Page 42 of Reckless At Raleigh High
She didn’t apologize for the way she treated me when she asked if I would visit Zen at the hospital with her. I didn’t expect her to, somehow. When she spins to face me, remorse all over her face, her hands fiddling fretfully with the tassel on the zip of her purse, and she says the words—
“I’m so sorry, Silver. I know saying sorry’s never gonna be enough to make up for the way I was…but Iam, okay. I’m really sorry. And I missed you. I missed my friend. I don’t deserve it, but I hope we’ll be able to be friends again. Proper friends. The way we should have been before.”
—I find that I can’t bear the sincerity or the cautious hope flickering in her eyes. I want to run away from it all as fast as humanly possible and pretend that it isn’t even happening. “It’s okay. It’s fine, Hal. You don’t need to apologize.”
“Like hell she doesn’t,” Alex growls, stabbing his fork in her direction. “She loved you. She trusted you, and you let every single person in this school believe she lied about being raped, when you knew for a fact that it was true. You could have told the truth. At least some of the assholes in this school might have given her story credence if you’d come forward and told Darhower what you saw that night.”
A pit of agony burns in the center of my chest, spreading out, out, out, making it hard to breathe. I love Alex for what he’s doing; he’s standing up for me when no one else would, and I could hug him for it. But I also really, really need him to stop. I can’t do this now. I can’t do this here. “Alex—”
“No, he’s right,” Halliday says, nodding firmly. “I know what I did was worse than Zen and Melody. I found you covered in blood. I saw the state you were in. My statement could have made a difference, but I was a coward. It’s a little late, but I’m figuring out how to not be a coward now. High school makes us into the worst versions of ourselves, but I’m trying to do better.”
“I say you forgive her,” Zander says cheerily, popping a fry into his mouth. “Looks like she means it. And she’s so pretty. I hate to see a pretty girl cry.”
Alex pivots on the bench, glaring at the guy sitting next to him. “Why can’t you ever just shut the fuck up, dude? For real. This has nothing to do with you.”
Halliday looks like she wants to crawl under the table and die quietly, where no one will be able to see the life wilt out of her. I get where Alex is coming from. I’m not going to be able to just snap my fingers and forget everything that’s happened since Jake dragged me into that bathroom. I’ll never be able to forget it. But I think…I think I will be able to forgive Hal. Maybe not today, or tomorrow, or next week even. But a day will come, probably soon, when I don’t look at her and only see all of the times she sneered at me over Kacey’s shoulder as the Sirens shoved past me in the hallway. I’ll see the silly, quirky, sweet girl I used to burn around Raleigh in the Nova with. I’ll be reminded of all the good times we’ve had, instead of all the painful, sad, angry moments, and the hurt of the past year will eventually soften. Until then…I’m willing to try.
I catch Alex looking at me in my peripherals and I know he’s worrying about me. This is a lot, after all. He’s seen me at my worst. He’s held the pieces of me together when I’ve fallen apart, and some of that heartbreakwasHalliday’s fault. I’m not used to having someone look out for me, and it’s making my eyes prick like crazy.
“How about we just focus on the fact that you’re the captain of the football team now,” I say, clumsily changing the subject. Finesse has never been my strong suit. The less time we sit here, stewing in tension and guilt, however, the better. Halliday smiles meekly at me—a silent thank you for taking the pressure of her. From the smug smirk on his face, Zander’s perfectly happy to divert the course of our conversation in Alex’s direction. I can already tell that the guy has plenty to say about Alex’s new role and can’t wait to aggravate him some more. Alex, on the other hand, plunges the tines of his fork into his lasagna and spits out a string of curse words so colorful that the nerds sitting at the table next to us all trade terrified looks.
I don’t blame them. Alex is an intimidating guy even when he’s silent, expressionless and minding his own business. Irritated and giving his emotion free rein, my beautiful boyfriend is so savage and menacing that it’s a miracle the nerds don’t pack up their laptops and flee the cafeteria like a flock of startled lemmings. “I broke Travis McCormick’s middle finger,” he states icily.
