A horrible thought struck and I pulled out my phone and flipped to my banking app, my heart racing.
I still had a teen account at that point because it was easy for my parents to transfer money into it—but they could also easily transfer money out of it.
I’d taken out some credit cards in my name, but I never thought about protecting my money beyond that—mostly because I didn’t really consider it to be my money. Using it was fine, but if I transferred it to a different account or something, I’d feel like I was stealing.
All these thoughts ripped through my head, pushing my anxiety to eleven, in the few seconds it took for the app to load. When I saw my balance, I almost threw up.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
“They took all their money back,” I said. “Left me with fifty bucks. I can’t even pay my phone bill with fifty bucks.”
I hit the “request transfer” button just to see what would happen. An error message popped up to tell me that this feature had been locked down by the account owners.
My head spun.
“They locked me out,” I said, not even believing the words I was saying. “They locked me out. They took it all—and they, they—”
My breath was coming too fast and I dropped my head between my knees, taking long, shuddering breaths.
I couldn’t verbalize it at the time, what I was feeling and why. It wasn’t about the money. I’d be fine without an endless supply of cash, at least through the end of high school. It was more than that.
Deeper than that.
It was that money was the only communication my parents and I really had, the only affection they really showed me, the only acknowledgment they gave that I was theirs to care for.
And it was gone.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
RUDY
There was nothing I wanted to do more than run away from her so she could have her life back. Her friends, her parents, her academic career, all of it. I’d ruined it.
If we hadn’t been in the car together stuck in the fast lane going nowhere, I would have driven myself out of her life right then and there.
She’d cried for a while, but now she was just staring blankly out the window as the sky ripened.
We were miles from Starline now and her phone chimed a dozen or more times, but she hadn’t looked at any of the texts. I understood, or I thought I did. Rejection hits hard when you aren’t getting all that much affection in the first place. Makes you feel like you aren’t even worth the slightest bit of effort.
“What do you want to do now?” I asked her.
She inhaled deeply and shook herself. “What time is it?”
“Little after five.”
She shrugged. “Still have a couple hours to kill before the party. I’m down for whatever—as long as there aren’t any parents or cops involved.”
I’d almost forgotten about the party. “We don’t have to do that, you know. I can call up the guys right now, redistribute assignments.”
She shook her head. “It’s not their fight.”
I was going to say something else, but she started staring out the window again. Processing or anesthetizing. Either way, I didn’t want to argue with her when she looked like that.
I wanted to roll her up in a blanket burrito and hug her until she felt better.
I almost decided to take her back to my place and insist on her zoning out in front of the TV with some snacks, but came to my senses before I’d done more than get off the freeway.
Kennedy had spent most of her life being pushed to do things she didn’t want to do by people who told her it was for her own good. Maybe it was, sometimes. Maybe it would be this time. But that wasn’t my call to make—it was hers. All hers. So I turned around in the middle of a tiny one-stoplight town and got back on the highway, to take us to whatever Starline had in store for us next.
Chapter Thirty
KENNEDY
I wasn’t exactly in the mood to do this anymore, but I didn’t want to let the guys down. Besides, Julianne sort of deserved it now more than ever; I just couldn’t find it in me to care.
My world was falling apart all over again. My parents’ marriage was over—and if it wasn’t, it damn sure should be. If my mom stayed with my dad after all of that, I wouldn’t be able to look at either of them ever again—assuming they would even let me be in the same room with them ever again.
My heart ached, drumming against a hollowness as empty as my bank account, with just enough left inside to hurt.
The worst part was, I felt like it was my fault. If I hadn’t hooked up with Rudy and embarrassed Julianne and flagrantly dismissed her in front of everybody, she never would have tried to get back at me, mom would never have gotten hysterical, and dad never would have hit her.
“Hey,” Rudy said gently as we pulled up on the curb a block away from Julianne’s place. “You ready for this?”
