Page 64 of Revenge At Raleigh High
I shouldn’t have attacked him so viciously outside those locker rooms. I should have thought it through. I should have known he’d snap and come looking for me. I should have just fucking run.
Beneath me, a series of loud barks emanate from the kitchen. Oh, Christ! Nipper! I haven’t been shutting him in the living room like I’m supposed to. Every night for the past week, he’s been grumpily nudging my bedroom door open at about two o’clock in the morning and jumping on the edge of my bed, shooting me a belligerent sideways glance before knotting himself into a pretzel and falling asleep next to my feet.
He’s down there now…
With Jake…
My eyes begin to burn.Just let him be okay. Dear God, please, just let him be okay. I stifle a cry of horror when the barking downstairs is cut of, replaced by a pained squeal, Everything falls threateningly silent again.
Nipper’s probably okay. Jake probably just kicked him to shut him up. Dread presses down on me, crouched in the bottom of the closet, though. The seconds tick by and Nipper doesn’t make another sound.
“Silver? Silver, are you still there?”
I haven’t dared breathe for the past two minutes; the emergency operator’s obviously making sure I’m alive. It’s a risk to answer her, even in a whisper, but I chance it. “He’s downstairs. I think…” A tear streaks down my cheek. “I think he hurt my dog.”
Shaking like a leaf, I lower the phone, hiding the keypad so I can pull up my texts while still keeping the operator on the line. I hit Dad’s name, opening our conversation stream, and quickly tap out a desperate message.
Me: Jake in th house. Hiding. Police on way. Come home!
Lord only knows what he’s gonna think when he reads that Jake’s broken into the house. For such a common name, Jacob Weaving is the only Jake at Raleigh. There’s no mistaking who I’m talking about. Like everyone else in town, Dad follows high school football it’s a certified religion, and just like everyone else in town, he thinks Jacob walks on water. After the rape, I would rush to the bathroom and run both taps full blast to hide the sounds of me violently throwing up every time my father paid the sick fuck a compliment.
Unlike Jake, however, my father is smart. He’ll put two and two together. Hewillfigure out why I’m scared of this boy breaking into our house, and he will come running. The question is when? I don’t know where he went tonight. He was so secretive. He could be in the middle of a late-night movie at the Regency. They have an eleven thirty showing on Friday nights. If my father’s on a date and that’s where he chose to take her, then his phone will be switched off in his pocket. It’ll be—
“Silver! What the fuck? I thought you were some kind of badass now. Why don’t you come out and face me? You don’t realize how lucky you are. I know plenty of girls who’d kill to spend their Friday night with me.”
I bite down on the inside of my cheek, fear scattering my thoughts to the wind. I’m not coming out of this closet by choice. No fucking way. Whatever violence he has planned for me will not be good. The text messages he sent were dark. They grew worse, more graphic and ruthless each time my phone chimed. There are no limits to Jake’s frightening imagination, and I have no plans to walk willingly into whatever violence he has in mind for me.
Slow, steady footsteps ascend the stairs. The steadythum, thum, thumsounds like nails being hammered into the lid of a coffin.
My mind flashes, dragging me back to that night in the upstairs bathroom of Leon Wickman’s house. Jake’s crazed, half-mad eyes. The weight of him bearing down on me. His fingers gouging into my flesh, driving my legs apart. Such shame, surging around my body, carried along by the reluctant push and pull of my heart every time it beat in my chest.
“You’re nothing. Worse than nothing. You’re a piece of meat, put here on this earth for our pleasure. Don’t you know how this works, you dumb fucking cunt? Me and my boys? We’re from different stock. Purebreds. We do what we want. Say what we want. Take what we want. You should be fucking grateful we even deigned you worthy of our attention.”
He'd believed that. He’d believed, forcing me into submission on the cold tile of that nightmare room, that I should have beengratefulthat he’d noticed me. Months later, so much pain later, and here we area again, Jacob Weaving forcing his way into my home, convinced that I should be thankful he’s paying me the visit.
The guy’s a fucking psychopath.
“Just stay hidden,” the operator advises quietly. “Don’t make a sound. Not long now.”
I keep quiet. Jacob’s on the landing now. His boots find every creaky floorboard possible as he slowly makes his way toward me.
“I came here once, remember?” Jake’s voice is closer. Softer. He’s not shouting anymore. He knows that I’m close and I can hear him just fine. “Your twelfth birthday or something. You had a movie night, and your dad turned the basement into a make-shift theater. Hot dogs. Popcorn machine. Red vines. I told everyone I thought it was dumb, but you wanna know the truth, Silver Parisi? Your movie theater birthday party was the coolest party I’d ever been to.”
So…fucking…close…now…
I close my eyes, trapping the breath at the back of my throat, trying to hold back tears.
“Meanwhile, my dad had this assistant, Susannah. It was part of her job to remember when my birthday was. Dad paid her to keep track of what was cool with kids my age and buy an appropriate gift when the time came around. She was also in charge of organizing all of my parties. Figuring out new and interesting ways of celebrating every year. For my tenth birthday, Susannah actually sent my parentsinvitesto the party she arranged, like they were distant relatives or some shit. And…” Bitter laughter floods the upstairs landing. The footsteps, worryingly, have stopped. “D’you know what happened? My mother RSVP’d very courteously. Said she was sorry but unfortunately she had a prior engagement and wouldn’t be able to attend. My father came. It was a baseball party, and he showed up wearing an L.A. Lakers shirt, then proceeded to fuck Susannah in my mother’s walk-in closet. I found him grunting over her like a sweating, hairy pig and thought he was trying to fucking kill her.”
“Hello? Are you still there, sweetheart?”the operator whispers.
I am silent as the grave. I don’t make a sound.
I’m gripped by a bottomless terror that knows no end.
“That movie theater party probably didn’t cost your folks much. I told everyone your family must be poor if they couldn’t afford to even hire a D.J. or book a venue for you. We laughed behind your back about it for weeks. Truth was, I was jealous. You were so happy that night. You were beaming from ear to ear. You were stoked to hang out at home with your mom and dad, and all your friends. You spent most of the night laughing, happy as a pig in shit, and I…I couldn’t remember a time when I’deverlaughed like that with my parents. I couldn’t remember a single time when my dad had put away his work for five minutes, looked me in the face, and saw me.”
Jake sighs heavily. Wearily. His boots scuff against the bare floorboards again…as he steps into my father’s bedroom.
