by Callie Hart
When you take into account the huge bay windows, the haphazard, tumble-down columns, the pristinely manicured gardens that lead up to the looming, gothic entrance, and the heavy oak doors replete with obscene gargoyle knockers, you’re looking at the perfect location for any kind of horror movie.
Of course, Principal Harcourt has rejected every single offer that’s landed on her desk. She’s of the opinion that her school isn’t some sort of tourist trap. As long as she’s drawing breath and has any say in the matter, there will be no gauche Hollywood productions shot on school grounds.
Pax trudges up the steps into the school with his head bowed, hanging off his shoulders like the world’s about to end. Wren follows, his ever-present, ever-confident swagger giving him the air of a man about to walk onto the stage at the Oscars to accept his award. Somewhere in between the two, I bring up the rear, trying not to grind my teeth.
I’ve never given a flying fuck about this place. It’s never made much of a difference to me if I have to come here and serve out my time during the academic year. I’ve been with Wren and Pax, and that’s all that’s mattered. But holy fucking shit if I’m not pissed as hell that I have to come here today.
Pax neglects to hold the door open for us in the same way that he purposefully neglects to do anything that might be helpful to anyone else. Wren laughs scathingly as he opens the door again and we head inside. I’ve barely taken three steps when an arm locks around my throat and I’m being folded over into a headlock. “The fuck’s the matter with you, Eeyore?”
I go still. “Get the fuck off me, Pax.”
He snickers as he whispers into my ear. “Not until you admit it. Your dick shriveled up and fell off, didn’t it?”
For fuck’s sake. He’s in one of those moods. He’s not going to let me go until I give him what he wants. This requires swift, decisive action. In one quick move, I hook my foot behind his, bend my knee so that his knee has to bend, bring my arm forward and then forcefully piledrive my elbow back into his ribs.
A second later, he’s on his back, sprawled out on the marble.
“FUCK!” Pax wheezes out the curse word. He can’t seem to gasp down any air. “Motherfucker!”
I stand over him, regarding the arms and legs bent at weird angles for a moment, before offering him a hand. “Better if you don’t mess with me today, man,” I tell him.
“I see that.” He accepts my hand as begrudgingly as a person can. He scowls at me deeply once he’s back on his feet. “And people are always saying I’m the reactive one.”
“No. You’re the annoying one,” Wren corrects.
“Hah.” Pax is not happy about this. “And what does that make you?”
“The hot one. Naturally.”
This earns him an eye roll from both Pax and me. Truth is, Wolf Hall is comprised of three YA novel-style factions. There’s Team Wren, Camp Pax, and then there are the Dashettes. It’s impossible to figure out which girls are members of which faction. You can’t tell by the way a girl dresses, or how smart, or friendly, or shy, or cocky she is. The only thing you can guarantee about a female student at Wolf Hall is that she is a member of one of the factions, and probably a die-hard member at that.
There have been fist fights at Wolf Hall over which Riot House boy is the hottest.
And Pax only instigated one of them.
He gives me raging stink-eye. Apparently, he’s not going to forget about the fact that I just put him on his ass. “If you’re gonna be a salty piece of shit all day, it won’t just be me putting you in a time out. Jacobi’ll hand your ass to you, too, and you won’t be able to fend both of us off.”
Wren grunts at this. “He does have a point.”
I don’t want to mention how fucked up I am over my father’s email. My old man is the very last thing I want to talk about, so I do the only thing that makes sense: I lie. “I’m fine. I didn’t have time to jerk off this morning, that’s all. I’ll be fine by lunch. Come on. How about you both stop giving me shit and we get to class before Fitz skins us alive for being late.”
Wren arches a dark eyebrow, huffing out a breath of laughter. “Fitz loves us. He won’t do shit if we’re late.”
Our English teacher, Dr. Fitzpatrick, has been a little more lenient with us of late. He still reams us out when we pull shit in his class, but he’s more bark and less bite these days. God knows what could be inspiring this level of tolerance for our bullshit, but I’m not complaining.
