Page 26 of Reckless At Raleigh High
Leaning back, Silver’s disturbingly quiet for a very long time. After a while she rests the back of her head against the frosted window behind her and lets out a long breath. “What would your Mom say about that? What did she want for you when you grew up?”
Well, shit. I could really do without unleashing my mother on the inside of this car. To remember her is to give her life, and she’s just too big and overwhelming to deal with right now. Silver asked the question, though, and she looks like she’s expecting an answer. “She…she wanted me to make music. She wanted me to be an artist like Giacomo. She wanted me to be an arctic explorer. A deep-sea diver. She wanted me to be happy.”
Silver smiles softly, brushing the pad of her thumb along the line of my jaw, making my stubble rasp in the silent car. “She wanted you to befree…” she says in a hushed tone. “None of the things she envisioned for you involved office jobs, mortgages or regrets. You’re not made for that world, Alessandro. You were made for colorful ink and the rumble of an engine, and an open highway, full of possibilities and uncertainty. That’s what your life looks like after high school.”
The oxygen rushes out of my lungs in a winded, long exhale. “I’m not interested in a future that doesn’t feature you in it,Argento.”
“Who said anything about that? I’ve told you once already, I’m not going anywhere. We’ll weather whatever storms come our way together, I promise. We have so far, haven’t we?”
Man, when did I turn into such a little bitch? When did I start feeling this swollen ache in my chest any time Silver talks about the future? It feels like I’m holding something fragile in my hands, delicate beyond measure, and the slightest twitch will cause it to shatter. My whole life, I’ve had to be forceful and brash in order to make it from one day to the next. This entire thing with Silver requires finesse, though. It requires a gentle touch that I sure as shit wasn’t born with. As the bell rings inside the school, across the other side of the parking lot, I find myself praying that I can figure it all out before I end uppermanentlybreaking something.
15
SILVER
Three Weeks Later
“I heard she got busted sucking Jake’s dick and the new kid lost his temper. What kind of psycho carries a gun around anyway? I’ve been saying there’s something off with that Moretti guy ever since he walked through the front door.”
“God, you are such a dipshit. If that was true, how did she end up in the hospital with broken ribs and a rope burn around her neck?”
“What the fuck, dude. How the hell am I supposed to have all the answers? What am I, a bad daytime TV detective? All I know is, Jake’s s’posed to come into some of his inheritance after his eighteenth birthday. Watch this space. That bitch is gonna be knocking on his door, holding out her unmanicured hand, looking for a payout. Seriously, have you seen her hands? They are gross. Her fingers are actuallycallousedlike an old man’s.”
“Oh my god, Leah, you’re such abitch!”
An eruption of laughter bounces off the tiled walls of the changing room—a pack of hyenas cackling over a fresh kill. I roll my eyes, marveling at how stupid the girls sound, tittering to one another on the other side of the lockers. The past three weeks have been fine. With both Kacey and Jake gone, no one’s bothered openly attacking me. What would be the point? There’s no one left to impress with their random acts of cruelty, and so I’m mostly ignored. Every once in a while, this kind of bullshit takes place, though. Tall tales and sharp words crafted to entertain at my expense. The girls know I’m here, which means their little gossip session’s being conducted with the specific purpose of fucking with me. Sucks for them that I’ve heard way worse. Nothing they or anyone else says can hurt me now. I’m literally fuckinguntouchable. Bored by the whole affair, I finish tying my chucks, straighten out my Raleigh sweatpants, and sit myself down on the bench next to me.
“Olives,” I say loudly. The girls on the other side of the locker fall auspiciously quiet. “In the forties, after the war, my gram married my grandpa. They were young and in love, and they wanted to move away from their parents, so they bought a patch of old farming land in Toscana and decided to start growing olives.”
A head pops around the side of the locker: blonde hair blown out to perfection; black cat-eye liner and heavy mascara; ridiculously overdrawn lips that look kind of clownish. It’s Leah Prescott, in the spray-tanned flesh. She was always a low-ranked member of the Sirens, but with Kacey gone all sorts of powerplays have been set in motion as a number of the girls jostle for the position of Queen Bee.
“The fuck are you talking about? Olives?” She lets out a disgusted sigh. “You’re that desperate for attention now that you just start rambling about fuckingolives?”
I give her a saccharine-sweet smile. “They’re one of Italy’s biggest exports. Gram and Pops built up themselves an olive empire. When they moved to America in the seventies, they outsourced the management of the business and lived off the profit. Gram sold the business in the mid-nineties when my Pops died. I won’t go into specifics, but let’s just say the Parisi family did damn well for themselves. We’re what some people might callobscenelywell off. I’m set for life. I sure as fuck don’t need Jacob Weaving’s inheritance money. But even if I were planning on extorting cash out of that piece of shit, I’d have a tough time. He’s apsychotic rapist. He’s gonna spend the next thirty years rotting in a jail cell with all of his assets frozen. Now. Do you want to head into the gym and actually practice, or are you gonna hang around out here, pulling your kick shorts out of your ass crack and popping pineapple Hubba Bubba like the basic bitch that you are?”
