Revenge at Raleigh High

by Hart, Callie

  Since that night at the high school, my daughter’s been quiet. Too quiet. Reserved. She’s tried to hide it, but the trauma of the past year has been weighing on her more than she wants to admit.

  “The therapy sessions are going to help. It’s going to be one step at a time, Mr. Parisi. One step at a time. Oh, oh, Dr. Romera. Have you got a second? You remember Cameron Parisi, Silver’s father? He’s here to pick her up and take her home.”

  A tall brunette wearing blue scrubs stops in the hallway. She’s thirty, maybe. Beautiful. A bag’s slung over her shoulder, a set of keys in her hand, and she’s bouncing a little baby boy on her right hip. We’ve met before, just once, the night Silver was admitted to the hospital. As one of the leading trauma surgeons in the state, Dr. Sloane Romera was flown in at three o’clock in the morning to save my daughter’s life. She managed to stop the internal bleeding inside Silver’s chest that many other doctors wouldn’t have been able to. The woman’s a fucking hero in my eyes.

  “Ah, yeah, Mr. Parisi,” she says, smiling warmly. “I’m glad Silver’s finally being cut loose. Three weeks in a hospital bed’s enough to make anyone crazy.”

  I shake her hand like my life depends on it. “You came to check on her before she was released?”

  “No, unfortunately I was brought out on another emergency. One that didn’t pan out as well as Silver’s. A mother and her son. Car accident. They were coming home early from vacation and—” Dr. Romera eyes Max and frowns; obviously she thinks the details of the accident are too gruesome for such young ears. “Anyway, it was great to see you again, Mr. Parisi. My ride’s here, and it’s a long drive back to Seattle. I’d better be going.” Her eyes travel to a monster of a guy, covered in tattoos, leaning against the wall of the waiting room, watching us intently. He smiles when he sees Sloane, and the brooding, dark expression on his face instantly lightens. I bid the doctor farewell, unable to tear my eyes away as she approaches the man in the leather jacket who is obviously her husband or her boyfriend. The baby gurgles like a drain when the bruiser takes the little boy out of Dr. Romera’s arms and tickles him.

  “Shame we can’t convince more doctors like Sloane to transfer permanently out to our smaller towns,” Dr. Killington mutters. “She’s on the fast track to a shining, very illustrious career in the city, though. All the money in the world wouldn’t tempt her away from that. Believe me, the hospital board has already made her some pretty staggering offers. Come on, now. We should probably go and find your daughter.”

  * * *

  SILVER

  I haven’t looked in a mirror for weeks. Time and time again, I’ve told myself that there’s simply no need. Alex has been locked up, stuck behind bars in a dingy Grays Harbor County prison cell while he awaits trial, so what was the point in making an effort? Reality’s a bitch, though. You can try and lie to yourself until you’re blue in the face, and maybe you’ll succeed in convincing yourself of something on the surface, but deep down you’re always going to know the truth.

  My truth is this: I haven’t looked in a mirror, because I’ve been too damn afraid of what I’ll see in the reflection.

  Jake did a real number on my face. The broken nose, the split lip, the shattered jaw, not to mention a fractured cheek bone. For days after I was admitted to hospital, people would walk into my room and I’d have to react quickly, preparing myself for the moment when they took one look at my bruised, swollen, unrecognizable face, and they would flinch. I could handle the pain, that was tolerable, what with all of the extra special meds the doctors kept shooting into my I.V. catheter, but the looks on their faces… They scared me. I’ve been terrified that I don’t look like myself anymore. And if I don’t look like regular old Silver, then how the hell can I expect Alex to still be attracted to me?

  It’s shallow. Stupid. There are plenty of more important things to worry about right now, namely how we’re going to be able to get Alex cleared of all his charges without Caleb Weaving’s legal team pinning something damaging on him, but I can’t help it.

  If I’ve survived all of this, and Alex is freed…but then he doesn’t want me anymore? I don’t know how the fuck I’m going to handle that.

