Page 27 of Revenge At Raleigh High
I ask no questions. I say nothing about the Weaving situation, or the fact that he promised to help bring down the entire family. It’s better if I don’t even type their name in a message. According to Montgomery, everything still going according to plan. As per Silver’s request, whatever trick the old man has tucked up his sleeve is legal and won’t cause any physical harm to Jacob, but I’m increasingly less and less enamored by the promise I made.
I want to break the law.
I want to hurt Jacob.
I want to fucking kill him.
Thankfully, Silver doesn’t have any classes with the piece of shit. They might not have believed her when she went to Darhower and told him what had happened, but they sure as hell made sure they weren’t on the same class schedule afterward. At Mr. Weaving’s request, I seem to remember hearing. He didn’t want a lying, vindictive, spiteful little bitch anywhere near his son. Such a fucking joke. Jacob’s ass should have been beaten black and blue and then thrown in fucking jail. Instead, Silver was treated like garbage and she was moved from her classes as punishment for telling tales. How is any of that right?
Bellingham was rough. The shit that went down there would give most people nightmares, but even there the administration ran things by the book. If someone was discovered to be bullying or harassing the other students, they were gone. And sexual assault claim? Fuck, the cops would have been there before you could evenbreathethe word rape.
Raleigh likes to present a well-to-do façade to the outside world. A lot of rich motherfuckers send their kids here in light of the fact that the closest private school is all the way over in Seattle and they want to keep their children close. The building itself is beautiful, and the facilities are all brand spanking new…but at its core, Raleigh is a rotten fucking apple. Take a bite and you won’t struggle to come across something foul that will leave a bad taste in your mouth.
This year, it's the Weaving family pulling the strings, with their obnoxiously large donations to the football team and Mr. Weaving’s unwelcome presence on the school board, but Jacob will be aging out of Raleigh in a year’s time and Mr. Weaving’s interest in the school will graduate right along with his son. There isn’t a shadow of a doubt in my mind that there’ll be another meddling parent with deep pockets who’ll happily step into the breach once Caleb Weaving’s made his exit and taken his check book with him. It’s just the way these things go.
Regardless of how it happened, I’m glad Silver doesn’t have to sit in a classroom with Jacob. I, on the other hand, am not that lucky. We’re in History together, as well as Spanish, English and Graphic Design; I find myself sitting next to the sick bastard at least once a day, and it takes everything in me not to pile drive my fist into the sick fuck’s face.
Thirty minutes after I reply to Monty’s text, the bell rings and I make a fast escape. Silver’s on the other side of the building, so chances that I’ll see her between classes are slim, but for once she isn’t the reason I’m bolting from Math. There’s someone I plan on paying a visit, and I don’t want Silver knowing about it.
I find Cillian Dupris close to the boy’s locker rooms, talking to the Neanderthal who thought about starting a fight with me this morning for knocking into him. Cillian sees me charging down the hallway toward him, makes eye contact, and practically shits himself. Before the shooting, he might have tried to bail before I could reach him, but that’s not quite as easy anymore, given that he’s wheelchair bound.
He scrambles, trying to navigate his way around Bronson, but there are too many people bustling by, choking the corridor, and he isn’t able to bully a path through the crowd. His buddy doesn’t even give him a hand and get out of his way.
My hackles are up when I finally reach Cillian, a red-hot heat burning down my back. I ball my hands into fists, imagining how satisfying it would be to grind my knuckles into his face. “We’re going to have a chat, you and me,” I inform him.
Cillian works his jaw, eyes unsure as he looks up at me. He was a tall guy before one of Leon’s bullets hit him in the back and shattered three of his vertebrae. He used to use his size and his build to intimidate everybody around him. He used the fact that he was so much bigger than Silver tohurther. It must be a real blow to him that he now has to look up to meet the eyes of every single student at Raleigh. “Go fuck yourself, asshole. I don’t have anything to say to you,” he spits.
Maybe he’s hoping that there’s still some sort of residual respect for him floating around the school. Maybe there actually is, and the people he trampled all over on a daily basis before he lost the use of his legs are still frightened of him, one way or another.
I, on the other hand, have never been afraid of him. If he thinks he can cow me with a bit of attitude, he’s going to be sorely fucking disappointed. “That’s okay. I don’t really need you to say anything. You only really need to listen.”
Quickly, I take hold of the handles at the back of his wheelchair, pushing him away from the locker rooms. “Hey! Hey, get the fuck off me, Moretti. You are making a big mistake. Jake’s gonna flip his shit when he hears about this!”