Leah’s jaw drops. Low and behold, there, wedged into the side of her cheek, is a wad of bright yellow gum. “Eww,” she grouses. “Have you been staring at my ass? Gross. Don’t even think about it, okay.”
God, seriously. Yawn. I make mention of her ass and suddenly I’mhittingon her? “If I were into girls, Leah,youwould not be on my radar. I’m only interested in creatures with a soul, and you’re a fucking vampire.”
“Rude! Wait, what kind of vampire? Like, a Bella Swan kind of vampire? Or the dusty old hag kind out of one of those old black and white movies?”
“GIRLS!” Coach Foley’s voice roars into the changing room, causing one of the girls still loitering on the other side of the lockers to scream out loud in surprise. “I can hear your bickering from my office on the other side of the damn hall. What in God’s green earth is wrong with you?” Coach Foley used to work at Raleigh, but she retired a couple of years ago. Darhower enticed her away from her gardening and her cross-country mountain biking to cover for Coach Quentin while he takes a leave of absence.
I’m glad it’s Foley who’ll be coaching the Sirens during my first term back on the team. She always kept Kacey in check whenever my ex-best friend used to haze the new girls who joined the team. I wasn’t strong or brave enough to shut Kace down myself, no one was, to do such a thing would have been social suicide, but Coach Foley didn’t give a shit about Kacey’s ice queen routine. She was immune to every single one of Kacey’s powerplays, and she’ll be immune to Leah’s brand of bullshit now, too. “Get your asses into the gym right now. And if I hear any of you say fuck one more time, you’re all gonna wind up in detention. Get moving! Silver, hang back a sec. I need to go over some game dates with you.”
“Bitch,” Leah mutters under her breath. “You’ve been off the team a long time, Parisi. Don’t think you’re just gonna waltz back in and claim your old place at the top of the Siren food chain. It won’t be that easy.”
I smile tightly, pressing my lips into a thin line. “Siren politics don’t interest me in the slightest, Leah. I’m only here for the college application credits. Believe me. The floor’sallyours.”
Her mouth opens and closes like a fish out of water, gasping for air. If I stand still long enough, I’m sure she’ll come up with a cutting come back about how she doesn’t need my permission to jostle for role of Siren’s head bitch, but I’m already walking past her, heading for Coach Foley’s office. Leah’s friends chitter and mumble quietly behind me; I can’t tell if they’re gossiping about me or their beloved leader. Can’t bring myself to care, either. They’re sohigh school,clinging on to the unimportant, unnecessary stuff. They still think that surviving at Raleigh is tough, but they’re so fucking wrong. Surviving here is easy as hell once you’ve been raped and nearly strangled to death.
“I know I’ve been gone a while, but I read the papers. I still have friends on the faculty here, and I have to say, I’m surprised you haven’t transferred out to Bellingham, Silver. What you’ve had to deal with…” Coach Foley puffs out her cheeks, eyes wide as she shakes her head. “It’s unconscionable that the situation wasn’t dealt with properly before it could come to a head like that. Principal Darhower should have investigated the matter and taken the appropriate steps to make sure you were safe. I’m sorry that didn’t happen. Truly, I am.”
My eyebrows hit my hairline; it takes a second to register that a member of Raleigh’s staff justapologizedto me for what happened. Foley’s the first person to openly acknowledge that it even happened in the first place. The other teachers have all been making an obvious effort to avoid eye contact; there must have been a staff meeting held in my honor, detailing how little attention should be drawn to my existence.
“No need to look so surprised.” Foley steeples her fingers together. “The school administration’s been woefully corrupt for the better part of the past decade. It’s part of the reason why I retired early in the first place. My position here’s temporary now, though, so I can say whatever the hell I like. The Weaving family are evil incarnate, and they deserve everything coming to them. I doubt the board’s going to replace Principal Darhower mid-way through an academic year, a regime change like that might be too upsetting to the status quo, but believe me…it’s on the cards. It’ll be too late to right the wrongs he’s done to you, but next year hopefully there’ll be someone a little more competent in the driver’s seat.”
I’m astonished that she’d say all of this to me. She’s talking to me like I’m…well, like I’m not only an actual, real life person with real feelings, but like I’m an adult who is due an explanation. I remain mute, uncomfortably gripping the sides of the metal chair I’m sitting on, waiting for this unexpected moment to be over.
