by Hart, Callie
And he’s so fucking right. Even if he didn’t tell me about Halliday.
* * *
“I heard she’s been transferred to some sort of mental facility. Margo, my neighbor? Her mom told my mom that she tried to drown herself in their pool last night. I mean, who does that?
“Who still hasn’t drained their pool.”
“It’s an indoor pool, dummy.”
I know exactly who the girls next to me are gossiping about, as I make my way into the locker rooms. Laurie Gulliver and Jade Prescott—both members of the Raleigh Sirens, girls Kacey used to haze back in the day, when she found it funny to terrorize the other cheerleaders to the point of nervous breakdown. It’s funny, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard them say so much in one go before. In the past, it was always, “Yes, Kacey.” “No, Kacey.” “Sorry, Kacey.” There was only one thing Kacey enjoyed more than giving those poor girls hell, and that was when she had one us do it instead. Me, Halliday, Zen, Melody: all of us are guilty of making these girls cry at one point in time or another.
They sound delighted that one of their previous tormentors might have been carted off to the loony bin, and I can’t say I blame them, really. We were fucking terrible to them. Zen’s the only one of us with an indoor pool, and all of Raleigh is still buzzing about her cat fight with Rosa Jimenez. Doesn’t take a detective to figure out that Laurie and Jade must be gossiping about her.
“She’s gonna have to shave her head, y’know. No way she’ll be able to pull that off. Her skull’s a weird shape,” Jade titters.
Laurie rolls her eyes. “Her head looked perfectly normal to me. Rosa left her with an inch of hair in a few places remember. I’m telling you, she’s going to show up at school today with a head full of the most expensive, amazing looking extensions and it’ll be like nothing ever happened. This kind of shit doesn’t stick to the Kacey Winters’ crew.”
“It stuck to Silver,” Jade counters.
It’s then that they notice me behind them, pulling my Raleigh sweater and sweatpants out of my gym bag. The girls fall ominously silent. I’m used to overhearing all kinds of shit about myself, so I’m not going to be losing sleep over Jade’s off-the-cuff remark. At the end of the day, she’s right—the shit really did stick to me. I don’t think the girls have ever been caught so blatantly talking about me, or Zen, or anyone else for that matter, though, and they don’t seem to know what to do with themselves.
I pull off my shirt, quickly replacing it with a Raleigh High School Sirens tee, wanting to get dressed as quickly as possible. Technically, I shouldn’t be wearing the Siren’s shirt—I haven’t been on the squad for a long time now—but it doesn’t matter. A second later and my Raleigh sweater is hiding the article of clothing from sight anyway.
Laurie and Jade still haven’t started talking again; the silence in our little corner of the locker room is growing more awkward by the second. Eventually I can’t take it anymore and I turn around to face them. “Zen won’t get extensions. She’s too proud to cover up what happened. She’ll shave her head,” I tell them. “And she’d never try and drown herself. It’s not her style. If Zen was going to kill herself, she’d be a little more theatrical.” I think about it for a second. “She’d probably hang herself. Somewhere public. She’d get a kick out of the fact that someone would have to find her swinging from a light fitting.”
The color drains from the girls’ faces. They look like they’ve seen a ghost. Both of them stare at me, eyes wide and unblinking as I continue to get ready, shimmying out of my jeans and donning my grey sweatpants. It isn’t until I’m doing up my sneaker laces that they dare breathe a word in my direction.
“With both Kacey and Zen out of school…” Jade begins. She has to look to Laurie to supply the rest of her sentence.
Laurie doesn’t seem all that happy to help out. “With both of them gone now, we were wondering…are you planning on trying out for the squad again?”
My head snaps up so fast I almost give myself whiplash. “I’m sorry?”
“The squad,” Jade says weakly. “There are two spots open now, and the girls on Kacey’s backup list, well…they kind of died in the...shooting…so…”
What the hell are they suggesting?
I shake my head a little, trying to understand. “I—Are you—” Nope. Still not making any sense. “Are you asking me if I’ll rejoin the Sirens?”
