The Rebel of Raleigh High (Raleigh Rebels #1)(28)

I make nice with the kid who hurt Silver, and it costs me dearly. I fucking hated him before I knew what he did to her, but now…

Now, I want to fucking kill the bastard.

“Leon’s parties are legendary, man,” he tells me, throwing his arm around me as we head inside. “Half the school’s still talking about the last one, and that went down, like, nine months ago. His cousin’s a DJ in L.A. He always comes up here to play a set. There’s plenty of booze, and the girls…” He shakes his head, laughing. “The girls get fucking crazy, man. You’re guaranteed to get laid, no matter who you are. Last time, I fucked three different girls and they were all hot for it.”

He spins a sordid, repulsive tale of Leon Wickman’s spring fling party that took place last year, as I try to make a beeline for History. Unlucky for me, turns out Jake is in my class, so I have to listen to him brag on and on about how some chick was blowing him under a table while he made out with a different girl, who had no idea what was happening.

“There’ll definitely be some action for you there, Moretti, if you’re into it.” My face feels fucking numb. Jacob sits down next to me on the back row. “Any of them caught your eye so far?” he asks, as Mr. Biltmore, a skinny guy with a wispy, half-assed beard begins scribbling something on the chalkboard at the front of the class.

“Hmm?”

I’d ignore Jake if I could, but the motherfucker is persistent. “Any of the girls here in school?” he presses. “You into any of them?”

“God, no.”

“It’s cool, it’s cool. I know Zen’s diggin’ on you. She’s one of Kacey’s friends. Gives amazing head, and I heard she let Taylor Elliot stick it in her ass. She’d be a freaky first conquest.”

“Told you. I’m not interested.”

“Hey, okay, okay. Didn’t mean to stick my nose where it’s not wanted. I just felt like I had to say something because…well, I hate to speak badly, but I saw you hanging ’round with Silver Parisi a couple of times, and pssshh…” He widens his eyes, making a crazy face. “That one is certifiable, my man. Bitch has mental problems.”

I press the nib of my pen into the notepad in front of me so hard, the plastic buckles and cracks between my fingers. “Oh yeah?”

“She’s a manipulator. Worse, she’s a super bad lay. Take whatever she says with a pinch of salt, dude. If Silver’s mouth is moving, then she’s fucking lying. She’s always been that way. Took a long time for any of us to see it, but now…I’m telling you the truth, man. There isn’t a single person at Raleigh stupid enough to look twice at her.”

“All right. Open your books to page fifty-eight, people. Today we’re learning about, you guessed it…the United Nations Treaty Series! One of the most important international docu—ahh, who am I kidding?” Mr. Biltmore calls from the front of the class. “We’re going over the American Civil War again, ladies and gentlemen! Are you pumped for the Battle of Gettysburg or what?”

His sarcasm goes mostly unnoticed, but I appreciate it. Slowly, I turn my head a full forty-five degrees to the left, until I’m staring coldly at Jacob Weaving’s profile. “Duly noted,” I tell him. “Silver’s a liar. I’ll give her a wide berth.”

Jake grins at me, an All-American football hero in the making, complete with perfectly white, perfectly straight teeth. “Good man, Moretti. Good man. Now, are you gonna come to Leon’s party on Friday or what?”

My pen cracks again. The entire thing breaks in two. I clench my fist around the broken pieces, enjoying the feel of the sharp edges digging into the flesh of my palm. “Sure. Why not. Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

When class ends, Jake thumps the top of my arm, telling me he’ll catch me later, and just like that, I’m dismissed. It’s a relief. All I can think about is slamming my fist into the fucker’s throat; finding myself free of him is like finding myself free of a persistent and particularly nasty bout of Chlamydia. I do not like the dynamic Weaving’s trying to cement between us—one where he assumes the role of alpha, with me playing along as the good subordinate.

Jacob really has to be the stupidest fucking person I have ever met. Or maybe not. Maybe he really is this sure of himself. Either way, he seems to be missing all the warning signs where I’m concerned: the rap sheet; the tattoos; the motorcycle; the murder in my eyes whenever I look at the piece of shit. I’m gonna go right ahead and blame this one on Instagram. They made guys like me popular. They made it fashionable to look like me, to dress like me, to talk and walk like me. But these Insta famous fuck boys have no idea what the hell they’re doing when they pick a gang tattoo from a wall in a hipster den in Seattle and pay to have it driven into their skin. They have no idea what a knife feels like in their hands. They sure as fuck don’t know what it feels like to drive that into someone else’s skin.

In the end, they don’t have a clue how to really walk this walk or talk this talk. The fact that you can buy my ‘style’ in H&M might have robbed me of my threatening reputation…but that doesn’t mean that I am not a threat.





I spend the day on the look-out for Silver. She’s not an easy person to keep track of, let me tell you. I swear I see the same repeating faces in the hallway, over and over again between classes, but not the girl with the haunted look in her eyes. Seems as though she’s a ghost from the moment she walks into Raleigh High to the moment she books it out of here. I’m unsurprised to find her noticeably missing in the cafeteria at lunch. I normally leave school grounds and eat at a diner nearby myself, but not today.