Hah. Poor bastard. I lean down a little as I push him toward the set of double doors by the technology block, heading for the exit. Only he can hear me speak above the chatter and the gossip of our fellow classmates. “You think Jake gives a fuck about you now, Cillian? You think you’re any use to him whatsoevernow? You’re off the football team. You’d be useless in a fight if Jake got himself in trouble. The only purpose you serve to Jacob Weaving these days is that of a distraction. He’d push you into oncoming traffic if he thought it would benefit him somehow. Other than that…I’m willing to put money on the fact that he doesn’t even want to fuckingknowyou anymore.”
Being paralyzed from the waist down would be an awful outcome for anybody. A small part of me wouldn’t wish this fate upon my worst enemy, but you know what? Fuck that small part of me. This is exactly what Cillian Dupris deserves.
Plenty of people watch as I wheel Cillian out of the school building, but no one does a thing to stop me. That piece of shit Bronson probably is running like the little bitch that he is to go and find Jacob, but that doesn’t matter. What I have to say to Cillian won’t take long, and even if it did, I amnotafraid of Jacob fucking Weaving. Let him fucking come, if he can be bothered.
The sky is clear, so pale it’s almost white as I push Cillian down the ramp toward the stand of trees behind the tech block. Along a small pathway, beyond the line of the trees, there’s a steep siding that leads to a small gully if you have the stones to scramble down to it. Some of the students like to smoke pot in the little hidden gully, but with so much snowfall over the past few days, it’s impossible to even see where the drop off is, let alone a route to climb down to it.
The tires of Cillian’s wheelchair are rugged, with a deep tread that bites into the snow with ease. “Nice rig you’ve got here, Cillian. Folks really hooked you up, huh? This thing must have cost a pretty penny.”
“Fuck you, man. Where the hell are you taking me?” Cillian’s doing his best to maintain an outward display of dignity, but I can hear the frustration and the embarrassment in his tone, muddled in with a healthy dash of fear. It’s smart of him to be afraid. I’d be fucking terrified if I was in his position, and the boyfriend of the girl I’d raped was pushing me into a dim, eerie forest, where my body might not be found until spring.
I don’t supply him with an answer to his question. This isn’t my first time at the rodeo, after all. I know that fear is an entirely psychological beast. It festers and grows fat on the back of whatmightbe far more than it feeds on whatis. The longer Cillian’s left worrying about what I’m going to do to him, the better.
I only have to travel another fifty feet down the small snow-covered pathway that cuts through the trees before we’re out of sight from the main building, but I take him an extra fifty just for good measure. And the whole time I’m pushing him, Cillian is babbling like a lunatic.
“You don’t want to do this, man, I promise you. You’re gonna regret this, big time. My father’s gonna have you shipped off to fucking Stafford Creek for this. You ever been inside a supermax prison before, Moretti? They’re gonna eat you a-fucking-live. Alex? Alex! Fuck, come on, man. There’s no need to get this crazy over a fucking girl. They’re all insane, am I right? You know how they get. They drink too much, hook up, don’t wanna look like a slut, so they start slinging mud. You know what they’re like, man! Look, stop! Stop, stop, okay, okay! Jesus fucking Christ! All right. It wasn’t my idea. It was all Jake’s idea. Me and Sam, we didn’t even know what he was planning until he brought her up there. Neither of us touched her. Silver Parisi isn’t my type anyway. I—fuck! I like redheads! I didn’t touch her!”
I come to a halt, grinding my teeth together so hard it feels like they’re about to shatter under the strain. Slowly, I walk around Cillian’s chair, and the snow beneath my sneakers creaks.
There’s real terror in Cillian’s eyes. He tries to push himself away from me, back the way we came, but the wheels of his chair only sink into the looser snow that I’ve parked him in. Purposefully slow, my face purposefully blank, I crouch down in front of Cillian so that I’m at his level. The guy who hurt my Silver snivels, wiping at his nose with the back of his hand.
Still, I don’t say anything.
“All right, man. All right. Fine. Ididdo it. Ididtouch her. Ididfuck her. But you don’t understand what it’s like, man. Jake’s a fucking psychopath. You go against him and it’s like signing your own death warrant. This place is no walk in the park. You’ve got to try and get ahead, to be better than everyone else, or—or you end up being walked all over. Without Jake, I’d have been left behind.”
