Riot Rules

by Callie Hart

  Disappointment is to be expected. He’s going to try and talk me out of this stupid, dangerous decision, to let someone into my life, to fall in love with someone, to trust someone enough to want to tell them my deepest, darkest secret. Because, at the end of the day, that’s what needs to happen. Dash needs to know. How the hell am I supposed to trust in our relationship if the very foundations of it are built on sand? Many half-truths that don’t come close to forming a whole.

  My heart climbs into my throat as I hold the phone to my ear. It rings, and fear nearly gets the better of me. I hold my ground, palms sweating, knowing that this is for the best. The line rings again, and then again. Every time the loud burring chime sounds in my ear, I have to stop myself from chickening out and hanging up. The line goes quiet momentarily, and then there’s an audible click.

  “You’ve reached Ashley’s Emporium Bridal and Formal Wear Center, where your wedding dreams come true,” a bright, overly friendly female voice says. “We’re unable to get to the phone right now, but if you’d like to leave your name, number and a short message, we’ll be sure to get back to you as soon as we can. Have a wonderful day!”

  Last time I called and Alderman didn’t pick up, the number connected me to a Chinese restaurant. The time before that, it was a travel agency. Ashley’s Emporium Bridal and Formal Wear Center is a brand-new front for my guardian. For the millionth time, I wonder who he gets to record such convincing voicemail messages.

  “Hey.” I toy with the fringe on the blanket at the end of my bed. Parts of it are still plaited from where Presley braided it months ago, before the party when Dash kissed me for the first time. “Call me when you can. I’m interested in buying a dress.” I’m not supposed to leave detailed messages for him, just in case anyone’s listening. I’m not even supposed to leave my name. No personal details. Nothing that could somehow lead back to him or me. But this time I need to say something. I feel like this thing between Dash and I is suddenly too big to keep a secret.

  “There’s a boy,” I say quietly. “I know there isn’t supposed to be a boy, but I couldn’t help it, okay. Try not to be too mad. He’s a good guy. Actually, I think you’re really going to like him.”

  I end the call, filled with hope. Telling Alderman is the right thing to do. I mean, he’s not stupid. He can’t have thought that I was going to be single all my life. Someone was always going to come along and sweep me off my feet. Dash has done more than that, though. He’s healed the part of me that I assumed was going to be broken forever. He’s given me a shot at a real future—where I can do more than just survive. One where I can actually live.

  I hardly notice the rain anymore. The years I spent in Seattle before coming to Wolf Hall conditioned me against wet, miserable weather. At least it’s still warm. That’s something. I tuck my hands inside the pockets of my rain jacket, hurrying up the cliff path to the observatory. How is it that I can still be full of butterflies whenever I think about his smile? God, I’m a fucking lost cause. It’s embarrassing, how much I love this boy.

  As usual, Dash has gotten here before me and closed all of the blackout curtains at the windows. This time, he hasn’t locked the door from the inside, though. I hurry inside, wrestling to get the door closed, and—

  What?

  Dash looks up and grins at me, though there’s something wrong with the smile. Something plastic, and forced, and hard. That could have something to do with the fact that he isn’t here alone. There’s a girl here. Another girl. A girl who is not me…and she’s on her knees at his feet, and his dick is in her mouth.

  Again…

  …WHAT?

  “Ahhh, shit!” He inhales sharply through his teeth. “I totally forgot. I told you to meet me here tonight, right?”

  I’m…where are my words? I’m speechless. What the hell is happening?

  Dash laughs, running his hands over the girl’s hair. Her head continues to bob up and down on his dick. Who…who is that?

  “Don’t worry. If you can give me twenty minutes, I’ll be finished up here and good to go again. Just grab a seat or something.”

  Just…

  …grab…

  …a…

  …seat…

  …or….

  …something…

  A shocked bark of laughter rips out of my mouth. One solitary blast of sound that bounces around the inside of the observatory.