I shrugged and pulled my mask on. I went to open the door, but Rudy touched my wrist to stop me. He hadn’t even turned the car off yet.
I paused.
“Kennedy.”
“Yeah?”
“Shit happens. You know?”
Yeah, shit happens. But it doesn’t happen all by itself. Somebody makes that shit happen. Somebody like me.
My lip trembled and my throat tightened and I was very glad that the mask I was wearing covered my whole face.
Rudy was silent for a few minutes, then sighed.
“Okay. Stay here, I’ll be back.” He turned off the car and stepped out. Stunned, I followed him.
“What?”
He turned around in the middle of pulling his mask on. “What, what?”
“You’re just going to leave me here? And what, do this all by yourself? How are you gonna be in two places at once?”
He shrugged. “I’ll figure it out.”
“Why would you do that? I’m right here!”
All of the bullshit I’d witnessed that day already had my emotions in turmoil and this rejection was the last straw.
Tears streamed down my face beneath the mask, dripping off my chin, spattering wildly as I shook.
Rudy gestured at me. “Because of that. You’ve had a rough day. You should, I don’t know…deal with that. I’ll finish this so, you know, we don’t waste our time and stuff, then we’ll bounce and get ice cream or whatever.”
Damn it, damn it, damn it!
I raised my hands and dropped them again, too full of conflicting emotions to figure out what to do with myself.
“It’s this shit again,” I said, my voice trembling. “Why is it always this shit?”
“What shit?”
I gestured at him, not really meaning it to be a mockery of the way he’d just gestured at me, but it sure looked that way from the outside.
“This shit! The shit where I’m involved, I put in my time and money and energy, and then right when it’s about to pay off it’s oh, no, Kennedy, better sit it out, Kennedy, you’re too emotional, Kennedy, you’ll just fuck it up, Kennedy, you’re too weird, Kennedy.” My breath was coming in shallow little gasps between words and my nerves felt like little dots of floating fire over my skin. “This is why, this is exactly why,” I exploded. “I never had friends, I never had a boyfriend, I never bothered trying to do the daughter thing, nobody fucking wants me! Why, why should I go through all this shit just for the chance that maybe someone will talk to me occasionally before they forget I exist? Or worse and they don’t and then they’re all laughing at me and—”
I kept talking but I couldn’t hear what I was saying and I wasn’t exactly directing those words with my brain. They just sort of poured out of me with no direction, all of my hurt and confusion spewing out in a projectile mess, absorbed by Rudy’s thick costume and strong chest.
His arms held me close while my heart broke all over him, and when I finally came back to myself he was rubbing my back and stroking my hair. He didn’t say anything; but he usually didn’t, not when
emotions were high.
I sniffled and sighed myself back to zero, then pulled away from him and wiped my face on my sleeve.
I wasn’t embarrassed—I didn’t have enough emotional energy left to feel embarrassed. I didn’t have enough left in me to feel anything.
“I won’t abandon you,” he said simply. “I won’t tell you what to do.”
“I want to come with you like we planned,” I told him.
I shivered, though the night was still comfortable. He nodded once and pulled my costume robe out of the car. He handed it to me.
“Then you should probably get ready.”
I pulled the mask on and Rudy and I were suddenly indistinguishable from one another. We wore long black robes with long black hoods, and masks painted to look like porcelain jesters. He told me they were from some anime or other, and I was sure he was going to ask me to watch it with him at some point because he was so excited about it; but for me, the costumes were extremely practical.
Assuming everyone else had done their parts, there should be three more creepy porcelain dolls lying in wait in the hedge maze.
Rudy pulled out his phone and sent a text. He got one back right away, and nodded at me. We were good to go.
We joined the crowd of costumes streaming toward Julianne’s door, as fashionably late as any of them, and slipped inside without any trouble at all.
