Page 107 of Riot Rules
Eventually, I have to say something. “For God’s sake, can we break for a moment. My ankle’s killing me.” Reluctantly, Elodie, in her now torn fairytale dress, slumps down on a flat ledge of rock, huffing unhappily. I sit next to her, grateful that she finally cut me some slack. “Look. I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you everything, okay. I love you, Elle. Youaremy friend. I care about you, and everything that happened with Mara was such a mess. I didn’t want your experience of Wolf Hall to be as fucked up as ours, okay?”
“That’s why you told me to stay away from Wren. You didn’t want him to do anything bad to me,” she mutters.
“No. I mean, I told you…Wren was at the house the night of the party. He really didn’t leave. He and Mara were over before they even got started.” I continue to explain, but my heart’s not really in it. I’m trapped back in that kitchen, the night of the other party, hating Mara and Mercy’s bickering. I just left Mara there. Even now, I can’t bring myself to face that particular truth. I left her, so I could go hang out with Dash.
I should admit this to Elodie, but I feel too stupid that I chose him over my friends that night. Everything else, though. The drugs, and Fitz, and the police, and even my oldest secrets, the ones I’m still carrying from Grove Hill—I’ll give all of that information to her now.
“I really am sorry, Elodie. Please just believe that I kept you in the dark for a reason. I’ll tell you everything I found out after that night, okay? Right now. No more secrets, I swear.”
There’s no reason for Elodie to forgive me. But I think that she might. She sighs. “Okay. Then start at the beginning. And don’t leave a single detail out.”
I jump in, unpacking the beginning of that party, the night Mara disappeared, but I’ve only gotten a few words out when a loud snapping sound cuts through the quiet, freezing the story mid-sentence.
Oh, holy…fuck.
What the hell was that?
The hairs on the back of my neck stand to attention. Beside me, Elodie goes rigid, too. We stare into the black forest, as the shadowy shape of a man emerges out of the darkness, wearing one of those hideous wolf masks.
The voice that emerges from underneath it is muffled, but it projects perfectly across the tiny clearing we’re sitting in. “Go on, Carrie. I wouldn’t wanna interrupt story time.”
49
DASH
I can’t rememberthe last time the three of us fought, but we fight tonight. And boy, does it get ugly.
Wren’s planning on letting someone else move in here? No fucking way. Then he makes some stupid comment abouthimmovingout, and everything spirals out of control.
Finally, I’m so pissed off by Wren’s behavior over Elodie that I say some things I don’t mean. He confesses that he loves the girl, and I’m so shocked that I just stand there, replaying the same sentence over and over in my head.
Why does he get to have her, when I couldn’t have Carrie?
Why does he get to have her, when I couldn’t have Carrie?
Why does he get to have her, when I couldn’t have Carrie?
The whole thing descends into chaos.
Pax loses his fucking mind.
Wren hits Pax so hard that it’s a miracle he doesn’t knock him out, and then all three of us are storming out of the games room, seething mad and staving off violence.
I take a beat to cool down in my room but cooling down isn’t really an option. Carrie’s downstairs, wearing the tiniest skirt known to man, her tits spilling over the top of her costume’s bodice, and my sick and broken mind won’t let me forget it.
This thing between us is an infected wound. Any time a scab begins to form and either of us starts to heal, I pick at it. I can’t leave it alone. I wish I could. Maybe that way, there’d be some hope for us. We could move on. Find happiness. But no. The knowledge that Carrie is here, downstairs, so fucking close, stirs me up to such a degree that I can’t contain my frustration anymore.
I punch the mirror above my dresser. The thing fractures, jagged cracks spiderwebbing out, out, out around the point where my fist meets the glass. My knuckles are bleeding. My head’s pounding. My heart won’t stop beating, even though I keep pleading with it to have mercy on me and just fuckingstop.
It’s at this point that I bail in search of the others. We can’t let this thing fester. If we do, the rift that’s forming between us will become too wide to close, and I can’t allow that to happen. I can’t lose my friends. Downstairs, the house is slammed. I do a preliminary search of the ground floor on the hunt for Pax, since Wren’s likely with Elodie, but the fucker’s nowhere to be found. It was a longshot, considering Wren’s challenge as Master of the Hunt. Half of the academy’s missing. They’re all out in the forest, trying to find Wren’s red flags. Pax is out there in a wolf’s mask, doing what he does best: terrorizing the girls and fucking with as many people as he can get his hands on. Even though he’s probably fuming over the punch Wren sent his way, I’m sure he’s having the time of his life.
I try to text Wren, but the message won’t go through. I try to call him, and low and behold, the line can’t connect either. I doubt he’s out there, playing this stupid game of his. He’s probably snuck off with Elodie somewhere, which is ridiculous, considering the fact that he created this mess. We pushed him to be Master of the Hunt this time, though. I tried to suppress it as best I could, but my resentment finally caught up with me. I was angry that it looked like things were falling into place between him and Elodie, when things had gone so awry for me and Carrie. And Pax? Pax was angry because whenisn’tPax angry? We forced Wren to be Master of the Hunt again, thinking somehow that would fix things. We could re-do the whole affair, and the old Wren would come back to us. That everything would go back to the way it used to be. So Wren concocted this disaster of a game, and now here we are, the three of us in three different places, the house being fucking trashed by a bunch of drunk idiots, and I’m just about ready to kill someone.
I storm through the kitchen, and a group of girls scatter like startled birds, colliding with one another in their haste to get away from me. It’s laughable that they’re brave enough to come here and join in the party, but they’re too intimidated to come within a hundred feet of one of the residents of Riot House. One of the girls, I sort of recognize. She peers back at me as she attempts to scramble out of the kitchen, and yes, itisher.
“Chloe! Chloe Khan, stay right fucking there.”
She freezes, her friends giggling behind their hands as I storm over. “If you want me to switch back with Carrie…I can’t,” she says quickly. “I already told her I wasn’t going to. The smaller room’s easier to heat and it’s closer to the bathroom. Plus…you already paid my last semester’s tuition fees and you can’t make me do anything now. Harcourt isn’t going to give you a ref—”
