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Not ones this dire.
I should be happy.
This isn’t my fault. It’s karma.
Her family drove my father to suicide. I couldn’t reach her father, so I did the same to her brother.
But I didn’t mean to. I didn’t.
Did I?
I couldn’t have predicted this. I couldn’t have known this is what he’d do after, I assume, his friend confronted him about fucking his girlfriend. He sure as fuck didn’t sound sorry about it when he was drunk at the party. He sounded fucking proud of it.
The door beside me swings open, and a guy with tattoos all up his arms comes out. He pauses when he sees me. I drop my head, trying to catch my breath.
He tips his chin. “You good?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Just a stomach bug or something.”
He digs in the pocket of his navy slacks and produces a pack of cigarettes. “Guess one of these wouldn’t help.”
“I don’t smoke.”
He tucks the butt of the cigarette between his lips. “You’re Lo’s little fuck boy, right?” he asks around it while he digs out a vintage Bic.
I straighten, a flare of jealousy rising in me when he calls her by that nickname.
“I’m her boyfriend,” I say. “What’s it to you?”
“Nothing,” he says, and he turns and walks off toward the bleachers, leaving me to wonder.
I’ve never met the guy, but it’s a small school. Everyone knows who Colt is. He’s WHPA’s one and only loser. I’m not sure why he goes here at all, since he doesn’t fit in with all the perfect, plastic people at Willow Heights. Maybe they need a whipping boy, or the Dolce twins need an example to hold up when people forget what happens when you disobey them. Apparently they’re to blame for his disfigured hand.
Gloria’s whole group hates him, and he’s relegated to eating under the bleachers every day so as not to taint the pretentiously named ‘café’ with his loser vibes. He must be poor or something, and combined with the hand and the stain of bad blood between him and the Dolces, it’s enough to make the whole school shun him. It makes me understand Gloria a little, why she’s so nervous about making a wrong move. I’m nervous around them too, but I also feel for the dude who didn’t get so lucky as to have the perfect blonde cheerleader for a girlfriend.
I should thank Lo, really. If not for her, I wouldn’t just be out of the popular group. I’d probably get my ass kicked and have to eat under the bleachers too.
Hell, I’d probably be friends with that guy. Just from looking at him, I can tell we have more in common than I have with the meathead jocks who sit at her table and only think about showing off how many cars they have and how many girls they’ve fucked.
But if I talked to Colt now, I’d probably end up with more than a fucked up hand in the process. He looks like an even match for one of the twins, while either one of them could kick my ass with one hand tied behind his back. So, I head back inside because I know the Dolces don’t let Colt have friends, and I’m not going to put a target on my back without good reason.
After school, I slide into the new, leather seat of my new, shiny 4Runner, tricked out with every extra the dealership could throw at my stepdad. I tried telling Mr. Montgomery that I didn’t need his charity, and I sure as fuck don’t need a gas-guzzling, oversized SUV that says I’m compensation for something. But he showed up the next day with keys in hand, having completely ignored my arguments and gotten it for me anyway.
He said he thought I was just being modest, and Mom bitched me out for being ungrateful when I tried to argue. I wasn’t trying to be ungrateful, but if he’d told me I didn’t have a choice about getting a car, I’d have picked out something within the same galaxy as my style.
Amber rolls her eyes as she climbs up into the passenger seat. She gets it. We look like a couple rich pricks driving around in this, but I guess that’s the point. We fit right in with the rest of the kids at this school.
“You okay?” I ask my sister as we lurch out of our parking spot, the oversized beast roaring before I quickly let off the gas. Everyone in school has heard about Dawson by now, since some chick posted about it on social media.
Guilt curls into a dark hollow in my chest when I think about how I can never, ever tell anyone what I did at that party.
Not even Amber. She’d never look at me the same if she knew I took someone from the Waltons the way they took Dad from us. She’d never wish that pain on anyone.
A few heads turn our way as we roll past the rows of cars, kids probably expecting to be run over by some ‘roid-raging dickhead who would rev his engine at them. I cringe at the thought of being seen that way. I’m one of the populars now. If I was like Gloria, if I could be the guy she wanted me to, I’d embrace popularity and act like the kind of guy who would threaten to run over kids in the parking lot just for laughs.
But I’m not that kind of guy. Sitting at their table just shows me what a sham it all is. They’re all fake. Even Gloria.
Gloria most of all.
