Avery takes a step back, shocked. She looks down at her hands, turns them over.
“That’s right,” Wren says. “You were so caught up in getting those funds; you didn’t realize you were doing the same exact thing you did to Sophia. You did it again. You haven’t learned at all. And you’ll probably do it again, and again, until you kill someone or someone kills you for it.”
“I was doing it for Sophia!” Avery screams, livid. “Those funds, the French club trip, it was for Sophia! She doesn’t have long, Wren, you know that! You fucking know that!”
“So you’d hurt someone else to help her?” He asks.
“I’ll do anything to help her,” Avery says through gritted teeth. “Anything.”
Wren smiles. “It’s too bad you can’t wring the money from your parents. Then again, they’re too smart aren’t they? They raised you, after all. You’re their spitting image. They’d track where it went, who was invited. They’d find Sophia’s name, and dig around in her background. And then what you did would be brought to light. It’d explode in your face. The whole town would know. Maybe it’s time the world knew.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” she snarls. “You and Jack would get dragged down with me.”
“Maybe. But I’m sure in court Jack would get a pardon, and I could plead I feared for my life. We’d get off more easily. But you? No. You’d get something much longer.”
“GET OUT!” Avery roars. “GET OUT!”
She throws things – a vase, a picture frame. She rips a fancy lamp from the wall and chucks it at my head, but I duck just in time. Glass shatters and I run after Wren, back to Kayla’s room.
“We need to go,” Wren pants, helping Kayla off the bed. She leans on his arm, tears almost dried, but still looking confused.
“What’s going on?”
“Give me your keys,” I say. Kayla rummages in her purse and hands them to me. Wren helps Kayla downstairs, and Jack lags behind with me. Avery’s screaming is waking up what’s left of the party. It sounds like a banshee being squeezed out in a wringer.
“Someone’s unhappy.” Jack smirks.
“Wren threatened to come out with the truth about what happened with Sophia,” I murmur. Jack’s face falls, and settles into a granite-hard determination. Wren and Kayla stumble across the lawn to her car. Just as Jack and I get out the door, rapid footsteps come down the stairs and race behind us. I turn just in time to see Avery, nose bloody from my punch, eyes wild with savage fury, her red hair like a mane of a fire goddess, and a baseball bat raised, inches from coming down on my back. I duck, the bat swinging over me, and there’s a snap the sound of something being forced, and Jack suddenly has the bat. Avery pants, shrinking away as Jack looks at the bat, observes every inch of it.
“Just like the good old days, hm?” Jack smiles predatorily at Avery. “Although the one I used was metal, wasn’t it?”
Avery’s fury drains so fast she looks like a punctured balloon. Terror claws at her expression as she scrabbles backwards, jumps to her feet, and runs back into the house, slamming the door shut and locking it.
Jack doesn’t say anything more until I’ve dropped off Kayla. Wren drove behind us, and got out to help Kayla to her front door. She thanked him, quietly, and he watched her go inside. Wren and I nodded at each other in a farewell, and he even nodded at Jack. When we’re on the highway and I’m driving towards Jack’s house, I spare a glance at him. I’d given him back his shirt, and he has his chin in his hand, fingers over his lips thoughtfully, watching the world flicker by outside his window.
He speaks first.
“I broke up with Kayla.”
“Shocking. I thought you two were going to last forever.”
He shoots me a sardonic smirk. “Haven’t you heard? Good things never last.”
I switch lanes. Jack turns on the heater. It smells like skunk. He shuts it off quickly.
“What happened last night?” I ask.
“You don’t remember?”
“I remember being…I remember being scared. Shaking.”
“That’s all?”
I nod. Jack goes still. His eyes are unreadable chips of ice as they always are, but for a split second I swear I see them crack on the inside with pain.
***
She was scared. She didn’t enjoy any part of it. If she did, she would’ve remembered. But her fear overwrote her memories.
The wound is far deeper than I’d imagined.
I watch her face as she drives, hands white on the steering wheel. She’s waiting, confused, trying to piece the blanks together in her mind. She blocked it out. Last night was too much like the time that caused the wound. I want to tell her I was trying to make her feel better, or tell her that I was trying to help (liar, you were taking advantage, just like he did).
In the sober light of morning, what I’ve done hits me with petrifying acidity. I forced a kiss on a drunk girl who’d been forced upon before. I’d touched a girl terrified of being touched at all. I lost control. I, Jack Hunter, the one person who keeps calm and cool and collected at all times, lost all control. And it hurt Isis so bad she blocked it from her memory.
It’s better if she doesn’t remember.
***
But the cracks fill in, icing over again, and Jack shrugs lightly.
“You were pretty drunk. Some guy with a disturbing mask jumped out at you from a corner. You were shaking fairly hard for the rest of the night.”
“And why was I wearing your shirt?”
“You bumped into someone while dancing and spilled coke on it. It was sticky. So I offered you my shirt, and you washed your suit off and left it to dry on the floor.”
It sounds like something I’d do. I nod.
“Makes sense.”
***
She pulls up to my house, and I get out and hang in the window.
“Take care of Kayla in the next few days,” I say. “She’ll need you.”
“Since when did you start caring about her?”
She’s important to you. So I care.
I don’t say that. I shrug and lie, instead.
“I know what it’s like. Breaking up. And GHB.”
“Client of yours get too creepy?”
“Just a bit.”
My eyes find her neck, and my breath hitches. There, just below her jaw, is a soft red hickey.
“Something wrong?” She asks.
If she doesn’t look up and use a mirror to see under her chin, she won’t see it. I shake my head.
“Nothing. Thanks for the ride.”
“Thanks for helping. With Avery. And for lending me your shirt. And…for dating Kayla. It made her really happy.”
It made you happy.
I smirk. “Anytime you want to give me another 200 dollars to go out with one of your friends, let me know.”
She snorts, and I step back and watch her pull away from the curb with something like regret festering in my chest. I tuck last night somewhere deep in my mind – lock it away for good. I’ll revisit it, when the longing gets too bad. But it doesn’t exist, any longer. It never happened. And that’s for the best.
I’m the only one who remembers.
And that’s for the best.
***
Northplains, Ohio, is a town full of secrets.
You’d think the boring Midwest wouldn’t have things like savage popular girls with baseball bats and shady events that happened in the past no one wants to talk about. But it’s got those by the truckload. Deception, revenge, lies. They all merge together like a vortex over the school, hanging heavy in the air on Monday.
Jack walks into the main hall, takes one look at me and Kayla on the bench, and walks right past us. Kayla, of course, bursts into tears. It took a lot of coaxing and chocolate on Sunday to convince her to come to school on Monday. I’m torn between my urge to punt him for making her cry, and knowing the breakup was the best thing for both of them. It was inevitable. A guy like Jack Hunter just doesn’t date girls his own age. That’s the general consensus around school. Of course Kayla only lasted two weeks! He’s Jack Hunter! He runs around town with rich girls in Porsches. He got early acceptance into Harvard, a fact Mr. Evans has taken to reminding every student of when they look like they’re slacking in study hall.