We arrive at the den, Fitz’s office/library/classroom, just after the man himself. Compared to the rest of the dinosaurs that teach at Wolf Hall, the guy’s practically a fetus. He dresses well—tailored shirts and pants that my father would probably approve of. He slicks his hair back like a hipster, though, and his glasses make him look like Clark fucking Kent. There’s something a little too polished about him that I don’t like. Pax gets it. He snarls under his breath as we file into the room and the teacher starts slow clapping us.
A fucking slow clap? I’ll give you slow clap, motherfucker.
“As always, making a fashionably late entrance. Please take your seats, gentlemen. We have a lot to cover today. I’d hate to have to call you all back here at lunchtime to make sure we get through the material.”
I smile a cutthroat smile. The very same one my father used to brandish at a political opponent whenever they made a pointed comment. It’s a casual upward tilt of the mouth that says: I’ll hold my tongue because I am a gentleman. But fair warning. One more incursion and I will open-palm slap you in public like the little bitch that you are.
Fitz chuckles, like he has a front row seat to my inner monologue and finds it just darling. One day, I’m going to wipe that smug smile off the fucker’s face. That day can’t come soon enough.
The den is not your average English classroom. It’s casual. Comfortable. There are no rows of desks and chairs for the students. The high-ceilinged space is massive. To the rear of the room, rows of book stacks hold everything from the classics to contemporary literary works, not to mention a large number of random historical texts. There’s a grand brick fireplace and flue in the back wall that Fitz lights in the winter. The right-hand wall is primarily made up out of casement windows. Everywhere you look, there are overstuffed wingback chairs and ottomans, beanbags, stools, love seats and well-worn sofas. Wren parks himself on his favorite leather sofa. I sit my ass down on the floor underneath the window that overlooks the gardens. Pax usually sits at the old Victorian writing desk to my right, but this morning he sinks down next to me on the floor, giving me a churlish smile. I glare daggers at him; he’s been trying to taunt me into a fight all morning. “Come on, dude. Enough.”
He pouts, shaking his head in mock surprise. “I’m not doing shit. I’m just sitting next to my friend.”
“Right. And I’m the king of England.”
“You’re the future king of England’s second cousin, three times removed,” Wren mutters from the couch. He’s already lying down, his arm thrown over his face to shield his eyes from the early morning light spilling in through the windows.
“Why do you even sit down here anyway?” Pax asks. “There are far more comfortable spots to rest your pampered ass upon.”
Wouldn’t it be great, just to get a moment’s peace? Like one? I sigh. “Because I am the future king of England’s second cousin, three times removed. And I don’t want anyone here thinking that I’m better than them.”
“You are better than them,” Wren mutters. “Every last one…”
“Are you gonna share why you’re in such a bad mood yet?” Pax’s prods. He won’t stop prodding until I give him what he wants.
“Alright. Fine, you persistent fucker. My father’s been giving me shit again. I’ve had three emails in the past week and I’m pissed about it. Happy now?”
Pax runs his tongue over his teeth. “For real? That’s why you’ve been so salty?”
“What, you wanna read ’em?”
Unadulterated glee shine
s in his eyes. A slow, suggestive smile spreads across his face that I don’t like the look of. “You sure it doesn’t have anything to do with a certain girl named Carrie?”
“Carrie?”
“Ahhh, quit it. I saw you talking to her outside the party. You like her, don’t you?” There’s a too-light, too-excited tone in Pax’s voice. He can’t know about the kiss. If he did, he wouldn’t be asking me this question. He’d already be making plans. If I don’t play this carefully, he’s going to figure out that something happened and that’ll be it. As soon as class is over, he’ll turn into a category five hurricane full of vicious plans designed to bring Carina to her knees. Because we Riot House boys? We’re not allowed to like a girl. If one of us develops any sort of warm or fuzzy feelings for a female student at Wolf Hall, then she’s fair fucking game. It’s one of our rules. An attraction to a girl is a distraction from our friendship, as well as a threat to our reign as the undisputed rulers of the school. We made a pact a long time ago that we wouldn’t allow girls to make trouble for us. We decided we’d make trouble for them instead.
