trails off and traces a blue-nailed finger across his forehead. “My artistic handiwork, but he’s clearly had several laser treatments. Eventually, it’ll be gone. Also, he’s gotten testicular implants, but it doesn’t stop the other boys from calling him No-Nuts. He doesn’t seem to have many friends left.”
“Basically,” Oscar continues, as smoothly as if they rehearsed this conversation before delivering the news to me. Shit, for all I know, they might have. “What we’re asking is: is it enough? Do you want us to do more?”
Aaron watches me as Hael perches on the edge of a knee-high brick wall, one that surrounds an ancient tree, creating a planter box that’s currently flush with purple crocuses. In just a few weeks, it’ll be spring, and the campus gardeners—hah, campus gardeners—will likely plant something new here, something pretty and colorful and nothing at all like you’d see at Prescott High. We had a few planter boxes here and there, but they were filled with dandelions and shit. Usually a few stray pieces of garbage. Some discarded cigarette butts.
“I want to see him for myself,” I answer finally, and Vic shares a long look with Oscar before nodding briefly. “That’s possible?” I continue, glancing between the two of them. “You know where to find him?”
“We know,” Vic answers, and then the six of us take a quick cigarette break in the shade before the bells toll, signaling the end of lunch.
After school, Cal leads us across the campus like he’s lived here a hundred years and knows every fucking shortcut there is to know. We get the keys to our cars from the valet—Jesus, this place is like the goddamn twilight zone—and we head into the ritziest part of Oak Park, to a café that sells coffee that legit gets shit out of a wildcat’s ass. It’s called like, kopi luwak or some shit, and it really and truly is coffee made out of beans eaten by an Asian palm civet cat and then crapped right back out.
That’s what rich people do with their money: eat cat crap.
“Thirty-five dollars for a cup of coffee that may as well be kitty litter?” I choke as we step inside the fancy-ass establishment with its highbrow idiot consumers. Back in the day, coffee producers would just search for the cat dung and sell it—apparently the cats only eat the highest quality coffee cherries and the animal’s digestive enzymes do … something that makes it taste good.
Now, with the industry booming, humans have ruined things the way they always do: most of the kopi luwak sold is from caged wildcats force-fed crappy coffee cherries the way geese are brutally force-fed to make foie gras.
Yep, another ‘ridiculous political cause’ for me to hunt down and be annoyed by. Like, for real-real, I absolutely hate rich people. Mostly billionaires. Billionaires are the devil. Trillionaires are like … anti-matter that consumes and feeds on society like a cancer.
Eventually, we find Donald, sitting alone at a table in the corner with his phone in his hand and the faintest whisper of the word Rapist scrawled across his forehead. How the boys knew to find him here, I’m not sure. Since this is part of my list fulfillment, I decided not to ask. The mystery is what makes it fun.
As soon as our shadows fall over Don, he glances up and there’s this moment of instant recognition. Sure, on the night of the assault, we were wearing masks, but I know that the second he lays eyes on us, that he’s already heard the rumors, that he already knows Havoc was responsible.
Whether or not he remembers that ‘southside whore’ he bragged to his friends about, I’m not sure.
“Holy fucking shit,” he breathes, and then I see it, the quickening of his pulse, the way his hands shake, the frantic bounce of his knee as he jostles his foot against the stained concrete floor. “You.”
“Me,” I reply, giving him my best wolf’s smile, my dog of war smile, my Havoc smile.
“You’re the one that …” Donald trails off, his attention moving from me to Vic, from Aaron to Hael, Oscar to Callum. He turns his shit-brown gaze back to me again, fear streaking through him like lightning. The background noise of the café is pleasant enough—even if they do serve cat crap coffee. I take a seat across from Don and he has a visibly strong reaction to my presence.
“Do you remember when you roofied my drink?” I ask him, leaning forward and