“Everything,” Ms. Keating repeats, pointedly ignoring my move to corner her. With a sigh, I come around the chair and sink into it. “You don’t have to tell me, but I thought you might like a safe place to talk.”

I lean forward in the chair and exhale.

“Have you ever wanted everything to stay the same, but also have it all change, too?” I ask her and she nods, slowly, like she’s actually thought about it. “That’s where I’m at right now.”

Ms. Keating looks at me sadly.

“I have to, in good faith, let you know that I’ll no longer be responsible for anything regarding you or your friends. Anything your teachers—or your parent, even though you’re emancipated—has to say will be reported directly to the police.”

After a moment, I just stand up and leave the room. Instead of going back to class, I go sit outside on the top of the yellow Firebird, wishing it were the Camaro and wondering when the fuck I’ll get to drive the Eldorado.

I like it so much that it hurts

Like the sunlight that falls through the window, white as cream against the tangled sheets.

I like it so much that it makes me hate you

Like the pain of your hand in my hair, but the pleasure of your body between my thighs.

I like you so much that it hurts

Like the feeling of losing myself, just so I can find you.

The poem is for Mr. Darkwood’s class, and it’s late because I just can’t be fucked with poetry lately. But I like it. I like writing it and discovering things; the words only have to mean something to me. That’s what matters.

I drop the poem off before the end of class and meet Vic outside, climbing on his bike, and curling my arms tightly around him.

“I wrote about you today,” I say. He says nothing, but he fucking heard me. He’ll probably steal my poem out of the trash when I get my grade back—it’ll likely be a C-minus or a D-plus—and read it anyway. He’ll probably tuck it in his back pocket, act like he was going for a cigarette, and keep it to reread later.

Fucking asshole.

When Heather and I lived with Pamela and the Thing, the morning consisted of oh shit, let’s get the fuck out of here! while possibly stealing a stale granola bar from the cabinet, one that I’d pinched from the delivery truck outside the cafeteria. Didn’t hurt that every time I walked by, I might see Hael Harbin smoking over by the dumpsters.

Mornings at Aaron’s house depend on which guy is sleeping beside me. Or comes to find me. Or corners me against the wall in the hallway and shoves my pajama pants down my hips, grinds me into the wall to the left of the staircase. Covers my mouth with his hand. Moans huskily against my ear.

Callum is fucking me so hard that I can’t breathe, that I don’t dare make a sound. The girls are upstairs, and I don’t need them wandering out of their room to see this. When he comes, I relax a bit, holding tight to him so he won’t move for a second.

The sound of the door opening upstairs gets us both moving and quick. He sets me down and fixes his shorts while I pull up my pajama pants and underwear.

“Can I use the bathroom?” Heather calls out, and I close my eyes as Cal chuckles.

“No! It’s my turn next,” I yell back, wondering how the fuck I lived in Pam and Neil’s house for so long. The tension was so tight, you felt you might slip off the tightrope of it and break your goddamn neck at any second. It’s much better here. Same amount of tension, but a different kind. It isn’t all focused on my throat like a garrote. It’s more … diffused. “What are we doing today?” I whisper as Heather whines and stomps back down the hall toward the room she’s been sharing with Aaron’s sister, Kara, and their cousin Ashley.

“It’s Friday, so … something,” Cal says, pausing as Aaron shuffles out of his room toward the top of the stairs. He’s here every night, obviously, but the other boys come and go, depending on their living situations at home. Vic is here as much as he’s legally allowed to be. Maybe a tad more than he should. He’s cutting it too close.

I feel irrationally irritated all of a sudden and scrub my hands down my face.

Vic met with his mother on Monday—in a very public place—and told her that he agreed. She gave him paperwork. We gave it back. Now we’re waiting. I feel sick, and I hate every second of this. We go to school every day like things are normal. But they’re not. Nobody understands that better than me, I think.

“Don’t let it get to you,” Cal warns me, coming up behind me and running his hands up my sides. It was like, as soon as I’d given him permission, he was here by my side, like he’d always been there. Nothing changed except for the fact that I knew he was there. Oscar was pretty much the opposite. “You know how Vic feels.” Callum chuckles. “He wants you all to himself. Last thing he’d do is give you up.”

“I know that,” I tell him, and that’s not a lie. I just … want more.

