by Hannah Capin
scream for Mack, good and evil and all mine—
—for that little whore, for crazy bitch, for queen.
I can still taste Mack’s kiss and his promise. Our pact.
Partners in greatness.
Hancock Park is asleep under the trees. I slide into our driveway with my wings lifting me up, already ready for tomorrow—
Jenny stands exactly in my path. The headlights cast her shadow huge against the center garage door. Hands on hips. Eyes on fire.
I stop in front of her. “What the hell, Jen.”
She slams both fists against the hood. “What the hell, yourself.”
I kill the car and step out onto the driveway.
“Nice of you to text,” she says. Her hair has gone from pure black to pink, pastel-bright in the spotlights ringing the house.
I haven’t checked my phone since Mack looked up from the field to my perch. I didn’t meet Jenny and Summer and Mads at Jenny’s house. I didn’t even look to see what time it was when we finally walked back to the empty parking lot, hands holding us together in the dark.
“Don’t even try to say you don’t like him,” she says.
“I don’t.”
“You’re fucked.” She sits down on the hood of the car and her doll-short skirt fans out. “And go for it, have fun with your Stockholm shit, have fun playing house with a fucking accomplice, have fun pretending this is a normal crush and not some fucked-up proving-something—”
I flare. “Are you done?”
“Hell no,” she says. “Have fun. But don’t even try your lies with me. Don’t you fucking tell me this isn’t going to ruin your plan. Because it is, and when it does, I called it. And I don’t want to call it. We’re murdering those boys and your Mack obsession isn’t going to fuck that up, okay?”
We stare for a frozen second. The spotlights blink out and back on so quick I’m not sure if it’s real.
I slap her across the face.
“Fuck you,” she says.
My handprint glows on her cheek. “Fuck you,” I say.
She leans back onto her elbows and says, “That’s better.”
I watch her for another lit-up breath. “I know what I’m doing.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I’m a St Andrew’s girl now,” I fire at her. “I’m one of them and Connor’s dead.”
“You didn’t kill him.”
“I made it happen. Just like I’m making Mack mine.”
“You really think he’s going to kill his best friend just because he wants to fuck you?”
My hand twitches. I want to slap her again, but if I do she’ll win.
“It doesn’t mean anything that he wants you. You know what it meant to his friends—”
I lunge for her. Pin her arm against the car with two nails digging deep between the bones in the back of her hand. She yelps. Her eyes light up. She sparks pain and pride.
“Don’t you ever forget who I am,” I say.
“Exactly,” she says. She’s still pinned to the hot metal, but she doesn’t pull away. “I didn’t. But you can’t, either. You don’t want Mack. You want to kill them.”
“I know.”
“It’s not just going to happen. You can’t be so fucking cocky.”
“It’s working.”
“Duncan already wanted to off Connor. You barely had to do anything.”
“Yes, I did. I had to turn into one of them. I had to make him think—”
“Barely anything,” she says. “Not compared to the rest of this. Duncan was ready to kill. Your golden boy isn’t.”
“He will be.” My words are iron-solid.
Jenny watches me, still caught in my claws. Her brand-new hair splinters the same way mine did Friday night. She still smells like bleach, even painted as princess-pink as her kindergarten crayon drawings.
“You can’t lose your focus,” she says.
“I’m not.”
She blinks her giant circle lenses. Tonight her eyes shine silver, the same color as Duncan’s. She reaches out with the hand I’m not pinning down and brushes her fingertips against the chopped-off ends of my hair, the same way she did on Saturday morning.
“Don’t trust him, Jade,” she says.
“I don’t.”
“Don’t believe him.”
“I don’t.”
“You’re alone,” she says. “When we’re not there you’re alone. Don’t forget that.”
Finally I let her go. “I’m going to do it,” I tell her. “Don’t try to tell me I don’t remember why I’m there.”
