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IMANI
The cheerleaders screamed around us, and the football players rushed off the field through a back entrance. Vaughn’s head lay feet from Jace, blood splattered across the white field lines. Allie grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the exit with the herd of students rushing down the bleachers.
Everything turned to pure chaos within mere moments, the crowd erupting into screams and shouts. Red and blue police lights turned on around the field. When Poison had told me they would kill the principal, I had not expected this.
What were they thinking?!
People started rushing down the bleachers and knocking people out of the way.
“Jace!” Allie screamed, but with the people around us, we couldn’t see shit. Once we finally made it down to the solid ground, Allie stopped. “JACE!”
More and more people pushed to get the fuck out of here.
I glanced around nervously, knowing that we had to move or these animals would trample us. So, I grabbed Allie and pushed her to the exit along with the group. “We have to go. Jace will get out of here safely.”
Everything happened so quickly. Students shoved us until we reached the sidewalks. Allie stood beside me, standing on her tiptoes to try to see above the crowd. She was so worried about Jace, and I was so fucking worried about the three dumbasses who had recorded themselves torturing our principal.
If someone linked this back to them … I might lose them forever.
Forever, forever.
What if they went to jail? To prison? What if I never got to see them again?
Cops stood around us, trying to calm people down and make sure they were safe, trying to be nice. But everyone knew that cops in Redwood were never nice; they were always corrupt. Now, they were scared that they’d be next to be exposed and killed by Poison.
“Come on, Imani. We need to go,” Allie said.
But suddenly, it all hit me at once. Poison had done more than kill Principal Vaughn. I’d expected it to be a quiet death, something that I wouldn’t have to witness. But Vaughn’s head was sitting on the football field, and they’d had fun in that video.
They’d loved torturing him.
“Imani,” Allie said again, but she sounded so distant.
Tears burst from my eyes. I couldn’t stop them, no matter how hard I tried. I didn’t know why I was crying, but … I hadn’t expected this. My heart was aching. My mind buzzing with so many fears of losing them and fears that they had enjoyed that a little too much.
I went to wipe my tears away, but I couldn’t even pull my arms up enough to reach my cheeks with my trembling hands. I glanced at Allie and mouthed her name, but no words came out. Pain shot through me. I should’ve expected this and nothing less.
Allie wrapped her arms around me like I had done to her countless times and stroked my back. “Imani, we have to go. We don’t know what else they have planned.”
She ushered me forward, but I knew that if Poison had anything else planned, then they wouldn’t have let me come to the game.
Would they have?
Maybe João was trying to scare me away again. Maybe he wanted to test me to see how I’d react. But how the hell was I supposed to react when I just saw our principal’s head fly across the bleachers and onto the field?
I shook my head, still unmoving. “They-they killed someone!”
Allie swallowed hard and continued to push me forward with the other students and parents, so we wouldn’t be trampled by the growing crowd. “That’s what they do,” Allie said, careful not to speak their name out loud and in public.
While everyone had to have known that this was their doing, I didn’t want to incriminate them.
I wrapped my arms around her as we kept up with the students. “I knew they were bad news, but … I-I-I didn’t think that they’d do anything like this. They took a life and put it on display like it was … nothing.”
We made it farther onto the sidewalks, where everyone was dispersing onto the streets and speeding out of the parking lots.
“How many times do you think they’ve done that before? Like that violently? Once? Twice? Hundreds of times? Did you see how much fun they were having?”
After scanning the crowd, she turned back to me. “I don’t know, Imani,” she answered.