  The girl, Amalie Gibbons, I think, stops what she’s doing and looks up at Dash. I don’t see her face, but he does. He strokes her cheek affectionately, the way he’s stroked mine so many times before. “She can totally join us. I don’t mind.” She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and reality warps.

  How is this not making any fucking sense? I can’t…who…?

  Dash told me to meet him here. We’ve met here so many times. The observatory is my favorite place at the academy. So then…what is this?

  Dash looks up at me, shrugging. “Did you hear that? She doesn’t mind, actually. If you want, you could just—”

  I turn and I crash through the door, back out into the rain.

  Just grab a seat or something. Just grab a seat or something. Just grab a seat or something. Just grab a seat or something. Just grab a seat or something. Just grab a seat or something. Just grab a seat or something. Just grab a seat or something. Just grab a seat or something…

  I roll my ankle on a tree root. My hood falls down.

  The rain slants horizontally, lashing, driving right into my face. I can’t see where I’m going. All I can see is the blonde, wavy hair of the girl who was on her knees. The way her head was bobbing up and down. The way Dash’s eyes were glazed over, full of lust…

  I trip on a rock, and a yelp bursts out of my mouth. It wasn’t real. There’s no way that was real. He would never, ever do that to me. He just wouldn’t. He told me that he loved me last fucking night.

  I stumble, unable to stop myself this time. I slide down the side of the hill, screaming as the shale and scree bites into my ass. I slide to a stop in a deep puddle, and the rainwater soaks though my jeans, flooding my shoes. My jacket, which was so waterproof on the way up the hill, now definitively is not. I’m soaked to my skin. Cold, stagnant water seeps up my back. It doesn’t matter, though. Nothing matters anymore. How could it?

  I’m such a fucking fool.

  How did I not see this coming? How did I miss this? Where were the warning signs? I’ve been so wary. Cautious. Careful. And just when I became so sure of him, when I knew with every inch of my being that he wasn’t going to hurt me…

  It would be hyper melodramatic to say that this is worse than what happened with Kevin. Stupid, right? But in this moment, sitting in five inches of water, so dejected that I can’t really feel anything anymore, it does feel worse.

  Jason and Kevin didn’t lie about who they were. They didn’t try and lull me into a false sense of security. They were who they were—grotesque, evil monsters—and they didn’t have any qualms about people knowing that. In fairness to Dash, he did warn me that this was going to happen. Quite a few times, actually. But then he spent two months stealing secret kisses, slowly letting me in, holding me in his arms and making me come. He made me forget all of the things that he said he was going to do. Like a fool I let him walk me into this…this epic betrayal, and now I only have myself to blame.

  A choked sob flies out of me, loud enough that it echoes down the hillside toward the academy. My hair is plastered to my scalp. My hands are completely numb. The rain sheets down, the cold droplets skate over my face, blending with my tears.

  “You win,” I whisper. The words are lost below the roar of the rain slamming into the earth and the wind shaking the trees, but I feel the resignation in them, deep inside my soul. Dashiell has won. He told me he was going to break me, and he has. Was this his plan all along? Has he spent the past two months, rolling his eyes every time he has to be with me, laughing behind my back whenever he heads back to Riot House, telling his asshole ro
ommates tales of how stupid I am?

  Was this whole thing a game to him?

  This suspicion is a dagger, twisting over and over in my chest. The blade cuts deep, and the misery hurts more than any other pain I’ve ever experienced. I thought I could trust him. I thought…

  I thought…

  God, I’m going to throw up.

  Shame pools in my stomach as I heave into the pool of rainwater. I lean sideways, attempting to salvage some of my dignity by trying not to vomit onto myself, but what does it even matter at this point? I’m already humiliated.

  I let myself wallow for another ten seconds, but then a spiderweb of lightning rips across the sky, throwing the side of the hill, the trees, and the academy below me into stark relief, and I realize that maybe sitting in a puddle of water on top of a mountain isn’t the best place to be during a storm.