When I developed a thing for Sadie Rothmore in freshman year, all three of us terrorized the shit out of her. Her parents moved her back to Wisconsin and enrolled her in a public school. Pax’s dick kept getting hard last year whenever he was around Collette Bridger. He refused to admit that he had a crush on her and maintained that his dick was actually broken, but he still agreed when Wren and I cornered him in his room and told him Collette needed to be dealt with. He’d played his part without complaint. Wren seduced the girl in the locker rooms and fingered her until she came. Pax then shared the video of the act with everyone on Wolf Hall’s emergency notification list. A list that had included Collette’s parents, for fuck’s sake.
Confessing that I allowed Carina to get under my skin the other night? To Pax? That would be a nightmare. Out of the three of us, Pax masterminds the most hurtful ways to fuck with people. I grit my teeth, focusing way too hard on the notebook that I have balanced on top of my legs. “Alright, dude. Cool it. I don’t have a thing for her. No need to go wasting energy on someone who’s of absolutely no consequence.”
Fuck. I think the vein in my temple is pulsing. Pax bites down on his knuckles, trying not to laugh. “Shit, Jacobi. Lord Lovett’s looking guilty as fuck over here. He’s got it fucking bad for Mendoza.”
At this, Wren does something that spells certain disaster: he sits the fuck up.
With very green, very interested eyes, he gives me a once-over that spells disaster. Then he smiles the devil’s own smile. “Carina Mendoza?” he asks. “That Carina Mendoza?” He points directly…shit, directly at the girl in question. How have I not noticed her in this class before? She’s sitting on a floral print sofa on the opposite side of the room, next to Mara Bancroft. She’s wearing a bright green silky looking shirt and a brown tie (what the fuck?) coupled with a pair of cut-off jean shorts that show off a vast expanse of thigh so delectable and toned that I want to crawl across the room on my hands and knees and fucking lick her.
Carina looks up, right as Wren points at her, which is just stellar.
“I thought I felt a frisson of tension between you two at the hospital,” Wren says, waggling his eyebrows darkly. “Wasn’t sure, though. I figured that maybe it was the amount of blood pouring out of your dick. How is that now by the way?”
Pax answers before I can. “Gangrene’s set in.”
I scowl at Pax. “It’s fine, cheers. And there was no frisson of tension. No frisson of anything. I was in a highly compromised position and trying to remember a girl’s name. Fucking sue me.”
“Fair enough.” Wren drops back down onto the couch, resuming his horizontal position. “We’ll go to Cosgrove’s on Friday night. If you don’t bang at least one customer and have her screaming your name by close, it’s game on with Mendoza. Agreed?”
Pax claps so loud, at least three other students nearly jump out of their skin. “Yes! So fucking agreed.”
Wren’s head lifts an inch off the couch cushion. “Dashiell?”
Fuuuuuuuuck. “Agreed.”
His head drops back down. “Sounds like a perfect weekend to me, either way.”
I glance up, and Carina’s still looking over in our direction. Her eyes—beautiful, striking, wide—are staring straight at me, and they’re full of concern. It’s as if she knows exactly what kind of bomb is about to blow up in her face, and she’s preparing for the fallout.
9
CARRIE
“See, I told you he was interested,” Mara hisses. I look up without even thinking—it’s an automatic reaction—and there’s Wren Jacobi, sprawled out like King Shit on the leather couch by the windows, pointing right at Mara. Only, from this angle, it kind of looks like he’s pointing at me. The last thing I need is Wren Jacobi aiming a digit at me. My gaze flits to the left, to where Dash is sitting in his regular spot on the floor with his back leaning up against the wall, and for a tense, brief moment, we look right into each other’s eyes.
A distant, frosty expression transforms his face from what I think was worried to what I’m sure is annoyed. Part of me has been hoping that he’ll have miraculously developed short term memory loss and forgotten all about what transpired between us on the hood of Pax’s Charger the other night.
Doesn’t seem like I’m going to get that lucky, though.
