That’s just who she is, I guess, Ms. Breonna Keating.
“Where are my boys?” I repeat to Sara, my eyes briefly meeting the Vice Principal’s inky brown ones. The ambulance doors are slammed shut, and I let out a small snarl of frustration. Police Girl is staring at me like a riddle she’s determined to fucking decipher.
“Who are you?” she asks me after a moment, like she either doesn’t understand the depths of my rage or just doesn’t care. I turn to look at her, my body shaking as the pain really starts to set in. It’s everywhere. I had my ass handed to me today, didn’t I?
“The Queen of Havoc,” I tell her, and then I lean back against the wall and close my eyes. Where are you, boys? I wonder as the ambulance jostles down the road. Where the fuck are you?
If one of them is gone, so help this universe.
I will rend the fabric of reality to taste vengeance.
I hope Maxwell Barrasso likes his son delivered with a concave head and no eyes.
Because I am just getting motherfucking started.“Tell me that they’re alive,” I repeat for what’s likely the hundredth fucking time, lifting a hand up and rubbing it across my mouth. I’m used to seeing the bright waxy smear of lipstick on my pale skin. Instead, I’m almost too clean. Scrubbed raw and smelling of powdery soap.
But I had to clean up, didn’t I? After all that blood …
Sara Young stares at me from across the surface of her countertop. After the cops took pictures of me dressed in copper-scented crimson, and collected my clothes for evidence, I was allowed to come back here to shower.
“You owe me that much, at least,” I say, my tongue scraping across the inside of my mouth like sandpaper. Sara is staring at me with a fresh set of eyes as if she, too, made a snap judgement. As if she, too, underestimated me.
She won’t make that mistake again, unfortunately.
“You know,” she begins, adjusting her position against the opposite counter and dropping her chin to her chest. Her eyes are closed, but I have no doubt that her ears are attuned to my every movement. “I thought I had you all figured out, Bernadette.” Sara looks up suddenly, and her doe-brown eyes don’t look so soft anymore. “You were sad, I could see it in your eyes. That much, I knew for sure.”
“Just tell me if my fucking boys are still alive,” I snap back, wanting to dig my fingers into my scalp until my skin bleeds. But only so that I keep them away from her. I want to grab Sara and shake her right now; she knows the suspense is killing me.
Six hours, four minutes, and thirty-two seconds ago, a man shot Stacey Langford in the head, and I ended up spilling more blood at Prescott High than I’ve ever spilled in my life. The police took my phone, and I haven’t been able to get access to a laptop. Shit, I’m so desperate right now that I’d march my ass down to the corner where all the hookers hang out and use the very last payphone in all the city of Springfield. It belongs to Prescott, of course, and it’s used more often for paid fucks than phone calls.
Right now, I’d gladly press that filthy receiver to my ear if that’s what it’d take to hear the voices of my boys. Victor is okay, obviously, but I haven’t seen him since they put us in separate ambulances and drove us away from the school.
The last thing I saw before the paramedics closed the doors was his face, drawn but determined.
I pick the crown up that Victor gave me and hold it in two hands, staring down at it with a frown taking over my mouth. I don’t know why I’m here, at Sara Young’s house, instead of the station. Or Aaron’s place. Because I’m either under arrest or … I’m not.
But of all the things they took from me, for some reason, they let me keep this goddamn crown.
I look back up again, but Sara’s focus hasn’t wavered. She’s boring into me with eyes like swords, sharpened and ready for justice.
“You’re really and truly invested in all of this, aren’t you?” she asks, her tone accusatory, like I’ve torn apart her perfect little life and dashed her dreams on the rocks of reality. “You’re not looking for my help; I’m just an obstacle you need to overcome.”
I slip the crown back on my head, just to feel the weight of it. My eyes close of their own accord, and I pull in a deep breath. If someone had asked in August if this is where I’d be in January, sitting on a cop’s stool and wearing a crown given to me by one of the darkest minds to ever attend Prescott High, I’d have laughed in their face. What is this? What am I doing?
