Page 6 of Reckless At Raleigh High
One Week Later
I jerk upright, the sound of loud, obnoxious punk music splitting my head apart. For a bewildering moment, I’m so fucking turned around that I have no idea where I am or what the fuck is happening. The trailer’s popcorned ceiling isn’t where it’s supposed to be. The window to my right wasn’t there last night, when I collapsed on top of my bed sheets and descended into oblivion. The door opposite the bed has moved three feet to the left of its own accord…
Only…
…wait…
The trailer. I don’t live in the trailer anymore. I have an apartment now. I live above the hardware store. And Silver—
Silver.
The moment I think of her, other dangerous memories begin to creep back in. Truths that shouldn’t be faced right now. I sit bolt upright, the room see-sawing like a pitching ship as I try to get up from the bed and realize, belatedly, that I’m more hungover than I have ever been in my entire fucking life and I’m about to throw my guts up. “Holy…shit.” Scrambling, I’m all arms and legs as I try to make it to the bathroom. Luck ain’t on my side, though. I retch, bile blazing a pathway up my esophagus, and I am out of fucking options. I grab the first thing I lay my hands on and double over it, capturing the vomit that erupts out of my mouth.
It feels as though I’ve been repeatedly donkey kicked in the stomach by the time the spasms in my diaphragm quit and I can finally draw in a ragged, burning breath. Which is when I see that I’ve just hurled in my empty fucking guitar case.
Fuck.
Fuck, fuck, fucking fuck.
I grit my teeth, wincing as the raucous, pounding music playing somewhere in the apartment intensifies to a deafening crescendo. There can be only one explanation for any of this madness. Somehow, I pull in a second, shallow breath, and roar at the top of my lungs, “ZAAAAAAANDER!”
A jarring screech interrupts the thrashing punk tune—the sound of a needle being egregiously dragged across the surface of a record—and the music cuts off. Steady thumping sounds follow. I can’t tell if it’s footfall or the reluctant, labored pumping of my own heart, but a second later Zander Hawkins appears in the bedroom doorway, clad in a pair of black boxers and bright red silk robe—the kind of robe bored housewives wear in soap operas while lazily considering whether or not they should try and seduce the pool boy.
Zander’s broad, shit-eating grin dissolves into open disgust when he lays eyes on me. “Dude. You desecrated your gig bag. Fuck’s wrong with you? You’re sitting next to a perfectly good trash can.”
I look to my left, in the direction that he’s pointing, and he’s right. I could easily have grabbed the trash can instead of my case a second ago, but I was too preoccupied with the fact that it’d felt like I was about to die on my bedroom floor. Still feels like I might expire any second now.
“What the fuck did you do to me?” I press a hand to my face. Fuuuuck. Breathing issomuch easier with my eyes closed.
Alex? Where were you? I don’t like it here. Can you come and get me?
God…
Nope.
No fucking way.
A spiderweb of pain spreads its fingers across my chest. Quickly, I chase the sound of that voice right out of my head.
Zander lets out a scathing, “Ha!”I sense his approach, but I don’t bother cracking my eyelids. “You did this all by yourself, my friend. I told you to stop after your tenth shot, but would you listen? I’m gonna let you guess the answer to that one. Boy oh boy, you look like expertly hammeredshit,my friend.”
I swallow, tamping down the urge to vomit again. “Tequila?” I already know— cantaste—the answer.
“You took down that sexy Latina mistress like she’d justbeggedyou to fuck up her shit,” Zander confirms. “I barely got a look in. Lucky for me I brought my friend Jack Daniels along to your sad sack one-man pity party. Otherwise I’d have had to watch you drink yourself into oblivion totally fucking sober. That would have been really lame, dude. It was bad enough watching it all go down while buzzed.”
I groan, which I instantly regret. The vibration of the air traveling over my vocal cords makes me feel like I’m about to implode. Or explode. Not sure which. “Pity party?” I pant.
Zander’s pronounced shrug is practically audible. “Don’t ask me. I haven’t got a clue why Alessandro Moretti, Destroyer of Worlds, came out to play. Not my job to pry. I’m only good for vague, surface emotions and drinking games. You did mention something about your little brother? And that woman who’s taking care of him. You called her…what was it? An evil, vicious cunt?”
Yeah. Evil, vicious cunt sounds about right. I clench my jaw, grabbing hold of my own wrist and squeezing it as hard as I can. I have to get the fuck out of here. My stomach complains resentfully as I heave myself into a seated position, leaning my back against the side of my bed. “Phone? Have you seen my phone?”
Zander chuckles under his breath as he slumps down beside me on the floor. “Oh yeah. I’ve seen it all right. Here.”
The light stabs at my eyes when I crack them open. Zander reaches into the pocket of his red silk robe and takes out a mangled piece of bent metal, placing it unceremoniously on top of my chest. I haven’t had the iPhone for long. Couple of months, maybe. I’d held out on buying a cell phone for the longest time, convinced I was never going to need one and the mere purchase of such a piece of technology was going to make my life infinitely worse. Then I’d met Silver and all that had changed. The phone quickly became one of my most treasured possessions, because it was my direct link to her. Now, its screen is shattered. The whole thing is warped, bent into a worrying curve. No way it still works.
“You were laying into it with a hammer when I got here,” Zander supplies, sticking the end of a vape pen into his mouth. He pulls on it, his cheeks hollowing out for a second, and then a thick cloud of white smoke pours down his nose and out of his mouth. The smell of cherries fills the bedroom, sweet and noxious. “I’ve seen some stupid shit in my time, but that particular act of wanton destruction topped the list. Those things are fucking expensive. How the fuck you gonna watch porn now?”
“I need to call Silver,” I groan.
