Page 36 of Revenge At Raleigh High
“Yeah, I guess I was lucky,” Halliday mumbles. She scoots down and collects her things back into her bag while I stare down at her, too many cogs whirring in my head to provide any assistance. “I’ve really gotta get going.” Without a backward glance, she bolts for the door, leaving it yawning open after her.
And I realize, more than a little numbed by what I’ve just seen, that one of my ex-best friends has been stripping behind her mother’s back.
14
ALEX
The bar’s sorely understaffed, so Monty offers me triple pay to stick around and bus. I agree, but not for the money, per se. My mind’s racing a mile a minute, and with Silver teaching lessons for the rest of the night, the prospect of heading back to the trailer and waiting out the silence alone doesn’t sound very appealing. People continue to pour in through the door as the night progresses, and the next six hours whip by in a blur of spilled beer, smashed glass, rowdy arguments, and a few thrown punches.
Halliday shows up and takes to the stage. I don’t acknowledge her presence, and in turn she pretends I don’t exist—an unspoken arrangement that I wholeheartedly support. By midnight, the place has cleared out. The snowstorm might have passed but the roads are still hazardous, especially after the dark, and the cops are always out in force after a busy night at the Rock. No one wants to wind up in a ditch, or worse, having to try and pass a sobriety test when they’ve had more to drink than they should have.
Paulie cuts me loose at twelve thirty. I head out front, the same way I came in, bracing against the cold, pocketing my wages for the night, and I’m about to climb into the Camaro when a hand lands on my shoulder, roughly spinning me around.
When you grow up in foster care, or at least in the kind of foster homesIgrew up in, you develop some pretty sharp reflexes; my fist is swinging even before I register who’s trying to manhandle me. In my world, hesitation will only get you killed.
The fucker behind me is nothing more than a black streak as they duck, darting back, beyond my reach.
“Tut tut, Moretti. Holy shit. Getting a little slow in your old age?” a voice says teasingly. I take a step forward, homing in on the piece of shit who’s trying to jump me, but then my ears catch up with my brain and I realize that I know the voice. I know it really well.
The secondary uppercut I was about to send flying halts in midair. There, in front of me, wearing a leather jacket that looks a littletoonew and a pair of ridiculously tight stonewashed jeans, stands a guy I never thought I’d see again.
Well, fuck me sideways.
“Zander Hawkins. As I live and breathe.” I don’t sound all that happy to see him. Understandable since the last time I laid eyes on the fucker, he was paying a fucking tank of a kid named Jorge fifty bucks to start a fight with me in the cafeteria of a shitty juvenile detention center. I was pretty sure Zander was going to wind up killing someone before he was released from juvie and wind up having his ass transferred to a legit prison, and yet here he fucking stands. And it’s thehereof it that’s bothering me. “What thefuckare you doing in Raleigh?”
Zander shrugs one shoulder. “Had some business with your man in there. Got called down from Bellingham. I heard you were working here, so I stuck around. Thought a catch-up was in order. Old time’s sake, y’know?”
Zander’s almost as tall as me, with the same angry spark in his eyes. In juvie, he spent most of his time with a pair of weights in his hands or at the squat rack, working out like a fiend. I chose to pass my time getting ripped, too…which is how we became friends.
“Old time’s sake?” I have no fingernails to speak of, what with playing the guitar religiously every day; if I did, I’d be digging them into my palms, trying to distract myself with the pain while I decide what the hell I should do here. For eleven months, Zander was at my side, looking out for me, ready to brutalize anyone who looked fucking sideways at me. I made a couple of other friends during my incarceration, but Zander was more than that. He was like a brother. And to then have a brother betray me the way he did, so grievously, the day before I was released? Yeah, that fucking sucked.
Javier grins at me in thatdevil may care but I sure don’tway of his. He hasn’t worried for one second about how he’ll be received. He’s just shown up, shoulders thrown back, middle finger held up at the rest of the world and expected me to be pleased to see him. Well, the fucker’s got another thing coming. He was ready for the first fist I sent his way. I stopped the second. The third comes out of nowhere and takes us both by surprise. My fist connects with his jaw, landing heavy and hard, right whereheshowed me to hit, once upon a time.
Pain roars up my arm like a column of fire, settling into my shoulder joint and spearing up the nerve endings in my neck. Hurting someone else always ends up hurting us, too, one way or another. It’s the natural order of things. Action and consequence. I relish the throbbing pulse of pain in my hand, welcoming it gladly, happy to accept the trade off as Zander Hawkin’s eyes roll back into his head and he hits the fucking deck.
* * *
I rarely smoke. Every once in a while, when I’m particularly vexed, I’ll light up and savor a single cigarette while I contemplate dark thoughts, allowing myself the length of said cigarette to rage and fume. To break bones in my head and set the world to rights. When I hit the filter and stub it out, though, that’s it. I shrug my way out of the darkness, putting away the anger, and I wash my hands of whatever violence I allowed to steep in my veins. I’m usually a lot calmer by the time I’ve completed the ritual, but tonight that calm is nowhere to be fucking seen.
I’m on cigarette number five and I still can’t seem to stop my knee from bouncing like a jackhammer.What the fuck is he doing here? What the fuck does he want? And why the hell did he hang around to seeme?The Rock’s parking lot is nearly empty by the time Zander stirs. He groans on the back seat, swatting at his face with the back of his hand like he’s trying to shoo away a swarm of flies.
“Nuuugghhhh.What thefuck,Moretti?”
I exhale a lungful of smoke and flick the butt of the cigarette out of the window. It sizzles out when it hits the snow. “Quit the shit. It’s late, and I’m tired. You know exactly why I popped you.”
He grabs hold of the chair’s headrest in front of him, using it as leverage to pull himself upright. I’m pretty fucking pleased with myself when I note the dark shadow of a bruise that’s already forming along his jaw. “If you’re still mad about Jorge, then you’re being a dumbass,” he complains, rubbing the back of his head. “It was an Irish goodbye.”
I glare at him in the rearview. “I don’t think that means what you think it means.”
“Ehh, whatever.” He waves me off with one hand. “It waslikean Irish goodbye. It was juvie. I couldn’t leave before you to avoid a miserable goodbye, so…y’know.”
“So you paid someone to try and stab me. You’re a fucking psychopath.”
Zander grins like a madman. A madman with a very sore head. “You didn’t miss me, though, didn’t you? I was doing you a favor. Can I get one of those smokes?”
“How about you go fuck yourself.”
“Awww, I never had you pegged as the kind of guy to get all butthurt over a little shanking between friends. C’mon.Give.” He holds out a hand, gesturing for the pack. Reluctantly, I slap it into his hand. He chuckles darkly under his breath as he takes a cigarette out and lights it. “Be real, Moretti. If you’d walked out of Denney as my best freakin’ pal, what would you have done next?”