  “Okay, Silver. Stop frowning, baby. Seriously, it’s nowhere near as bad as you think. Here, use this.” Mom hands me a piece of doubled-over toilet paper, miming the action of blotting her lips as I take it from her. She’s been here a lot. Nearly every day. She and dad came to some kind of agreement between themselves which meant they weren’t running into each other in the hospital hallways, but occasionally it couldn’t be helped. They’d both have to come in for the results of one of the eleventy billion tests that have been run on me over the past three weeks, and I’m giving them credit where credit is due. They haven’t made it awkward or weird. They’ve been polite and considerate around one another. They were even laughing in the hallway together three days ago.

  Their behavior might give other people hope that they might attempt to repair their relationship, but I can feel the change in them now. There’s something missing, and by the way they look at each other when they think I’m sleeping, they both know they’re never going to get it back again.

  “I have three different shades of eye shadow if you wanna use it. Eighties make-over?” Mom asks hopefully, holding up the palette so I can see it.

  “I don’t wanna walk out of here looking like some kind of Halloween sideshow. A little eyeliner and some mascara’s fine.”

  She pretends to be disappointed. I’ve never worn much in the way of make-up, though, so she can’t be all that surprised. “Okay, then. Are you ready? I have a paper bag in my purse just in case. You can put it over your head and make a run for the car—”

  “Oh my god. Just give me the stupid mirror.” I’m not a vain person, but I feel a little light-headed as I snatch the hand-mirror from my mother, lifting it gingerly until I’m holding it in front of my face.

  “Breathe, sweetheart. In and out. Just rip the Bandaid off and look.”

  I look, and…there I am.

  My face.

  My completely normal face.

  There’s a tiny, pinkish scar below my bottom lip, and a very faint scar on my left cheekbone where they operated to repair a few fragments of bone, but aside from that…

  “I didn’t use much foundation,” Mom tells me, perching on the edge of the hospital bed beside me. If you use something a tiny bit heavier, then you won’t be able to see those marks at all. Dr. Rami said they’ll be practically invisible in a couple of months, so…”

  Huh. I tilt my head, studying myself from different angles, searching for the hideous disfigurement that I assumed was going to have marred my face for life, but I am almost exactly the same as before. The bruises and the swelling have gone. Aside from the fact that my nose isn’t even slightly turned up at the end any more, I am just…Silver.

  Mom clears her throat. “I was going to wait for your father before I told you this, but I knew you’d want news about Alex as soon as I had it, so—”

  I nearly drop the mirror in my haste to spin around. “What! What is it? What’s happened? Have they convicted him?” I’ve been having nightmares every night for weeks. Every time I’ve closed my eyes to fall asleep, I’ve been haunted by the fact that Alex was lying somewhere, on a hard prison cot, trapped in one of the shittiest, most terrible places on earth, and all because of me. Because he had to come to my aid.

  His current predicament is all my fault, and I haven’t even been able to speak to him. Tell him how sorry I am. Those text messages were a sign. I decided that being strong and not letting anyone fuck with me was more important than anything else, and I didn’t heed those signs. If I’d shown Alex all of the spiteful messages I received, then perhaps things would never have reached the point they did with Jake. With a little outside perspective, I might have seen that the situation was worsening, and it was time to take steps to end the cycle of hatred and abuse. Instead, my stubborn refusal to seek help
resulted in my own kidnapping and brush with death, as well as Alex’s incarceration.

  Mom quickly shakes her head, taking my hand and squeezing it. “No, sweetheart. There was a closed session this morning at the courthouse. They haven’t released the news to the local press yet, but Alex was tried as a minor this morning.”

  “What? A minor?” The lawyers Dad hired to defend Alex told us right out of the gate that there was no chance that was going to happen. They said it has been a miracle that he’d been treated as a minor after the graveyard incident, and because of his previous misdemeanors he was definitely going to face whatever charges were brought up against him as an adult. To find out that they were wrong is kind of shocking.

  “I know. I’m as surprised as you,” Mom says. “The Mayor shouldn’t have even let me sit in. I guess she felt bad for me, knowing you were still stuck in here.”

