Page 90 of Vile Bastards
“Oooooh,” he breathes, snapping his fingers and pointing at the guy. “This is—”
Nisha elbows him in the side and gestures for me to get this little shindig started.
“Hey.” I raise a hand and the purple-haired girl glances over at me, that red plastic straw between her lips. She’s clearly diggin’ her soda or whatever it is, as evidenced by the audible sucking sounds from her cup. Alexei shudders in disgust and picks at a thread in his gloves. “Let’s get introductions out of the way, shall we? I’m Scarlett Motherfucking Force.” I touch a hand to my chest and then point at Alexei. “This is Marie.” He bristles but says nothing in response to that. “Widow. Kelly Kitagawa.” That’s Ash’s preferred pseudonym, apparently. “You know Bohnes, obviously. I’m assuming Nisha and Bastian introduced themselves?”
“Hype.” Hacker Girl raises a hand in greeting. “At least, that’s what you can call me.” Her brown eyes take in each person individually before coming to rest on me again. I assume that’s because she senses I’m the boss of the operation? Better fuckin’ be. She leans in toward me and lowers her voice to a whisper. “Which one of these boys is the Borisov brat?”
I hesitate briefly. This is a big deal. Widow isn’t wrong that this girl could be selling us out to either the mayor or the mob, but if Bohnes trusts her, then he must’ve worked with her before. I decide to trust him and, at his slight nod, I point at Alexei.
“That’d be Marie,” I say loudly, and he shifts in his seat. I know what he’s thinking: that the chair he’s sitting on is contaminated (let’s be fair: it probably is), that he wants to lay out one of his garbage bags as a covering, but that just isn’t in the cards for him right now. His germaphobe tendencies are far too obvious, especially in a place like Prescott where every little eccentricity is magnified, and the students have honed their cruelty to a fine blade.
They can spot an outsider a mile away and will react accordingly. Because of his tendencies, Alexei comes across as an easy target. Little do they know, he doesn’t start altercations, but he fucking finishes them. He can’t be doing that and maintain his chill, you know?
As far as his gloves, well, scene kids always wear gloves, so we outfitted Alexei with a pair of fingerless skeleton patterned ones. It isn’t perfect, but it’s the best we could do. As he sits there, his hands fidget in his lap, and his eyes flame from behind the rims of his glasses.
“And Kelly over here is …?” Hype—haha, nice alias, girlfriend—trails off, rakes her gaze up and down Ash, and then shakes her head. “Jesus fucking Christ. This is real?” She looks over at Bohnes as he leans back in his seat and hooks a cold smile.
“I told you the job was good.” He pauses as Sandra approaches our table and holds up a preemptive hand in response to Bastian’s unasked question.
“No, kid. It’s not on the house today or any other day. What are we eating?”
Basti makes a face, but Ash is doing what Ash does best, getting out his money and placing it on the tabletop. Sandra hoovers it right up and deposits it into her apron without even counting. She doesn’t have to: the top bill in the stack was a hundo.
“You motherfucker,” Widow growls out, but it’s too late to take the money back now. He’d have to pry it from Sandra’s cold, dead fingers. “You know what though? I’ll take a chocolate shake and a cheeseburger on him.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out what’s probably the last bit of cash he has, passing it to Sandra who looks at him like he’s nuts. “This is for Scarlett’s food.”
“Uh-huh.” Sandra just shakes her head, but she’s never one to turn down extra cash. Besides, she’s seen Prescott boys scrapping over girls before. Nothing new to see here. “Orders?”
We rattle off our various requests and she disappears again, leaving our table in relative silence. It’s like my birthday all over again except the tension between the boys has ratcheted up to new and daring heights, and I’ve died and come back to life.
Did Alexei really just fuck me to completion with a gun pressed to his skull? Yep, yep, he sure did, and as truly messed up as it all was, I liked it.
Yeah, I’mma need mad therapy after this is all said and done.
“She wants us to pay her upfront,” Nisha interjects, the first to break the silence. She offers Hype a wrinkled scowl, but her eyes, well, they gleam with stark appreciation. I kick her under the table, and she threatens me with a fork. “Queen, I will skewer you, swear to God.”
