Revenge at Raleigh High Read online

  Revenge at Raleigh High

  Callie Hart

  Copyright © 2019 by Callie Hart

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  TEXT MESSAGE RECEIVED:

  Chapter 2

  TEXT MESSAGE RECEIVED:

  Chapter 3

  TEXT MESSAGE RECEIVED:

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  TEXT MESSAGE RECEIVED:

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  TEXT MESSAGE RECEIVED:

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Epilogue

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  About the Author

  1

  SILVER

  Samuel Adrian Hawthorne

  Devoted Son.

  Beloved Friend.

  Talented Sportsman.

  A Bright Light, Taken Too Soon.

  Here, we weep, but in Heaven, the Angels rejoice, for one of their own has returned home to them.

  The midnight forest breathes deep around the cemetery, drawing the night into its lungs, its mournful limbs swaying on a cold breeze as I look down upon the grave of Samuel Adrian Hawthorne. The frozen ground feels like it’s pulsing beneath my feet, the beat of a somber drum rising through the non-existent soles of my Chucks, but it’s only my own blood protesting the fact that I’ve been standing here too long. It’ll be time to leave soon enough, but tonight I’ve come here to face a demon, and I won’t go until it’s slain.

  Behind me, I hear the muffled shushhing of waves lapping at the shore of Lake Cushman. Winter’s arrived in full-force, it won’t be long before the lake begins to ice over, but for now the water remains free to roll pebbles and rake the sands at the beachline.

  Mallory Hawthorne, Sam’s mom, refused to have her son buried in the Raleigh Gardens of Rest Cemetery on the outskirts of town. No one needed to ask why, but Mallory went around Raleigh exclaiming loudly to anyone within earshot that she wouldn’t have her poor murdered son fertilizing the same ground as the sick bastard who’d killed him. Three times she’s brought a petition before Mayor Griffith, demanding that Leon Wickman be exhumed and cremated, so no one will ever have to set eyes on his headstone again. Three times, Mayor Griffith has dismissed her, asking her to let the matter rest, but the chances of that happening are negligible. Mrs. Hawthorne keeps on doing her rounds through Raleigh, going door-to-door with her list of signatures and addresses, and each time she shows up at the town hall, her petition has gotten longer. It’ll only be a matter of time.

  Some kind of night bird lets out an eerie, plaintive wail, deep within the forest, and a cold sweat breaks out across the back of my neck. I don’t want to be here. I don’t enjoy hanging out in cemeteries in the middle of the night for the fun of it. I was drawn here, though, an undeniable force pulling on my insides, tugging me through the lateness of the night as I drove the Nova up the long, winding roads that lead toward the lake, the car’s headlights guiding me toward Sam.

  Devoted Son.

  Beloved Friend.

  Talented Sportsman.

  My eyes follow the sharp line and curve that forms the letters of each engraved word, knowing without the faintest glimmer of doubt that Mallory Hawthorne believes these statements to be true.

  It’s amazing how little parents really know about their children. They give birth to this creature, who sucks them dry physically, financially and emotionally. As the child grows, beginning to form, developing character traits and personality quirks that make it a unique cog in the machinations of society, it becomes very difficult for mothers and fathers to really see the teeth that form on that cog. Their rose-tinted view paints their children with all the beautiful gifts they wish to bestow on them: kindness; loyalty; honesty; intelligence. The blind love they feel for their child builds them up to be this blameless, perfect being, brimming with so much potential that their offspring might as well be the second coming of Christ.

  So, when they find out that their blameless, perfect child is really a monster, it’s no great surprise that they won’t accept the truth. Some cogs don’t fit into the places assigned to them. They make the machine skip, their teeth too sharp and too grating. They are square pegs that won’t fit in round holes. That doesn’t mean that the determined and the persistent won’t keep on trying to jam them into place, of course. Mallory Hawthorne will believe her son was a saint until the day she fucking dies.

  I suppose he was quite good at sports.

  “Sammy just got back from surfing in Hawaii. D’you think he’s hot?”

  The memory rushes me like the cold water of the Cushman tide. I try not to let my mind catch on it, but the sights and sounds of that night are bright as comets when they flare across the landscape of my mind and just as unstoppable: Sam, standing shirtless in front of the bathroom mirror, face split with a grin as he stoops down to do a rail of coke. Jake standing behind me, grinding his hard dick up against my ass as he trades suggestive looks with his friends. Sam, queuing up Sublime and cranking the music loud to mute my screams. Sam, handing Jake the razor he uses to cut away my clothes. Sam, leaning his bodyweight against me, holding me down as Jake paws at my naked body. Sam taking his turn, climbing on top of me, his breath reeking of whiskey, eyes unfocused, that terrible, mindless grin still twisting his features like some circus clown maw.

  And then, after all of that was over, Sam, downstairs at the party…

  I blink rapidly, gouging my fingers into my palms, hoping that the pain will shock me out of the past, but it’s too late.

