by Hannah Capin
“It was all of us,” he says.
“Don’t be so modest.”
“Dunc got the points. Banks kept them down. Duff went hard. Connor—”
“Connor almost lost it for everybody. Until you saved them.”
He stays quiet.
“You won the game,” I say again. “Duncan said it, too.”
He’s trying not to admit it, but I can see the pride about to break through his loyal-soldier mask.
My fingers graze his arm. The shock electrocutes us both and the sky flickers brighter for one shattered second.
“You won,” I tell him: third time’s a charm.
He smiles, finally, and it lights him up—
green eyes and ruddy-tan skin and blond hair a little too long and tangling, and tall and strong and ready to take Duncan’s place as soon as I can make him want it—
—and I will. I know I will. And then I’ll ruin them, every last one of them, and the more they beg and fight and try to run, the more I’ll make them wish they were already dead.
My hand locks over his. “Say it.”
He says, “I won.”
The First Kill
We walk in together. The golden boy and the new girl, turning gold now, too. Alchemy by association.
Our entrance is so good I couldn’t have made it any better even if I’d planned it. We’re at Lilia’s house, perched up in the hills looking down on everybody else. It juts glass corners out of a stone lawn where every plant is pale and spiny. I parked my father’s car too close to Duncan’s: a bullet hole against the concrete drive.
The front doors swing on their hinges, unguarded. The first floor is bare and waiting, stark except for the trail of bags and blazers and crosses they all shed on their way in. Duncan’s pack and Lilia’s flock sprawl dirty and drunk on three white-leather sofas that stare down at the skyline.
They look. All of them. At Mack and me, at us, together. And they all go silent.
“Damn, new girl, you work fast,” says Duncan. He’s at the center of the biggest sofa, a careful space on each side of him and Lilia but no space between them. His left arm locks her against him. Her eyes are mirror-blank.
“Only when I know what I want,” I say.
They laugh. Duncan glossy and on-purpose. Duffy because Duncan did. Banks with a little edge, like Duncan without the polish. Connor too hard and hungry: enough to get caught.
“This is Jade,” says Mack with his yes-ma’am manners.
And Piper says, “We know.”
Duncan’s eyes stay on Mack and me, because Piper wants everything too much: Duffy, and all the things Lilia has, and all the things Duncan can hand out. “Heard you got kicked out of boarding school,” he says. “Is that true?”
“Heard you throw unforgettable parties,” I tell him. “Is that true?”
“Sometimes the girls forget,” says Connor. He’s still Duncan’s third choice, sitting third-nearest after Duffy and Banks with the two stupidest flock-girls hanging close even though they know better.
Banks’s laugh cracks open. “Watch yourself.”
“Or what?”
They share a loaded look that drags too long.
Duffy breaks the standoff. “God, Banks, you’re tense. Gotta do something about that.”
One of Connor’s girls reaches over and swats the girl closest to Banks and she goes pink on purpose. Banks slides one hand farther up her thigh, but he says, “Shutting Connor up would do the trick.”
And Duffy grins. “It’s those three bitches in the masks, isn’t it?”
“I still think you’re making that shit up,” says Connor. “I didn’t see anything.”
“Cute, Banks,” Piper cuts in, curling closer to Duffy, swirling an almost-empty bottle. “Imaginary girls. The only way you’re getting any this century.”
Connor’s black eyes glisten and he laughs again. He’s back in his St Andrew’s shirt, with the collar unbuttoned and his tie hanging loose and uneven. “Maybe not the only way—”
“Try me, Connor.” Banks shoves the girl away from him. “Go ahead. Tell Dunc what you told me after the game. Show him what you sent to Mack. Go for it. We’re all waiting.”
But Connor doesn’t stand up. “I didn’t send shit to Mack.”
I look at Mack for the first time since we walked in—since his golden wolf-pack started facing off one-to-one. I make my eyes say innocent, innocent, innocent.
He nods. Just for me. Just enough that the rest of them will miss it.
