vMayhem At Prescott High - C.M. Stunich Page 0,116

her leggings. I wish I could let her read Pen’s journal. When I open it, and I see the loops and twists of her pretty handwriting, I can hear her voice in my head. But how can I let Heather read it when it’s so awful? How can I let her crack those pages and find out that when Penelope was fourteen, she dressed up in a cute outfit and went out with her friends. She had a single beer. Not unusual for a student at Prescott High, to start drinking early.

How do I let Heather read about what happened when she came home, how the Thing amped up his assaults from molestation to rape. How Penelope tried to seek help. How they blamed her skirt and that beer on Neil’s twisted, fucked-up depravities.

“Penelope is always with us, Heather,” I say instead, my hands shaking. Like I said before, I’m pretty sure I have PTSD or something. But it’s not like I can go to a shrink and tell them all my problems. Hey, yeah, so, I’ve always had panic attacks when talking about my dead sister, but they’ve increased in intensity after I buried her rapist alive in a bloodred satin-lined coffin. “If you think about her, and you remember her, and you love her even though she’s gone, it doesn’t matter where we live or if we even have any of her possessions. She stays alive through our memories.”

Heather doesn’t say anything as we pull into the circle drop-off lane in front of her school. She shoves the back door open and slams it behind her. When she takes off running, her backpack bobs against her skinny body, and I just lose my shit.

I drop my face to my hands as hot, salty tears stream down my cheeks.

“Oh, Bernie,” Aaron murmurs, reaching out and brushing hair back from my face. I can hear in his words how much he hates to see me hurt. So even though parents are honking behind us, and we really should get moving, he unbuckles his seat belt so he can lean over and give me a hug that’s so tight it almost hurts.

That’s what I love most about him: he always has the emotional capacity to give when I’m feeling empty inside.

“Hey,” he says after a few minutes, when most of the other cars have zoomed around us cussing and screaming and flipping us off. No joke, parents of school-age kids are fucking cray. “I have something I want to give you.”

I look over at him, and I see on his face that this is something serious. It’s not like when Hael tells me he wants to ‘give me something’ and then flashes his dick. Which, I might add, he’s done twice in the last week.

“What?” I ask, but Aaron just shakes his head, running his fingers through his chestnut hair as he sits back in his seat and puts the Bronco in drive. It starts to rain on our way home, fat droplets that turn into hail about a half a block from the house.

The Harley and the Camaro are still parked out front which tells me everyone is still here.

I like that, the rain and the company and feeling cozy in Aaron’s house while Heather is safe at school.

I wipe my tears away with the sleeves of Cal’s sweatshirt, but as soon as Aaron and I walk through the front door, Oscar’s eyes snap to mine and I can tell he knows I’ve been crying. Dick-face, I think at him, because I just don’t have the energy to argue.

“You okay, Blackbird?” Hael asks as I pass by the kitchen and find him cooking eggs in nothing but his boxer shorts from last night. I nod, but I don’t bother to explain, intent on following Aaron up the stairs and into his bedroom.

He closes the door behind us as my breath quickens.

This is his room in this house, but it’s almost mine. Since we’ve officially gotten back together, if I sleep in here, he usually does, too. Before that, he either slept in the room with the bunk beds or on the floor in the girls’ room. Even when he was ignoring me and acting like I was an imposition in his life, he was being accommodating.

“You didn’t bring me all the way up here just to ask me to suck your dick, did you?” I joke, but Aaron just gives me a tight-lipped smile.

“Nope,” he says, opening his closet door

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