by Hart, Callie
Good.
The smart thing to do would be to run, but I’m not thinking clearly. I clamber up on top him, straddling his chest, and I bring my fists down on his head, putting everything I’ve got behind the punches. The skin across my knuckles splits. Pain and sheer insanity cycle around my body, pushing me on, encouraging me to keep on hitting him. Jake tries to grab hold of my wrists. He manages to grab one of them—my left—but I still have my right free. I clench my fist extra tight and drive it down one last time. Jake lets out a strangled shout, and then I’m flying backward away from him, skidding across the other side of the hallway. He’s kicked me off him. I sit up quickly, ready to launch myself at him, but he’s not even looking at me. He’s propping himself up on one hand, blotting at his nose with the back of his hand. His letterman jacket is covered in blood, as is the front of his white t-shirt.
For a second, he stares down at the back of his hand, at the blood slick on his skin, wearing an expression of abject confusion. How many times has Jacob Weaving been punched in the face before? I’m betting not very many. Nowhere near enough times, that’s for sure. Well, I just upped his tally by a good twenty times or so.
I’m bracing for the explosion. It’s coming any second. Jake’s going to jump to his feet and fly at me. He’s going to fucking kill me when he gets his hands on me. But then…
Down the hallway, a door opens and Mr. French peers down the hall, squinting at us. “Hey! What the hell are you two doing? Stay right there!”
Jake and I stare at one another. A message of mutual hatred passes between us, so thick and foul that it chokes the life out of me. Jake breaks the exchange first, baring his blood-coated teeth at me as he scrambles to his feet and bolts in the opposite direction. I’m unsurprised; there’s no way he’d want to get hauled to Darhower’s office for fighting, given who he was fighting, and the fact that he definitely looks like he came off worse.
I don’t give a shit if I get hauled over the coals in front of Darhower. It’s hardly going to damage my reputation any, but Jake’s pride won’t allow such a thing to happen. His footsteps ring out down the hall as he runs toward the science block, and a dead weight settles in my stomach.
This thing between me and Jake, it just escalated up to an eleven. No way he’s going to let it lie now. No way in hell. He’ll be after my blood soon enough. Revenge to a wronged member of the Weaving family is a prerequisite of the highest order.
I’m not as weak as I once was. Maybe I’m fired up from actually getting the better of him just now but fuck it. If Jacob wants to retaliate, then I say so be it. And the sooner the better.
I look up, and Mr. French is standing over me with his hands on his hips. He’s disapproval radiates off him like heat from a fire. “I think you and I had better have a talk.”
16
ALEX
Ben: I don’t wanna see Louie’s Great Adventure on Friday. I want to watch Dread Station II. Can we?
It’s my night to pick up Ben and take him out for dinner. Thankfully the roads through to Bellingham have been cleared properly, otherwise I’d missed my night, and I doubt Jackie would let me take another one to make up for it. She’s too fucking spiteful to be that understanding.
Me: I thought you liked those animated movies? Dread Station’s a horror flick. And it’s the second part in the story, dude. You won’t know what’s going on.
Ben: I’ve already seen the first movie. It was awesome. Blood and guts everywhere. All of my other friends have already seen the new one. Please!
I’m so focused on my phone that I almost walk into one of the guys from the football team. He growls, begging me to make the wrong move so he can start something. I’d love the opportunity of a punch-up—there’s some kind of fire zipping around inside me today that’s hard to ignore—but I’m on my way to meet Silver by reception and she sounded like she needed me to hurry.
Me: All right. Fine. But we’re gonna have to sneak you in. If anyone asks, you’re fifteen and you have a growth defect. And you can’t tell Jackie. If you have nightmares, I don’t want her calling me at three in the morning to scream at me. Deal?
Ben: You’re the best!
I’m already regretting giving in to him. Last summer, less than six months ago, for fuck’s sake, the kid was content to go and watch whatever Disney or Pixar movie had just come out. We’d split a bucket of popcorn and smash ice cream into our faces, and he’d gurgle like a drain he’d laugh so hard.
