’ll always have me.” I take his hand and lace my fingers through his, reassuring him.
“So, what’s up with Mr. James? Are you guys still seeing each other?” He perks up in his bed, scooting upwards to a sitting position. I smile through the pain, because that’s what life has taught me.
“Not really.”
“Why?”
“He wasn’t who I thought he was.”
“And why is that?”
“I thought, if anything, I’d be his downfall…” I say, biting my lower lip and picking at my chipped, black nail polish. “Turns out he was mine.”
It’s been two weeks since Pierce appeared at my door begging for me to listen to him. Begging for forgiveness. Two weeks, in which I tried to convince myself that in time, it would feel better. That it can’t possibly hurt that bad. That life moves on. That he was just a teenage crush.
I see him walking down the hallway, and time stops. He walks in slow motion, at least in my eyes, but maybe it’s because when it comes to him, everything else fades away.
He doesn’t look at me. He doesn’t talk to me. I’m trying to convince myself that he is giving me the space I demanded. The space I blackmailed him into giving me, threatening to tell the world about us. But the truth is, deep inside, I am scared and hurt and desperate. What if he got over me? What if he forgot all about me? What if I was nothing but a quick fuck?
I think about our time together more than I should—every waking moment, and then I dream about it in my sleep. And even though it’s only been two weeks, every day, it’s becoming a little harder to imagine exactly how his touch felt against my skin. How he smelled when we made love in his bed. How he tasted when we fucked on his office desk.
“Remington?” I hear a voice calling out my name and look up. It’s Pierce. I swallow hard.
“Yes?” My back straightens at his voice. We’re in the hallway. He looks amazing in one of his sharp suits.
“Follow me.” His voice is so distant and faraway. Like he is talking to me from the other side of the country. I hate it. I nod faintly and move in his direction, and he leads me to Headmaster Charles’ office.
“Am I in trouble?” I ask behind his back as we walk past students, cheerleaders, and the commotion of lunch hour.
“Not at all.” He takes a sharp right, exactly like I knew he would, and we’re standing outside Headmaster Charles’ office.
“What is going on?” My heart rate escalates, and I wonder if it can spontaneously burst from everything that’s happening here. Has he told Headmaster Charles about us? Does he want me back? What is happening here?
“I’ve noticed that you haven’t fill out any applications to colleges yet.” He strangles the handle of the door leading to the office.
I shake away my disbelief and try to calm down. “Yeah. No. I didn’t have time.”
Riverside makes you log your history of applications and acceptance letters to their online system so they can send potential colleges all the necessary documents and reference letters. My file was blank, as I didn’t have time or the right mindset to actually make any academic plans.
“Well, I took it upon myself to set you up with a few options.” He knocks on the door softly, then opens it, and behind Headmaster Charles’ desk is a woman I don’t know. She is young, maybe mid-twenties, and she is wearing a suit and a sweet smile, her blonde hair in a tight bun.
“Hello there, Remington. I’m Holly Tate.” She reaches with her arm for a handshake, but I don’t make a move. “I’m an external adviser. My job is to find students their best fits for college. Mr. James spoke very highly of you. I can’t make any promises, but I can try to give you a few shortcuts to your colleges of interest once we look at your grades and electives.”
I want to laugh and cry at the same time. He wants to look after me and secure my future after I threatened him and kicked him out of my house. Jesus. Only Pierce James would do something like this.
But I don’t want his generosity. I don’t want his help. I want to forget we’ve ever happened and move on.
“No, thank you,” I hear myself say. Holly’s smile melts on her face, and it gives me a little solace. “But I appreciate the offer.”
I turn around and walk away. I hope he will follow me, but when he doesn’t, I’m not surprised.
Everything is changing. We are changing. The only thing that’s not changing is my family life. No. That stays put. Like a bad habit you can’t seem to shake.
Dad is on the road again, with nothing but a quick text telling me that we’d work it out when he got back.
Ryan is back to disappearing and standing me up when he needs to be picking me up from school, sporadically giving me lunch and school money.
And the reality of my destiny is clear as the sky from Piece’s boathouse on Lake Mead.
There’s nothing to see here.
All the interesting, beautiful things are happening to other people.
Gwen always used to say that hope is a contagious disease. If you’re not careful, you can catch it. I used to laugh it off at the time. I didn’t have hope because I didn’t need it. I had her. I had friends. I had a glowing future ahead of me. I saw the world through rose-colored glasses. I thought I had it all.
Today, I have nothing.
I don’t have any friends. I mean, I do. Of course, I do. But not real ones. I’ve pushed them all away.
I don’t have a glowing future ahead of me. I have a mediocre job I hold onto because I don’t want to leave this place.
I don’t have Gwen.
And I don’t have Remi.
That leaves me with spare time on my hands, so today I decide to do something productive with my life. I log on to my Amazon account and order what I wanted to order for her the day she showed up on my doorstep, soaking wet, telling me it was her birthday. Then, I drive to the nearest Safeway and buy Shelly her usual groceries fit for a kindergartener.
I’m trying to keep my world moving for no reason other than Remington Stringer. It occurs to me, as I walk down the aisles of the too-bright supermarket, that I have nothing to lose or to gain outside the game of winning her back.
After I’m done paying for everything, I drive over to Shelly’s place. I know she’ll be there, because unless she’s scoring, she’s at home. And last time I saw her, she was dope sick. Which means she hadn’t used in a while. Hopefully, she was able to keep that up.
If she is home, no issues.
If she is scoring, I know exactly where she buys her drugs. On which street corners to look. And I know that even if I don’t find her, she’ll be back to her apartment as soon as she can to stick that needle into a vein.
When I get to her apartment building, it dawns on me that I haven’t been here in the longest time. Since Remington and I got together. Revisiting Shelly was always about revisiting Gwen. And Remington provided the distraction I needed in protecting a woman I could actually save. I’m not sure Shelly can be saved. I doubt she even wants to be.
I knock on Shelly’s door two times, the loaded paper bags at my feet. I hear music from the other side of the door. Breaking Benjamin is on full blast. She wouldn’t be able to hear me even if I screamed to her from the other side.
Staring at this door takes me back to that time I looked at their bathroom door when I found Gwen. Everything looked so ordinary…until it wasn’t.
I decide on a whim to walk in. She always locks her door even though she lives in a dumpster not even a homeless person would rob. I walk in and examine the living room. Empty. The music comes from the bedroom. I dump the paper bags onto her small to non-existing kitchen counter. It’s already crammed with half-empty bottles of soda and torn chips bags. Then I proceed down the short, narrow hallway to knock on her door to make sure she’s still alive and breathing.
Misbehaved Page 20
