Page 31 of The Rebel of Raleigh High
14
ALEX
Another shift at the Rock.Halliday doesn’t show, which is a relief. I don’t want to deal with anyone from Raleigh right now, least of all a member of Kacey Winters’ Sirens. Montgomery has me make a run for him just before midnight. I hand off the bag and accept the envelope all without looking up at the person I’m making the deal with. I don’t want any faces sticking in my memory, and this has never felt good to me. I don’t know what’s in the bag, but it’s probably drugs. Coke, maybe. Hopefully not meth or heroine. I don’t like the idea of being Monty’s mule any more than I like the idea of losing out on the cash if I tell him I won’t do it anymore, so I try and get the job done as quickly and painlessly as possible.
Monty gives me a six-pack and my own little envelope containing our agreed upon amount. Once my shift's over and I'm back at the trailer, the green neon digits of the alarm clock next to the T.V. reading two twenty-three in the morning, I squirrel the envelope away in the box behind the water heater. Then, I drink the six-pack in silence, staring at the static on the television screen, thinking about Silver. The over-sized t-shirts she wears are a shield. A defense. She uses all that extra fabric to hide her body from hungry eyes. I should know—I couldn't take mine off her when I saw her in that black lacey number she was sporting yesterday. She wore that for me, to impress me, to catch my attention, and when she got it…
She was afraid.
She was afraid ofme, which is not okay. I’m a piece of shit, sure. I’ve done plenty of things I’m not proud of. I still do things I’m not proud of on a regular basis, running Monty’s deliveries being a prime example, but I have never,everhurt a girl. I’ve never laid my hands on a girl unless she’s begged me to do it, and then it’s only been to bring her pleasure. I’ve never encouraged a chick to do anything she didn’t want to do. Damn it, I don’t even disrespect women when I open my fucking mouth.
Silver doesn’t know this. She doesn’t know me, so her reluctance to give me a shot is understandable.
I fall asleep on the couch—nothing new there—and my neck’s killing me when I wake up. I shower while the coffee’s brewing, hurrying because I don’t want to miss Silver before she disappears through Raleigh’s doors and manages to give me the slip for the rest of the day. But when I open the trailer door…it’s fucking raining so hard I can barely see three feet in front of my own face.
No way I can ride to Raleigh in this. I’m going to have to drive the old Camaro, and it’s been so long since I even started the engine it’s bound to be fucking dead. When I throw my ass inside the car, slide the key into the ignition, and turn it over, I’m met with the straining sounds of one very unhappy combustion engine. It stutters, catches, almost strengthens, and then dies. Fuck, I hate when I’m right.
I've been fixing cars since I was old enough to hold a wrench, so it doesn't take long to hook the Camaro up to the neighbor's car and zap some life into the old girl. It does mean the bell's already rung by the time I jog inside the school building and Silver's nowhere to be seen, though.
I think about missing homeroom altogether and just waiting for her outside her room; I need to have my attendance marked even if I am late, though, otherwise RhondaandMaeve are gonna shit themselves, and I can’t be fucked dealing with that right now. Besides, hunting Silver down and lurking in the hallway until she appears is pretty fucking close to stalking, and I doubt that will help.
At lunch, Jake informs me that my presence is required after school for my first training session with the team, even though the schedule Coach Quentin gave me doesn't have me down until next week. “All good, though, Man. We're all gonna be on a massive high for Leon's party and no extra sit-ups or push-ups required to make our shirts look good. Plus, that first beer is gonna taste so fucking good if we've earned it on the field.”
I really fucking hate the way he throws his arm around my shoulder and grins at me, laughing like a hyena, but I allow it. Jacob needs to believe I'm toeing the line with him for more than one reason. I'm still working out the details, but there will come a day when Jakey Boy's crown slips, and I'll make sure the whole school is on hand to witness it. His fall from grace will make Silver’s descent look like she tripped and landed on the world’s most comfortable feather mattress.
* * *
Training’s brutal.My lungs are scorched, and my legs are on fire before we're even halfway through warm-ups, but I hide it well. Can't let these motherfuckers think for one second that I can't keep up. I can, and I do. But I also make a personal note to start running every morning. My cardio could be better.
