Page 148 of Victory at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys 5)
“So.” I set my sandwich down again, looking around the rachet fucking shithole we’re sitting in with its portable air conditioning unit dripping across the floor and the abandoned buffet in the corner, stacked with unused chairs. Ahh, Prescott. Classiest place on earth. “You called me here. What did you want to talk about?” I look at Vera expectantly, and she stares right back at me like I’m a crazy person.
“You just assumed I only called you here because I had business?” she clarifies, and it takes me a moment to think about it, but then I shrug.
“Yeah, I mean, I guess I did. It isn’t?” My stomach flutters strangely, and I realize I’m getting a friend crush. Like, maybe for the first time in years, I could be making a platonic friend. Oh, the boys are going to be so jealous … I take another bite of sandwich to disguise my total ineptitude for friendship. Let’s just say, it’s been a while. From sophomore year to the beginning of senior year, I was basically alone. Not even just that, but actively despised and hated, too.
“Girl, seriously?” Vera asks, and then she laughs, leaning back in her chair and giving me a long sigh as she looks me over. “Stacey liked you, you know.” I just keep eating my sandwich because I’m not entirely sure how to respond to that. It’s too sad in so many ways, to think that maybe Stacey felt a connection to me the way I did to her.
“Thanks.” That’s all I manage to get out, but then, we’re both Prescott bitches so we speak the same language. Vera can read all of the myriad things I’m trying to say with that one word. Thank you for telling me that. I liked her, too. I also thought we might become good friends.
“After this, come over,” she tells me with a small nod of her chin. “Hang out with the girls, drink a little. Relax. We’re just having a small casual birthday party thing for Tiff.”
Ah, Tiff, the one with the braids who hates me.
“She despises me,” I say, and Vera shrugs again, sipping her soda with a sharp grin building on her heavily painted lips.
“Maybe a little, but she never turns a Prescott girl down at the door. Come on, say yes.”
I think for a minute and then pause when Victor’s heavy hand rests on my shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze. When I glance up at him, I can tell that he’s been listening in on the conversation.
“Go,” he tells me as Vera makes a scoffing noise. Like, I’m sure she thinks this is ridiculous, me needing permission from my harem of men to attend a Prescott party. But that’s not what this is about at all. Victor isn’t ordering me around or pissing testosterone in an alpha male show of dominance the way he does sometimes. Instead, he’s trying to be supportive. He wants me to go, to make friends. I can tell all of that in his one-word response, just the way Vera could with mine. “We’ll make sure you stay safe.”
Victor lets go of me and heads back to the table with the boys as I glance back over at Vera to find her giving me a long, studying sort of look.
“You are cock-whipped,” she tells me, and I scoff.
“I am fucking not,” I growl back because I’ve totally kicked bitch’s asses for less. But then Vera just laughs, and I shake my head. “I am not cock-whipped. If anything, they are the ones that are pussy-whipped.”
“Ah, right,” she says, standing up from her chair as I clean my fingers off with the napkin and then pick up my garbage to chuck in the bin on the way past. “Victor motherfucking Channing is pussy-whipped as he orders your ass around.”
“He actively encourages me to fuck four other dudes,” I remind her as we step outside into the warm afternoon sunshine. Vera thinks about that for a moment and then sighs.
“Okay, okay, you’ve got me with that one. Now, you spoiled ass Oak Valley Prep ho, come with me and get your southside on for the love of god. Spend too much time at that palace and you’ll forget your roots.”
I let Vera lead me down the sidewalk with the boys following behind. What I don’t tell her is that I could never forget my roots. The origins of my story are wrapped around my heart in thorns, briars that make me bleed even as I make new memories and roses bloom. No, forgetting is not nor ever will be an option.
Some people have material things to fill the endless void in their hearts; in Prescott, we make bonds. That’s how we fill that dark void up until it’s overflowing.
When we get to Tiff’s house and look back, I see all five boys slip into skeleton masks and my mouth quirks into a smile. How they do shit like that, coordinated like a group of dancers, I’ll never quite understand.
