Riot Rules

by Callie Hart

  “Sorry, man.” Pax slaps a hand on his chest, all mock apology. “We were just trying to work out what type of message this truly heinous act was supposed to send.”

  Tone it down, dude. Laying it on a little thick there.

  Pax is great at reading cues. Whether he chooses to act on those cues is another thing. He’s not even looking at me right now, though, so he misses my wide-eyed warning. He runs Fitz through with a look so sharp that the other guy breaks out into an agitated sweat. “Doesn’t seem like a retaliation from Edmondson,” he says. “They probably would have just painted a bunch of dicks on the front of the building.”

  Great. Not on the nose at all. Good job, Pax.

  “Nah, this was a personal attack. From where I’m sitting, it looks like whoever did this was trying to send a message to you and you alone.”

  Fitz stares Pax down, flaring his nostrils. He bounces on the balls of his feet. “Yeah. Well, like I said. If anyone has a problem with me, it’s much smarter to come and discuss it face-to-face. Behavior like this is immature. It speaks of serious developmental issues that need to be handled in therapy.” He moves on before Pax can snipe back at him. A good thing, too. By the heat radiating off him, Pax would have said something incendiary that would have landed us in hot water.

  “Fucking therapy,” my friend rumbles. “I’ll give him therapy.”

  Fitz proceeds with our lesson for the day. Mercifully, we’re moving on from The Count of Monte Cristo. We spend the next fifty minutes breaking ground on Romeo and Juliette. “Clichéd as hell, I know, but it’s part of the curriculum, boys and girls. The Bard is a must, and if we have to spend our time on Shakespeare, then it might as well be the one with the sick movie, right?”

  He tells us to watch the Baz Luhrmann movie instead of reading the book, and for once no one groans at the prospect of homework. I do my best not to look across the room to the couch beneath Gustav Klimt’s ‘The Kiss.’ I almost manage it, too. I watched Carrie slip into the tight blue jeans and grey sweater this morning, so I already know how good she looks. She still knocks the wind out of me, though. Her jeans are tight, yes. The sweater, too. Her tits look fucking phenomenal straining against the wool. Now that I’ve seen how amazing she looks naked, it’s impossible to look at her and not remember…

  Last night was fucking incredible. Her skin. Her mouth. Her pussy, for fuck’s sake. So tight, so wet, so sweet. So perfect. I had no idea just how perfect until I sank my dick inside her and met resistance. I’d tried to stop, but it had already been too late. I was already taking something that didn’t belong to me, and—

  Fuck.

  I’ve been staring at Carrie this entire time.

  Her cheeks are flushed, her bottom lip sucked into her mouth. She’s staring down at the notepad resting on her knee like it holds the answers to the mysteries of the universe. She knows that I’ve been staring at her, and from the way she’s working that bottom lip, she knows exactly what I was thinking about, too.

  Dangerous. That’s what this is. I can’t be caught staring at her. Wren looks like he’s fast asleep on the leather couch, but I know him better than that. He’s taking in everything that’s going on around him, even with that arm over his face, blocking out the light. He picks up on the smallest things. And Pax is sitting right next to me, for fuck’s sake. He doesn’t seem to be paying much attention to me, though. He oscillates between glaring daggers at Fitz and mournfully nursing his blistered hand. Looks like I’ve gotten away with it this time.

  I’m far more careful during the remainder of the class. And when I see Carrie in the hallway before biology, I pretend I’m preoccupied with my phone. Outside the dining hall at lunch, when we pass each other in the hallway, I look right through her like she doesn’t even exist, and that is far more difficult than I could ever have dreamed it might be. Now that I’ve felt her skin on my skin, and I’ve been inside her, and I’ve held her delicate sleeping body inside the circle of my arms, I’m officially screwed. For three years, I walked the hallways and classrooms of this academy without ever noticing her once. Now, Carina Mendoza is all I can see.

  21

  CARRIE

  “You’ve lost your freaking mind. I’ve been thinking about it for hours, and that’s the only explanation I can come up with. You’ve officially gone crazy.”

