She just stares back at me before whipping her head away to look at the wall.
Ben pops his head around the corner a moment later, adjusting his small tortoiseshell glasses.
“You’re looking at Parrish?” he asks, trying and failing to hide the tremor of excitement in his voice.
“We are,” Maxx agrees, pulling out a chair for me and gesturing to it with a flourish. With a sad but very genuine smile, I take a seat and he sits beside me. “Want to join us?”
Ben thinks for a moment before nodding.
“Give me a second,” he says, disappearing around the corner and then reappearing with Amelia and Henry in tow. Ben sits beside me which I appreciate more than I could even put to words, while the twins sit across from us and then, after a furtive glance at one another, climb on the table to sit in front of the stack of albums.
Maxx glances at Kimber again, still standing in the corner like a petulant brat. But that’s okay. She’s only fourteen and she misses her brother; I get it. If I didn’t know all the things I do about his disappearance, I’d think he was dead, too.
“Are you sure you don’t want to join us?” X asks her, his voice calm and even, and oh so patient. It takes a second, but when she finally turns back to us, her face is neutral. It’s a huge step up from the vitriolic rage she’s been displaying lately.
Eventually, she makes her way around the table and sits in one of the chairs vacated by the twins.
Beneath the safety of the tabletop, Maxx takes one of my hands and squeezes it in his. With the other, he starts to flip through the photo album, telling stories that make the twins chuckle and snort.
When Tess walks by and sees us all gathered together in there, her eyes fill with tears and she very quickly dashes away.
Can’t say I blame her.
If I were reading this scene in a book, I’d truly and honestly believe that Parrish Vanguard was about to die.
With the administration still on high alert, Friday is a fairly easy school day. I catch sight of Lumen and Danyella once, but they very quickly take off when they see me and Chasm together.
I have yet to figure out what’s going on with them, but I’d like to. Chasm, on the other hand, flips off their retreating backs and scowls heavily.
“Cowards,” he murmurs, glancing past me toward Mr. Volli. He registers my presence in class like I’m any other student, but every day that I’m forced to sit there and listen to him lecture, I seethe. He’s the one cutting Parrish, making him bleed. Justin might be the ringleader, but Mr. Volli is a faithful lackey; they’re equally responsible for all of this shit. “You sure your bitch ass isn’t coming to the party tonight?”
Mr. Volli smiles prettily, the skin at the edges of his eyes crinkling in a jovial manner.
God, I hate these people, I think, frowning hard at his expression.
“Unfortunately, no. I have other matters to attend to.”
“More teenagers to kidnap and slice up?” Chasm queries, and Mr. Volli shrugs which is like, creepy as fuck,
“Maybe,” he replies cheerily, popping his head into the hall to yell at a senior boy. “No running in the halls, Mr. Hernandez.” Mr. Volli turns back to us, still smiling. I have a feeling that he’s just like Justin—happy one minute, but so close to snapping that a single word might end with a knife in your neck. “Try to enjoy yourselves tonight; this launch is a big deal for Mr. Prior.”
“One of these days, karma is gonna catch up to you,” Chasm says, his voice low and menacing. I wonder if, when he says the word karma, he doesn’t actually mean himself.
“If so, I welcome her arrival on swift wings,” Mr. Volli says, gathering up his things and putting them into a canvas satchel that he wears with pride, snatching Mr. Fosser’s walking stick on his way out. He turns the lights off, closes the classroom door, and locks it with a set of keys. “I will see the two of you on Monday—if not sooner.”
With the walking stick clanking loudly on the floor beside him, Mr. Volli takes off for the parking garage as Chasm and I exchange a look.
“If not sooner?” he asks, and I shiver.
“No clue what that means, but it can’t possibly be anything good.”
Maxx meets us shortly after, swinging a visitor’s badge around his neck.
“Ms. Miyamoto doesn’t understand why I keep needing these,” he says, lifting it up by the lanyard as Chasm smirks at him.
“Maybe she’s wondering if you’re just here to scam on high school girls?” he remarks, and Maxx gives him a very dark look in response. Not surprising considering my age was a bit of a trigger for him.