I spotted Julianne and her posse immediately. They weren’t even dressed like bugs; they were fairies now, scantily clad and color-coded. Thomas was a pirate. Captain Hook, I assumed from the way he was groping Julianne.
Seeing them talking and laughing together ignited a tight little ball of fiery rage in the center of my chest. It burned brighter in the absence of other emotions, and the only thing I wanted to do was walk over there and smash her face into the wall.
Rudy touched my elbow, steadying me.
“Save it,” he murmured under the din of the crowd. “This’ll be way more satisfying.”
I didn’t believe him and I was pretty sure he didn’t believe himself either, but I let him lead me toward the back door.
I did my best to ignore them entirely—which, if I’d been thinking about it, was an obvious mistake. Julianne has a sixth sense about things like that, and she was dressed specifically for attention.
“Who are those freaks?” She didn’t even bother trying to be quiet.
“I don’t know. Friends of your parents?” Macy suggested.
“Ew, maybe. They’re probably old and gross and that’s why they’re hiding behind those creepy masks.”
Her voice got louder as we walked away, like she wanted us to hear her and wanted us to know that she was, in fact, talking about us.
“Bitch,” I muttered.
We had to walk past her mother to get to the backyard. Natalie was busy illustrating where Julianne got her exceptional cattiness from. She was chatting with a bunch of other trophy moms, in that same performative and exclusionary tone.
“Ugh, there’s Martha. I don’t know why Greyson insists on inviting her to everything, she’s always such a miserable mess. I mean honestly, I know she’s his aunt and all, but does she really need to be involved every time? Look at her, the poor thing.”
Curious, I shot a surreptitious glance in the direction Natalie was looking, and found a woman who looked strikingly similar to her nephew. She was dressed like a Greek goddess, complete with toga and lyre, and was chatting it up with Elvis and Van Gogh. She wore a serious expression and deep, dreamy eyes. I couldn’t see what was so miserable about her.
Disturbed, I followed Rudy out onto the sprawling patio.
The Birds set it up like a dance floor, with a big sound system on one side playing gitchy Halloween songs like I knew they would.
The pool was full of floating decorations, jack-o-lanterns and shrunken heads along with a bunch of other things.
On one side of the yard was a huge cage full of live bats, all shrieking furiously. My stomach clenched.
I wondered what they had to do to get a license for that, or if they even bothered—I was pretty sure it was animal cruelty. I was also pretty sure that there wasn’t a single agency in the entire fucking town that would cite them for it.
Rudy and I took a casual stroll around the perimeter, keeping in perfect step. We’d had plenty of practice doing that on the track and it was easy.
When we passed the entrance to the hedge maze I kept walking forward while he melted into the shadows. Flawless. Not a single person seemed to notice.
I pulled out my phone and connected my Bluetooth to the sound system. I’d paired to it dozens of times before, and nothing had changed on their end.
I held my finger over the play button, biding my time as I strolled around the yard.
A couple of pops as loud as gunfire sounded in the hedges. That was my cue. I sent the creepy horror movie laughter to the sound system, interrupting the Monster Mash.
A couple of people jumped, one squeaked, but everybody sort of nervously laughed it off. That was fine. This was only just the beginning.
“Fire! Fire!” someone shouted.
Sure enough, the smoke bombs Rudy set off were pouring up into the sky. Orange lights flickered like fire beneath them, harmless and terrifying. Natalie screamed.
“Call 9-1-1! My roses! My roses!” She ran toward the hedges, but before she could reach the sprinkler control, the orange lights turned purple. I started playing carnival music over the sound system.
“Come one, come all, into the hedge…of horrors!” Chris’ voice, modulated and amplified, boomed over the party.
Slowly and creepily, an arch topped with a cutout of a circus tent rose over the entrance of the maze. When it snapped into place, dozens of fake spiders dropped from it, bouncing and flopping convincingly in the breeze.