Jade and Laurie trade a wary look. Laurie’s the one who speaks. “I mean, we have all college acceptance letters based on our athletics records. If the squad doesn’t do well this year at the NCC, we can basically kiss our hopes of getting into a decent school goodbye. And you…well, you were never captain material...”
“Gee. Thanks.”
“Nothing personal,” Laurie adds quickly. “We’re not captain material either. But you were a great flyer and you always showed up for everything, made sure you gave it one hundred percent, and that’s what we need right now. Someone reliable who’ll do a good job.”
Jesus Christ, don’t bowl me over with flattery or anything. I’ve never received such a glowing recommendation before. “I don’t think so. I’ve got a lot going on right now. I don’t really have the time. What with guitar lessons, and, um, having to help out at home and all that.” I don’t even really know what excuse I’m giving them, only that I’m totally stunned they’d even ask me. Not long ago, they wouldn’t have acknowledged I was a living, breathing entity. Amazing how quickly things change. With Kacey gone, the head of this particular snake has been cut off, and the body no longer knows what to do with itself.
“Okay, well, if you change your mind…” Jade mumbles. “Also…” She casts her eyes down at her feet, picking nervously at one of her fingernails. “If you remember, could you please tell your boyfriend, um, thank you for…” She trails off, unable to finish.
“We were in the library that day,” Laurie says. Her voice is harsh. A little sharp. I recognize the anger in her tone for what it truly is—the only way she can talk about what happened without falling to pieces. “I saw the look on Leon’s face. He would have shot every single one of us if he’d had the chance. We’d all be dead now if Alex hadn’t tackled him.”
I nod, eyes flitting from one of the girls to the other, unsure how to proceed here. “Okay, well…if you want to thank him, maybe it would be better coming from you,” I suggest.
Jade snatches up her gym shoes, clutching them to her chest. She shakes her head violently from side to side. “I can’t. He’s terrifying.”
She pads away quickly in her socks, ponytail swinging wildly as she heads for the gym.
* * *
I’ve managed to sort through most of what happened with Jade and Laurie by the time I’ve showered and gotten dressed after volleyball. It was the shock of another student addressing me on purpose that did it. It’s been forever since I’ve spoken to any of my classmates in a normal, everyday way, that I couldn’t stop wondering when the hammer was going to drop. When they were going to laugh in my face. When they were going to start whispering behind their hands, giving me vicious sidelong looks caustic enough to strip paint.
The moment never arrived, though, and all through gym class, all I could think to myself was, ‘You cannot rejoin the Sirens. You cannot rejoin the Sirens. You cannot rejoin the Sirens.’
Trouble is, I’ve missed it. I’ve missed being on the squad more than anything else I lost during my great downfall. The Billy Joel-loving, Chuck Taylor-wearing, guitar-playing, badass version of me is kicking against the very idea that I might want to become a cheerleader again. It’s telling me that I’m better than that, and only vapid monsters place any stock in a cheerleader’s uniform. Another large part of me (that doesn’t listen to Billy Joel) knows that isn’t the case, though. There are plenty of girls on the cheer squad who aren’t brainless, vain dimwits who just want to flirt with boys. Some of the girls on the squad joined because they are actual athletes, and they love taking part in such a fun sport. I alw
ays envied those girls. I was never allowed to say it, of course, but they were the true stars of show.
I take my time brushing my hair, waiting for the hallways to clear before I leave the locker room. I have a free period next and a date with some text books in the library since Alex has History, so there’s no need to brave the rush of people all trying to make it to their next class on time.
You cannot rejoin the Sirens. You cannot rejoin the Sirens. You cannot rejoin the Sirens.
I’m repeating the mantra on repeat when I do finally make my exit. My phone buzzes in my back pocket, and I’m reaching to take it out when I see the door to the boy’s locker room swing open and someone emerges.
My blood is instantly ice-cold.
Jacob Weaving.
His bag is thrown over his shoulder, just the one strap, effortlessly cool-looking. Naturally, he’s wearing his letterman jacket. His blond hair is swept back in that douchey way that makes him look like he just came from an Abercrombie and Fitch photo shoot. I recognize that he’s handsome, the same way you look at the sky and register that it’s blue, but I’m also so repulsed by the sight of him at the same time that I almost double over and puke onto the hallway floor.
