The Rebel of Raleigh High (Raleigh Rebels #1)(17)

Heat prickles at the back of my neck. I grind my teeth together, wrestling to keep my temper in check. One heated, angry word and I’ll only be proving her point. Somehow, I manage to affect some level of calm as I force out the words that are burning at the back of my throat. “I’ve been looking after myself for years, okay? Me. I worked. I bought my own food. I cooked my own meals. I learned to look out for my own wellbeing when the guy you people placed me with got wasted and beat the shit out me every night of the week that ended in the letter Y. I am more than capable of looking after my own little brother. And guess what? I’ll do it for free. You won’t have to pay me a goddamn dime—”

“This isn’t about money, Alex—”

“And what do you mean, if you thought I was serious enough about taking Ben? I’m serious as a heart attack. The day after my birthday, I will be walking away from Jackie’s place with my little brother, and there won’t be a damn thing she can do about it. So please. Go ahead and tell me how that isn’t serious enough for you.”

“You are treating him like he’s a PlayStation, Alex. Despite how you may feel, Ben is not an object or a piece of property that was confiscated from you. You don’t deserve to have him handed over to you once you meet the barest of criteria, just because you share a mother and a father. That is not how this works.”

Oh, god. If I even part my lips right now, I am going to fucking explode. I grind my teeth together as hard as I can, but the rage doesn’t subside. I have to look away from her, back out of the window and onto the winter landscape beyond as I silently fume.

Inhale.

One. Two. Three. Four.

Exhale.

One. Two. Three. Four.

Inhale.

One. Two. Three. Four.

Exhale.

Rhonda huffs—she’s obviously having trouble letting go of her own anger. Her voice is much calmer when she speaks again, though. “At the end of the day, a stuffy old man is gonna review your case. He’s going to take into account your age, and the way you’ve chosen to decorate your body, and the fact that you ride around on a fucking deathtrap, and he’s gonna form an opinion real quick. And then, he’s going to look down at your file in front of him, and he’s going to read that you were Tazed in an open grave ten days ago, while you were pissing on a dead man. What do you think he’s going to say about that?”

I can already feel my hackles rising again. I do my level best to keep my shit together as I return my gaze to her. “I don’t know. Maybe the old bastard will have a sense of humor. Or some sense of justice?”

Rhonda slowly pushes away from the table, sliding back her chair. She gets to her feet and crosses her pokey office, collecting her purse from a hook on the back of the door. “I like you, Alex. I really do. You’re a smart kid. Your grades are…” She throws her hands up, her eyes rolling to the ceiling. “If you wanted to go to college, I do not doubt for one second that you’d get a scholarship based on your grades. I’m not going to bother wasting my breath trying to lead a charge on that campaign, though. Instead, I’ll give you some sound advice. You need to fix your attendance. You need to start building up some extra credit. You need to create a stable, clean, safe home environment. You need to get a job—”

“I have a job.”

“Shut your mouth and listen to me for five minutes. You do not have a job. You bus tables at a dive bar until the early hours of the morning, which is nothing but a huge, giant black check mark against you. Have you thought about who’s gonna be there to watch Ben while you’re out until two in the morning on a school night? No. Uh uh, Sweetheart. You need a proper job, with reasonable hours, and the potential to build a career for yourself out of it. If you want to stand a cat’s chance in hell of becoming Ben’s legal guardian, then none, I repeat, none of this is negotiable. You have seven months to accomplish all of that. You think you can handle it?”

My tongue is stuck to the roof of my fucking mouth. I feel like smashing every stick of furniture in Rhonda’s office into kindling, but instead, I calmly stand, grabbing my jacket from the back of the chair. “I guess I don’t have much choice, do I?”





5





SILVER





“You need to be home by four to watch Max, Sil. I have to work late, and your dad’s in Spokane for some conference. Neither of us will be back before midnight.” My mom’s in a rush, frantically sifting through her bag in search of something. I stab a knife into the butter dish, absently smearing some onto my toast. “Can you give him dinner, Honey? And I don’t mean pizza. A proper meal that has at least one green thing in it. There’s forty bucks on the mail stand if you wanna go grab some groceries.”

This is becoming more and more frequent, this palming-off of Max. Could be that all seventeen-year-olds end up playing standin parent once they get old enough, but my parents would never have dreamed of asking me to cart him around or feed him at the beginning of last year. It feels as though something’s changed, and not just all my shit at school. There’s been some kind of dynamic shift inside my home that feels distinctly unpleasant. Barely noticeable, but wrong.

“I’m teaching tonight. Gregory and Lou. Every Wednesday, remember?”

She stops what she’s doing, her hands falling slack, the open-heart surgery she was performing on her purse suddenly forgotten. “Shit. Uhh…” She closes her eyes; the cogs inside her head work overtime for a moment as she tries to come up with a solution to this problem. “I’m sorry. How much do they pay you again? Fifty bucks? I can just give you the cash instead to make up for it.”