“This is bad news,” Vic agrees when the others find me and Hael in the cafeteria, eating pepperoni pizza and sitting across from one another. I want to leave campus altogether, but I think that’ll do more harm than good when it comes to Sara Young. Victor rubs at his chin and then shares a look with Oscar. “We might want to move forward with Pamela,” he says, and Oscar nods, but just barely.

“What does one thing have to do with the other?” I snap, feeling my skin get hot and tight with frustration. I look directly at Vic, but he just shakes his head slightly, warning me off the subject.

“Stacey is here,” he explains, and I pause to look over my shoulder.

Stacey Langford might be the only person at this school brave enough to walk over to our table at lunch and actually sit down. She takes the spot next to me and folds her arms on the tabletop. Her blond hair is twisted into a messy bun on the top of her head; her shoes are designer. Her shoes are also stolen. In fact, her entire outfit screams larceny.

I slip the straw of my chocolate milk between my lips, wondering if Stacey likes my lipstick. I have a huge collection, most of it filched just like her outfit. It looks better that way, when it’s stolen. There’s an edge to the color that you can’t whip up in a factory, something that defies chemistry. It’s the danger of getting caught; it’s the satisfaction of fucking with the establishment.

“You’ve been avoiding us for three fucking weeks,” Oscar purrs, but not in a nice way. No, he sounds like a cat who’s excited by the idea of killing a mouse. Stacey doesn’t miss the dangerous edge in his voice, giving him a look. Her blue eyes are endless, like a lake that’s iced over and seems to go on forever when you stand on the slick surface and stare down.

“Yeah, sorry about that,” she hazards with a weak smile. It quickly fades into a frown as she turns around in the seat and curls her fingers around the graffiti-stained plastic. Some of the tables in here are wood, and the splinters are so bad that only the lowest rung of Prescott High society will sit there. All the junkies and the addicts, they crowd around the three wooden tables, exchanging bullshit and narcotics. Well, that’s what they normally do; the campus cop looks the other way for a cut of every sale.

But today, we have ‘real’ cops onsite, cops like Sara Young.

I underestimated her for sure. I did to her what everyone always does to me. I saw a cute, little blond with a soft face and doe eyes, coffee cups with inspirational sayings, and a few carefully selected items from Pottery Barn in her kitchen, and I made a snap judgment.

“It’s your deal,” Vic says, more to himself, I think, than to me or Stacey. He hates that I spent all weekend with Hael; I know he does. But he’ll be the very last person on this earth to admit it. Stubborn fuck. I feel suddenly hot and strip my hoodie off, chucking it onto the tabletop in a black wad. “You’re the one that called us; you have the right to cancel so long as you haven’t accepted our price. What do you want us to do, Langford?”

She nods and exhales, looking over at her usual table. Her girls are gathered there the way they always are. One of them is essentially fucking a guy at the table while the others watch her grind, nice and slow, her tight jeans turning her ass into an apple bottom. The guy can’t keep his hands off of her.

I look back at Stacey, sucking on my milk as I sit there in leather pants and a half-shirt made from my boyfriend’s old t-shirt. Which boyfriend, you might wonder, but the fact that I don’t even know makes it feel edgier, so I don’t bother to think about where the item might’ve come from or who it smells like. I found it in the clean laundry, so it’s mine now.

“Look,” Stacey begins, running a hand covered in rings over her face. They’re not for show, obviously. I mean, this is the girl we paid a menial amount of money to in exchange for a riot. Her girl gang flipped cop cars, set them on fire, looted the entirety of Springfield’s Main Street. I’m surprised nobody got shot. “I’ll never be able to pay the price you’d ask in exchange for what I need.” Her brows knit together as Callum scoots just a bit closer to us, Pepsi clutched in his blue-tipped fingers. The fact that he’s crouching on the tabletop doesn’t seem to bother Stacey in the least; I see at least two other students shudder at the sight of him. “Anyway, I think it might be a bit out of your league.”

“Out of our league how?” Oscar demands, immediately latching onto the situation. The iPad is in his hand as I stare at him and try to reconcile the familiar image of him, distant and unattainable, with the man that fucked me from behind while all of his friends watched. We stare at each other, and I suck harder on the straw.

“I’ve always been straight with you guys,” Stacey continues, and her voice is heavy and dark, the voice of every woman, one that we grow into whether we like it or not, at that point where we realize that life is decidedly less pleasant for our gender. I frown hard, because I really don’t like the direction this conversation is headed. “So, I’m going to do you a favor and give you a heads-up.”