Now, he’s shot up three inches out of nowhere, wants to watch people flay each other’s skin off and perv on half-naked chicks. What the hell was I like at eleven? I was tougher than Ben, that’s for sure, but I wasn’t really interested in watching movies. I was only interested in surviving, and having to defend yourself at every turn, physically and mentally, will make a kid grow up faster than usual.
I put my phone back into my jacket pocket just as I turn left into the small corridor where Karen’s administration office is located. As gatekeeper to Principal Darhower’s domain, Karen is strict about who she allows to walk past her desk. The balding fuck in the office at the end of the hall doesn’t take kindly to people banging on his door without checking in with her first, so she watches everyone and everything like a hawk.
“H…A…W…K…”
“Yes, yes, I know how to spell Hawkins. Just…sign there on the bottom of the…yes, that’s right. Now, you’ll need to take these papers home for your parents or your legal guardian to sign.”
Oh, come the fuck on.
You have got to be kidding me.
I didn’t give Zander a ride last night. I thought he was just trying to cause shit and get my back up. I left him there in the Rock’s parking lot, and by the time I got home, I’d forced myself to put him out of my head. Zander always was good at riling people up. He’s never been afraid of stretching the truth a little in order to get a rise out of them, which is why it’s such a shock to see him standing at Karen’s window now, leafing through a bunch of papers with a studious frown on his face. I didn’t think he was serious about enrolling at Raleigh.
I do a double-take when I see what he’s wearing: a white polo shirt, pressed beige khakis with a fucking line down the front, and a red down body warmer. A fucking body warmer? I must look incredulous. I am incredulous. What kind of bullshit stunt is he trying to pull here? Last night, he was wearing a Dreadnaughts cut, rippled up jeans and a band shirt. He looks like Prep School 101 right now. His hair is neatly brushed to one side—fuck, it looks like he actually washed it—he’s clean-shaven, and every single one of his tattoos is covered. To look at him, you’d think he was group leader of a church fucking summer camp.
I walk right up, leaning on the ledge of the counter outside Karen’s office, and I arch a sardonic eyebrow at him. “What the fuck, Hawkins?”
“Excuse me, Mr. Moretti. Language! If Principal Darhower hears you cursing like that, he’ll have you in detention for a month.”
Zander wrestles an amused smirk from his face; I know why he’s so entertained. Threatening people like Zander and me with detention is so inane and pointless that it’s pretty fucking funny. Detention? At Denney, we were locked away, kicked, starved, spit on, cursed at, had freezing water turned on us through a high-pressure fire hose…I mean, that’s not even the half of it. Having to sit in a room and complete some random thousand-word assignment on why swearing is really bad doesn’t pose much of a deterrent to our ilk.
Poor Karen. She’s quite conflicted. On the one hand, from her perspective, I’ve just rocked up and gotten into this new kid’s face, and New Kid looks like he comes from decent, respectable stock. I should be reprimanded for my behavior. On the other hand, I’m also the kid who found her, frantic and afraid, the day a gunman waltzed into Raleigh and started shooting people. I helped her, calmed her, told her to find somewhere safe to hide until I could come back for her. And then I’d nearly died trying to save the entire fucking school.
I can see the conundrum pl
ay out over her face. It’s quite the show.
She’d probably feel less sympathetic toward me if she knew the truth. I wasn’t trying to save the entire school that day. Did I want anyone else to get hurt and die? Of course not. But I only jumped Leon in that library to protect one person. Silver was all that mattered…
“I’m sorry? Do I know you?” Zander asks, crinkling his brow in my direction. Well, hot damn. He must have signed up for some amateur acting classes after I left Denney, because that shit was almost believable. “I can’t say I recognize you, friend. Maybe you’re confused.”
