Page 42 of Revenge At Raleigh High
I tap my lips with my index finger, frowning at him. “Yeah. We know each other all right. I believe we spent sometimetogether over in Bellingham. You and your buddy Jorge made life difficult for me, if I remember correctly.”
I know what it sounds like when Zander laughs. He has a brash, raucous, uncontrollable belly laugh. People used to throw shit at him to make him shut up, because once he started it was impossible to make him stop. The stiff, reserved little titter that comes out of him now does not belong to Zander. He must have stolen it from some preppy piece of shit on T.V.
I tilt my head to one side, nodding as I pull my mouth down at either side—the expression of someone who is more than a little impressed. “You been practicing that?”
“Time to move on, Mr. Moretti. We only allow one student at the window at a time, so…I’m…you need to move along,” Karen stammers out. I’m proud of her, really. Apart from stumbling all over her words, she sounded very firm. That probably took balls.
“Okay, Karen. You win.” I shoot her a wink. Looking back at Zander, I gift him with something far rarer:a smile.“Well. Looks like we’ll have to catch up another time, Zander. Soon, I hope. It’s always nice to get to know new people. I haven’t been registered at Raleigh very long, either, so we have something in common.”
“Thanks,” he says, plastering a broad, fake-ass smile on his face that perfectly matches all of the other fake things about him. “I’ll look forward to that. It’s real nice of you to reach out and wanna make friends. I appreciate it.”
God, I’m going to knock him the fuck out again if I have to stand here one more second. I give Karen a tight-lipped smile as I push away from her window.How’s Silver going to react when she finds out one of my ex-buddies from juvie has enrolled here at Raleigh, and he looks like he’s up to no good? Speaking of which, where is—
As soon as the thought begins to form in my head, the door at the end of the hallway begins to open. Darhower’s door. And there, emerging out of the principal’s office, is the girl in question.
Long, wavy brown-blonde hair. The same grey and white baseball tee she was wearing this morning when I drove her to school. Same faded blue jeans and Chuck Taylors. The bruises are new, though. The broken skin across the backs of her knuckles. The flecks of blood all down the front of her shirt, and the dark red, almost black blotted mark on her right thigh. She walks toward me down the hall, weaving slightly, like she can’t quite seem to get her gait right or something, and I nearly combust right where I motherfucking stand.
What…the...fuck…happened…
Her head snaps up, as if I said the words out loud instead of roaring them inside my head. She looks confused. Kind of dazed. Over her shoulder, Principal Darhower follows behind…behindCam? Oh, fuck. They called inCam? This is really fucking bad. I don’t say a word when Silver reaches me. I take her into my arms, hugging her to me, knowing that the contact is probably what she needs most of all. I make eye contact with Cam, and I can’t tell if the guy’s glaring at me, through me, or just into fucking space. He's visibly shaking. I haven’t known him for very long or spent a great deal of time with the guy, but I would never have pictured him like this—too angry to function.
“Mr. Moretti, that behavior isn’t appropriate in a school hallway,” Principal Darhower clips out.
Fuck me. If he thinks he’s going to prevent me from comforting Silver, then he must be smoking crack. “I’mhuggingmy girlfriend, not trying to strip her naked. I think my fellow students will survive the impropriety.”
“Don’t push your luck, Moretti. Your stay here at Raleigh could easily be cut shor—”
He rambles on, reminding me of how tenuous my place here is, and how quickly I could find myself behind bars, etc., etc., etc., by the grace of god, blah, blah, blah, but I’m not listening. I’m stooping down, searching Silver’s face, trying to read what happened there without having to ask her to put it into words. I don’t have a fucking clue what’s gone on, but I do know Silver. It’s unlikely she told Darhower anything. She might have told Cam, but I can’t know for sure.
“Are you okay?” I whisper.
Her eyes are wet and shining. She’s stiff, her emotions kept well hidden from her face. It’s as though she’s wearing some kind of mask. Her features are all where they’re supposed to be, it’sher, but there’s something different about her. She’s thrown up a ten-meter-high wall and she’s not letting anything through. I’m relieved when she blinks, giving me a hint of a weak smile, and a flash of her normal self breaks through that wall.
For me.
She lowered it for a secondfor me.
“Long story,” she says quietly. “I’ll tell you later.”
She’s either keeping her mouth shut because she doesn’t want Darhower and her father to hear, or because she wants to explain things to me somewhere else, away from Raleigh…which means it must be really bad. If she thinks I’m going to lose my shit, then something seriously fucked up has happened.
Darhower clears his throat. “Mr. Parisi, I think it’s best if you take Silver to the hospital now and get her checked over—”
“Hospital?” Oh, fuck no, he did not just say hospital.
Silver reaches up and takes my hand from her face, squeezing it. She kisses the inside of my wrist, sighing under her breath. “It’s okay. Just a bump on the head, Alex. I’m fine. Principal Darhower thinks it’d be best to go get it looked at. The school needs to avoid any liability if I end up with concussion or something.”
“Liability?” I pierce Darhower down with a shotgun stare. “That’s what you’re worried about?Liability?”
Darhower rolls his eyes. “You’re a seventeen-year-old student with a pretty poor track record, Alessandro. You know nothing about running an education facility of this size and importance to the community. Please do not interfere in matters you do not understand.”
Oh. Oh,really? I am going to fucking kill this bastard the first opportunity I get. Despite his atrocious attempt at comb over, the overhead strip light bounces off Darhower’s bald spot as he turns to Cam.
“Were you aware of Silver’s association with Alex, Mr. Parisi? Seems as though it would be something they would try to hide, given Alex’s past run-ins with the law.”
Cam’s still glowering like a madman. He turns his dark eyes on Darhower, the muscle popping in his jaw. “Yes, I know they’re dating.”
Darhower shoves his hands into his pockets, rocking back on his heels. “Really? Well, I have to say I’m surprised that you’d allow Silver to—”