And I tip my chin back. Show her my neck, guillotine-ready, with Duncan’s bruises bleeding through the makeup. Give her one-two-three seconds. Let my hair fall—
REVENGE
—and step back and fold my arms behind my back, the way my father does when he’s pacing in the living room on the phone, forgetting where he is.
“We’re here,” says Jenny. Not sweet like Summer or steady like Mads. Too fast, but lit up from inside. “You need us.”
My hands grip tight onto my skin. “You need me, too.”
“Exactly,” she says. “It’s a rule.”
“There are no rules.”
She rests one heel against my father’s car. My car now, I think. Now that I’m sweet sixteen. “It’s going to be harder than you think,” she says.
“I’m ready.”
Jenny stands up. Cups her hands under my jaw so her pinkies rest cloud-light over the bruises. Rises up onto her tiptoes and kisses my cheek in the same place where I slapped hers.
She says, “Don’t lie.”
Water
When Jenny flies off into the night the warm breeze dies all at once, so the whole street is a cold dead void.
My cheek burns where she kissed me. My hand burns where I slapped her.
She said, Don’t trust him, Jade. I said, I don’t.
The breeze comes back again, breathing close around my neck and teasing at my too-short hair.
I won’t trust him. I won’t.
I spin and the breeze scatters away. Then I’m inside with the door locked iron-sure against the night, and skimming up the stairs in the dark, and standing straight and still in front of the same mirror that watched me slash hard with my knife.
When I blink my hair flashes long and platinum.
Jenny said, Don’t trust him.
I go to the tub and turn on the water. It runs hot and hotter until steam fills the whole room and clings cloying to my skin. The water rises, clear and hot, until it sulks away into the little drains along the top of the porcelain. Until it seeps over the edge and pools shallow around my feet.
I stand in a lie-white towel with my eyes burning green. My hands grasp at the dead ends of my hair. I want it back—
the dark unrepentant black—
the long shining cape that matched me better than my best dress—
—the way it was before I told Mads to turn it St Andrew’s blond.
The water boils and bubbles and I kneel beside it and let my fingers drag deep.
Then my mother’s hands are in my hair, as gentle and unasking as when I was her little laughing daughter with the too-big eyes. Brushing the dull painted-black a hundred times and a hundred more. Weaving in oil that soaks into every strand from the roots to the knife-sliced ends.
She gathers all my short hair together and sweeps it smooth over my shoulder. Her fingers find the bruises on my neck.
The room is white and hot and choking. My eyes close tight—
shutting out Don’t trust him—
shutting out I’ll never lie to you, Jade, never—
shutting out God damn, she’s feisty—
—and my hands come up out of the water so fired-red I can feel it all the way to the bone.
My fingers find hers over the dark blue spots that mark my skin.
We stay that way, together, until the water runs cold.
Chapel
Wednesday
morning, Lilia is back.
Except she isn’t. Not really.
She slouches in front of the statue, cheekbones jabbing close under her skin, eyes sinking into bruise-blue shadows. Pupils blown too big. No trace of the dying-desperate nerve that made her paint Connor’s guilt where everyone could see it.
“Whatever the fuck you’re on, it better keep you quiet,” says Piper.
Lilia leaves her empty stare exactly where it is. I can almost see through her throat.
Piper’s starling-call laugh sings across the commons. “You’re over,” she says. “Dunc knows you wrote on the banner. And almost got that cop on the damn case, too.”
Nothing.
“He’s tired of you anyway. Give up.”
Nothing.
“Fine,” says Piper. “Stay with him. Let him do what he’ll do.”
Less than nothing.
Piper shakes her head and locks in on me. “New girl,” she says. “You and Mack—”
“Me and Mack,” I say, as alive as Lilia is dead.
“I never thought there was anything interesting about him until you showed up,” she says. Her eyes are beady-bright. “He never even cut class. And now he’s the kind of boy who makes out with sluts he barely knows the morning after somebody—” She catches herself just in time. She’ll never say it out loud, not as long as Duncan’s still king and she and Duffy are still groveling at his feet. “Falls,” she says, after a broken little pause. “The kind of boy who doesn’t answer when Dunc texts him.”
