Page 48 of Havoc at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys 1)
“Have fun at school, okay, kiddo?” I ask, the only light in my day coming from that little girl's face. There's nothing else for me, no other star to punctuate the velvety blackness of night. When I look at her, I see Pen’s face, and my heart breaks and shatters into a million jagged fragments.
“I always have fun at school,” she says, wrinkling her nose at me, and then waving as she turns and takes off for the bus, ponytail bobbing, the pink charms on her backpack tinkling merrily.
“Forgot how cute she was,” a voice says from my right, and I jump, turning to find Aaron waiting next to his minivan, smoking a cigarette. The screams from inside the house echo out the still open front door, and I cringe, gritting my teeth.
“Yeah, well,” I say, because all of the mean, horrible things I want to scream at him are stuck inside my throat, choking me to death. I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to get them all out. Or any of them, really. “What are you doing here?”
“Might not be safe for you to bike to school today,” Aaron says, waiting at the curb as I head up the walk, grab my backpack, and close the door behind me, silencing the screams.
For a moment, I just stand there with my hand on the knob, breathing in deep.
Then I turn and look at Aaron, really look at him. His chestnut hair is tousled and wavy, his eyes the color of fall, this green-going-gold, just like the leaves on the maple that shadows our ugly street with some much-needed color. He’s wearing a red t-shirt, too tight across his broad chest, and a pair of worn jeans with boots.
His body is made up of long, lean muscles, all of them earned on the streets. None of those contrived steroid-and-gym muscles that make up the football team for Fuller High—the prissy upper-middle class school across town.
“Why? What happened?” I ask. Besides Donald, groaning on the ground, the loose rope still clinging to his thin neck. The blood speckling the boys’ clothes. The way Vic looked at me as he swept past.
Vic.
Fucking Vic.
I feel like he’s gotten into my head, like he’s invading every pore, climbing down my throat, suffocating me.
“The Ensbrook brothers stopped by the game at Fuller last night and started some shit. Broke the JV quarterback’s arm, roughed up some cheerleaders. They did it wearing masks, and everyone’s on our asses about it. Like they think we’d waste our time on something as stupid as that.” Aaron scoffs and turns away, like he can barely stand to hold my gaze for long. “You should’ve gone with your grandmother,” he says again which just infuriates me.
You don’t know the whole story! I want to scream.
Grandma isn’t related to Heather. Even if she wanted to take her in—I don’t think she does—she couldn’t. Heather shares DNA with the Thing. If I left, if I went to Nantucket and lounged on the beach in a bikini, dated the cute son of a fisherman, let myself have a normal life … then Pen wouldn’t be avenged, and Kali wouldn’t pay, and Heather would be alone.
For some reason though, when Aaron looks at me with that stupid handsome face of his, all I feel is anger.
“Let’s go,” I snap, moving past him, and feeling his fingers grab the edge of my backpack. I glance back at him. He has the letters H.A.V.O.C. tattooed on the knuckles of his left hand, just like all the other boys.
Their own not-so-very-subtle gang symbol.
“Eventually, we’re going to have to learn to talk to each other,” he says, his voice hard, so different from the boy I used to know. There’s a fragment of that old Aaron in there somewhere, but that one bright ray of sunshine is swallowed by dark clouds. One day, probably someday soon, it’ll cease to exist.
“You think so?” I ask, and he sighs, raking his fingers through his hair. The muscles in his right arm bunch and swell with the movement, causing the sleeve of his shirt to ride up. I can see the names of his sister and cousin tattooed there, right over the generous swell of his bicep.
“You’re a part of Havoc now,” Aaron says, and I scoff, yanking out of his grip and reaching for the car door. He stops me, pushing in front of me and forcing me back a few steps. Our eyes meet, and I don’t care that he smells like bacon and maple syrup, that I know he cooked for the girls this morning, or that everything he does is for them.
Just like how everything I do is for Heather.
“I’m a plaything for Havoc now,” I say, and Aaron growls at me, grabbing me by the upper arms and staring into my face, almost pleadingly.