  Presley is red from the roots of her hair all the way down the collar of her t-shirt. The backs of her hands are splotchy, too. “He was in your room, Carrie! Someone could have just barged right in.”

  I push open the door to the dining hall, giving her a pointed look. “Someone did barge right in. You did. You remember how to knock, right?”

  “I don’t count. I’m one of your best friends, and as one of your best friends, I’m allowed to enter your bedroom without knocking if something scandalous has happened. Don’t change the subject, anyway. You cannot be having sleepovers with Da—” She lowers her voice to a strained whisper. “With Dash Lovett in your bedroom, Carina! You’ll get kicked out!”

  “Don’t worry. It was an accident. It won’t be happening again.” We join the back of the line to collect our meals, and all the while I’m hoping that will be the end of the conversation. Ha! Like hell it will be.

  Presley holds up her binder, using it to cover her mouth, like she’s afraid someone might read her lips. “You won’t be having sleepovers in your room again? Or you won’t be having sex with Dash again?”

  “Seriously. Can we just…” I look around, gesturing to all of the people who are in line ahead of us, as well as behind us now.

  Pres nods. “Right. Right.”

  We collect our food and find a table to sit at on the outside perimeter of the room. Presley bounces up and down in her seat, desperate to ask her questions. She looks like she might explode from the needing to know. I roll my eyes. “Go on, then. Get it over with.”

  “Was it amazing?” she blurts out. “How big was his dick?”

  I drop my fork. “Pres!”

  “I’m sorry! You can’t blame me for asking. How long have we been lusting over those guys? And now you’ve actually slept with one of them? A girl’s gotta ask the important questions.”

  Urgh. I’d probably be asking the same questions, too. I’m not proud to admit it, but she’s right. “Yes, it was amazing. And no, I am not telling you how big his dick was. Some details are just sacred.”

  She pouts, but then quickly brightens when she looks down at her plate. A second later, she’s holding up a corndog on a stick, waggling her eyebrows. “Are we talking bigger than? Or…” Her smiley face turns into a sad face. “Smaller than?”

  God, she isn’t going to quit. “What do you think?” I shove a forkful of salad into my mouth.

  “Bigger. Sooooo much bigger.” She laughs.

  Okay, so I am a little giddy about what happened last night. I do want to talk about it. I just don’t even know where to begin. “I can neither confirm nor deny…” I tease, trailing off.

  “Whoa! What’s with the shit-eating grin?” Mara sets her lunch down on the table beside Presley, spitting gum into a napkin. She looks at us expectantly, waiting for the gossip, but my smile has all dried up. I can’t tell Mara about Dash. Not yet. Not until I know what the hell is going on…

  “I showed her this cute dog video on TikTok,” Presley says. She comes out with it so easily—the lie must have been balanced there on the tip of her tongue, ready and waiting. I widen my eyes, a little surprised at how convincing she was.

  Presley takes a bite of her corndog, and Mara’s nose wrinkles. “Thousands of dollars in tuition every month. Tens of thousands of dollars, and they’re still serving us corn dogs in the dining hall. What the fuck, guys?”

  “I like them,” Pres says around her mouthful of food. “They’re delicious. You like corn dogs, too, don’t you Carrie? You don’t mind a good corn dog every once in a while.”

  Lord help me, I am going to kill her. If Pres isn’t careful, Mara’s going to hear t
he inuendo in her voice and know something’s up. If I’m not careful, Mara’s going to take one look at me and see that I’m different. It has to be visible. It feels like there’s a neon sign hovering over my head, blinking on and off, ‘Non-Virgin! Non-Virgin!’

  Mara’s not the most perceptive person I’ve ever encountered, though. She’s too distracted by her own bullshit to notice anyone else’s. “Listen to this. And I don’t want you guys to freak out or anything, but…” She leans in, whispering. “I was with Fitz this morning when he found out about the vandalism.”

  “What do you mean, you were with him?” Pres asks. “He was at home when they told him. Damiana said she was down by the office, getting some Aleve for her period cramps. She said she could hear him yelling on the other end of phone in Principal Harcourt’s office.”

