Chapter 27
AGE 18
Max’s house, the shit show.
“Don’t you want to hear my proposition, King?” Kyleigh bats her false eyelashes at me, smiling sweetly.
I flex my fists, looking from Jacob and Max back to Kyleigh. I’m still standing on Max’s front porch.
Jacob is in trouble, I can tell just by looking at him, and he’s definitely fucking high again. He promised me after last weekend, when I had to pick him up and drive him home from a bush party, that he was gonna cut that shit out. He was all fucked up on Molly and booze. Him and two guys from the team thought it was smart to try to rope swing into the shallow river. He sliced his leg up real bad, I still think he should’ve gotten stitches.
All this shit has just gotten out of control over our senior year. It started with weed, we all smoked it once in a while at parties when we started high school, it was harmless, but he’s taken it too far.
Especially since he’s been hanging around Max. Now, it’s not just weed, more often it’s Molly or Percocet, I’m sure it’s been coke a few times too. It’s been changing him, and I’m worried about him.
“Please, just come in, I—fuck. Please, King,” Jacob begs, still bouncing his knee.
I push past Kyleigh and enter Max's small living room. Their house has always been a little on the messy side, they don’t have much. His mother works a factory job, mostly nights, and his stepdad works the night shift at the lumber yard. They’ve both been known to drink a lot, so Max is just turning into a chip off the old block.
The Sports Network is playing on the TV, and a floor lamp from sometime in the eighties is the only light in the room. I take in the smell of cigarettes and some sort of air freshener as I sit down on the dingy old sofa across from Jacob.
“The fuck did you do?” I ask him only, blocking out the rest of the room when my eyes meet his. I hate this, feeling like his big brother instead of his friend.
His short brown hair is messy and his eyes are bloodshot. He leans back on the sofa and blows out a breath.
“They’re trying to get you here so you can agree to my terms. I knew you’d never come to see me if I called,” Kyleigh quips, sitting down right beside me.
I move so her leg isn’t touching mine. I made the mistake of touching her once. I won’t do it again.
“If you do, I’ll keep quiet about what they did.” She looks at them. “I found them in the math wing at school trying to steal the answers to their final—caught them red-handed, actually.” She holds her phone up. “Got it on video.” Jesus Jacob. “Wanna hear the best part?”
I look at her and wait. She’s enjoying this way too much and it’s pissing me off.
“They broke in, well technically I guess they were let in. They used your new girlfriend’s student ID fob to get into the building.” She holds it up. I snatch it from her hand.
“It’s pretty convenient for them that she has access to the school after hours, giving the card to her brother so he could steal, though.” She makes a tsking noise.
“Breaking and entering with intent to steal school—well, technically, government—property when you’re eighteen. I’m pretty sure of the rules, since my dad’s the deputy sheriff. I think the county would charge them both as adults.” She blows out a breath “Not the best look for a future WSU rugby star on a scholarship,” she says smugly. “Also, not a good look for your girl, King.”
“She would never and the school would know that,” I fire back. She shrugs.
“Maybe. Sure would suck for her either way. Not the best for her college career either.”
I stand up. “What the fuck, Jacob? You implicated Violette in this bullshit? Fuck’s sake!” My voice is loud, and he knows I’m fucking pissed. How could he? Oh, right, because he was high, that’s how.
“Oh, and add onto that, they’ve definitely been drinking and they’re high, and he drove them both there.” She points to Max with a scoff.
Fucking idiots.
I turn to her. “This is funny to you? Just fucking stop, Kyleigh, and let me talk to them. Alone. ”
Kyleigh smiles. “Sure thing, King, it’s fine, I’m gonna text my dad. He’s coming to pick me up anyway. I’ll be right back, boys, talk amongst yourselves.” She looks pointedly at Jacob. “When they’re done telling you about their piss poor life choices”—she glances back up at me and smiles—“come find me, we can talk about what I want to keep this quiet. For him and his loser sister.”
I grit my molars to stop myself from shooting a slew of cuss words at her as she ventures out of the house, and I watch her through the window as she takes a seat on an old lawn chair on the porch, pulling her phone out.
I turn back to Jacob and sit down across from him.
“Tell me she’s full of shit, you two.”
“She’s not,” Jacob says, running a hand through his hair.
I’ve never wanted to hit my best friend before now, but I have to physically restrain myself. Violette is a model student, to use her like this sends a rage through me that I can’t explain. Even in his less than sober state, I can see that he did exactly what Kyleigh accused him of.
“I’m failing trig, man.” He looks over at Max.
“We both are,” Max adds. “I just thought that if we could get our hands on the final, we could both pass, and…fuck, this is my meal ticket. My old man will fucking kick my ass into next week if I don’t get into Oregon State. He’s been bragging about it to all his buddies in the yard. My parents can’t afford shit—this is my only ride.”
I rub my temples. “Maybe you should be taking your classes more seriously then, instead of getting fucking high all the time.” Max looks just as scared as Jacob, but I don’t owe shit to him. “And what’s your excuse? Why didn’t you come to me?”
Jacob puts his head in his hands. “All you do is look at me like a fucking disappointed dad, and I fucking hate it!”
I fold my arms over my chest and eye him up, as if to say, if the shoe fits…
“Look, I know I have to stop partying. I figured you’d just give me shit for failing, and at the time I didn’t want to hear it. I thought I had it under control and I’m in the same boat as Max. If I fail, I’m fucked. They’re barely letting me in as it is with my GPA. Fail my final? I won’t graduate, King, I’ll lose my scholarship.”
I know enough to know that getting into WSU on a rugby scholarship means everything to Jacob.
“That doesn’t give you the right to bring Vi into this,” I tell him.
“I know.” A lone tear falls onto his cheek. “I would never want to hurt her. I wasn’t thinking…. She goes there at night to bring food every week, they’d never even second guess the scan in logs with her ID, and there are no cameras in that part of the school.”
“You never thought about what would happen if you got caught? It would look like she gave her pass to you, like she helped you, she would be taken off the national honors society, she could be expelled.” I add, pacing the room. “And it would fucking crush her.”
“We’re fucked regardless. Kyleigh was leaving cheer practice when she saw us. She took a video through the window of us using our phones as flashlights to rummage around, she thought you might be with us. I slipped up and told her how we got in. I thought it would be better than her thinking we broke in,” Max says, pulling a pack of smokes out of his back pocket.
“She just said to call you, you were the only one she wanted something from.”
I look out at Kyleigh through the dirty front window under the porch lights, she’s on the phone talking to one of her friends and she’s laughing . Of course, she would want me to be here. She’s been looking for payback for two years. One night. One fucking drunken night we hooked up and she’s never let me hear the end of it. No matter how many times I apologized, no matter how honest I was with her. She even started a rumor that she was pregnant, which Jacob helped me squash by getting close to Carmen and getting her to admit Kyleigh was lying. I already knew she was, but this is a small town, if that got back to my parents? I was only fucking sixteen.
“What’s she want from me?” I ask, turning back to face Jacob.
“Fuck if I know,” he says, reaching down to take a sip of an open beer on the table.
I shake my head. He just got caught in this heap of shit and he’s drinking. I have no idea what’s running through his mind these days.
“Chick’s fuckin nuts,” Max says, lighting his smoke. “Said you owed her a favor.”
Like fuck.
“Stay here and stop fucking drinking,” I tell Jacob.
I don’t know what Kyleigh wants, but I’m gonna find out right now. I’m done playing her game.