Havoc at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys #1) - C.M. Stunich Page 0,4
your list Principal Vaughn?” he whispers, and when I look away, Vic laughs in my face, his breath hot against my mouth. He pushes up off the wall, stalks toward the edge of the brick patio, and lights up a cigarette.
One of the math teachers—Miss Addie or something—sees us, but then puts her head down and keeps on walking. Pretty sure Hael’s fucked her. I walked in on them once. Well, I walked in on him with one of the teachers, her clothes disheveled, her lipstick smeared. I can't remember which of the blond math teachers it was.
“Principal Vaughn.” Victor laughs, and the sound is so twisted and full of malice, it makes my ears bleed. “Go home, Bernadette, and we'll see you in the morning. It's still 193 44th Street, isn't it?”
“Don't ever come to my house again,” I growl at him, and then I take off for home.
My home life is worse than my school life. I’ve tried to make it better on more than one occasion. I’ve called social services, but my foster family was even worse. I’ve tried running away, but then the cops dragged me back and put me on house arrest, and then I was just … trapped in hell.
Once upon a time, my family was wealthy. But then my father killed himself, and my mother lost the house, and well, I can barely remember what it’s like to feel safe and secure, to know there’ll be food on the table and a roof over my head.
Pamela, she still lives that old fantasy of having money.
“Bernadette,” she calls, trotting down the stairs in pearls and a designer dress. She probably charged them to one of the dozen stolen credit cards she keeps in her purse. My backpack is literally falling apart, and my little sister doesn’t have any shoes that don’t have holes in them, but sure. Buy yourself a nice dress and some fancy jewelry.
The thing about my mother is, she doesn’t do drugs, she only drinks at parties, and she paints a very pretty picture with her blond hair and bright green eyes. I’m almost certain that she’s a psychopath. Once, when I spilled a cup of juice on the last of her fancy rugs, she locked me in the bathroom after filling the tub with bleach. The fumes made me so sick that I passed out.
“What?” I stand there in the front entry with my backpack on one shoulder, hating her with every breath and wishing she’d move out of the way, so I could retreat upstairs to my room. Heather will be at the after-school program I signed her up for, so at least for an hour or two, I don’t have to worry about my little sister.
Besides, the thing I call my stepfather won’t be home for hours yet. He works the swing shift at the police station, an on-duty cop with a taste for depravity. And he has so many friends, so, so many. It’s terrifying. I don’t feel safe anywhere.
“Can you do that thing with my hair? What’s it called? A fish-mouth braid?”
My own mouth tightens, but I don’t bother to correct her. If she wants to call a fishtail braid, fish-mouth then who am I to stop her? Maybe she’ll look like an idiot in front of all the fancy friends who’d drop her in a hot second if they knew how poor we really were?
“I have homework,” I say, refusing to make eye contact with her as I brave the stairs and push past her. Her freshly manicured nails tighten on the banister, and I do my best to hold back a flinch. I can remember those shiny perfect nails digging into my skin, leaving tiny crescent marks that hurt for hours. The trauma runs so deep, in tracks and canyons across my heart, that I forget that I’m just as tall as she is now, just as capable. The physical violence between us has lessened, but the verbal and emotional abuse remains the same.
“Homework? Since when do you care about homework? That school for delinquents is hardly an academic palace.” I ignore her scathing words and head straight for the room I share with Heather. I don’t look at Pen’s room or think about how I should’ve made her sleep with me, in a locked bedroom, as far away from the Thing as she could get. I didn’t know I had to protect her, my older sister. Maybe in her own way, she was