I mean, that’s what I thought, but it felt like my mom was content to stay here regardless of the truth.
Ugh. Whatever. I needed to not focus on that and get my homework done. Try to get caught up. It’d probably take me a few weeks to fully get in the swing of things—and if I was honest, I wasn’t a straight-A student—but I had to try. I had to put my blinders on and focus on the matter at hand, and that was adjusting to Midpark, not digging where I didn’t belong.
My resolution to keep my nose out of it lasted an hour. We didn’t eat dinner until late usually; most nights Ollie was out until six-thirty or seven, and he was always served his food first, leaving Mom and I to eat whatever was left. When I pulled out my phone—one of those cheap phones, not an iPhone or Android—I was able to see it neared four-forty-five.
Well, I’d been studious for a long while, hadn’t I? I thought it was time for a short break.
And by break, I meant Googling.
I pulled up the internet and hit the search bar, my eyes glancing to my shut door before getting up from the desk and walking to the bed in the center of the room. Only the headboard rested against the wall, its other three sides jutting out. The room was big enough for it. I’d already kicked my boots off under the desk, but as I climbed onto the bed, I tore off my socks and flung them to the floor.
Laying on my stomach, I typed in Celeste Chambers and clicked on the first few articles that popped up in the News section. I scanned them fast, getting the gist of it. When she escaped, she was only seventeen, so the news outlet couldn’t cover her story in detail. There were no pictures of her, either. No recent ones. The latest report—dated not even six months ago—had tried to contact her and talk about her future, but the only quote was from Oliver Fitzpatrick, who’d said Celeste was trying to move on with her life and leave her past behind her.
Huh.
I set my phone down, my mind racing. That could mean so many different things. Maybe her mom and Celeste had decided being with Ollie wasn’t a good fit; maybe they got divorced. But if that was the case, wouldn’t the news outlets have gone after Celeste’s mother?
Her kidnapper was never found, although Celeste’s biological father was found mutilated in a place most authorities claimed was where she was held. Most now assumed it was her father who had kidnapped her, and even then, some even went so far as to blame Celeste for his death. She got out, killed him, took her vengeance, and disappeared. But then who helped her? Surely a seventeen-year-old girl wasn’t capable of such violence all by herself.
Bobbi’s words rang true—Midpark had a dark underbelly, one you wouldn’t realize if you were just scratching the surface.
Mutilated. That was not a word I ever wanted to read, much less think about someone from this very town being. It was such a harsh, bloody word.
What if it was Ollie? He seemed like a nice enough guy, but he was quiet, closed-off. There was something hiding behind his tired blue eyes that I couldn’t place, and that bothered me. I liked to think I could read people. It was a good skill to have in life.
Living with someone who was capable of such slaughter…I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to put my mom at risk either, even if she liked the job. Even if it put a roof over our heads, cut down on the bills, and still paid her a salary she could shore away and save. I just couldn’t do it; could you blame me?
Of course, this was all me hypothesizing. I had no proof that Ollie was involved in anything.
Proof. I had to get proof, knowledge that one way or another would put this matter to rest.
But how?
Chapter Six – Jaz
Bobbi and I made plans to meet next week after school to practice the songs we were learning in choir. We had a concert in less than a month, and whatever I was—alto, soprano, whatever—was still up in the air. I refused to really sing in class, kind of humming along with the girls around me.
I had that to deal with, and also a test in world history next week, which Archer was being kind and letting me borrow his notebook to copy tonight. That blondie was a cutie. If I wasn’t careful, I might just fall for his dimpled smiles.
Now that it was lunchtime, I was a bit hungrier than I was yesterday. I wasn’t letting the stares affect me as much, though maybe there weren’t that many stares to begin with. Today I wore flared jeans and a longer shirt. Maybe I fit in more with my outfit? Or maybe my newness was already wearing off. I hoped the latter.
