Page 83 of Anarchy at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys 4)
Mitch isn’t here.
Logan isn’t here.
None of the Ensbrook brothers are here.
I sit down in Mr. Darkwood’s class first thing, black-painted fingernails tapping out the rhythm to MISSIO’s song “Twisted”. The Charter Crew is absent, but so are a lot of kids. This is fucking Prescott High for fuck’s sake. People go missing or run away or quit all the time.
Still … this is different.
I had my hands around Kali’s throat. Aaron shot her. She’s gone and she isn’t coming back.
“Boo,” Cal says at lunch, and I jump. I don’t mean to, and he smiles sadly at me when it happens, but it’s just more proof that something isn’t quite right here.
“I don’t like what’s happening,” I tell the boys in the cafeteria, just waiting for that first summons to the principal’s office. I’m nowhere near untangling myself from Sara Young. I just have to hope I can lead her in the right direction. If not, she might end up in the same position as Kali. “Something doesn’t feel right.”
“Because it’s not,” Oscar agrees, sitting at the table with his iPad. He’s wearing contacts again today. He’s been wearing them quite a lot actually. It took me an entire week to figure out why he wasn’t wearing his glasses as often: his face hurts. Of course, he’d never tell me that himself, but I caught him in the bathroom, sliding his glasses onto his nose and cringing. I pretended that I didn’t catch his flinch. “I don’t like the fact that Barrasso was at the club. And I don’t like Trinity Jade.”
“At least the school is under control,” Aaron says, observing the other students. We’ve been treated like royalty since we arrived on campus this morning. Nobody wants to ask where Mitch or Kyler or Logan are, where Kali is. Because they already know the answer to that.
Don’t mess with Havoc unless you’re willing to pay the price. And since people keep forcing our hands, we’re all growing up much faster than we should be. Our bites are most definitely worse than our barks.
“Not you, though, Bernadette. Because you didn’t kill me. You wouldn’t.” Kali’s ghost sits beside me, a frustrating reminder of my own fragile morality.
I exhale and stretch my knuckles.
“Prescott High is peaceful, but the city’s in a turmoil,” I say, because I can feel it. People are looking at us who never noticed us before. And not the right kind of people either. Our age no longer protects us.
“I’m meeting with my mother today,” Victor announces, pushing his math homework forward. I’ve never noticed before that he’s in calculus. I didn’t think anyone but Oscar was in calculus at Prescott High. It’s not even really a class. The regular math teacher—Miss Addie—just prints out course material from an online college class and uses that for any advanced students. “She wants my answer about the annulment.”
“It’d be safer for Bernadette,” Aaron offers up, drawing Victor’s unnerving focus and attention. For a second there, I’m convinced that Vic is going to start a fight with Aaron, or that Aaron is going to push so hard and so fast that Victor has no choice but to defend his authority.
“It would be. That’s why I’m agreeing to it.”
A shock tears through me, one that makes me feel cold and empty for the briefest of seconds. My hands curl into fists, but I keep the rest of what I’m feeling from showing on my face.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Hael asks as he looks between Callum and Aaron for help. He knows better than to look at Oscar; we both know how likely it is that Vic’s already talked this out with him. I remember Oscar’s words from the other day, too, when he said he never should’ve let Vic marry me.
I half-expect Victor to raise his chin and proclaim that he’d never in a million years, in a trillion sunrises and sunsets, ever consider an annulment. Fuck, I’m his, and he’s mine, and we both know that. The other half of me knows that this is what I should’ve expected the second that offer was made. Vic Channing is nothing if not opportunistic. He knows exactly when and where and how to play his hand.
Shit, look at me. This entire situation, this whole fucking scenario, is just a manifestation of a game he’s been playing by himself since ninth grade. A bet against the universe. He wagered me in it, and then he won me back forever. That’s supposed to be the point, isn’t it? Why I accept all of his bullshit like it’s fate?
But Victor is doing what a smart leader would. He’s playing into a game that has a lot of variables, that can be manipulated and turned into a sure thing for him to win. He stares back at me, tapping his fingertips against the tabletop, waiting for me to say something.