He trusts me.
Knowing it jolts hard under my ribs. Because it’s working: Mack is almost mine already; the plan is almost real already; the boys are almost dead already—
“You better watch yourself, Connor,” says Banks, and he gets up and stalks over to the bottles jumbled across the island. He grabs one, not even looking, and drinks.
The room is betrayal-quiet. They’re all watching Banks, because Duncan might be the one who tells them what to do, but Banks is the one who tells them how to feel. The good-times boy. The one with enough real charm to run for office and win someday, because he’s almost-but-not-quite as perfect as Duncan. Just rough enough and still magnetic. Banks, last in the room on Friday night, hanging in the doorway, yelling back to somebody. Laughing. Turning—and he faded darker and brighter but I could still see his whole face change. Campaign trail to kill room.
“The fuck is it so quiet in here?” says Banks. He slams the bottle down and laughs. Fake, but everybody else laughs, too, and then it turns real. It’s a party again, because Banks says it is.
“That’s more like it,” Duffy says. “Damn.” And one of the flock-girls gets up and links her phone to the sound system and music spills out of the speakers, and Mack puts a hand on my arm and leads me over to the rest of them, and we sit. The girls chatter about nothing. The boys pour another round.
Nobody looks at Connor. Not even the stupid girls next to him.
And he catches me watching.
His jaw gets tighter. “What’s your fucking deal?”
I glance at Mack next to me. Point back at me and my crucifix. “Me?”
“Yeah, you. Crazy bitch.”
I laugh.
Banks laughs.
Everybody laughs.
And Connor looks hard at me and says, “Fuck you,” and then he pushes a too-close flock-girl off of him and sneers at Banks. “You’re not so innocent, either.”
He cuts past him to the bags by the door. Everyone watches him now, but they’re laughing, because Banks is laughing and Duncan isn’t stopping them.
They have a boy to blame.
Connor digs through his bag and straightens back up. “Going to smoke on the roof,” he says. “You coming, Duff?”
Duffy looks sidelong at good-king Duncan. Duncan grins square teeth and vodka at Banks.
“Later,” says Duffy.
I don’t even realize I’m grabbing for Mack’s hand until I feel our fingers braid together. I hold tighter than I should, because it’s realer every second—
because Connor is alone now, peeled off from the pack—
because even if I can’t take down all of them at once, I can take down one lone wolf at a time—
—because Connor will be the first kill, and that’s exactly how it should be.
Connor’s eyes cut back toward me, but he looks at Mack instead. “Never trust a bitch,” he says. Then he’s gone.
A door slams upstairs, and Banks says, “So anyway, welcome to St Andrew’s, bitch.” He crosses back over to the rest of us, another bottle in his hand. Sits down heavy and takes a drink. Smiles wide and holds the bottle out to me—
and his smile is too bright—
and his charm is too true—
—and his voice claws and claws behind my eyes, pretty name instead of bitch.
I take the bottle. I raise it high and unshaking. “Crazy bitch,” I say. I drink too much too fast. My veins heat up.
Banks laughs, but I watch Dunca
n. He lets me wait just long enough that maybe, without the liquor, without Connor trapped up on the roof, I’d be nervous.
I’m not.
“To the crazy bitch,” says Duncan. He tips his drink toward me.
“To the crazy bitch!” they all chorus.
Duncan drinks.
We drink—all of us.
I’m one of them now.
When everyone settles back into everything, Banks slides over to where Connor was and leans in. “You saw those girls, Mack,” he says.
He nods.
“You know what I’m thinking,” says Banks, “I’m thinking Connor sent them.”
“Great theory, dumbass,” says Duffy. “Why would he bother?”
Banks laughs with all of them, but then he says, “Because Mack’s getting all the glory lately. Connor’s fucking with us, all of us, about—”
“Careful,” says Duncan, his fingers digging a little harder into Lilia’s shoulder.
