Chapter 10
Vale
I’m over it.
This day.
This week.
This year.
High school.
Seth…
All of it.
The day passes as mundanely as any other day, with one bright exception:
It’s Friday. Game day.
Despite my shitty mood, I don’t make a spectacle of it. I flit from class to class, giving my teachers and peers just enough attention to keep up with the status quo. Obediently playing my part in this little production called high school.
The one I created to fit my needs and nurtured over the years. The one that will ensure I achieve the future I’ve laid out for myself.
It used to be easy, keeping up pretenses. Easy as breathing. Seamless as sleeping. Requiring no more energy or forethought than it would to flip a switch from On to Off and back again.
Now, not so much.
I’m…bored. Of the act. Of pretending I give a shit.
And I’m impatient. Antsy. A hair trigger away from dismantling everything for no other reason than to create a challenge for myself to overcome.
I don’t have to wonder as to why that is, or rather who is responsible…
Just the knowledge—the deep-seated awareness that Aston St. James is somewhere in this building—is enough to set my teeth on edge.
Suddenly I’m eight years old again, helpless to resist his gravitational pull, with no logical explanation as to why, or any idea how to break free of it, once and for all.
What is it about Aston?
Why him, when no one or nothing else?
Beyond frustrated, I blurt loudly, “Can I have the bathroom pass?”
The room quiets at my interruption, Mrs. Cheshire’s voice cutting off mid-sentence.
I can’t even find it in me to care enough to toss an apology or smile her way.
This…itch in my brain is too strong, too insistent.
A bone-deep restlessness that comes with a boredom so pervasive it’s sometimes a wonder I haven’t offed myself.
Mrs. Cheshire’s smile falters a fraction, and something sizzles in my chest at the brief show of irritation flickering behind her glasses.
But she’s quick to shake it off.
Too quick.
I clamp down on my molars, willing back the irrational anger her restraint churns up. Fuck if I’m not jonesing for a fight—for a reason to drop the act, just once.
Let me show them who I really am.
“Sure, Vale,” she says pleasantly, nodding toward the little table off to the side of her desk. I feel several pairs of eyes tracking me across the room when I get up, but it’s nothing new. Again, it’s just…noise.
While I know I can fade into the background, I’ll be the first to admit I don’t want to.
Not because I have something to prove, but because to pretend I’m not better than these bottom-feeder, hormonal-driven nobodies, who think fulfilling some checklist of accomplishments laid for them by their parents—accomplishments that in the grand scheme of things amount to nothing—will somehow make their lives meaningful…
Well, it’s not only a disservice to myself, but a waste of fucking energy. Energy that could be better spent making my life meaningful, instead of dwelling on how theirs isn’t.
I quickly sign out and grab the thin red rectangle of wood that says PASS in big, bold, black letters across the front. I loop the frayed rope attached to it around my wrist and head out into the hall.
Flyers for the carnival and Tunnel of Horror—a haunted attraction held in the old coal mines that the junior class puts together every year for Halloween to raise funds for their senior trip—are already posted along the walls, in the gaps between lockers, and hanging over the doorways peppered down the hall.
It’s another one of those traditions the school goes gaga for every year. Hell, the whole town.
I pass the first set of bathrooms, shooting for the stairwell instead, jogging up the two flights it takes to get to the top floor.
It’s unspoken knowledge that the bathroom in the west wing on the third floor is where you go for a smoke, a line, a fuck, or whatever it is you want to do that requires a bit of privacy.
It’s the creakiest of creaky rooms in the entire monstrosity that is Grady Preparatory Academy, so anything short of screaming bloody murder wouldn’t be heard beyond the thick, heavy door.
Most students avoid it, claiming it’s haunted. That some poor schmuck hanged himself from the exposed pipes back in the ’70s, and after one such pipe burst last year…well, idiots took that as a sign to stay away.
In reality, it’s just old as fuck. Old and outdated, with a sewer system that’s probably older than Mr. Laurent, my English Lit teacher who’s gotta be pushing one-hundred.
It’s the only bathroom in the entire school that was never upgraded.
And after what happened last year, no attempt has been made to fix it up
As always, I ignore the OUT OF ORDER sign taped over the wooden door, pushing my way inside. Only to freeze mid-step, when my gaze lands on the shadowy figure lounged against the windows across the room.
