“Can you do that thing with my hair? What’s it called? A fish-mouth braid?”
My own mouth tightens, but I don’t bother to correct her. If she wants to call a fishtail braid, fish-mouth then who am I to stop her? Maybe she’ll look like an idiot in front of all the fancy friends who’d drop her in a hot second if they knew how poor we really were?
“I have homework,” I say, refusing to make eye contact with her as I brave the stairs and push past her. Her freshly manicured nails tighten on the banister, and I do my best to hold back a flinch. I can remember those shiny perfect nails digging into my skin, leaving tiny crescent marks that hurt for hours. The trauma runs so deep, in tracks and canyons across my heart, that I forget that I’m just as tall as she is now, just as capable. The physical violence between us has lessened, but the verbal and emotional abuse remains the same.
“Homework? Since when do you care about homework? That school for delinquents is hardly an academic palace.” I ignore her scathing words and head straight for the room I share with Heather. I don’t look at Pen’s room or think about how I should’ve made her sleep with me, in a locked bedroom, as far away from the Thing as she could get. I didn’t know I had to protect her, my older sister. Maybe in her own way, she was protecting me?
My throat tightens up, and I slam my door as hard as I can, making the walls shake. Mom screams something at me from the hallway, but I flick the extra locks I installed, and then jam my headphones over my ears. When the Thing realized I’d added a chain lock and a deadbolt, he’d looked me right in the face and laughed.
“You think I couldn’t get in there if I wanted?” he’d sneered, and then he’d let his fingers dance over the gun on his hip. As if I could ever forget that he’s a cop, and I’m just a seventeen-year-old loser who got bullied so bad she was afraid to go to school.
My life is a perfect storm, full of lightning, thunder, and rain clouds, swirling in from all directions. No matter where I go or what I do, I can’t escape it. And that’s why I spent all summer thinking, wondering if I should call on them, those Havoc Boys, wondering if their price is worth a pound of flesh.
I finally came to the conclusion after I found one of Pen’s journals: it is.
It really, really is.
No matter what it is they did to me.
No matter what it is they do to me.Two years earlier …My feet are bare, and the ground hurts. There are sticks, thorns, and stones all over the place, but I can’t stop running. If I do, they’ll catch me, and I’m afraid to see what those dark grins and awful laughter lead to.
I know what monsters like to do in the dark, and I won’t let myself be taken by them, those awful, awful Havoc Boys.
They dragged me out of my bed in the dark, without waking my mother, my stepfather, or either of my sisters.
They told me to run.
So even though it’s pouring rain, I do it. I run, and I don’t stop until I can’t catch a breath, falling to my knees and soaking my pajama pants straight through. I tried to circle around and go back to the house, but two of them were waiting there for me.
I’m just lucky they didn’t see me.
Choking on my shuttered breaths, I rise to my feet and keep going, and I don’t stop until the rain lets up and the sun kisses the horizon. By then I’m so exhausted, I can barely keep my body upright.
This time, when I go back, they’re gone, but I know that’s not the end of this.
Not even close.
Somebody called out Havoc, somebody made a deal.
And this time, I’m the mark.At school on Friday, Victor finally pulls me aside, grabbing me by the elbow and dragging me into the dark theater where Callum is trying on questionable looking masks. The places Vic’s fingers touch, they burn. The sensation makes me sick to my stomach.
“We have a price for you,” Vic says, circling around me like a shark. I can smell him, too, this pungent mix of bergamot, tobacco, amber, and musk. The stink of it makes me shiver and then bite down on my tongue to hide the reaction. God forbid I give Victor or the other Havoc Boys even an ounce of physical appreciation. They’re pretty, I’ll admit that. But they don’t need to know that I know that.
“Finally,” I spit, because that caustic, bitter nature of mine was learned, not gifted to me from birth. I never asked to be this way, this ornery, this angry, but I wasn’t given many choices. In order to keep myself and my sister safe, I adapted to the harsh world I was thrust into. “Like you said, no talking in circles, be direct and all that.”