Mara rubs a finger over her mouth, smearing her favorite Kiss Me, Kill Me gloss over her lips. She pouts, puckers up, and blows a kiss at Wren. I’d say I can’t believe she’s done it, but this is Mara we’re talking about. She’s a shameless flirt, even when the boy she’s interested in is a goddamn pit viper. Wren might see her over-the-top little display. He might not. It’s tough to tell with the blank, unimpressed expression he wears at all times. No matter what, the guy looks permanently pissed.
I’ll tell you who does see the air-kiss, though.
“Miss Bancroft. I’m not sure what you hope to accomplish with displays like that, but you’re better off pursuing a more intelligent suitor. The one you picked out is defective, I think.”
Wren turns a glare so icy and cold onto the teacher that it could put out the goddamn sun. So, he did see the kiss. If he knows Fitz is talking about him, then he must have done. “I’m far from defective, Doc. One can only imagine that she was hoping to garner my attention. In which case…” He looks back over at us, running his tongue over his bottom lip. “She has it.”
The class erupts into a chorus of shouts so loud and boisterous that Doctor Fitzpatrick has to pound his fist against the white board to get everyone to settle down.
“Alright, alright, you little miscreants. Let’s settle in and learn something before I puke all over myself. Please turn to page eighty-three in your books. Carina, since you’re blushing so prettily over there, you can start us off by reading the first paragraph.”
I’m staring at Dashiell, the way I’ve been staring at Dashiell for the past year. Only this time, there’s a difference. This time, he’s staring back.
“Miss Mendoza?”
Mara elbows me in the side, and I nearly slide right off the couch. “Huh?”
“Page eighty-three. First paragraph. You’re up,” my friend hisses.
Ahhhh, shit. I haven’t even taken the book out of my bag. Mara thrusts hers at me, her eyes wide, her eyebrows hiking up her forehead. “Read, weirdo.”
Her battered copy of The Count of Monte Cristo promises to fall apart in my hands as I crack it open and find the correct page. Silence fills the room, brimming over with boredom, and anticipation, and embarrassment, as I clear my throat and begin to read. “He decided it was human hatred and not divine vengeance that had plunged him into this abyss. He doomed these unknown men to every torment that his inflamed imagination could devise while still considering that the most frightful were too mild, and, above all, too brief for them: torture was followed by death, and death brought, if not repose, then at least an insensibility that resemb
led it.”
“Damn!” Doctor Fitz declares from the front of the room. “Thank you, Carrie. Nicely done. So what, guys? What’s Edmond coming to realize here?”
Crickets.
Fitz groans, letting his head fall back. “It’s right there, people. On the page. In plain English. Come on. Someone. Anyone. Just say the words.”
It’s Mara that offers up the answer. “He’s saying that, after everything his captors did to him, even killing them wasn’t enough to satisfy him,” she offers. “And that he started out his quest believing it to be just and righteous. That he was doling out vengeance for the crimes they’d committed against him. But in the thick of it, he realized that his actions weren’t righteous or just. He was driven by pure hatred. And that’s something else entirely.”
Doctor Fitzpatrick clicks the top of the pen he’s holding in his hand, all the while staring at Mara. “That’s right, Miss Bancroft. Sometimes a man becomes so enraged by the crimes others commit against him that his fury drives him to do the most wicked things. Even to kill. What do you think? Do you think Edmond was justified in his actions? Do you think those who sinned against him deserved to die?”
Mara answers without hesitation. “Absolutely. Those fuckers stole from Edmond. They robbed him of so much. If someone did that to me, I’d want to destroy the bastards, too.”
The doc smiles softly. “Any way you could?”
She nods. “Any way I could.”
The pen clicks in his hand again. And again. Then the teacher’s smiling, casting a conspiratorial glance around the room at the rest of his students. “Well. Don’t tell anyone this guys, we teachers and lecturers are supposed to be a little more reserved in our judgements and we’re definitely not supposed to condone murder in anyway, but I happen to agree with Edmond. And Miss Bancroft. If someone robbed me the way Edmond’s jailors robbed him, I’d end them without a second thought. If someone took something from me—”
