Victory at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys #5) - C.M. Stunich Page 0,48

own shirt. I just wanted to wear my own things for a minute. I just wanted to be alone for two. “I’m in love with you. Desperately so.”

Why did Oscar have to tell me he loves me in a way that sounds so similar to the word goodbye? Because that’s all I heard when he said that to me: I love you so much but goodbye. He’s worried about us and the GMP, the VGTF, the world. He isn’t as sure as he’s always seemed about everything.

I used to think that Havoc was untouchable, but now that I’m on the inside, I can see it.

We are all—as Oscar might say—desperately human.

But it’s the inhuman parts of us, all the ugliest, most hideous, most bloodied parts, that will save us in the end.

I kneel down beside Penelope’s box and dig furiously through it, pulling out old math assignments, an essay about—of all things—Shakespeare (namely that the fucker was likely a plagiarist of George North), until I find a bunch of pages with thin pink lines printed on the paper. I recognize these pages as coming from her journal.

And these are ones that’ve been ripped out. Most of them are barely more than fluff. “I saw the cutest shoes today.” My throat closes up. “I saw the prettiest girl today.” My heart starts to race so hard that I feel dizzy, sitting back hard on my ass. My socked feet scrape across the carpet as I lean forward and put the pages between my legs, so I can drop my head between them to help ward off the feeling of vertigo.

Behind me, on the nightstand, is an empty bowl that was full of beef broth. Aaron brought that to me. I’m being spoiled today. Technically, I’m supposed to be packing for the safe house, but your girl needed a cigarette and a moment.

One does not take a confession of love from Oscar Montauk lightly.

“Pen liked girls,” I say, turning the page and finding a rant about Mr. Darkwood that makes me smile. And then frown. I have no idea if he’s still alive. I hope so. In fact, if I were a woman of any sort of faith, I’d probably pray for it. I switch the pages again. This one is a bucket list. I can barely stand to look at it.

Is there anything more depressing than unfulfilled potential? And this is why I hate rapists. This is why I hate murderers (although, I suppose, I am one myself now). How dare you corrupt beautiful souls and act like there’s any excuse for it.

The back of the bucket list page is blank, making me wonder if there isn’t another page stuck to it. I doubt anyone would notice it, but Penelope always wrote on both sides of her notebook paper. I’ve rarely seen one without something scrawled on the back of it: be it a list, a note, a drawing of a sun or a heart or a moon with a face.

I peel the pages apart and find something that I feel like Sara Young may very well want to keep.

“The worst part is the way she talks to me when nobody else is around. She says that I ruined her life. She says that I stole her youth. She tells me all sorts of things that mothers should never whisper to their daughters in the dark.

She wants me dead.

She wants me gone.

She says I took her man.

She says she’s going to kill me.”

I stand up suddenly, snagging a pair of blue jeans and stuffing the hot water bottle in the front. I don’t bother to zip or button them up; they just sort of hang there. But I have better shit to do. I take off, throwing open the bedroom door and heading down the stairs to find Oscar and Vic turning on a pile of new phones.

“Look what we got you, wife,” Vic starts, his cigarette hanging from his lips. He pauses when he sees me and then frowns hard as I snatch Aaron’s cordless receiver. Without skipping a beat, I grab a card from beside the phone, one that has Sara’s number on it.

With the page clutched in my shaking hand, I call Police Girl up.

“Hello, Bernadette?” she says, almost like it’s a question. I assume she’s programmed this number into her own phone.

“Why did you arrest my mother?” I whisper, holding that damned page and shaking so hard that I wonder if my skin isn’t going to split