  My descent down to the academy is torturous. My ankle hurts like hell, and I can’t stop crying. When I reach Wolf Hall’s main entrance, I try to turn the large brass handle and the damn thing won’t budge. It’s locked.

  This is truly impressive. How can this situation possibly have gotten worse than it already was? I lean back and sink down the door, stifling a sob. At least I’m out of the rain. I’ll stay here until I die, I think.

  I’m cracked open.

  I’m hollowed out.

  I’m shattered into pieces.

  I’m done.

  34

  CARRIE

  SEVEN MONTHS LATER

  Whoever said that time is the biggest healer is a fucking liar.

  Six months have passed, nearly four times the length of the brief relationship I shared with Dashiell Lovett, and every day I wake up with the same dull ache in my chest. When everyone left to go on summer break, I stayed at Wolf Hall alone, wandering the halls like a melancholy ghost, stuffing my face with chocolate and watching documentaries on Netflix. There was one particular show about amputees who suffered from phantom limb syndrome. Even though their leg or their arm was missing, they experienced very real, very shitty pain, originating from a limb that didn’t exist anymore.

  That’s what this feels like. I lost Dash. He was severed from me like a wasted limb, but he’s still there. Kind of. Not one word has passed between us since. Months of silence. Months of avoided eye contact. Six excruciating months, where I’ve trudged from one class to the next, never lifting my head, never engaging with anyone apart from Presley.

  We’re all seniors now. Christmas has come and gone. A whole new year has begun. While others went overseas to visit their families for the break, I chose to stay at the academy and work. All three Riot House boys left the mountain, and the knowledge that none of them were within a fifty-mile radius was a relief.

  When Dash returns from wherever he spent the holidays, he’s officially a year older. Eighteen. It’s hard to forget someone’s birthday when it’s New Year’s Day. He’s paler than before. His hair darker. He was wearing more casual clothes, even after our run-in at the observatory, but on his first day back at the academy, his attire has returned to business casual again. He’s also wearing a pair of black-framed glasses that he keeps taking off and putting back on again, presumably still getting used to them. He’s less sun god now. More pale and interesting. These changes in him don’t make him any less attractive. Ironically, he looks like he’s grown into himself while he was away. He graduated into manhood over the break, and it really, really, really suits him.

  The bastard.

  I need to get away from him. I count down the days until graduation with bated breath. The sooner I can leave New Hampshire, the better. The idea of being accepted into a college on the other side of the country and leaving this godforsaken place is all that keeps me going. But then, when I try to visualize what life will look like once that happens, I can’t seem to picture it.

  My mind is incapable of constructing a reality for me in which Dashiell Lovett doesn’t exist. The worst part of it all? The part that keeps me up at night, burning like acid in the pit of my stomach? I miss him. I was exhausted during the two months Dash and I spent together, but the hours we lay naked, tangled up in my bedsheets, were more precious than sleep. I miss his laughter. I miss the keen intensity of his gaze, edged with lust. I miss the way he used to touch me so possessively. How he could make me come with nothing but a fingertip and a slow-burning kiss.

  In a very real way, it feels like someone close to me has died. The trauma of my loss is a cold shard of ice in my heart that never, ever melts. Dashiell didn’t die, though. I still have to see him every day. He sits on the other side of Doctor Fitzpatrick’s den during our English classes, looking like a distant, aloof, arrogant god, his distant gaze sliding over me like I don’t even exist, and every time it happens, I feel like I’m dying.

  I want the pain to stop. I’m sure I’ll go crazy soon if it doesn’t. Alderman offered to transfer me to a private school in Washington, but I was gripped by an illogical, unreasonable rage when I considered taking him up on the offer. A fresh start, away from all of this bullshit and away from all three Riot House boys does have its appeal, but then what would that say about me? I’d be coward, running away from my problems instead of facing them. Running from Grove Hill and my past there is one thing; I killed a man there. My mother allowed an alcoholic drug addict to barter me away like I was his personal fucking property in exchange for a line of credit with a demon. I was eleven years old. I don’t regret what I did to Kevin—I did what I had to do in order to survive—but that isn’t the case here. I won’t die if I stay at Wolf Hall. Even though it hurts like hell, none of this is outside of my control.