Fortunately, I did not come across that blonde chick again, though there were still a few hours left in the day, so I should really bite my tongue.
After grabbing my lunch, I went to the cafeteria, energized and ready. Should I sit with the same kid again? Vaughn. He was attractive, in the dark, brooding and dangerous kind of way. The tattoos on his hands were a little much, but I supposed if he came from money, he probably had a family business to fall back on. There weren’t that many places out there who’d hire a young employee with hand and knuckle tattoos.
Must be nice, to be able to do what you wanted when you wanted, all because you came from wealth.
Mom and I weren’t exactly poor, but we weren’t rolling around in the dough. I always had a fit of tiny jealousy toward those who had both parents together and those who could afford the latest phone and newest gadgets.
Just like yesterday, the cafeteria was bustling with students, munching and chatting away, having a good old time. I felt a little lonely, looking at them having such fun times with each other. I had friends before but…well, it was strange, but it didn’t feel real. It felt like, my whole life, I’d been slowly putting up my walls, as if waiting for my life to come crashing down.
And it did. It came crashing down the moment my mom told me we were moving at the drop of a hat, right after turning eighteen.
It wasn’t fair.
I didn’t hate her for it, but I was a bit resentful of what these kids had that I didn’t.
The only wide-open table was, yet again, the one with Vaughn. Had no choice yet again, unless I wanted to be better acquainted with a bathroom stall. Since that wasn’t an option, and because I was me, I marched over to him and sat down—unlike yesterday, I didn’t steer clear of him. I sat right across from him, tossing my lunch down and pulling out the chair, aware that everyone nearby was watching.
If me sitting by the loner kid shocked these guys, just imagine how continuously horrified they’d be if I kept doing it day after day.
Vaughn merely watched me sit down with his dark, mysterious eyes. Or maybe that was just me attributing more to him than I should. He seemed like the mysterious type, the kind of guy you could never really know what went on in his head.
His dark hair was black and somewhat greasy, its top lengths sticking straight up. The sides of his head were cut shorter, to the point where his hairline seemingly faded away once it reached his neck. He wore a black shirt, along with dark jeans. I didn’t have any classes with him, but I could imagine that he constantly lounged around, looking bored.
Hell, he looked bored right now, staring at me.
“What?” I asked. “Do you have a problem with me sitting here today?” I sounded weirdly confrontational, which was so not how I wanted to sound. Maybe it was the way those dark eyes pinned me to my seat, how much I wanted to squirm when I saw his lips thin and a slight frown cross his face.
I’d gotten him to smile yesterday; what was with the switch? Was I some bore now?
“Not at all,” Vaughn said. “Don’t let the face fool you. I might look murderous, but that doesn’t mean I always am.” He pushed around the food on his tray—today was chicken nuggets and fries.
They…they actually looked kind of good.
And then my mind snapped back to reality, at what he just said. “So you’re only sometimes murderous?” With what I’d found out about Celeste Chambers, I kind of had murder on the brain. Not actually going out and killing someone, but…what would it take for someone to snap and dismember someone else?
I just…no. God no. Ugh. A shiver crept up my spine as I pictured what the crime scene must’ve looked like, and I fought to not let it show.
“Occasionally,” Vaughn spoke, giving me a slow, seductive smile. “I think we all are, depending on the day.” The way he spoke about it, as if he had first-hand experience being murderous…
Or maybe that was just my mind being paranoid.
Snap out of it, Jaz, I told myself. Be cool, be normal. Basically, be anything but yourself.
Easy.
Easier said than done, that was.
“Well, personally I’ve never been murderous,” I said, shrugging as I unrolled my lunch.
“Then you haven’t been pushed enough.” Vaughn cocked his head, giving me the side-eye.
“Not to change the subject, but what do you know about Celeste Chambers?” When I spoke her name, I lowered my voice, not wanting everyone else to overhear. Then again, if that blonde chick knew I’d gotten out of Ollie’s car yesterday—thank God he didn’t offer to drive me today—the whole school might know.