Natalie shrieked again—but her guests thought it was all part of the show. Laughing, a few brave souls started for the entrance. Natalie was too stunned to stop them at first. As soon as she found her voice, I turned up the volume to drown her out.
It took twelve minutes for the first “victims” to find their way out the other side of the maze, disheveled and tear-streaked, laughing helplessly in the dizzy aftermath of their terror.
I started wandering aimlessly across the yard, staying within range of the sound system as I circled the pool.
Keeping an eye on the chaos around me, I pulled one of the bottles of dish soap from the satchel I carried beneath my robe. I drizzled it into the pool as I walked, and tossed a detergent ball in every few steps.
At the other end I ducked behind the elaborate waterfall fixture and leaned against it casually and poured the second bottle into the fountain, then dumped the rest of the detergent balls in the little reservoir behind the fountain. As soon as I was finished, I moved again. This wouldn’t take long.
I’d lost track of Mrs. Bird, but Julianne and her posse were outside investigating the chaos when my soap bomb hit critical capacity.
One by one, shrunken heads and jack-o-lanterns succumbed to the foam, lost and hidden within it. The bubbles spread over the lip of the pool, growing faster as the detergent in the reservoir activated, bubbling down into the pool. People who ran screaming from the hedge maze faced a confusing and slippery obstacle, compounding the chaos.
Screams of delighted terror filled the night, punctuated by random outbursts of fury from Natalie.
Julianne stood off to one side, arguing with Thomas about something. He finally stormed off into the haunted hedge alone, while she stayed put and pouted prettily. Joan and her boyfriend exchanged a look, then left Julianne to explore the hedge. Macy patted Julianne’s arm comfortingly. Julianne jerked her arm away.
I wasn’t really paying attention to the screams until the tone changed. A masculine voice shouted, “woah, woah! Too far, man! You don’t get paid to kill people.” A woman screamed in real fear and then there were more shouts.
Thomas was in there with Rudy.
; My heart sank like a stone. I raced into the hedge, pushing past the backpedaling crowd, following the sounds of struggle.
Motion-activated skeletons with blazing eyes pounced out of the bushes, cackling maniacally. Poppers went off underfoot like tiny little gunshots. Smoke blew everywhere, obscuring everything until I was right on top of it.
I took a turn I thought would lead to the center of the disturbance and an evil clown popped up in my path. I jumped, but I definitely didn’t scream. Definitely not.
I stepped around him and missed getting plastered into Kennedy paste by inches when a tangle of arms, legs, and capes smashed through the hedge beside me and crashed to the ground by my feet. Captain Hook landed on the bottom. He looked up at me. He screamed.
“No! Leave me alone! How many of you are there? Fuck! Get off of me!”
He was throwing punches at the person who had him pinned; a person wearing the exact costume I was wearing. The person pulled back to smash his fist into Thomas’ face.
I’m not sure what I was thinking, except that I knew I wasn’t strong enough to just grab Rudy’s arm and hold it. I stepped in the way.
His fist connected with my thigh so hard my knees buckled and I went down hard. I grunted as I hit the ground and Rudy and Thomas both froze. I heard the glitter bombs pop as I lay there. Damn it, I missed the best part. I hoped someone would take a picture.
“A girl? You’re a fucking girl?” Thomas gaped in disbelief, then snarled at the mask above him. “Fuck off, bitch.”
The mask growled—Rudy growled, rather—and Thomas’ snarl disappeared.
I stood up and realized that it wasn’t just our area that had gone silent; it was everything. The lights in the back yard were off, the music was gone, there weren’t even any voices echoing over the hedge.
In the sudden darkness, with the smoke and the silence, it felt like we’d been transported to some kind of alternate dimension.
I tugged on Rudy’s shoulder insistently. He didn’t want to let Thomas up. I could feel his intent in every line of his body, in every gasping breath. He wanted Thomas dead.
Something Wicked: An Enemies to Lovers Bully Romance (The Seymore Brothers Book 2) Page 19