  I can be strong. I can choose to ignore the pain that paralyzes my soul every time I see Dash, and I can ride out this nightmare until graduation rolls around…because I refuse to let him know how badly he has hurt me.

  Once you’ve come on my dick, I’ll move onto the next pretty girl with a decent sized rack, and that’ll be that. You won’t hear from me. There won’t be any texts. We won’t go skipping hand-in-hand down the corridors of this dumpster fire. I’ll have ruined you. I’ll be this ugly sore of a memory that never goes away, festering in the back of your head, poisoning every future relationship you ever have because I made it impossible for you to trust men.

  He was right about all of it. That’s precisely what he did. He went on with his life like nothing ever happened. Like I didn’t fucking exist. Presley wanted to murder him when I told her what I’d seen in the observatory. For weeks, it was hard not to burst into tears whenever I heard him joking around with Wren or squabbling with Pax in the hallways.

  I was relieved when Amalie’s family relocated to Argentina in October and took her with them. Not having to look at her and remember what she did to my boyfriend helped some, but the pain never fully went away.

  So, my interminable punishment for not heeding Dash’s warning continues. Maybe one day, in a year or two, when there are thousands of miles between us, I’ll wake up and feel like I can finally breathe again. But for now…

  “Carrie?”

  I snap my head up, locating the person who just called out my name. Principal Harcourt is heading across the library toward me at a fast clip, her face very serious as usual. She smiles tightly when she reaches the table I’ve been studying at, rapping her knuckle in a business-like manner against the wood.

  “Alderman would be pleased to see you studying so hard,” she says in a low, conspiratorial voice. “I can’t imagine why you’d want to do your work here, when you have so much space upstairs, though. I have to say, I think that’s my favorite room in the entire academy.”

  She still thinks Chloe Khan traded rooms with me out of the kindness of her heart. I don’t have it in me to tell her the truth: that Dash bribed the girl. Within twenty-four hours of seeing him in the observatory with his cock in Amalie Gibbons’ mouth, I’d begged Chloe to exchange rooms with me again. She’d looked at me like I was crazy, and then refused point-blank to sw
itch back. Wouldn’t even consider it. She told me that she liked being so much closer to the second-floor showers, but after I bugged and pestered her for a few days, she let slip that Dash had told her that she couldn’t switch back under any circumstances. That was confusing as hell. The guy blatantly trampled all over my feelings, crushed my heart under his heel, didn’t give a shit about me whatsoever, and then told her their deal was off if she accepted her old, much larger bedroom back. Maybe forcing me to stay in the beautiful room, with all of the beautiful things he bought me, was just another form of punishment on his part. One that was very effective indeed.

  I hate the room now. I spend as little time as possible there, only returning from the library or from Presley’s room to sleep, when my body absolutely demands rest.

  I smile stiffly at Principal Harcourt. “Is there something I can do for you, Principal Harcourt? I’m just in the middle of my Spanish assignment.”

  She nods. “There is. We have a new girl starting at the school in a couple of days. Her name is Elodie. She’ll be taking Mara Bancroft’s old room, which means she’s on your floor. As student teacher liaison, it’ll be your responsibility to make sure she gets situated and settles in properly. Wolf Hall can be very overwhelming and intimidating to new students. I’d like you to show her around a little. Make her feel welcome. Show her where her classes are. That kind of thing. Think you’re up to the task?”

  We’ve had a slew of new students recently, but none of them have seemed to stick. With girls repeatedly transferring in and out, the bedroom that Mara used to occupy might as well have a revolving door on it. A few of the girls on the fourth floor have begun to gossip about the room being haunted.