His blue eyes harden to steel when he sees me. “Well, if it isn’t Boudicca herself.” The venom in his voice is shocking; this isn’t the playful, slightly arrogant Jake he presents to the rest of the world, when there are other people around to see. This is the hate-filled, spiteful, evil piece of shit who had his friends pin me down while he tried to sink his increasingly flaccid dick inside me on a bathroom floor. I think, perhaps, I’m one of very few people who have ever met the real Jacob. I can’t decide if I feel sorry for him, having to hide how hideous he is as a person all the time, or if I’m grateful that he has the decency to do it.
I roll my shoulders back, setting my jaw, meeting his gaze with indifference; I know just how crazy it makes him when I don’t respond to him with fear. I learned that the hard way, with that cold bathroom tile digging into my back and Sam Hawthorne kneeling his bodyweight onto my wrists, so heavy it felt as though the bones would break at any moment. “I’m shocked,” I say coolly. “I had no idea you knew who Boudicca was.”
His warped sneer is ugly and makes his face barely recognizable. “Oh, I know exactly who she was. She interfered, stood up to the wrong people, and got herself killed for it.”
Hah. Makes sense that he would skip the part where the Romans invaded her city, killed her family, and she led the charge against them, rallying her people, and proceeded to make life a living nightmare for them, almost pushing the Romans out of London altogether before they finally caught and killed her. She was brave. A warrior. She was courageous and sought justice in the face of unbelievable odds, even though she knew she would ultimately die. If Jake wants to pick a figurehead for stupidity as a warning, then really, he picked the wrong woman. It’s an honor that he would compare me to Boudicca.
I shouldn’t have waited for everyone to get to class before leaving the locker rooms, because now the hallways are deserted. Jake smiles like the snake that he is when he realizes this. I have nowhere to go as he crosses the hallway to stand in front of me. “Jade Prescott’s boyfriend just told me she asked you to rejoin the Sirens,” he says. I hate myself for flinching when he reaches out and takes a piece of my hair, wrapping it thoughtfully around his fingers. I can’t help it, though. I am wired to recoil from him. I should have been wired that way from the beginning. It should have been obvious to anyone who looked close enough that Jake was a vile, cruel, despicable human being, but I didn’t know any better back then. I was too blinded by his looks to see him for what he was.
“Back away, Jake,” I snap, knocking his hand away. “After your performance in that music booth, quaking in your boots and pissing yourself at the smallest sound, I’d have thought you’d be more than willing to steer clear of me.”
His eyes are narrowed into murderous slits as he considers my face. His lips are parted and wet—a sight that would once have made me daydream about kissing him. It only reminds me of his mouth fastened around my nipple now, his teeth viciously grinding against the bud of my flesh. “What, you think I’m worried about you telling people I embarrassed myself? Pssshhh, come on, Silver. Don’t be ridiculous. We both know no one’ll believe you. They didn’t believe you the last time you opened that whore mouth of yours and tried to tattle on me, did they?”
I’m too hot. Too cold. My skin’s clammy, a nervous sweat breaking out down my back. It’s true. No one believed me when I went sobbing into Principle Darhower’s office. I wouldn’t let them call my parents. I wouldn’t let them call the police. The Raleigh High administration saw my unwillingness to report the ‘alleged’ crime to the authorities as a sign that I was making it all up. Never mind the bruises on my face…and the ones between my legs.
I draw in a shaky breath, aware that Jake is moving closer, but my mind is shuttering, my thoughts a whirlwind of panic. He’s quick, grabbing me by the back of my neck with a strong hand, and the next thing I know he’s jerking me forward, planting his mouth down on mine.
It only lasts a fraction of a second. A disgusting, terrifying moment when he’s kissing me, trying to force my mouth open, and I can’t pull myself free from his grasp. My reactions finally kick in, urging strength into my arms, and I shove against his chest, making him trip backward over his own feet, sending him stumbling into the middle of the hallway. “God, you really are stupid, aren’t you,” he hisses.
