Page 39 of Anarchy at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys 4)
Heather shakes her head at me, curling her fingers around the edge of the blanket and sinking into the pillow just a little further. Her eyes peek out at me from beneath the old Star Wars blanket that’s so faded, it must’ve belonged to Aaron’s mom or dad as a teen.
“In my dream, you were bleeding from the mouth.” Heather pauses as my lips part in surprise. How the fuck do I respond to that one? How do I tell my sister what she needs to hear, reassure her that I’ll be okay? Even though that’s probably an awful, awful lie. “Bernie, in my dream, you were dead.”“It’s just the dream of a stressed-out kiddo,” Hael says when I lean against the wall in the hallway, waiting for him to close the girls’ bedroom door carefully behind him. He puts his ass against it and lights up a joint. He puffs it twice and passes it my way. I stare at the damn thing in my fingers for a minute before I take a drag. “Don’t sweat it.”
“The GMP,” I start, thinking of the dead gang members back in the woods. “I want to know everything there is to know.”
Hael sighs and shakes his head.
“Not tonight, Blackbird. You need to fucking rest.” Hael pushes up off the door and comes to stand in front of me, lifting the edge of the t-shirt so he can see the stab wound in my side. It could’ve easily killed me, if Kali had moved the blade an inch in any direction. Isn’t that funny, how you can have the shittiest luck in the world until you just don’t? “It’s winter break, yeah? Try to lean into it. We’ll deal with the GMP, but you know as well as I do that you cut the head off the zombie to keep it down.”
“Ophelia,” I breathe with a sigh as Hael drops my shirt back in place and takes the joint from me again. He smokes it for a second, and then laughs in that loud, raucous way of his. His red hair looks like blood against the beige of the hallway walls and my heart constricts painfully in my chest.
“Ophelia,” Hael agrees, reaching up to play with my hair. I want to tell him that I’m going to dye it the same color as his, but then I look into his brown eyes and I’m falling so hard and so fast that I can’t even remember what I was going to say. When I swallow, I swear I can taste honey and almonds on my tongue.
The sound of Victor’s boots coming up the stairs draws both our attention.
I can always tell it’s him in the house because he’s either silent as a mouse or, when he wants you to know he’s coming, has the loudest footsteps in the Pacific Northwest.
“Heather okay?” he asks, and I nod, offering him the joint. He comes up the last two steps, towering over me with his six-foot-five frame. Many men will try to become Vic. They’ll see him and they’ll think they can copy his vibe, that they can be more vicious or more brutal and somehow they’ll encompass that very unnamable thing that is Victor Channing. It’ll never happen.
He smokes the remainder of the joint, but Hael’s already moved into the boys’ room and come out with a glass pipe. He loads up some flower and lights the bowl.
“She’s fine,” I say finally, knowing my response is incredibly delayed. I take the pipe from Hael. Everything is better when you’re high. Food. Music. Sex. I’m smoking specifically for the last reason on the list. Oh, and because I hurt. All over, heart and body and soul. So bad that I’m seeing ghosts that aren’t real.
My eyes slide over to Victor. Looking at him, I feel like I should have every confidence that life is going to work out. That’s how he stares back at me, how he reacted when Aaron was gone.
I saw his shell crack for a fraction of a second, but now … it’s like he’s doubled up on his emotional armor. I can’t get a read on him at all.
“Excuse me,” I say, heading back downstairs and finding Aaron in bed. South Park flickers on the wall-mounted TV, the volume turned down nearly all the way. It’s nothing but a murmur as I pad back into the room, climb onto the bed, and find myself in Aaron’s lap.
He doesn’t ask me any questions as I shed my shirt, ignoring Oscar as he turns his attention from the TV and over to us. He can either watch or get the fuck out. I couldn’t give a shit less.
“Let’s fuck this away,” I tell Aaron, rocking my hips against him. “I don’t want to feel like this anymore.” What this is, exactly, I’m not sure. And maybe that’s the cause of it all? The fact that I’m not sure of anything.