“Is Cal the only one here?” Aaron asks, staring at me blearily and wearing a pair of pj pants with World of Warcraft characters on them. Makes him seem thirteen instead of seventeen and a half. Like, he’s still an innocent boy and not a man who shot a girl to death for me a few weeks ago.

“Nobody else is here yet,” I tell him as he scoots back and heads into the kitchen. He still has the medical boot on his leg and the cast on his arm, but overall, he looks much better, like he’s finally recovering.

Physically, that is. His emotional state is a bit … all over the place. I still miss him every day like he’s gone, like I’ve got this permanent bit of PTSD to remind me how deep I am into this fucking shit.

“Need to know if I should get the babysitter tonight,” Aaron murmurs sleepily, pausing as the sliding glass door opens and Vic steps in, smelling like smoke. So … he came in the back gate to smoke a cigarette before coming inside.

I stare at him and he stares right back.

“Get the babysitter,” he commands before turning a look on Cal that brings this dark tension to life in the air between them. I would not like to see the two of them fight. It’d be like a hyena versus a crocodile. Fuck if I know which one would win. They’re terrible and awful and, looking at them like this, I can’t goddamn believe my luck.

They’re my lovers now, not my enemies. Not like they made me believe in sophomore year. At least now I know I had every reason and every right to be as afraid as I was. If I’d been anyone else, they probably would’ve just killed me and buried me on Tom’s property.

Anyway, Vic is most definitely looking at Cal like he knows we fucked. He turns back to me.

“What are we doing?” I ask, and Vic sighs, moving closer and handing me an invitation written on some fancy ass paper, the kind they make for fun at the rich elementary school I didn’t go to, the kind they send home with the kids that smells like vanilla and roses, all tied into a fancy journal as a Mother’s Day present. “What the fuck is this?”

“It’s an invitation to a murder mystery party,” Vic says, snorting and swiping his hand over the lower half of his face. “Fucking hell,” he murmurs as I scrunch up my brow and look up at him.

“The fuck is that?” I ask as Aaron makes a sound of annoyance from the direction of the fridge.

“Have you ever seen the fifties movie, The House on Haunted Hill?” he asks, and I shake my head.

“I’ve seen the shitty nineties remake,” I offer, but Aaron just smiles at me.

“It’s like, a live play where everyone at the party is a character. You get a character sheet, and you try to solve the mystery. That is, who at the party is a murderer.” Goose bumps ripple across my skin as I blink stupidly in Aaron’s direction, looking back down at the incredibly cheesy but probably expensive paper invitation. “I mean, the murderer,” Aaron corrects. “In the group. It’s a rich, white people thing.”

“This is fucking dumb,” I tell Vic, letting Callum have the invitation when he grabs for it. “You know that, right? This is just asking for trouble, Victor.”

“How so?” he asks, tucking his inked hands into his pants pockets. “We were invited by Trinity. Guess who else is going to be there?”

“This sounds like fun,” Cal agrees, his smile made of pretty nightmares. When he looks up, it’s obvious he’s on Vic’s side.

“Only because you’re a psychopath,” I tell him, and he laughs. “This isn’t fun. This is trouble not-so-subtly disguised as a party.”

“James Barrasso will be there,” Vic says with a nod as Aaron steps up to the peninsula and leans against it, shirtless and too pretty for the harsh morning light. “I don’t need to tell you what a valuable opportunity this is.”

“You’re going to this thinking it’s the perfect cover to start shit. That’s what everybody else is thinking, too. I don’t like this. What does Oscar think?” I cross my arms over my chest in an attempt to hide the hardened points of my nipples from showing through my borrowed t-shirt. Doesn’t work. All it does is draw more attention from my boys.

“What does Oscar think about what?” the man in question asks, coming in the front door with Hael on his heels. I show him the invitation right away, and he plucks it from my fingers like they’re poisoned, like he’d rather not touch me. He sighs and hands it back as soon as he sees what it is. “We’re going.”

“This is fucking stupid,” I say, letting Hael take the invitation next. He looks at it for a moment and then cocks an eyebrow.

“A murder mystery party, huh?” he asks, shaking his head like he’s as perplexed as I am. “Fuck me, rich people are weird.”

“And you’re an idiot,” I tell Vic, pointing at him first and then Oscar next. “Both of you.”

But they’re not.

And if they want to go to this party, I have to go, too. Not just because I know how fucking smart and crafty they both are, but because we’re Havoc. Even if it were a mistake, we’d be making it together.