  I recognize the song blasting through Mr. Wickman’s state of the art, thirty-thousand-dollar speaker system, but I’m not really hearing it. It’s impossible to hear much over the high-pitched ringing in my ears. My mouth still finds the shape of the lyrics as they pump out into the living room, though. My lips work of their own accord, silently repeating the chorus of the song like a prayer. I feel nothing. Even when I trip on the last step of the stairs, twisting my ankle as I lurch forward, barely catching my footing before going sprawling across the dove-grey marble floor in the foyer, I feel absolutely nothing.

  The house is packed to the rafters. There are faces here I don’t recognize. Or…maybe I do know them. Everyone looks unfamiliar as I stumble toward the front door, bile boiling in my stomach, choking me, clawing its way up the back of my throat.

  “Silver? Silver, Jesus, what the hell are you wearing? Is that one of Mr. Wickman’s shirts?”

  There’s a girl standing in front of me. Fine wisps of her beautiful red hair are stuck to her forehead, curled, captured in the sheen of her sweat. She’s wearing a royal blue dress that makes her eyes lo
ok as bottomless as the sea. Her pupils are blown wide open.

  Halliday. Her name is Halliday.

  She’s one of my best friends, and she’s frowning at me like she’s just realized something is very, very wrong. “Silver? Oh my god, Sil, is that blood?”

  Robotically, I look down at where she’s pointing. I’ve been slumped in the bottom of the shower for…I don’t know how long I sat there with the freezing cold water hammering against my skin. I thought I’d gotten it all. I thought I’d cleaned away all of the blood. The insides of my thighs are slick with it, though.

  Fresh. Bright. Red.

  I couldn’t find any pants…

  I reach out, my hand grasping at thin air as I try to hold onto something. “I’m going to throw up.”

  “Shit, let’s get you outside. You need fresh air.” Halliday wraps an arm around my shoulder, rushing me to the door. I barely make it down the front steps and to the lawn before I drop to my hands and knees and retch into the grass. Nothing really comes up. I puked at least three times in the shower before I blindly staggered down the stairs, so there’s barely even a mouthful of stomach acid to bring up this time. It burns like nothing else, though. The taste is foul.

  When I sink back onto my knees, Halliday has an arm wrapped around her own body and a hand covering her mouth. Her Pacific Ocean eyes are full of tears. “Silver, what the hell happened?” she whispers.

  She already knows. She suspects. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t be looking at me the way she is. I’m so fucking tired, I could fall asleep right here on the lawn. “I need to go home, Hal. Can…can you find my purse?” The sound of my own voice surprises me. I sound normal. I sound sober. I sound like me. I’m not me anymore, though. I’m a tragic, broken imposter, occupying a tragic, broken body that belongs to someone else. Three people, to be precise: Jacob Weaving. Samuel Hawthorne. Cillian Dupris. This mangled, uncomfortable shell of muscle, flesh, and bone belongs to them. They baptized themselves in my blood, and now I’m theirs…

  Halliday stifles a sob. “Silver.” Her hand shakes as she reaches out, stroking a tangled strand of damp hair out of my face. “I think I should call your dad.”

  I whip around, eyes finally focusing properly on her face. “No. I don’t want him here. I don’t want to talk. I just wanna go home. I need my purse, Halliday.”

  My phone’s inside that Tory Birch clutch. House keys. If I don’t find my keys, I won’t be able to get inside the house without waking up Mom and Dad…

  “Please. Just go inside and find it so I can leave.”

  “Where…?” she whispers.

  I swallow. My throat’s so raw, it feels like I’m choking down broken glass. “Upstairs. Top floor. The bathroom at the end of the hall.”

  “Okay, I’ll find it. I’ll find Kacey, too. She’ll know what to do.”

  I feel myself nodding.

  Time passes. I start to shiver, but I don’t feel the chilly night air. I’m detached from myself, unmoored, my psyche trying to float away downstream, but no matter how hard I try to kick and swim away from the misery of my own existence, I find I’m still trapped within it. I have no idea how long I wait on my knees in the grass. Eventually, I get to my feet, wobbling like a newborn deer, and I walk to a window, peering through the glass.

  It’s sheer luck that I immediately see Halliday. That she’s even in the hallway at all. My eyes catch on her red hair. She’s animated, her hands moving in the air, gesturing toward the front door. In front of her, Kacey’s tapping furiously into her phone.

  My best friend looks worried. Her eyes are sharp, spearing people through as she holds her phone to her ear. The light from the screen casts a blue glow across her face. Nervously, she tucks her hair behind her ear, and—

  My chest pinches tight, a sharp pain spreading like the roots of a tree across my ribcage.

  Sam…

  Sam’s joined them, and he’s listening to Halliday frantically speak. She points to the front door, undoubtedly telling the story of me, wearing nothing but an oversized dress shirt with blood staining my thighs, collapsed out on the front lawn.

