Page 101 of Chaos at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys 2)
Girlfriend … I still need to unpack that word.
After all, can I really be Vic’s fiancée and Aaron’s girlfriend and Hael’s … something, all in the same breath?
Once I get out of the shower and put my cup in—it’s the disposable kind you can still have sex with, so I’m happy about that—I wrap a towel around myself and head back to Aaron’s room to get dressed. I slept alone in there last night, but something about that felt off.
There’s no reason for me to sleep alone, not anymore. Aaron might’ve been in the woods, but Vic was at the house.
I check on the girls and find them immersed in a fierce game of Mario Kart together. I feel a bit like an asshole; I haven’t been giving Heather the attention she deserves. Let’s just get through this, and we can be together, I promise her. But I don’t interrupt their game to tell her that. Children are perceptive as hell. If I start acting weird and hugging her, kissing her forehead, murmuring strange shit, she’s going to know something is wrong.
She knew on that awful day, when I found Pen. Heather knew before she knew, you know what I mean? I remember her starting to scream, throwing her body against my arms, straining for the stairs.
Penelope was already gone by then, loaded into a bag that looks an awful lot like the tarps we’ve been using, transported away to Neil’s friend at the morgue. Buried. Drowning in dirt. Rotting. My stomach clenches with cramps, and I turn away sharply, closing the door to the girls’ bedroom.
Heather and I are staying here enough. Maybe I should get her like, a cot or something? Would that be better than an air mattress?
“Good morning,” Callum says in that husky voice of his, standing by the table when I come downstairs. There’s a heap of chocolate in the center of it, a literal freaking mound. I narrow my eyes, and he grins back at me. “We heard. Congratulations on not being pregnant with Victor’s child.”
“Shut your mouth, you smart-ass,” Vic says as he leans back on the sofa and crosses his ankles on the coffee table. He’s shirtless and wearing only pajama pants. Come to think of it, they’re all shirtless and wearing only pajama pants. Even Cal, in his usual sleeveless hoodie, has left the damn thing unbuttoned and gaping open to the point that I can’t even figure out why he’s still wearing it.
They did this shit on purpose, I think, just because it makes me feel like they’re being spiteful so I can be spiteful back. In reality, I know we’re all just settling into a new normal.
I am a part of Havoc; I am one of the guys.
Except … with a vagina that they all want to fuck.
Okay, maybe not Oscar, but the others.
“Any news about …” I trail off, because there’s no point in saying it aloud when we all know what I’m talking about. Any news about Danny? Or Ivy? I feel nothing for the former, but there’s some shred of feeling deep down inside of me that aches for the latter. Ivy … she was snooty and full of herself, her essays in English last year were as bad as Kali’s, and she cheated at every game she ever played, but she wasn’t a terrible person. A misguided, gossipy little cunt, but that’s about it. She didn’t deserve to die for that.
“Nothing,” Hael says with a groan, lying on his stomach on the small sofa. I grab a dark chocolate bar from the table and try to forget how stupidly cute it was for them to think of getting me candy. They’re not supposed to be cute; they play games with corpses. “There won’t be. If the Charter Crew is smart, they’ll just put Danny somewhere else.”
I come around the end of the couch to look down at his face. Hael is pretty badly swollen still. Worse than that, he mentioned Brittany’s dad threatening rape charges. That’s not good.
That makes sense, about Danny though. Of course Mitch isn’t going to call the cops with a body in the trunk of his car. It really wouldn’t look good for him. Question is: what are they going to do to us now that we’ve struck back? And so much worse than firebombing an old minivan.
Havoc escalates things, but never unnecessarily. It’s just right, just the correct amount of menace to perfume the air with violence.
“And the other?” I ask, trying to be cryptic. I feel like you can never really know who’s listening in.
Callum starts stretching in front of the fireplace, just below the flickering screen of the TV. He glances my way, blond hair hanging into his eyes.
“Likely, we won’t see news about her as a missing person for days. In any other regard, she shouldn’t make headlines either.” Cal curves his body over to touch his toe, and I admire the sinewy perfection of his muscles. Some guys get all bulked up, and turn into these stiff statues, strong but about as limber as the stone they’re made out of. Callum is bendy, and vibrant, and I want to know what would happen if we started dancing … and didn’t stop.