  “Oh, he yelled alright. He was furious. I’ve never seen anyone that angry before.”

  “Wait. So, you were…at his place?”

  Mara rolls her eyes. “Yes. He snuck me out last night and I stayed over. His apartment is beautiful. The man has excellent taste.”

  It’s true, then. This is her way of telling us that she’s been screwing Fitz. I’ve had my suspicions. Having Mara confirm it is another thing altogether.

  Presley just looks at me, the top bitten off her corn dog, which now hangs loosely in her hand. “Excuse me. I suddenly need to go throw up.” She gets up from the table and walks across the dining hall, dumping the corn dog into the trash before pushing the door open and disappearing through it.

  Mara steals one of the fries Presley left behind. “What’s up with her?”

  “Nothing. I think it’s just been a bit of a weird day, that’s all.”

  22

  CARRIE

  Spring storms in New Hampshire are common. Tonight, the horizon is molten lead—dark, seething grey, shot through with cracks of blistering white, brilliant gold and angry crimson where the setting sun breaks through the storm clouds.

  Is he even coming?

  The question rattles around inside my skull as I hike the steep path that leads to the observatory. The rain comes down in sheets, slapping me in the face every time I dare look up. If Alderman knew I was braving this kind of weather to climb up the side of a cliff in the pitch black to see a boy, he’d have my bags packed and I’d be on my way back to Seattle in no time. Admittedly, this is some pretty stupid behavior. The ground is made up of loose scree and hunks of mud. I’m also not the most agile seventeen-year-old. I might slip and go hurtling down the slope any second now, and I don’t even know if the bastard is coming. That’d be a great way to die, wouldn’t it? Snap my neck like a dumbass over a guy who might decide that he never wants to see me again now? Fuck.

  It’s humid as hell and way too hot. Beneath the thin waterproof jacket I grabbed from my room before I left the academy, I’m only wearing a loose, silky shirt. My jeans are drenched. My shoes are soaked. My socks…urgh, I don’t even want to talk about my socks.

  I slog my way up the last fifty feet of the path, being extra careful and watching where I put my feet. I’ve turned the beam of my flashlight down to its dimmest setting so I won’t be seen climbing the hill, but the weak light is bright enough to point out any obvious tripping hazards.

  When I reach the door to the observatory, I take the handle, its brass weight solid against my palm, and…it’s locked. And I forgot my goddamn key. “You have got to be kidding me.”

  I’ve come all of this way for nothing. In the driving rain, with thunder rolling overhead. The damn door’s locked, and Dash isn’t even here, and—

  The door cracks open. Light lances out into the night, cutting through the dark and the rain, and then there’s Dash, dressed solely in black, so devastatingly handsome, and so very dry. His mouth quirks into a half-smile. “Took you long enough.”

  I rush past him, acutely aware of how terrible I look in this godawful rainjacket. I can’t even get the jacket’s zipper down—

  Strong hands rest over mine, stilling me. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Were you chased up the hill by a bear or something? Steady, love. Let me help.”

  I look up at him, dreading the amusement that I know will be there on his face. And there it is. He’s not as smug as he could be, though, which is a small win. Instead of unfastening the zipper, Dash slowly lowers my hood, wiping a bead of rainwater from the tip of my nose. “You look…”

  “Like a drowned rat?”

  His left eyebrow curves up. “I was going to say adorable, but now that you mention it…”

  I slap him, then go back to wrestling furiously with the zipper. Again, his hands land on mine, stopping me. “Jeez. You take a girl’s virginity and suddenly it’s okay for her to assault you.” In one deft, smooth move, he lowers the zip. It would be polite to thank him for the assistance, but he’s enjoying this far too much. I shrug out of the jacket, and it lands on the floor of the observatory with a wet slap. Cringing, I remove my sodden shoes and pull my dripping socks off, and then I face him again. He’s watching me with a steady, serious intensity that makes my cheeks flame.

  “Your hair’s crazy,” he offers.