There’s a very clear message in his words. Back off, man. You’re gonna fuck this up for me, and it’s important. He wants me to disappear, but I don’t know if I feel like playing along with this ridiculous charade. If Zander’s arrival at Raleigh had anything to do with his meeting with Monty last night, Monty would have told me. He knows I’m a student here. No way in hell he would have charged Zander with some sort of task here without at least giving me a head’s up first. Which means he’s likely here on Dreadnaught business, and guess what? I don’t give a flying fuck about the Dreadnaughts.
I tap my lips with my index finger, frowning at him. “Yeah. We know each other all right. I believe we spent some time together over in Bellingham. You and your buddy Jorge made life difficult for me, if I remember correctly.”
I know what it sounds like when Zander laughs. He has a brash, raucous, uncontrollable belly laugh. People used to throw shit at him to make him shut up, because once he started it was impossible to make him stop. The stiff, reserved little titter that comes out of him now does not belong to Zander. He must have stolen it from some preppy piece of shit on T.V.
I tilt my head to one side, nodding as I pull my mouth down at either side—the expression of someone who is more than a little impressed. “You been practicing that?”
“Time to move on, Mr. Moretti. We only allow one student at the window at a time, so…I’m…you need to move along,” Karen stammers out. I’m proud of her, really. Apart from stumbling all over her words, she sounded very firm. That probably took balls.
“Okay, Karen. You win.” I shoot her a wink. Looking back at Zander, I gift him with something far rarer: a smile. “Well. Looks like we’ll have to catch up another time, Zander. Soon, I hope. It’s always nice to get to know new people. I haven’t been registered at Raleigh very long, either, so we have something in common.”
“Thanks,” he says, plastering a broad, fake-ass smile on his face that perfectly matches all of the other fake things about him. “I’ll look forward to that. It’s real nice of you to reach out and wanna make friends. I appreciate it.”
God, I’m going to knock him the fuck out again if I have to stand here one more second. I give Karen a tight-lipped smile as I push away from her window. How’s Silver going to react when she finds out one of my ex-buddies from juvie has enrolled here at Raleigh, and he looks like he’s up to no good? Speaking of which, where is—
As soon as the thought begins to form in my head, the door at the end of the hallway begins to open. Darhower’s door. And there, emerging out of the principal’s office, is the girl in question.
Long, wavy brown-blonde hair. The same grey and white baseball tee she was wearing this morning when I drove her to school. Same faded blue jeans and Chuck Taylors. The bruises are new, though. The broken skin across the backs of her knuckles. The flecks of blood all down the front of her shirt, and the dark red, almost black blotted mark on her right thigh. She walks toward me down the hall, weaving slightly, like she can’t quite seem to get her gait right or something, and I nearly combust right where I motherfucking stand.
What…the...fuck…happened…
Her head snaps up, as if I said the words out loud instead of roaring them inside my head. She looks confused. Kind of dazed. Over her shoulder, Principal Darhower follows behind…behind Cam? Oh, fuck. They called in Cam? This is really fucking bad. I don’t say a word when Silver reaches me. I take her into my arms, hugging her to me, knowing that the contact is probably what she needs most of all. I make eye contact with Cam, and I can’t tell if the guy’s glaring at me, through me, or just into fucking space. He's visibly shaking. I haven’t known him for very long or spent a great deal of time with the guy, but I would never have pictured him like this—too angry to function.
“Mr. Moretti, that behavior isn’t appropriate in a school hallway,” Principal Darhower clips out.
Fuck me. If he thinks he’s going to prevent me from comforting Silver, then he must be smoking crack. “I’m hugging my girlfriend, not trying to strip her naked. I think my fellow students will survive the impropriety.”
“Don’t push your luck, Moretti. Your stay here at Raleigh could easily be cut shor—”
He rambles on, reminding me of how tenuous my place here is, and how quickly I could find myself behind bars, etc., etc., etc., by the grace of god, blah, blah, blah, but I’m not listening. I’m stooping down, searching Silver’s face, trying to read what happened there without having to ask her to put it into words. I don’t have a fucking clue what’s gone on, but I do know Silver. It’s unlikely she told Darhower anything. She might have told Cam, but I can’t know for sure.
“Are you okay?” I whisper.
