and Bernadette answered. If you need anything more, you'll have to call her mother.” Ms. Keating crosses her arms over her chest, making it very clear this conversation is over. And she does it all while wearing a hot pink pantsuit. See, her I do like.
At least she's handling this situation and not Principal Vaughn, the asshole who shouldn't rightfully still be around.
Constantine turns to our vice principal and nods once.
“I understand, and you're right.” He turns back to me, still smiling. Still fucking smiling. “Thank you so much for your cooperation, Bernadette. We'll be in touch.”
I shove up from my seat and head into the hallway. Only then do I let my hands shake.
“How did it go?”
A familiar voice stops me where I am, and I turn to find Oscar waiting in the shadows. Even with my instincts on full alert as they always are, I missed him standing there. His glasses catch the light, but that's the only part of him that I can see from here.
I try not to let that icy little shiver trace down my spine, but it happens anyway.
“You are one, creepy psycho, you know that?” I ask, my heart racing as he steps out from between the two banks of lockers, dressed in his usual black suit and white dress shirt, complete with bloodred tie.
“What did the cop want?” he asks casually, but there's something decidedly not casual in his expression as he looks me over, like he still doesn't trust me.
I'm not sure that anything has ever pissed me off more.
“He wanted to know where we buried Danny's body,” I say with a smile, and Oscar frowns at me. I take a few steps closer to him, reaching up to adjust his tie. He slaps my hand away at the last moment, smiling down at me to soften the blow, to make it seem like he truly doesn't care if I touch him or not. He does. “I told them I'd check in with you guys, grab the murder weapon from Hael's trunk, and then we'd all reconvene at the party house.”
Oscar just stares at me, his eyes like cold fog beneath the freakishly clean lenses of his glasses. His ink is intense, crawling out from beneath his shirt and taking over his neck. He's got two demonic hands wrapped around his throat with reaching claws, a fitting bit of décor considering our prior interactions. I try not to think about him shirtless in the bathroom, stitching up the wound on my arm, but I fail miserably.
“Do you think that's funny?” he asks me, and I smirk.
“Actually, I do. You know what's even funnier though?” I reach up for his tie again, and this time, he lets me touch it, lets me run my fingers down the smooth silk. “You. Stop looking for a reason to distrust me; you're not going to find one.”
“What if I could get you an out?” Oscar asks, reaching down to pry my fingers off his tie. His are covered in tattoos, as if some cosmic artist dipped them into a can of paint. They're long and wicked, the hands of a devil. I imagine Oscar could cast some black voodoo magic shit if he wanted to, stir up demons and spirits with those hands of his.
“An out from what?” I ask, tucking my hands into the pockets of my old blue jeans to pretend like they're not tingling, like I can't feel every single place he just touched me. “A princess dress, for a princess.” Oscar's childhood voice rings in my ears, and I can just see him, his skin bereft of ink, his tiny hands wielding round-tipped scissors. “You better not mean an out from Havoc.”
His smile turns into an evil smirk, twisting his face into something inhumanly beautiful, but equal parts terrifying.
“What if I told you we'd complete your list, that we'd let you stay with us for the rest of the year, but that you could walk away at graduation? How would you like that? You could even take your cut of Vic's inheritance with you.”
My eyes narrow to slits, and I'm so goddamn pissed right now, I feel like I could hit Oscar right here in the hallway and not give a shit what that looks like to the rest of the student body. Maybe if I hit him in the balls hard enough, they'd jam up his throat and stop him from spewing asinine crap.
“What was it that Vic said to