  “Wait, you were inside the court? Mom, you’ve been here for forty minutes. You sat here and applied my make-up like we were having a fucking sleep-over. What happened?”

  She gives me a disapproving look. She forgets and curses around me and Max all the time, but it appears I’m not allowed to do the same. “What happened is Alex’s social worker is some kind of hotshot ninja, that’s what. Marion, or Mary or something. I can’t remember her name, but she was on fire in that court room, Silver. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “Maeve?” I’ve only seen her from a distance, and I can’t remember a single thing about the woman. That was the day I saw Alex for the very first time, in the hallway outside Darhower’s office, and I was far busy persuading myself that I needed to stay the hell away from the sexy motherfucker with all the black ink to notice some woman in a pantsuit. Alex has told me plenty about her, though, and from what he’s said he didn’t think she was anything less than ill-equipped to do her job.

  “It was quite something to watch. There was this DEA agent there. Detective Lowell? She made some sort of closed deal with the prosecution team. The Mayor told me once the court had cleared that Caleb Weaving agreed not to peruse Jacob’s shooting as attempted murder if they knocked some time off of his sentence. I mean, what kind of parent does that? I’d never throw my kid under the bus for my own personal gain, and that’s essentially what he did. By agreeing that Alex acted in self-defense, Caleb’s agreed that Jake is guilty.”

  Mom’s having difficulty wrapping her head around the fact that Caleb would be so mercenary, but I’m not. He’s a Weaving, after all. It’s in their DNA to be selfish, evil, cold-hearted pricks. “I don’t care about any of that right now. I’m going out of my mind, Mom. For crying out loud, just tell me what happened! Was Alex remanded, or—”

  “Wow, I’m an idiot. I’m sorry, I should have lead with that part, shouldn’t I? My head’s all over the place. No, Alex was not remanded,” she says. “The charges against him were dropped, baby girl. He was released a couple of hours ago.”

  Released?

  A couple of hours ago?

  What the…

  “What’s wrong, Sweetheart? I thought you’d be thrilled?”

  “Oh, I am. It’s just…it’s nothing.” My mind is racing. Alex was released from prison hours ago, and he didn’t come to the hospital. He didn’t come to see me. If that doesn’t speak volumes, then I don’t know what does. Alex is angry with me. He hates me, and I don’t blame him either. He’s been trying so hard to stay out of trouble since he came to Raleigh, and yet I managed to fuck things up for him. The past three weeks must have been hell for him, stuck behind bars. I don’t blame him for avoiding me like the plague.

  How am I going to get through the rest of the school year if I have to see him every day…

  Fuck, how am I going to live with myself if my inaction and stupidity leads to the family court deciding that Alex is an unfit guardian for Ben? He’s been vindicated of any blame in Jake’s shooting, but the fact that he was caught up in such a messy situation in the first place is definitely going to destroy any hopes he had of bringing Ben home with him soon.

  “Shhh, oh—oh my god, sweetheart, are you crying? It’s okay.” Mom pulls me into her, letting me fall against her as I softly sob into her silk blouse. This is the very best outcome we could have hoped for. It’s a miracle that Alex isn’t going to suffer any devastating consequences because of the fact that he protected me. This is wonderful news…but at the same time it feels like the world is fucking ending.

  “I ruined it,” I whisper. “I ruined everything, Mom.”

  “No! No, I’m not gonna let you sit here and come out with dumb shit like that. None of this is your fault, Silver. You hear me? None of it. Jacob Weaving’s a certified psycho, and he deserves everything he’s got coming to him. Alex has probably just gone home to shower or something. Get a change of clothes. If I were him, I’d need a moment to decompress, too. Just give him a little time, okay, sweetheart.”

  There’s a light rap at the door. Dad’s standing there with a frown on his face, holding a bright pink, “It’s a Girl!” balloon in his hand. Next to him, Max is strangling a bouquet of flowers, radiating anxiety as he meets my gaze. “Everything okay?” Dad asks wearily.