Banks blinks. “Chill, Dartmouth.” But he grins when he says it, and Duncan lets him get away with it. “Connor’s messing with us, and he’s messing with Mack, because he knows Mack’s got his spot if he fucks up any more. Especially after—you know.” He lets the words hang, loaded down.
“Careful,” Duncan says again, colder.
But Banks nods anyway and says, not turning, “What do you think, Mack?”
Next to me, Mack hesitates. “Connor wouldn’t go that far.”
Banks drinks again and reaches over to scruff Mack’s hair. His arm is six inches from my face. Marked guilty with three long red scratches.
“God, golden boy,” says Banks. “You’re too fucking pure.”
“Seconded,” Piper chirps from Duffy’s lap. “Good thing he’s got the crazy bitch to corrupt him.”
I know Mack is turning red again without even looking. And then I look, and he is, and he looks back at me for long enough that Banks catches it and hoots at him.
So I blush, too. On purpose, just like Banks’s flock-girl, because I’m supposed to be a flock-girl too. Stupid and unseeing and ready to fall for him, for them, for anything.
“What did they say?” I ask Mack. So innocent I almost bleed white.
His eyes stay locked on mine. “They said Connor would fall,” he says to me. Only me.
Lilia says, a whole world away, “If Connor sent them, why would—”
“It wasn’t him,” Duncan cuts in.
I’m still looking at Mack. “Is that all they said?”
“We need to shut Connor up,” Banks says.
“Banks—” Duncan warns—
“Kidding.” Banks laughs. He’s the life and death of the party. Once Duncan is dead, he’ll be the one in control. Duffy will be nobody when he doesn’t have Duncan to lend him a little taste of power. A taste he’s allowed to have, because he could never pull off a mutiny.
But Banks—
Banks could turn them all against Duncan if he wanted. Friday night, that muddy half-second before his face changed and he took the last step in and slammed the door in Porter’s face and said fuck, Dunc, you know how to pick them—
if instead he said fuck, Dunc, let her go—
—everything would have been different.
And Mack—
—he could turn them all, too. Duncan sees it, I think, and so does Duffy: this too-pure boy, the one who won’t quite obey, is only on the outside because he’s the biggest threat of all to their fucked-up nailed-down order.
“You know what, I’m going to go talk to him,” says Mack.
“You kiss all the wrong asses,” Duffy says through Piper’s hair.
“Yeah, and you know all about ass-kissing, right, Duff?” Banks says. They howl at him, the whole pack.
But Mack gets up. He still has my hand. Flock-girl Jade isn’t supposed to let go, so I don’t. I follow him up the silver-steel stairs. The door at the top is all glass. All light, like staring heaven in the face.
Heaven or death.
Mack stops at the door and turns to me. “Connor texted me,” he says all at once. “Right before those girls disappeared. He said … he said, ‘She won’t.’”
I laugh, but I turn it light as air. “Does that mean something?”
He trusts me. He shouldn’t. “That’s what those girls said, too. ‘She won’t.’” He leans closer. “She won’t remember.’”
My hand tightens on his. “Who?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “Connor’s … you can’t trust him.”
I shouldn’t push it too far. I should let it play out. Be patient.
Should.
I say, “What does he have on Banks?” When I say his name another shred of static sloughs away and I see Banks there at Duncan’s house, cutting through the dance-floor crowd, closing in with a drink in his hand to where I stood all alone—
Mack checks over his shoulder, out to the roof. “Not just Banks. Dunc and Duff, too.”
“What is it?”
His lips get tight.
I laugh again. A disarming glittery laugh. “I won’t tell.”
Finally he says, “Dunc had a party Friday. Something happened.”
I’m holding his hand almost too tight. “What—”
“Whisper, whisper,” Piper shouts from downstairs. “Just fuck her already. God.”
His face goes white and then red, but I laugh as bright as Mads on Friday night—like blinding sunset light and the moment Piper ruined. I push the door open and Mack almost falls and I almost fall with him.
Then we’re outside, spinning around the corner.