“You’re the one with the fucking death wish. What do you think Alex is going to do when I—”
He drops his bag. The sound of it clattering to the floor echoes down the corridor, but there’s no one around to hear it. I barely have time to take a step back before he’s charging me, his hand closing around my jaw, fingers digging into my cheeks, and he’s slamming the back of my head against the wall behind me. “I’m not worried about that dumb motherfucker, Silver. I’m not even slightly worried. Wanna know why?” He spits the words out so hard that a fleck of his saliva hits my top lip. “Moretti isn’t a concern to me, because you’re not going to breathe a word of this to him, or anyone else. I’ve been doing some research on your boyfriend, and he’s walking a very fine line. One wrong step and he’s gonna find himself behind bars for a very long time.”
“He hasn’t done anything wrong,” I grind out.
Jake’s breath reeks of stale coffee; my stomach turns when it hits my face. “Really? You sure about that? Has he told you about his boss’s affiliation with those Dreadnaught losers who run drugs down to Seattle? Hmm?” He cracks my head against the wall again and my vision splinters, shards of light dancing in front of my eyes. “Has he told you about the little midnight runs he goes on for Montgomery Cohen? Has he mentioned anything about that?” He laughs under his breath, the sound manic and unhinged. “Jesus, under normal circumstances, I’d have my father pin something on the bastard. Something that couldn’t be swept under the rug in a court of law, but I don’t even fucking need to this time. There’s plenty of legit ammunition to hand. So you, Silver Parisi, you are gonna keep you dirty little mouth shut, and I am gonna do whatever the hell I like. Understand?”
The pain in the back of my head is breathtaking.
“Do. You. Understand?” Jake spits. Maybe I nod. I don’t think I do. Perhaps it’s my dumb silence that Jake accepts as my agreement. He smiles broadly, flashing his perfectly straight, white teeth, and ice flows through my veins. “Good. Now that we’ve got that ironed out, why don’t you and I find somewhere a little more private to talk, hmm? Wouldn’t want someone stumbling across us and coming to the wrong conclusion now, would we?”
He fists my hair, using all his strength to pull me forward and then he smashes my head back against the wall one last time. A scream builds in the back of my throat, but I’m so dazed, so stunned by the fireworks exploding in my skull that I can’t force it out. My legs barely keep me upright as Jake, still holding
onto a fist full of my hair, begins to drag me toward the door of the boy’s locker rooms.
“N—no!” Even through the panic and the pain, I know Jake can’t be allowed to drag me through that door. If he does, he’ll be able to take his time with me, do whatever he pleases, and no one will find us for hours. An electric current jolts me, bringing me back to my senses. All of the nights I’ve lain awake in my bed, wondering if I could have fought back harder in Leon’s bathroom, if I could have screamed louder, if I could done anything different to prevent what came next—all of those long hours come crashing down on me now, and I decide. There won’t be any room for doubt this time. I’ll kick, and scream, and gouge and bite. There’s no loud party to mask the noise I make today. I will use every last scrap and ounce of strength in my body before I allow him to humiliate and violate me again. I will fucking die before I let him touch me.
The roar builds deep down in my chest. I’m operating on sheer survival instinct as I drive my foot forward, using it to hook around Jake’s ankle, and then I’m pushing him forward, ramming him with every bit of momentum I can muster. He staggers, unbalanced, but he’s still standing, still holding onto me by my hair.
“Oh, Silver. Silver, Silver, Silver. Is that seriously the best you can do?” The mockery in his voice sends a wave of fury screaming through me, and something strange happens. I seem to step out of myself, distancing myself from what’s happening. I see him wrenching on my hair. I see the malice in his eyes, and the look of cold detachment in mine, and I witness as I pull my fist back and I drive it up into his perfect Abercrombie and Fitch fucking face.
His head rocks back, blood spraying from his nose, and his hand goes slack, releasing his hold on me. I seize the opportunity and throw another punch. This time, the blow lands on his jaw, and pain fires up my arm, burning in my wrist. My form might not have been the best but I had surprise on my side. Jake topples sideways, still very conscious but visibly a little stupefied by what I’ve done.