“He doesn’t have to listen to Duncan,” I say.
Piper glances at Lilia. Her eyes gape huge and vacant. When Piper looks back at me, her whole face says, She’s over, and when I’m in her place—
“You’re going to fall so fast, new girl,” says Piper. There’s something strange and slipping in her smile. “Mack’s going to get sick of you. Dunc’s going to get sick of Mack. You’re going to end up where every other girl like you ends up.”
She thinks she can scare me. She doesn’t know anything at all.
“A girl like you,” she says, and her voice goes feather-soft so none of the flock-girls can hear. “Who thinks she can come in and take whatever she wants—”
Friday night shimmers between us, a static-white scrap coming back: Piper pushing past Porter right on Duffy’s heels, tripping into the room, grabbing for her second-place boy, shrieking, You can’t just take whatever you want like I’m not even anything—
And Duffy said, You’re not.
“None of this is yours. You’re just the entertainment of the week,” says Piper. “They’ll throw you out when they’re done with you, unless you learn how to follow the rules. You don’t even know what they’ll do to a girl like you—”
Fine, said Piper on Friday night. Following the rules, seething and powerless and still shrieking at Duffy, and Duffy’s hand came down hard against my face and crushed my skull down. And Piper said, Go fuck some roofied slut—
“Piper,” says Duncan’s purring charming voice right beside us. “Stop.”
We both step back.
“Jade,” says Duncan. “Let’s talk.”
He takes a step closer, and behind him the wolves close rank. I steal a glance at Mack. He’s soldier-faced like the rest of them but I can read his eyes. He’s watching Duncan as much as Duffy does now, but instead of scrambling ready-to-serve he’s measuring out what Duncan has to lose.
I smile at Duncan. Perfectly, shiningly innocent. “Let’s,” I say.
He puts one arm behind me, not quite touching my back but doing everything he can to own me anyway. Walks away from the rest of them without even one look at Lilia.
I want to spin around and grab the arm he’s caging me with and break it. Hear the bone crack and see the splintered white rip through his skin. Watch his face fold in pain and his body crumple. Listen to him beg for mercy.
Instead I bite my cheek until blood coats my tongue, and I keep my heels clicking even.
Duncan takes us to the chapel. He pushes one door open and lets the wood and iron swing back heavy after us. Dull light seeps through the stained glass. At the far end of the room, a huge gold crucifix hangs behind the altar. Christ looks up instead of down at us. Crowned with thorns. Hands dripping gold blood.
“New girl,” says Duncan with a flash of teeth. “Jade Khanjara.” He pronounces it exactly right and oiled-smooth, like it’s natural on his lips.
“James Duncan,” I answer.
He laughs. His eyes flicker fast across my face. We’re at the doors, under the stone arch, and he stands just right so he can pretend he isn’t locking me into the corner on purpose.
“What’s your story?” he asks.
“Everyone already knows it,” I say. He’s dialing up his good-king charm, the same sheen he wore at his party, so crafted-perfect he looked like one of his plaster statues breathed to life. When Summer saw him she said, Damn, I can see why he’s their king, but Mads said, Don’t try it. Not even you. And then Jenny was pulling us hand-in-hand-in-hand-in-hand through the crowd, but I dragged back and kept my eyes on him because Summer was right: there was something in the way he was watching the whole party that said he ruled it all.
For a second his eyes met mine. For a second his teeth flashed white. Then his chin tipped down and he said something to the boy in his shadow, and the shadow-boy’s smile flashed bright, too.
“Piper doesn’t trust you,” he says now. Easy smile, easy stance, easy laugh. But it’s not easy at all. Up close, I can see all the whirring first-place effort underneath.
“I’ve noticed,” I say.