The roof is gray and razor-smooth. The second floor is glowing glass off to the side, and the edges drop straight to nowhere. Connor sits with his feet hanging off into thin air. Blocking out the skyline.
“Fuck you, Banks,” he says.
“Not Banks,” says Mack.
Connor turns around. He’s dropped his things behind him on his way across the roof: shoes, a lighter, an empty bottle. “Fuck you too, Mack.”
Mack lets go of my hand and starts toward Connor. “You’re pushing your luck.”
Connor takes a hit from his joint. He turns his back again before he breathes the smoke out.
“Banks and Dunc,” says Mack. “They’re—”
“Being pussies? No shit.”
“They think you’re going to get them caught.”
His laugh drips venom. “Even if I did, nobody’d believe the slut.”
“Believe what?” I say, uninvited. Jade the flock-girl, flighty and stupid.
Connor turns again. “Shouldn’t have brought the crazy bitch, Mack.”
I do the breathy little giggle he wants. I’ll make him say it. “Believe what?”
He looks straight at me. “Doesn’t matter.” His grin gets wider. “She wanted it.”
“Stop,” says Mack. His voice is hard. A flicker of the king he needs to be.
“Or what?”
“Don’t make it like that.”
Connor throws the end of his joint over the edge. “Stay out of this. It’s Dunc and Duff and Banks and me. You’re not one of us just because you had a couple good games.”
They’re both facing the skyline. The light is changing behind me, from blinding gold-white to dusk red. I slip Connor’s phone out from between my skin and my waistband.
I take that picture, the one he sent the second-string boy. His old tie and his trophies. And then a second: the one I snapped in the locker room after meddling Malcolm left. Today’s tie, pinned through with my earring and Connor’s fate.
I tag Duncan and Duffy and Banks.
I write a caption that will kill him in his very own words: another party, another slut down.
And I post it for the whole damn world to see.
Then I swoop toward them, let the phone fall next to Connor’s lighter, take Mack’s arm, pull him away from the edge so he’s looking back toward where the sun used to be. “Let’s go,” I say.
“Back downsta
irs?”
I count the seconds. Long enough for Duncan and Duffy and Banks to see what Connor’s done. “Anywhere,” I say. “Your friend’s being a dick anyway. You deserve better, don’t you think?”
He doesn’t answer, but he doesn’t have to.
“They should kick him out and bring you in,” I say.
Connor snorts.
And I lean closer and say, “Soon.”
Then the door slams open and Banks comes around the corner, furious and drunker than before, with Duncan behind him and Duffy and Piper hurrying to catch up.
“Get up,” says Banks.
Connor swings one leg back onto the roof and gives him a lazy smile.
“Get up.”
“Chill.” Connor pushes up so he’s facing them—
—us.
Banks is grinning. He’s all kill-room now. “Where is it?”
Connor’s eyes shift to Duncan and back. “Where’s what?”
And Banks lunges at him and grabs his shirt. “You’re so fucking close right now—”
“Banks,” says Duncan, even. Warning.
“Right.” Banks shoves Connor almost back to the edge—
and his tie swings, and the red sunset light catches on my gold-and-crystal earring—
—and this is it.
This is when they all know Connor is dead.
“For fuck’s sake,” says Banks. He grabs Connor’s tie and pulls it free. “Going to stop me now, Dunc?”
The tie hangs in front of him and Duffy and Piper. Piper laughs nerves and thrill.
“Shut her up,” Duncan tells Duffy without looking at him. He crushes the tie in his hand and says, “Start talking.”
Connor’s eyes shift again. The sky behind him is as dark as dried blood. “I didn’t do shit.”
“You just fucking posted,” Banks spits out, but Duncan raises one hand, barely, and Banks steps back in line.
“I don’t even have my phone.”
Ass-kisser Duffy points. “Then what’s that?”
Connor looks at the phone by his feet—
at Duncan’s fist around the crushed-up tie—
at his pack’s hungry eyes—