  “Yeah. Yeah, everything’s fine.” I sniff, wiping at my nose with the back of my hand. “Ready to go home, that’s all.” Jerking my chin at the balloon, I arch an eyebrow at my father. “Seriously? It’s a girl?”

  “Sorry. They didn’t have, ‘Hey! You survived a near death experience, and you’re finally getting the fuck out of here!’”

  “I suppose it’ll have to do then.” I smile, but it doesn’t reach my eyes. I put on a valiant show as Mom and Dad chat amicably, packing up the rest of my things, but the entire time I’m pretending to be okay, pretending not to hurt, there three words echoing on repeat inside my head, over and over again.

  Alex didn’t come.

  Alex didn’t come.

  Alex didn’t come.

  Alex didn’t come.

  Epilogue

  SILVER

  The click, click, click and snuffle outside my bedroom door lets me know that I have a visitor. I’ve been hiding in my room, feeling desolate and lost, for the past ten hours, and the time has stretched out, each second a minute, each minute an hour, each hour a lifetime.

  I can’t believe it.

  I can’t believe it’s ending like this.

  Alex—

  Dum dum dum dum dum!

  My visitor scratches at the door, rattling the wood in the frame, requesting to be let in. Groaning, I drag myself up off the bed and shuffle zombie-like over to the door. I don’t really hurt anymore. I get twinges in my ribs, since it’s harder for those bones to knit and heal, but apart from the occasional shitty headache when I watch too much T.V., I feel almost back to normal. My lethargy today is purely because of my mood.

  When I open the door, Nipper is sitting neatly on the rug in the hall, ears pricked, gazing up at me expectantly. His black, wiry coat is tinged with grey on the ends, and his dark, soulful eyes seem to hold a lot of questions: Are you okay? Where did you go? What’s wrong with you now? Can I come in? When are we going to play? And most, important of all: Got any food?

  I sigh, shaking my head, stepping to one side to let the small dog past me as he gets to his feet and hobbles into my bedroom.

  The night Jake broke into the house and kidnapped me, he’d come across Nipper in the kitchen. From the mess, Dad thinks Nipper had been going through the trash at the time; he couldn’t conceive why Jake would have dumped out the trash can onto the kitchen floor, so Nipper had seemed like the likely culprit.

  I’d heard Nipper barking ferociously from my hiding spot. I’d heard him growl, and then I’d heard him yelp and go quiet. While I was trembling, afraid and alone in that closet, Nipper had faced-off with Jake, and the evil monster had taken a steak knife to him. Three times: that’s how many times Jake stabbed Nipper with the knife. It’s also how many times the vet at the emergency animal clinic told Dad to put Nipper dow
n in the days after I was admitted to hospital. Thankfully, Dad refused.

  It was a close call. The scrappy little dude is always going to walk with a limp, but he seems to be getting better every day. He also seems to have decided we’re best friends. Dad says it’s because Nipper knows I’m a fighter, just like him, and fighters need to stick together.

  The dog growls at the end of the bed, biting the corner of the duvet. He can’t jump up yet. He’ll probably never be able to, what with the damage that was done to his hind legs, so this is how he tells me that he wants me to pick him up.

  I oblige him, allowing myself a small smile when the cheeky bastard scurries up the length of the bed and proceeds to make a nest for himself amongst my pillows. I curl up into a ball beside him, letting him nestle into the hollow created by my body, and after a while, he falls asleep.

  I never knew a dog could snore so loud.

  I stare at the new clock beside my bed, not thinking. Trying desperately and failing not to feel anything…

  “Silver?”

  Max hovers in the open doorway to my bedroom, looking down at his socks. Over the past three weeks, Max has come to visit me nearly every day, but he’s been quiet and withdrawn. I’ve wanted to spend time with him, hang out and talk to him about school, and Jamie, and whatever video game he’s been playing, but the opportunities have been thin on the ground. At the hospital, there were always doctors and nurses coming in and out like my room had a revolving door on it, checking on me, asking questions, recording my stats, running more tests. My parents were there without fail, one of them always sitting by my bedside, trying to make me laugh or feel better, when all I wanted to do was shrink into a fetal position beneath my sheets and cry.