“Well, well, well,” a disembodied voice says smoothly, echoing in the cavernous space.
“If it isn’t Grady Prep’s very own Cinderella.
I was just thinking about you. ’bout time you showed your face.
I’ve gotta admit, your secret spot is a little more drab than I anticipated for someone of your status.
Revisiting your roots in the slums, are we? ”
Fuck.
Of all people to run into in here…
Aston’s floppy light brown hair looks darker in the dim lighting, all the gold the light would normally highlight washed out by the shadows. It’s a dreary fall day, and the high floor-to-ceiling windows he sits against are made of an opaque, bumpy glass that filters in hardly any light.
What he just said finally registers. My nose flares, defensiveness rocketing up my spine and holding me rigid. “Are you fucking following me?”
Sure, I’ve caught him staring at lunch—the only time of day I couldn’t completely avoid him.
And then there was that day in the library. Hell, there’s been a few times I’ve caught him slinking behind the stacks.
But for him to know this is my secret spot, as he so idiotically put it, means he’s been doing far more than casually snooping around. I don’t come up here every day, but enough that he figured out this is where best to trap me.
“You make it sound so…creepy. I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”
To that, I say nothing.
Aston leans forward, away from the light, so that I can just make out the tilt of his growing smile.
And the red stain to his lips. Only this time, it’s not from one of the lollipops he’s always sucking on, but from the chocolate-covered strawberry he currently has impaled on the point of his butterfly knife.
Not taking his eyes off me, he brings the fruit to his mouth, and bites just the tip, his long fingers clasped loosely, carelessly around the handle of the knife.
Clearing my throat, I look away.
“Want one?”
A quick, fleeting glance shows a tin of mostly half-eaten chocolate-covered strawberries extended toward me; no doubt stolen.
“Where’d you get those?” I hear myself ask before I can stop myself. Taking a step forward, I let the door fall shut behind me.
He grins victoriously, and my neck prickles, spreading a chill across my skin. I can’t tell if it’s just irritation, or something…else.
“That’s neither here nor there,” he says with a little flick of his free hand. With that same hand, he pushes back his hair from his brow. It’s a useless endeavor if there ever was one. It just flops right back over.
“So, where’s your Prince Charming?” He taps his chin. His sage eyes sparkle with a mix of excitement and something sharper. Brittle, almost. “Come to think of it, I think this is the first time I’ve seen you without that horrid growth attached to your hip.”
“Don’t talk that way about him,” I find myself saying, voice tight with barely restrained ire.
His lips are still tipped up in that seemingly ever-present smirk of his. “Don’t talk that way about him,” he mocks lowly in a poor attempt to imitate my voice.
I grit my teeth. “You’re fucking deranged.”
His eyes flare, and I brace myself. Now that we’re alone for the first time since we were kids, if ever there was a time for him to drop the act, it would be now. Especially after what went down the other day in the hallway.
Yet, color me fucking surprised—not—when instead he tips his head back and laughs.
The sound has a chill racing down my spine and I fucking hate it.
Hate the effect he so clearly still has on me despite it having been years.
Despite spending the better part of the last three weeks refortifying my resolve to steer clear of him, strengthening the walls keeping the memories out. Something I can normally do with ease.
“That’s it?” he says loudly. “That’s all you’ve got?” His chuckles are slow to fade, and he’s still grinning when he drops his chin to his chest, meeting my gaze through the fringe of his lashes. “Come now, Valey,” he says much quieter. “No need to be shy. You don’t have to hold back with me.”
My jaw ticks. “Fuck this, I’m out.”
Turning on my heel, I grip the pass tightly in my hand, welcoming the slight burn from the wood digging into my skin. I’m just about to throw open the door and leave, when his voice rings out.
“WaitnoI’msorry,” he says in a rush, and I hear a shuffle followed by a dull thud. I turn my head just enough to peek a look over my shoulder.
He’s standing now, arms hanging at his sides, fingers twitching by his thighs. The knife is still in his grip, and there’s a stain on the side of his light khakis from where his fingers smeared chocolate and red juices. He doesn’t seem to notice. That or he simply doesn’t care.
I find my gaze drifting down to his bright-ass socks. Orange again, but this time with pink stripes instead of hearts.
“Don’t go,” he says in a soft, high-pitched voice, almost like that of a child’s.