“Heads-up?” Victor asks, narrowing his eyes. “The fuck are you going on about? You called us weeks ago.”

I glance over at Aaron, but he’s not looking at Stacey. Actually, he’s staring right at me with eyes that are more gold than green. He’s worried. And when he gets worried, he looks at me like I’m the only thing that matters. Pretty sure that’s one of the reasons he tried to get rid of me, to push me out of Prescott and into a different life. Kara and Ashley should matter more to him, but … we both know that our love is so selfish and so deep that we may very well choose each other if faced with an impossible choice. I’m not saying that’s okay, or that it’s not fucked-up, but it’s a definite possibility.

I refuse to even think about it.

Stacey sighs, pulling her phone from her pocket. It’s a rose gold iPhone, also stolen I’m sure. I mean, come on, this is Prescott motherfuckin’ High.

“The reason I called you …” she begins as she checks her messages and then glances back up at Vic. She’s anxious. Like with Victor and his chain-smoking, she’s playing with her phone to escape. The nervous tic gives away more than anything she could possibly say with words. Stacey Langford is scared, and that’s not something I think I’ve ever seen before. “Is that my girls robbed the wrong fucking guy.” She gives a dry laugh, one that’s gritty and feels like sand as it slithers across my skin. “Jesus fucking Christ, what a way to put it.” She exhales and tries again. “You know my crew and I are in charge of all the whores in this city.” I just stare at her; I did not know that. I never thought to ask about it. My mouth hurts all of a sudden, and I bring the straw away from my lips. I’m a dichotomy, sitting here in leather and tattoos and stolen lipstick, but I’m holding a chocolate milk carton and sitting in a cafeteria like a child.

It occurs to me in that moment, that I am forever and irreparably grown. I can never go back. I haven’t had that option for nearly a decade, but it’s just now hit me. Childhood is gone and it’s never coming back. It was never even really there to begin with which makes me even sadder.

I set the drink aside.

“We’re well aware of the permissions we’ve given you,” Victor says, standing above Stacey with his hands on his hips, his huge form casting a shadow that no other man could ever dream to replicate. It has as much form and substance as he does. “Get to the point.”

“Well, our game is to scope johns out and find the ones with money,” she says, staring at the floor instead of at Victor. It’s the first time I’ve ever really been able to definitively say that she looks less capable than he does. Usually, when she and Vic stare at each other, it’s like one alpha looking into the eyes of another. Would Stacey have killed Kali, watched her choke and shudder and vomit into her own mouth? I bet she would have. She sewed the cunt’s lips shut, didn’t she? “We send our best escorts to their place and then while they’re cock-deep in paid pussy, we rob the fuck out of them.”

“An angry john sounds like child’s play to me,” Oscar deadpans, but Stacey ignores him. It’s like, they’re a snake and a lizard, but the lizard’s evolved right alongside the snake. While the serpent’s venom might be able to kill a hundred grown-ass men with a single drop, the lizard isn’t affected at all. That’s what they are, just two wild animals who’ve evolved to deal with one another’s bullshit.

“Well, that angry john just so happens to be a member of the Grand Murder Party,” Stacey says, and alarm bells go off inside my head. My skin pebbles and the hair on the back of my neck rises as I dig my fingernails into the thighs of my leather pants. “They took two of my girls, but they only sent one back.” She looks from Victor to me, her smile even darker than my own. I think Stacey’s been privy to worse things than I have. Likely, in some scenario, at some point, she was essentially Penelope.

I feel privileged and weak all of a sudden.

My nails dig hard enough into my legs to draw blood, even through the leather of my pants.

“You called us to find your other girl?” Vic asks, but not like he really believes that. He knows as well as I do that the girl is dead; he just wants Stacey to say it.

“Oh, we found her eventually,” Stacey says with another caustic bit of laughter, looking away toward the row of windows on our right. They’ve all got bars on them, like this is a prison instead of a school. “When I called Havoc, my girls had reported being followed. That was it. But by the time Snow Day was officially over and the sun was rising on that Saturday, it was too late. I was no longer in need of your services.” She closes her eyes for a long moment, so long that I end up exchanging a look with Vic. “Not sure you could’ve protected us anyway, not from them, not for any price I could’ve possibly paid.”

Stacey opens her eyes and stands up as Victor takes a step toward her, like he’s figured out something I haven’t yet picked up on.