Her eyes are wet and shining. She’s stiff, her emotions kept well hidden from her face. It’s as though she’s wearing some kind of mask. Her features are all where they’re supposed to be, it’s her, but there’s something different about her. She’s thrown up a ten-meter-high wall and she’s not letting anything through. I’m relieved when she blinks, giving me a hint of a weak smile, and a flash of her normal self breaks through that wall.
For me.
She lowered it for a second for me.
“Long story,” she says quietly. “I’ll tell you later.”
She’s either keeping her mouth shut because she doesn’t want Darhower and her father to hear, or because she wants to explain things to me somewhere else, away from Raleigh…which means it must be really bad. If she thinks I’m going to lose my shit, then something seriously fucked up has happened.
Darhower clears his throat. “Mr. Parisi, I think it’s best if you take Silver to the hospital now and get her checked over—”
“Hospital?” Oh, fuck no, he did not just say hospital.
Silver reaches up and takes my hand from her face, squeezing it. She kisses the inside of my wrist, sighing under her breath. “It’s okay. Just a bump on the head, Alex. I’m fine. Principal Darhower thinks it’d be best to go get it looked at. The school needs to avoid any liability if I end up with concussion or something.”
“Liability?” I pierce Darhower down with a shotgun stare. “That’s what you’re worried about? Liability?”
Darhower rolls his eyes. “You’re a seventeen-year-old student with a pretty poor track record, Alessandro. You know nothing about running an education facility of this size and importance to the community. Please do not interfere in matters you do not understand.”
Oh. Oh, really? I am going to fucking kill this bastard the first opportunity I get. Despite his atrocious attempt at comb over, the overhead strip light bounces off Darhower’s bald spot as he turns to Cam.
“Were you aware of Silver’s association with Alex, Mr. Parisi? Seems as though it would be something they would try to hide, given Alex’s past run-ins with the law.”
Cam’s still glowering like a madman. He turns his dark eyes on Darhower, the muscle popping in his jaw. “Yes, I know they’re dating.”
Darhower shoves his hands into his pockets, rocking back on his heels. “Really? Well, I have to say I’m surprised that you’d allow Silver to—”
“Alex has been through hell and back. His actions in the past might not be commendable, but I would have behaved and acted out far worse than he did if I’d found myself in his shoes.”
“Cameron, he dug up a parole officer and urinated on his cadaver. That’s not just an infringem
ent upon the law. It’s mentally—”
“He also defended this school against a very dangerous, very real threat recently, too. Have you forgotten that? And the parole officer Alex dug up had beaten him black and blue for years. He was a sick piece of shit that got off on hurting young boys. I’m glad Alex dug him up. If I’d have been there, I probably would have dropped my pants and taken a shit on the bastard right next to him.”
Principal Darhower recoils, his mouth falling open.
“You’re a fifty-year-old bachelor with no kids of your own, Jim. You think sitting in your office back there, day in and day out, somehow makes you an authority on what it’s like to raise kids but you have absolutely no fucking idea. So how ’bout you don’t interfere in matters you don’t understand. Come on, Silver. Let’s get you out of here.”
I’ve never wanted to high five anyone so badly. No adult has ever stood up for me like that before. Cameron Parisi is a fucking badass. He shoots me a dry, sidelong look as he takes hold of Silver’s hand and begins leading her toward the exit. “Come by the house when you’re let out,” he tells me quietly. “It’s pizza night.”
“You got it.”
Silver pulls away from him quickly, turning back to me. She falls into my arms, hugging me tightly and pressing her mouth to my ear. “I love you. Just…don’t freak out, okay?”
It’s only when she and Cam have exited through the double doors that lead out to Raleigh High’s parking lot that I realize I’m standing in the hallway, not only Principal Darhower, but also with Zander Hawkin’s prep boy alter ego. Darhower seems to snap out of his troubled reverie at the same time. He bares his teeth at me, grimacing, like I’m nothing more than a bad taste in his mouth. The feeling is fucking mutual.
