When I asked Havoc to help me with it, I thought it was because I was too weak to take control of my own vengeance. Now, I know that’s not the case at all.
I’m here because I want to be.
Vaughn looks up at me the way I once looked up at him, with a sincere pleading in his gaze, a cry for help.
I put the bolt cutters against his finger, and squeeze until bone breaks and blood sprays.
Some of it gets on my face, but I don’t care.
Oscar is right: the sweet metallic bite of vengeance was the perfect way to describe it.
After we’re finished with Vaughn, we clean up in Nurse Whitney’s sink and scrub the room until it shines. Callum pockets the bolt cutters in his dance bag as Nurse Yes-Scott tends to the principal’s injuries as best she can.
We only removed five fingers; he still has full use of his left hand.
Consider that a kindness.
“Okay, Scott,” Vic says, after he’s all bandaged up and sipping orange juice from a straw. There’s a glazed look in Vaughn’s eyes that makes me wonder if he’s still all there. He passed out after each cut and had to be woken up. And after each cut, he seemed less and less coherent. “You’re going to take the rest of the day off. If you need to go to the hospital, you’ll tell them you had an accident with a circular saw. When I call your phone next, you’ll answer it, won’t you?”
Vaughn nods, and Vic smiles, patting him on the cheek in a patronizing sort of way.
“Off we go,” he says, letting Hael crack the door and check the hall. Once he decides it’s safe, we slip out together. “Get to class, you delinquents.”
Victor glances back at me, narrowing his eyes slightly, like he’s deciding if he should walk me to class or not. But he must see the way I’m gravitating toward Aaron, and decides to turn and stalk off, like he’s in a pissy mood. Let him be, that’s his problem.
“You don’t hate me, do you?” I ask Aaron, wondering if I’ve just shattered any leftover illusions he might’ve had about my being a good girl underneath all the leather and tattoos. Cal heads for the front doors and we follow him, in no hurry to actually get to class. The security guard looks up at us, nods his chin at Cal, and buzzes him out the front door. We follow, but Callum disappears down the sidewalk like a shadow.
I’m guessing he’s off to bury those bolt cutters.
“Are you kidding me?” Aaron asks, smiling to soften the blow as he lights up a cigarette on the front steps of Prescott High. The steps where he stood and watched as I was dragged and thrown into the back of a van, on my way to a week of darkness and granola bars. The start of my new, hellish life. “I love you, Bernadette. You know that, right? I would die for you.”
I smile, because even though I’m pretty sure I have Vaughn’s blood still stuck under my black-painted fingernails, I do know that Aaron loves me. I really do.
“You took a bullet for me, Fadler,” I say, because like I said, actions over words. He’s given me both, and I’m loving it.
We share a cigarette together before something strange happens. Aaron … hugs me. He just grabs me and squeezes me against him until I give in and fist my fingers in his shirt. He holds me there for a while, so long that the next bell rings before we pull apart.
“Remember to stay human,” he warns me, and then he reaches down to grab my hand, pulling me down the hall to my classroom.
After school, I step outside to find the Thing’s police cruiser waiting across the street from Prescott High.
My mouth goes dry and my palms fill with sweat. For a moment there, I’m eleven years old all over again, peering around the corner of the kitchen as Neil palms my older sister’s budding breasts and then laughs.
“What on earth is he doing here?” Oscar asks, and I blink, coming to like I’ve just woken from a coma. I glance his way to find him frowning, his iPad tucked under his arm, purple silk tie smooth and wrinkle free.
“You think Vaughn called him?” Callum asks, cocking his head to one side, hood up to hide his