“She says I shouldn’t, either.”
I lean into the cage he’s built around me so the bars bend and strain. “I didn’t realize you took orders from Duffy’s girlfriend.”
He scoffs and then he gives me a little nod, the same way the boy Piper was fighting yesterday nodded when she got her final touch. He knows I’ve won the point. “Piper’s insecurities don’t matter to me,” says Duncan.
“Likewise.”
He leans one hand against the door: a third wall closing me in. “Mack’s losing his mind over you.”
I say, coy, “We’re a good match, don’t you think?”
“You and Mack?” He shrugs. When his shoulders settle back down, he’s the slightest bit closer than he was before. “Not bad. You and me? Better.”
I laugh. Flock-girl flattery. “You’re with Lilia.”
“There’s an expiration date on that,” he says, and I laugh again because he’s right for exactly the wrong reason.
“If Lilia’s your type, I’m not,” I tell him.
“Lilia’s everyone’s type.” His eyebrows edge up just enough to finish the sentence for him. “But you’re different. You’re not a St Andrew’s girl.”
“Not yet.”
“Not ever.” He shifts closer. “You’ll be good for Mack.”
“I know.”
He shows his marble-hard smile again. “You know a lot.”
I nod.
“You know what happened to Connor.”
He’s close enough now that I have to tip my chin back to look into his eyes. “I do.”
He waits for me to say more, but I don’t. Outside the stained glass, shadows flutter and breathe.
“I trusted him,” Duncan says, finally. Lying.
“That was a mistake.” I say it sweeter than sweet.
He grins. “Never a St Andrew’s girl.” Then, “He confessed, you know.”
I see them on the roof, circling closer to the edge in the blood-red sunset.
“He admitted everything. Maybe he thought I’d let him get away with it.”
He’s still lying.
“Of course it didn’t change what he did. Betrayal doesn’t get you anywhere around here.”
It’s a warning.
“Still—” And this time he makes it obvious when he leans closer. The play he’s been plotting since we walked out on his pack. “He died
well, don’t you think?”
“Yes,” I hiss before I can stop myself.
“There it is,” he hisses back, so close I breathe in cold mint and aftershave. The dusky stained-glass light blows out to white—
God damn, she’s feisty—
I jerk away and my head hits the stone wall. I’m back in the chapel, back in the almost-dark, but Duncan still pushes too close. He leers victory all across his face.
“We’d be good together,” he says, his lips so close to mine it’s almost a kiss. “We’d be power. You’d like it.”
I flatten my hands against the stone. Cold and unfeeling and jagged. He hasn’t won. He won’t. “So would you,” I say, and I leave my murder-red lips parted and I don’t flinch. Not again.
His breath catches.
I pounce. One hand off the wall and onto his arm, silver skimming over the dark blue of his blazer. I say, clear and bright, “I’m with Mack.”
He grabs my arm. It takes everything in me not to scream. Not to fight. Not to kill him right here with his gold god watching.
“For now,” he says. “Until he finds out who you really are.”
I won’t ask him what he means. I won’t.
“I’m watching you, new girl,” he says. He smiles his practiced smile.
I smile mine back. His hand on my arm burns like a brand.
“You and me,” he says. “Soon.”
He walks out.
Revelations
I have to find Mack.
The bells in the tower over the chapel are ringing already, with Duncan barely gone, with me alone in the dusk breathing his scent and digging at the air instead of his skin. Eight long mournful tolls. I should be sitting down at my lab table in biology and crisscrossing my ankles and smiling jailbait-pretty at Dr. Farris in his horn-rimmed glasses.
I have to find Mack.
You and me, said Duncan. We’d be power, said Duncan. You’d like it.
Shut the bitch up, said Duncan. God damn, she’s feisty, said Duncan. You like it—
I yank the doors open and rush out. I see white and dead kings. I see my good long knife turning red.
I need him dead.
I need to find Mack.
