Page 160 of Victory at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys 5)
“There’s always the possibility of a bathroom break,” Oscar muses, tilting his head briefly from side to side to stretch his neck, eyes closing for a moment. “Unlikely but possible.”
I sigh and rub at my temples a bit, determined to come up with a plan the way I did for Mason Miller. Because all I really want is to prove myself to Havoc, prove to my boys that I deserve to wear that crown and that I belong. If only I can see something they don’t …
Hael passes out more scotch, and then we all drink until the sky is fully dark and our blood is warm and thick with alcohol. After nearly six hours of discussing strategy and studying the map, discussing risks and listening to Victor and Oscar bounce ideas off of each other, we give up and retire to the bedroom.
What we do in there, it’s not quite as magical and mysterious as what we did surrounded by candlelight. But there’s a lot of touching and fucking and it comes pretty goddamn close.Havoc—All of ThemTen years earlier …The little girl with the ashy blond hair is dropped off at the curb by a woman in a salmon colored raincoat, her expensive shoes clacking across the debris strewn pavement as she digs her fingernails into the child’s arm.
For her part, the girl looks unaffected by this subtle violence, her emerald eyes so bright that little Callum Park’s pink mouth parts in surprise. His own eyes, a blue so perfect that sometimes the adults in his life get caught up in imagining that he could be a famous child actor or model or something, sparkle as the girl is dragged past him and up the front steps of a dilapidated building with asbestos issues and too much mold in the gym.
Callum turns back to his friends and finds that he isn’t the only one in their little group to have noticed the new girl. His friends, Aaron Fadler and Hael Harbin, are both gaping after her. They turn to each other with excited smiles because it isn’t often that a girl in such fancy clothes with such a wild looking frown shows up to torment them.
Cal is smiling and happy and excited because he wants to show this new girl how to dance. He loves teaching people that you can make art with your body, that when you dance, your very sad but sweet mother might just smile a little more than she frowns. He doesn’t know that the woman is actually his grandmother, a woman who killed her husband and forced her daughter to help dispose of the body. Cal doesn’t know that, right after he was born, his real mom tried to tell her story to the police and then his grandmother killed her, too. He doesn’t know how much she desperately wanted a son because she’s only ever had seven daughters, so she’ll lie to him and pretend like he is hers. One day, Callum will look at Aaron looking at Bernadette and Bernadette looking at Aaron and decide there’s no hope for him, so he may as well experiment with his dance partner. All the while, he’ll be thinking of Bernadette anyway.
Skinny and quiet and small, Oscar Montauk also notices the new kid, but even though the sight of her excites his curiosity, he also knows that nobody dressed that fancy would ever go to this school for very long. He reaches up to touch his freshly dyed hair, as black as the night, as black as his friend Victor Channing’s hair.
Oscar is also not used to this strange and wild place in south Prescott; he attended a prestigious boarding school until recently, one that he already misses because it means being away from the dark and hateful eyes of his father. For now, the family fortune is locked away from Oscar’s father by the hands of his own parent. His father will get it back, eventually, but it won’t last. Then, half a decade after this moment, that same father will strangle his wife and kids, but he will fail to fully finish off the last child. Whether that’s by accident or design, nobody will ever know, but the boy who he mistakenly thought was of his own seed will end up with his mother’s dead arms wrapped around his neck. He will be pushed into a shallow hole, but luckily, he will not end up buried as he comes to, feeling sick and dizzy and disoriented.
He will see his father put a gun to his own head, too drunk and distraught to finish burying his murdered family, and he will watch as the man pulls the trigger. Oscar Montauk will grow up hating touch and hating people and scowling at everything, but he will also fall in love with the girl who comes striding out the front doors of the school like she owns the place.
