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I narrow my eyes.
He comes in, grabbing the back of my neck and bringing me in. “We’ll see him at the game,” he says. “You’ll win,have the best fucking year of your life, and then go off to the University of Chicago and leave him and his circle of influence behind for good.”
Fucking yes.
“But we have her now,” he points out. “She can be first.”
“I don’t give a shit about her—”
“Because if we beat them on the field,” he continues, “and he still gets to go home and have her at his beck and call, are you still going to feel like you won anything?”
I look at him, but my gaze falters.
“Oh, Jesus Christ.” He rears back a little, eyes gleaming with realization. “I can’t believe I actually called that shit.” He has the decency to keep his voice low. “She’s the reason for the rift between you and Kade,” he says. “She’s the reason for all of this.”
No.My problems with Kade aren’t Dylan’s fault.
I never cared about her beyond the fact that she was a friend.
It never hurt when she wanted to be around him instead.
“Fuck,” I murmur.
Farrow squeezes the back of my neck. “She needs to pay too,” he tells me. “Your fun…starts now.”
Dylan
The apple didn’t fall far, indeed. Not only did I make a vile comment to people I don’t know in that classroom, I also don’t feel badly about it yet.
It’s weird. I knew it was wrong the second it came out, and I knew why. But even now, a few hours later, and on my way to face everyone at lunch, the guilt hasn’t really set in.
I’m like my dad.
I’d always understood that he had problems in school. He spent years, not only forcing himself to hate my mother, but to actively—and unjustly—take it out on her. Treating her harshly, he’d told me, felt better than facing everything that was hurting him. His past, his parents, his lack of hope in the future, his jealousy over others’ happiness…
And his fear that she was too good for him.
Fear.
We only ever do anything out of love or fear, and I certainly didn’t say those things thismorning out of love.
I don’t want to be like my dad was when he was younger. Bitter.
I stop at my locker, lifting my notebook and the two books I’d been distributed—a copy ofCockney Redsand an economics book—but as soon as I open the steel door, a flutter of little papers spills out. I watch them float to the tile at my feet. Torn-up pieces of lined school paper with jagged serial killer penmanship.
I slip my belongings onto the shelf without looking and squat down, plucking a note off the ground to unfold it.
Hang the Pirate!it reads.
I laugh under my breath. I pick up another one and unfold it. Students probably slipped these through the vent.
We’re coming for you tonight.
The period at the end instead of an exclamation point really drives home the finality of the statement. It’s a fact, not a threat. I should be scared. Maybe I will be later.
Letting the notes fall, I swipe up another one. And then another.
You will never leave Weston.