“You should have seen it.” Zander chuckles. “The moron thought he could take on our boy all by himself. He was stupid enough to flip Alex the bird, and then…crack.” Zander mimes something snapping in two. “Fingers aren’t supposed to stick out at a ninety-degree angle. I haven’t seen anything that gross in a while.”
“And then he smacked you in the face? That’s where you got the bruise?” I ask. Alex looks over my shoulder, at the wall behind me. When I duck to the left, attempting to make eye contact with him, he shakes his head, looking up, suddenly intrigued by the paintjob on the ceiling.
“No. That was from after.” His voice is too light. Too airy. Clearly, he’s trying to skirt around a piece of information that he doesn’t want to part with. Unluckily for him, Zander’s all too happy to fill in the blanks.
“Kyle, Lawrence and Naseem tried to take him down and stamp on his head when Coach Foley left to take a call. One of them landed a punch. Kyle? I think it was the Kyle kid. That’s when I jumped in and joined in the party.”
“Yeah, you didn’t need to. I had the situation under control.”
“He really did,” Zander says, around a mouthful of burger. “He punched Lawrence so hard the fucker’s probablystillseeing stars. Hey, man, can you shoot me over that ketchup?”
Alex grumpily snatches up the bottle of tomato ketchup and slams it down in front of Zander. The guy looks a little surprised, like he was expecting Alex to tell him to go fuck himself. “Thanks. Anyway, he cracked Lawrence’s head so hard, I think his helmet split in two. And that Naseem kid looked like he was about to run crying out of the gym when Alex dodged his right hook and kicked his knees out from underneath him. I would have left Alex to take care them by himself, but then three other assholes started throwing their weight around, and I decided to lend a hand. One against three’s pretty manageable odds. One against six? Evenyou’renot that good, Moretti.”
Alex and Zander have a unique relationship. I say relationship, becausefriendshipjust doesn’t feel right. Alex lets Zander speak to him in a way that would have him ripping someone else’s arm off, no doubt about it. He also looks like he’s on the verge of beating Zander within an inch of his life at other times, too. Their dynamic’s so complicated that I feel like I’m suffering from whiplash whenever the two of them are together.
Alex pulls a face, shoving his tray away, his food stabbed at, poked and prodded, but otherwise untouched. “You should have let them kick my ass,” he says grimly. “Break a few bones. That way Foley wouldn’t be able to force the captain’s badge on me.”
Zander closely inspects a fry, holding it up to the light like it might contain some secret hidden message inside of it. “Friends don’t let friends get the crap kicked out of them, homie. Unless they’re being released from juvie and you don’t want to suffer through a bullshit emotional goodbye with them. In that situation, it’s perfectly acceptable to bribe another inmate to lynch them unexpectedly, so said friend doesn’t want to speak to you ever again.”
Alex rolls his eyes. Next to me, Halliday opens up the brown paper bag she brought with her to the table, gingerly offering it out to me. I already know what’s inside. The smell hits me before I manage to take a peek. Halliday always used to make lemon bars for her brother’s bake sales. Three or four times a year, I’d show up randomly at her place, conveniently ‘just in the area,’ and Halliday would have to make an extra batch of lemon bars to replace the ones that I inhaled.
She must have planned out coming to sit with me today. She labored in her kitchen last night to make these, and the whole time she must have been freaking out about what I was going to say to her. She probably pictured me grabbing a lemon bar and smashing it into her face, soap opera style. She has an overactive imagination like that. I take one from the paper bag, giving her a small smile in return.
Okay, so this feels weird, and not entirely uncomfortable, but…as I look around the cafeteria, I notice something remarkable. People are talking to one another, laughing over memes, gesticulating wildly as they laugh and chatter. They’re all engrossed in their conversations, and their late math assignments, and their crush that’s sitting on the other side of the room. None of them are looking atme.
For the first time in a very long time, I, Silver Parisi, am not sitting on the outside, looking in. I’m just another random student at Raleigh High, and that feels fucking incredible.
“This is nice,” Zander says, winking at me from across the table. “You and blondie are sharing sugar. Alex hasn’t tried to kill me inwellover five minutes. I don’t wanna get ahead of myself over here, but I’d go so far as to call this progress.”
21
ALEX
Monty: Come by the bar tonight. This doesn’t need to be a thing, kid.