Vaughn’s dark brows furrowed. “Aren’t you new here? Why are you so interested in something that happened years ago? Celeste is old news now. You, Jaz, are the new news.” He actually picked up a fry and ate it—the first time I’d seen him eat. He didn’t seem overly muscular, but he was lean. He had to work out, and eating the stuff the kitchen put out wasn’t exactly a healthy choice.
Not that I sat there ogling his arms. Which I didn’t…much.
“I am,” I relented, “but I’ve heard some things and I just want to know the truth. She escaped her kidnapper and came back?”
“Yeah,” Vaughn spoke, flattening his hands on the table, allowing me to see the tattoos on them. The guy actually had hate and pain written across his knuckles, along with some kind of thick black tribal design on the rest of them. Hmm. No wonder everyone else steered clear of him. Didn’t notice those particular tattoos yesterday. “And then she was gone like two months later.”
In two months she was gone again? As in disappeared? Surely the news would’ve been all over that, so there had to be more to it.
“She disappeared again, or she left Midpark?” I asked, slowly lifting a cracker to my mouth. I really wanted to snatch one of his chicken nuggets, but that would’ve been going a little too far, doing too much, too soon. Vaughn and I weren’t BFFs.
His lips curled into a smile. “She just vanished. She stopped coming to school, and that was the last anyone has heard of her. Everyone assumed she needed to start fresh, especially with what happened to some of the other kids here.”
Bobbi had mentioned some incidents, but at the time, I hadn’t sought to clarify. Now I needed to know, so I asked, “What happened to the other kids?”
“There was a guy, Axel Redmand, who got his hands cut off. They say his hands were never found, meaning whoever did it probably kept them,” Vaughn spoke, still somehow keeping the smile, even though his tale was making me queasy.
Someone cut a kid’s hands off and kept them? Just…what? How was that even something that could cross someone’s mind?
“And then, of course, there was Alice,” he spoke her name lightly. “Her car hit a tree, and afterward…she was never the same. People pointed fingers at Celeste, blaming her for everything. Both Alice and Axel had gotten into some confrontations with her. I was a freshman at the time, so I didn’t pay much attention, but everyone around here knew the rumors.”
So these terrible things happened, and everyone blamed Celeste? Why? Because she was an outsider, because she’d been away for years?
What if she did do them? Leaving after things like that…it kind of painted her in a bad light.
And then another idea came to me—what if Celeste didn’t do them, but she had them orchestrated? What if she had help?
I was so lost in my own head that I couldn’t say anything; Vaughn however said, “Why are you so curious about what happened years ago?”
How could I explain it all without sounding absolutely nuts? Normally I wasn’t paranoid, but there was something about Ollie and the story of Celeste that set me on edge, something I didn’t like. I didn’t know what that was, but it made me uneasy all the same.
“It’s a long story,” I said, fiddling with another cracker. “I wish I could find out the truth about what happened to her.” If she’d left, great. Her and her mom were incognito somewhere else. If she and her mom were buried in the backyard, then my mom and I would skedaddle ourselves the fuck out of here.
Vaughn studied me, and I wasn’t sure I liked the way his black eyes zeroed in on my face, how they seemed to look over every curvature there, how his gaze dropped to my chin. Or was it my mouth? Was Vaughn staring at my mouth? I honestly couldn’t tell.
If he was…bad boys weren’t necessarily my thing, but it kind of gave me a certain thrill.
“I’ll let you in on a little secret around here,” he said, leaning forward and resting his forearms on the table before his tray of nuggets. “The rich don’t go digging for dirt themselves. They have someone else do it.”
“Like a spy?” was what my brilliant mouth said.
Vaughn actually chuckled at that—and I almost hated how dark and low the sound was. It was a chuckle that I might just hear in my dreams. “I suppose, if you want to be fancy, but there are lots of ways. Theoretically, you could get anyone to do anything, as long as you have some blackmail.”