  No. No, no, no. God, please, no.

  Sam turns, eyes narrowed as he heads toward the door. Toward me. My heart almost explodes in my chest.

  Run! Run, Silver. Go!

  I am paralyzed. I couldn’t fucking run if I tried.

  The door opens, spilling warm light out into the darkness, and I pray for the sound of Halliday’s voice. She hasn’t followed behind Sam, though. He’s come out to me alone.

  The soles of his shoes crunch against the gravel pathway. He’s standing right next to me. He’s less than five or six inches away. It feels as though a ten-ton weight is pushing down on the back of my head, preventing me from looking up into his face.

  Sam’s bemused laughter is quiet, but it seems loud over the thumping bass of the music still playing inside. “Didn’t you wash that dirty little cunt, Parisi?”

  I flinch, making myself smaller inside my head, shying away from his voice. His hand reaches out, his fingers tracing the line of my jaw. I freeze. I don’t make a sound. “Your friends are in there, rallying the troops,” he says mildly. He barely sounds interested let alone fazed by this information. “Just curious. Are you on birth control? If you wind up pregnant, that’d probably be really bad, don’t you think? You’d have to explain that you went whoring around with not one but three guys at a party. Your parents would probably be pretty disgusted, I reckon.”

  My mind is a void.

  My ears ring louder than ever.

  My heart thrashes, trying not to seize.

  Sam hooks a finger under my chin, forcing me to meet his gaze. He looks down on me like I’m the most repellant thing he’s ever had the misfortune of seeing with his own two eyes. “I hear the morning after pill’s pretty effective. Dillinger’s is open twenty-four hours now, too. Seems like your best bet would be to make a stop there before you head home. Be silly to take any chances. What d’you think, babe?”

  Babe.

  Babe.

  Babe.

  Babe.

  I can’t stop the word from repeating over and over in my head.

  Babe.

  Babe.

  Babe.

  I clap my hands over my ears, screwing my eyes shut, refusing to breathe. If I stop breathing, I might pass out. I might fucking die. At least if I’m dead, this madness will finally stop.

  Sam’s hand drops to his side. “Are you listening?”

  I’m not. I can’t. I’m not. I can’t. I’m not. I can’t.

  “Crazy fucking bitch.” His jabs a finger into my chest, sneering viciously, his false indifference vanishing in a puff of smoke. “I’d be really careful how I handled what comes next if I were you. You’re gonna be faced with a choice. I’m gonna give you a piece of advice, Parisi. Right now, you’re standing at a crossroads. To your left lies graduation. The end of school. Summer with your friends. You finish your time at Raleigh with a smile on your face and we all part as friends. The other direction?” He shakes his head, disappointment forming on his face. “To your right leads copious amounts of pain and suffering. Humiliation. Embarrassment. You won’t make it to graduation if you head in that direction. Jake’ll make sure of it. You shouldn’t have defied him like that upstairs. You really got under his skin. You fucked up his head real bad.”

  I’m not in my right mind. The frigid, cold water from the shower must have addled my brain. If I was thinking straight, I’d make sure to stop the slightly deranged bark of laughter from exploding out of my mouth.

  Sam’s eyes harden like flint. He tuts under his breath, taking a step back toward the house. “All right, babe. It’s your fucking funeral. Remember that.”

  He goes inside.

  I press my forehead against the glass of the window, finally dragging a shaken, terrified breath down into my burning lungs. When I look up, Sam’s in front of my friends again, hands in his pockets. He’s talking to Kacey, his face very c
alm, his shoulders relaxed. Kacey, on the other hand? Kacey’s becoming visibly more and more agitated. She turns red, her icy-blue eyes filling with the kind of cold, dead fury that generally means someone, somewhere is about to be publicly eviscerated. A minute passes. Two. Sam doesn’t stop talking the entire time, words spilling out of his mouth like a goddamn oil slick, and Kacey does nothing but stand there and listen. At one point, Halliday reacts to something he says, covering her mouth with both hands. Kacey’s posture stiffens, so much tension pouring off her that it looks like she’s about to go nuclear. Halliday tries to say something to her, but she spins on her and snaps, snarling at her through her bared teeth.

  Sam finally stops talking. He shrugs, grins at the girls, and then pivots on the balls of his heels and walks away, rejoining the chaos of the party that’s still surging all around them. Kacey spears Halliday through with a look that makes my blood run cold.

  Still, I am a fool, though. Still, I don’t see it coming.

  When Kacey and Halliday emerge through the front door of the Wickman house, I expect my best friend to take me in her arms and hold me. I expect her to stroke my hair and tell me everything is going to be all right. I expect her to turn that legendary rage of hers into sharp cutting words, hone them into lethal weapons, and to send them flying at the boys who hurt me.

  I have never been so wrong in all my life.