Havoc at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys #1) - C.M. Stunich Page 0,52
up to me, and I feel myself bristling. He's testing me again, giving me another chance to prove myself.
What choice do I have?
So with one, final look at Don, I head back toward the front gates, and the slumped security officer, the mysterious Callum Park on my heels.
“What are they going to do to him?” I ask, feeling my heartrate pick up, my palms sweat. I'm ready for this. Vic knows it. He sent me away on purpose, a punishment for last week.
Callum shrugs, dressed in his sleeveless hoodie and shorts, a pair of boots on his feet. He leans back against the brick half-wall, and the black iron posts that adorn it, curling his fingers around the bars. His blues eyes are bright inside the holes of the ski mask.
“They probably won't kill him,” he says, and my brows go up. Probably. Do I want Don dead? What was it that Oscar had said, “How far, exactly, you want this to go: that's up to you.”
How far do I want this to go?
Don is a privileged, spoiled monster. I doubt I’m the only girl he's tried to hurt, and I won’t be the last.
I bite my lower lip, shred it with my teeth, but I don’t move from that spot. I don’t know how to.
After about twenty minutes, the boys come back through the gate, and all of them … are speckled with red droplets of blood.
“Let's go,” Vic says, and as he passes me, he pauses and waits until I meet his eyes. “You can cross that name off your list.”
Even though I know I shouldn't, I creep back toward the gate anyway and glance toward the tree where Don was hung.
There’s no sign of him, of anything at all amiss.
“Come on,” Aaron says, grabbing my arm from behind and tugging me toward him. “Vic wants me to take you home.”
“Hael, pinch Don’s car; we’ll strip it for parts. Cal, crack the safe in his room. Oscar, you deal with the security cameras.” Vic barks orders like he was born to it, tearing off his ski mask as Aaron leads me away into the darkness, his fingers smearing blood across the sleeve of my sweatshirt.
Monday morning gives me a welcome reprieve from the hellhole I call my house. As I take my little sister Heather outside to meet the bus, I can hear my mother and stepfather having one of their infamous screaming matches in the basement.
Eventually, it'll devolve into something worse. They'll start hitting each other and, tit for tat, they'll leave bruises and welts and scratch marks. The atmosphere at home is so toxic that I feel nauseous as I kiss Heather on the forehead and smooth her light brown hair back with my hand.
“Have fun at school, okay, kiddo?” I ask, the only light in my day coming from that little girl's face. There's nothing else for me, no other star to punctuate the velvety blackness of night. When I look at her, I see Pen’s face, and my heart breaks and shatters into a million jagged fragments.
“I always have fun at school,” she says, wrinkling her nose at me, and then waving as she turns and takes off for the bus, ponytail bobbing, the pink charms on her backpack tinkling merrily.
“Forgot how cute she was,” a voice says from my right, and I jump, turning to find Aaron waiting next to his minivan, smoking a cigarette. The screams from inside the house echo out the still open front door, and I cringe, gritting my teeth.
“Yeah, well,” I say, because all of the mean, horrible things I want to scream at him are stuck inside my throat, choking me to death. I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to get them all out. Or any of them, really. “What are you doing here?”
“Might not be safe for you to bike to school today,” Aaron says, waiting at the curb as I head up the walk, grab my backpack, and close the door behind me, silencing the screams.
For a moment, I just stand there with my hand on the knob, breathing in deep.
Then I turn and look at Aaron, really look at him. His chestnut hair is tousled and wavy, his eyes the color of fall, this green-going-gold, just like the leaves on the maple that shadows our ugly street with some much-needed color. He’s wearing a red t-shirt, too tight across his broad chest, and a pair of worn jeans with boots.