Page 5 of Riot Rules
I turn back to say something sharp and witty to this girl, Carrie, but when I look up, she’s already walking out of the hospital’s exit.
It feels like the axis of the earth has shifted. Marginally. An imperceptible fraction. Enough that I can notice the difference, and now everything feels…off kilter.
Eventually, the paperwork gets sorted.
Eventually, I get to see a doctor.
Some lidocaine, one tiny stitch, and an icepack later, and I’m walking (like John Wayne) out of the hospital, still wearing my hospital gown.
When I slump onto the back seat, feeling like I just survived frontline combat, there’s only one thing on my mind. “That girl. Carrie. What’s her deal anyway?”
From the front seat, Wren laughs mirthlessly, pulling an orange prescription bottle out of his jeans pocket and rattling it in his hand. “Gotta wait five days for that stitch to dissolve before you let your dick get hard. Wouldn’t wanna tear again, man. ’Til then, you’re better off not daydreaming about Carina Mendoza.”
Pax snatches the prescription bottle out of Wren’s hand. “Percocet? Nice, dude. You’d better be in the sharing mood.”
Wren talks, laughing with Pax, but I’m no longer in the car with them. I’m back in the waiting room, looking up into a pair of irate brown eyes and feeling about an inch tall. Carina Mendoza. Carrie, with eyes like dark cinnamon. Carrie, whoalreadymade my dick hard by scolding me like I was a naughty kid.
I’m still back in the waiting room, replaying the interaction I had with the girl in my head on a loop, when Pax pulls down the driveway that leads to Riot House and spits out a string of curse words so colorful that I’m yanked into the present.
Wren’s face is a picture of dismay. “What the actualfuck?”
Leaning forward is tricky. I’m nicely numb on painkillers, but I can tell that I’ll be paying for the movement later, once the Percocet has worn off. Riot House is an architectural masterpiece. Constructed out of glass, and slate, and thick ash beams, the three-story building is a thing of beauty. A beauty that is currently marred by the giant dick andveryhairy balls that have been scrawled across the impressive front door in blue spray paint.
Mud kicks up from the Charger’s tires as Pax brings the car to a jarring halt. Both he and Wren hurl themselves out of the car and up the steps like their asses are on fire; I bring up the rear as quickly as I can, which is to say not very quickly at all.
Wren glares down at his fingers, which are stained bright blue. “Still wet. We just missed them.”
“I’m gonna fucking kill them.” Pax paces up and down on the porch like a caged animal. “Who’sthisstupid? I mean, I’m serious.Whoisthisstupid?”
Wiping his fingers on his pants, Wren’s eyes have a steely, vicious glint to them. “I don’t know, but we’re about to find out.” He points to the camera, mounted to the eaves of the overhanging porch roof. “And when we do, there’s gonna be hell to pay.”
2
CARRIE
FOUR DAYS LATER
“You…did…what?”
Being a redhead, Presley’s fair complexion is prone to flushing whenever she has the slightest reaction to something. Her cheeks are aflame right now. She was lounging quite happily across the foot of my bed like a five-foot-eleven lap dog, but the moment I mentioned Pax Davis’ name, she sat bolt upright and began staring at me like I just told her I murdered the Dali Lama.
“What do you mean,called Dashiell Lovett out?”
Wolf Hall is a drafty, eerie old place, full of crooked angles and dark little nooks. The place was built back in the mid-1800s, and unlike many other private academies, has only ever worn the one hat. It was an academy when it opened its doors, and it’ll remain an academy until its doors eventually close. On the third floor of the school, in the girls’ wing of the main house, my bedroom is one of the smallest. A number of the other girls have rooms big enough for a sofa and a proper desk to study at, but my little box of a room is barely big enough to fit my bed, me and Presley inside it.
I rub at my face, groaning as I sidle down the negligible strip of free floor space between my bed and the wall, making for the window. At least I have a decent view; the observatory that overlooks Wolf Hall is my favorite place on school grounds. At night, the small, squat block of a building is lit up, silhouetting its fat, domed roof against a host of stars.
I put my hands on my hips and sigh. “It was four days ago, Pres. No big deal.”
“It most definitelyisa big deal. I go away for a funeral and you get into it with a Riot House boy? What thefuck! I need every single last detail.”
Her astonishment is totally justified; my behavior back at the hospitalwasout of character. I press my forehead against the window, wishing we could talk about something,anything, else. “I don’t know. I saw him sitting there and I got so angry. He just stared at me with this stunned look on his face, like I had two heads. He didn’t even ask why I was at the hospital. I had to tell him.”
“You did say he was in his underwear, covered in blood,”Presley points out. I hate when she points things out. Her logic gets in the way of my outrageous overreactions all the time. If she was any kind of friend, she’d agree with me and keep her mouth shut, with her ‘reason’ and ‘benefit of the doubt.’ I’m aware that she’s right, though. Yes, Dashiell Lovett, Sun God of Wolf Hall, was injured. His face was so ashen, he’d looked like he was about to keel over.
Pres frowns. “Wait. Are you gonna tellmewhy you were at the hospital?”
“They had a blood drive, that’s all. I went there to donate.”
