Burn Before Reading(95)
I hold the red post-it note between my fingers, and hand it to her.
“You will stop,” I say. “What you’re planning.”
Her eyes narrow with disbelief – I can’t know. Wolf Blackthorn can’t know her inner secrets, her darkest thirst for revenge. But I do. And I watch her gaze until she sees the truth in mine.
“How do you know –”
“If you continue to go down this path, I’ll find out,” I interrupt her. “And I will expel you. Consider this your first and only warning.”
“You’re such a stuck-up asshole,” She seethes. “First you chased out that scholarship girl, now me, huh?”
I feel my insides writhe. Fitz snorts – dismissive, angry. Nothing like he usually is with girls. Behind me, Burn steps forward so he’s level with her, towering over her.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” His voice is slow, and it’s not directed at me, but his face is faintly irritated in a way not even I see often. The girl shrinks back, faking bravado.
“Fine. Whatever.”
The three of us watch her go. When she’s gone, Burn looks at me.
“You alright?” He asks. I scoff.
“Of course I am.”
“Weird of you to start caring,” Fitz says. “After the whole Bee thing, not before.”
Burn rounds on him. “I cared before.”
“You sure as hell didn’t show it,” I interject.
“It’s…” He slams his fist on a nearby locker, the sound reverberating in a way his words don’t. “It’s hard for me. To stay, instead of run. I’ve been trying. This whole time I’ve been trying.”
“Poor you,” I crack my neck and walk away, towards my Calculus class.
School is a blur, my brain barely soaking in any information. Tests come and go, homework comes and goes, people smiling at me or whispering about me barely register. It’s not me I hear. It’s Bee. When her name comes up on someone’s lips I can narrow in on it in less than a second, sharp and ready for every word that comes after.
“- what did the scholarship girl do, anyway?”
“ – at some party. She passed out and almost drowned in the pool –”
“ – gave her CPR right there. We were so freaked out, he was the only one who moved at all –”
“ – dating?”
“ – they hated each other –”
“ – he got her kicked out –”
“ – she was sort of stuck up, huh –”
They know so little. They know nothing, and yet they love pretending they do. That’s what humans do best. Pretend. I learned that all thanks to Bee.
A wave of sickness washes through me, and I spin my ring frantically. Let it pass. Dear God, please let it pass. I can’t lose control in school. Not in front of everyone. My shoulders are shaking so badly I can feel it radiating to my jaw.
I let myself trust again.
I trusted a liar, again.
I loved a liar, again.
She never hit me. Not once were her motions violent towards me. And yet somehow, this wound of hers burns hotter in me than any of Mark’s ever did.
That one dead poet was right when he said gentleness can kill, too.
Dad is smug about it, at home. He asks me if I’m ‘doing alright’, as if he genuinely cares. Today after school, I catch him sitting at the kitchen table, pouring over brochures of some kind.
“There you are,” He smiles up at me, that special snake smile he gets when he’s planning something awful. “Sit with me?”
He motions to the open chair, and suddenly exhausted by school, by the whispers, by all of it, I sit.
It takes me a minute to realize what the brochures he’s reading are about. My eyes focus – all of them are ‘rehabilitation centers’. For drug addictions. Dad sees me reading their headlines, and smiles again.
“I think it’s far overdue for Fitz to get some real help with his problem, don’t you?”
“Problem?” I whisper, hoarse. “He takes drugs at parties. And when he’s stressed, sometimes. But he hasn’t done a single one in two weeks –”
“You don’t know that. We can’t trust him, Wolf. It’s harsh but true. He might be your brother, but you can’t trust an addict’s word.”
“He didn’t tell me that,” I growl. “I know that. He gave me his stash. And I flushed it down the toilet.”
“You can’t know that he gave you all of it.”
“Haven’t you noticed? He isn’t himself, lately. He’s snappish and irritable. He’s having withdrawals.”
“And what reason,” Dad sneers. “Would your addict brother have for going cold turkey, hm? A change of heart? I don’t think so.”
“He nearly got B – ” I freeze. “He gave drugs to a girl. A girl who wasn’t used to them. And she almost – she almost got hurt.”
Dad watches me carefully, with eyes of a hawk. “And this girl – she was important to him?”
“She was important to all of us.” A low voice says. I look up to see Burn standing in the doorway of the kitchen, his fists balled. Things are never going to go well when his fists are balled.