This guy was talking about blackmail so nonchalantly, as if he dealt in this shit all the time. What had I gotten myself into? Who the hell was I sitting with? How could he say half of the stuff he said seriously?
“Or, if you have enough money, you can always hire someone else to do the digging,” Vaughn added, giving me a sly grin, as if he knew how much he’d unsettled me by bringing up blackmail.
Did he have blackmail on other people? Did he use it?
I forced myself to swallow, trying to sound as normal as possible as I asked, “Like a private investigator?”
“As long as you have the money, you can pay someone to do anything.”
That also sounded ominous…or maybe that was simply because my mind was running a mile a minute with everything he’d told me. It wasn’t like I had the money to hire a PI, but…that was more likely than blackmail.
Maybe I could try PI-ing myself. Maybe I could sneak around the house at night? No, that would probably only end up in me getting caught red-handed, and knowing my mom, she’d somehow know something was off with me if I tried to brush her off in the few hours right after school to do it.
Ollie was having some fundraiser event this weekend. Most of the house would be off-limits to the guests, and I was already told I’d have to stay upstairs in my room…but what if I didn’t stay in my room? What if I used that time to snoop while my mom acted the maid and kept offering the rich folks champagne or whatever the hell it was they’d be drinking?
Maybe I’d give it a try. Or maybe I should just give up and let it be.
How could I sit back and let it be, though, when something was clearly wrong with this situation? Something had happened with Celeste and his second wife, and that didn’t even mention his first family. Ollie was hiding something, and if that something would put my mom and I in danger, we had every right to know.
“I assume you do have the money, don’t you?” Vaughn’s voice cut into my thoughts, and I merely blinked at him, too startled to say anything.
Had my face given away my not-so-rich status?
“Of course I do,” I finally said after regaining myself. “I wipe my ass with money. Don’t you?”
Again, he chuckled, and again, I hated myself for liking the sound.
This one…this one might just get me into a whole lot of trouble if I let him.
Chapter Seven – Archer
Things were happening that I knew shouldn’t. It was only a matter of time until everything blew up in my face, but I couldn’t help it. It was like, the moment I saw her, I knew.
I knew she was different. I knew I liked her, even though I shouldn’t.
I really, really shouldn’t, given the current state of my life, but that’s how things seemed to go. Life kept kicking me while I was down. Someday I hoped to get back on my feet again.
It was Friday, and she was coming over to my house after school. We had a test next week to study for. I’d given her my notes to copy, which she did earlier in the week, but I couldn’t help but let slip the fact that I’d be glad to help her study. Make notecards or whatever it was people did while studying.
And…Jaz had actually agreed. The academics were harder here than they were at her old school, and she wanted to do her best. She’d told me she needed help, and I…I had been too stunned at her acceptance to say much of anything.
It took a little finagling, because I’d already had plans this afternoon, but luckily I was able to push those plans to tomorrow. This afternoon would be solely about me helping Jaz and catching her up. Nothing else.
I couldn’t let it become anything else.
My brain was logical here; it knew nothing good would come from it, and yet, later that afternoon, when I saw her exiting the building, my body started to heat up in spite of the chill outside. I stood near my car, watching as she crossed the parking lot and headed straight to me. Her nose was a little pink from the cold, but she was just as gorgeous as I remembered her being earlier.
The kind of gorgeous you couldn’t fight. The kind of pretty you couldn’t deny. She was worlds above everyone else here, and the sad thing was she probably didn’t even know it.
Her face lit up when she saw me, a wide smile growing on her face. A smile like that could stop anyone in their tracks and make you rethink your whole life.
Damn it. I was smitten, somehow. I liked this girl a whole lot more than I should. Really, I should take a step back. This could only end badly for the both of us.
Feisty: A High School Bully Romance (Midpark High Book 1) Page 4