Jacob’s as subtle as a sledgehammer to the head as he whispers into his buddy’s ears, encouraging them to put me through my paces. I’m tripped, punched in the back, and bombarded with a series of late hits that Coach Quentin ignores with a level of skill that I find pretty damn impressive. I was expecting this kind of shit, though. I’m the new guy. This probably won’t be the last training session I walk away from covered in bruises, and it won’t be the last time my new teammates give me the rough treatment. In their eyes, I’ll need to prove myself. Make them trust me.
And I’ve decided that maybe I do want them to trust me, too.
“Stai attentio, mi amore. Stai attento.”
I hear her voice, the whisperings of a ghost, as I shower, my body singing with pain. I try not to hear. I try not to pay attention, but it’s hard to turn the memory of my mother away. These memories are all I have left of her. I know how these things work. If I keep blocking the soft lilting melody of her voice from my ears, eventually I’ll stop hearing it altogether. There will come a day, maybe years from now, that I can no longer remember what she sounded like at all. I fucking dread that day’s arrival, it’s my worst nightmare, but I can’t lose myself in dark memories right now. I have no choice but to banish them from my mind. Later. There will be time for remembering later, when I’m alone, back in the trailer, when I’m grateful for the company of the dead.
“Might as well follow us over to Harry’s, Moretti,” Cillian Dupris calls across the locker room. “We’re grabbing burgers before we head over to Leon’s.”
Fuck. I was hoping I’d have a moment to slip away between the end of practice and the start of Leon’s party, but it doesn’t look like I’m going to be able to escape.
As we drive over to Harry’s diner, my head’s spinning. Connections are being made, pieces of a plan slowly coming together. In the background of my mind, images of Silver present themselves to me, one after the other, my subconscious thrusting memories of her to the forefront of my mind. These memories are recent, though. Unlike the echoes of my mother, the girl with the haunted blue eyes burns vividly in my head.
She's there, sitting beside me in the booth as I make short work of a burger, the guys tossing fries at each other, chugging milkshakes that Jake spikes from a scuffed hipflask. She's there, silent, judging me morosely as I make a point of joking and laughing along with my teammates. On the way over to Leon's place, she's sitting next to me in the Camaro, her head resting sadly against my shoulder. I can feel a resigned sorrow pouring from her and into me as I pull down a driveway after Jake's tricked out Jeep Cherokee, and I know she thinks this is a bad idea.
Except, Silver isn't really here. She's probably locked away in a bedroom I've spent a considerable amount of time imagining in great detail, studying, her head buried inside a textbook, hair gathered in a messy ponytail, her quick, bright eyes devouring the information on the pages before her. She's probably playing her guitar. She's probably not struggling to shove the memory ofmeout of her head. She probably hasn’t even thought about me at all since last night, when she told me I’d tasked myself with the impossible challenge of pulling down the moon.
Leon's family are predictably wealthy. The driveway turns out to be a mile long. From the outside, the house is a sprawling jigsaw puzzle of a building, all odd angles and jutting overhangs; an architect designed this building to mimic the shape of the land that surrounds it, complementing the steep, unforgiving buttress of the cliff face that forms the western wall of the valley the house is nestled into. The soft, liquid lines of the sloped roof seem to open themselves to the sky. Everywhere, vast stretches of glass reflect the green of the trees that gather around the structure. The subtle grey-blue of the slate exterior blends into the landscape with artistic precision. That’s how the whole place feels actually: that it wasn’t just designed. That it emerged or was wished into existence, right out of an artist’s dream.
“Pretty badass, right?” Jake asks, jerking his chin toward the house. “Leon’s dad’s rich as fuck. He’s a defense attorney in Seattle. He’s never here.” Jake shrugs. “Leaves Leon alone with his platinum Amex and the keys to his jag most of the time. Leon’s basically the luckiest bastard in the world.”
“Where’s his mom?” The question comes out unbidden.
“Dead.”
I flinch away from the word.
“Oh, it’s okay, man. Leon was just a kid when she offed herself. You ask me, he’s better off without her. My mom’s a major pain in the ass. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying I wish she’d kill herself of anything. That’d be super fucked up. But…you can’t deny it. Leon’s got it fucking easy here. And he wouldn’t be able to throw such killer parties if he had a bored, self-medicated yoga instructor mom hovering over him, prying into his shit, right?”