  “Thanks.” Ahh, sarcasm, my trusty old friend. I grab the hair tie from my wrist, ready to go to war with my curls, but Dash stops me.

  “Don’t. I like it. It’s sexy.”

  Sexy? I’ve always hated my hair. I’ve straightened it and braided it and done everything in my power to make it ‘normal.’ I’ve never considered that anyone might consider it sexy. It’s wet, which means that the curls are corkscrewing everywhere. Dash winds one of the twists around his finger, humming, his voice as low as a resonant bassline. “Could have picked somewhere easier to meet, y’know,” he murmurs. “Given the fact that the sky’s falling out there.”

  He’s closer. The back of his other hand brushes against mine, and my breath catches in my throat. I can smell him—the wild mint, and fresh winter scent of him combined with the smell of rain. His eyes are a kaleidoscope of color—pale blue darkening to green, his irises circled with a thick rim of amber.

  “I thought about it. But…”

  He cocks his head to one side. “But?”

  “I didn’t have your cell number. And I didn’t think driving down to the house would have been a good idea…”

  “Definitely not,” he agrees.

  “So…”

  He holds out his hand. “Give me your phone.”

  God. How did I forget in such a short space of time? He’s extraordinary. He’s an exploding sun. He’s a live wire, humming with electricity. A shot of epinephrine straight to the heart. And I just forgot?

  No…it isn’t that. I’ve been so focused on making it to this point, positive that he wasn’t going to show up, that I didn’t really consider what it would be like if he did show up. And now here he is, inches away from me, and my heart can’t handle the reality of it.

  I don’t recall giving him my phone. I must have handed it over, though, because there it is in his hands and he’s tapping away at the screen. He gives it back to me and a new contact sits there on the screen: LDL IV.

  I fire a sardonic sideways glance his way. “Was the fourth really necessary?”

  He shrugs a shoulder. “Wouldn’t want you getting confused with all the other LDLs.”

  “Because there are so many of them.”

  He doesn’t say anything to that. He walks away, across the observatory floor, toward the telescope. It’s a leviathan—one of the largest privately-owned telescopes in the country. There are only two bigger than her in the States, but neither of them are quite as accurate as our Mabel. Dashiell stops in front of it with his hands in his pockets, his head bowed as he reads the inscription on the side of the brass guard that houses the mirrors.

  “I’ve only been here once,” he muses. “Seems like an awful lot of effort to get up here when it’s too cloudy to even use the thing most of the time.”

  He has a point. “There are always breaks in the clouds, t
hough.” I run my hand over the barrel of the scope, greeting it lovingly like an old friend. “You just have to wait.”

  “All night,” he adds.

  “Sometimes. But when it clears, if it clears, it’s so worth it.”

  He clenches his jaw. He isn’t looking at me, but I get the strangest feeling that he wants to. “Why do you love them so much?”

  “The stars?”

  He nods.

  “Why do you love playing the piano so much?”

  His stoic study of the telescope ends abruptly. His eyes are sharp on me, scanning my features. “And who told you about that, I wonder?”

  “I didn’t realize it was a secret.” Oooh, so that’s why you sneak around in the dark, spying on him, then. If I could punch my inner monologue, I’d go one step further; I’d beat its sarcastic ass. “Am I not supposed to know anything about you, Dash? Are you supposed to remain this distant, unknowable enigma? A ghost, trapped behind a thousand locked doors?”

  He smiles. “Poetic. But I’m no ghost. I just don’t play in front of anyone, that’s all.”

  I think back to the very first morning I heard him play, outside the orchestra room, when all of Wolf Hall was silent and still and the soft strains of music flooded the hallways of the abandoned academy. It was a haunting piece. It stayed with me for weeks after I heard him play it; I woke with it ringing in my ears in the days that followed.

  Not wanting to keep up the lie—this one at least—I say, “I’ve heard you. You play in the orchestra room. Early in the mornings, before the sun comes up. The first time...I could hear the melody all the way from the other end of the building. It was this sweet, climbing…dance…” I can’t think of any other way of describing it. “I can’t remember the tune specifically, but I remember the way it made me feel.”