She cares about reputation and appearance.

He most certainly does not.

The teacher sighs and picks up the broken glass, cleaning the mess up before she leaves and closes the door behind her.

With a groan, Bernadette and I separate, and the feel of her cunt sliding along my still-hard cock is nearly enough to give me an orgasm. But I can’t very well continue now, having seen what I just did, now can I?

I stare at Bernadette, wondering if my gaze is too intense, if it burns when she looks back at me. I squeeze my hands into fists to fight back the rush of hormones. I’m more than my body; I’m smarter than it and its urges.

“What the fuck did we just witness?” she murmurs as she grabs the boxers, yanking them back into place as I take my time fixing my own pants.

“A plot twist,” I reply smoothly, my mind spinning as I think about how we might put this into play. “One that could very well change the game completely.”

“Wait till Victor hears about this,” Bernadette starts, but then she looks back at me and I meet her gaze. Before I even realize what I’m doing, I have her pinned to the wall of the wardrobe and she’s tearing my pants apart.

My hips drive her against the wall as we slide together in a violent storm, fingers clawing, mouths hungry. I don’t even bother taking the boxers off, pushing them aside just to be closer to her. The only person in the world I actually want to touch.

It doesn’t last long, but it doesn’t have to.

Bernadette asked me a question tonight: do you want me to keep touching you?

Now she knows the truth: I do.

Desperately so.

Bernadette Blackbird

After a three-day weekend at a fancy ski lodge full of gazillionaires and sister-fuckers (I knew there was something off about that James Barrasso), Tuesday back at Prescott High is a serious drag. I’m still reeling over whatever the fuck is going on between James Barrasso and Trinity Jade. I’d immediately assumed they were screwing when I saw him at her stupid murder mystery party, but this … this more than I ever could’ve imagined.

They’re related.

Trinity is Maxwell Barrasso’s daughter.

I shiver and run my hands over my face. Incest, of course. As if this plot wasn’t twisted enough.

I’m so busy going over that scene in my mind that I completely miss what Mr. Darkwood is saying. He passes out a worksheet describing our next essay assignment and then purposely pauses beside my desk to glare down at me.

“You’re not going to give me another ridiculous paper about the word ebon, are you?” he asks, and I just stare back at him like he’s lost his fucking mind. We have weird chemistry, me and Mr. Darkwood. I don’t hate the guy but fucking hell, he knows how to piss me off.

“Actually, I was thinking of writing a targeted piece about how girls shame other girls for not waxing the hair that naturally grows between their legs. As if having your cunt look like it’s pre-pubescent makes it sexier. Then again, me shaming them for actually doing said waxing is misogyny in and of itself. It’s sick, isn’t it, how women belittle each other for something so trivial? Clearly a tool of the patriarchy.”

Mr. Darkwood looks at me for a long-ass moment and then sends me to the principal’s office with a referral slip, listing vulgarity and insolence as the reasons for my dismissal from class. Not that it matters, seeing as Vaughn is Havoc’s pet now, but whatever.

I decide to head for the bathroom to freshen up my lipstick when I see Stacey Langford heading for Vaughn’s office with a similar referral slip in her own hand. She doesn’t see me since she’s already halfway down the hall, and I open my mouth to call out to her.

That’s when it starts, the whole fucked-up bullshit that makes up a Tuesday at Prescott High.

A man walks in the front doors of the school like he owns the place and then glances over at Stacey.

“You Stacey Langford?” he asks, and she pauses, turning to look at him with a raised brow and an expression dripping with skepticism and disdain.

“Who the fuck wants to—” she starts, but she never does get to finish her sentence because the man pulls out a pistol and puts a bullet through her head so quickly that I barely have time to blink. Her body slumps to the floor as the shooter pulls a ski mask from his pocket and slips it on, heading straight for the door to Mr. Darkwood’s classroom. He moves with a single-minded purpose that tells me one especially important thing: he’s looking for me.

“What on earth is going on out here?” Mr. Darkwood snaps, opening the door and then paling when he sees what he’s faced with. He flicks the lock on the classroom door, steps into the hall, and slams it closed behind him before he lunges at the gunman.

The move surprises me, but it also buys me just enough time to duck into the girls’ first floor bathroom, the very same one where Billie and Kali once cornered me with some of their lackeys.

The sound of the gun going off a second time is muted but distinct. The man is clearly using a silencer and subsonic ammo to keep things quiet.

My breathing is so ragged that I can’t hear anything but the sound of it, echoing around the enclosed space of the bathroom. Being in here is not a good idea. If one of those GMP assholes comes in, I’m fucked. Where am I supposed to go, trapped in the fucking rank-ass Prescott High bathroom?

I take a few seconds to get ahold of myself. I didn’t expect this. Of all things, I just didn’t see this shit coming. I should have, though, shouldn’t I?

Calm yourself, Bernadette. This school, as shitty and underfunded and awful as it is, belongs to Havoc. It belongs to you. Act like the queen you so proudly proclaimed that you were.

Sliding my phone from my back pocket, I debate whether or not to call or text one of the boys. What if their phone isn’t on silent, and it makes a sound that gives them away to a second gunman? I decide that at the very least I have to text them.

I don’t even have to consider what I want to send; we have a safety word for a reason.

Mare’s nest.

I send that simple text to all of the boys, and then turn my phone on silent, sliding it into my back pocket. At least now they’ll know that something’s up. Likely, they’re already on their way to find me.

I slip out the door, forcing myself to breathe nice and slow. Quiet, that’s my aim here. I’m trying to be as quiet as the fucking mice that live in the wall behind the main building lockers.

There are bullet holes in those lockers now. It’s something that, despite the sordid history of the school and the rabble that attends it, has never been there before. I stand in the bathroom doorway, hidden in the small alcove, listening for the sound of footsteps. In a different part of the school, I hear more gunshots.

My heart lodges in my throat, even though I know that the boys can handle themselves even better than I can. See, that’s the thing with love: it’s irrational. It makes no sense. It’s the sort of thing that makes you stay up late, holding your palm over the yellow-orange flame of a candle, just to see if it’ll burn you. Of course it will. The candle will burn you, and so will love.

I’m scorched by it, plain and simple.

The alarm goes off, this awful blaring siren that reminds of the ones used in tornado zones. It’s accompanied by an automatic message that repeats one thing over and over again: active shooter on campus, active shooter on campus.

The coast is clear for now. All the classroom doors will be locked and barred from the inside, the shades drawn, students hidden under desks or in supply closets. The world feels like it’s gone silent.

Now or never, I think to myself, because I’m not getting a better chance than this, and I’m most definitely not getting stuck in the windowless bathroom with nowhere to go and no way to defend myself. Poor Stacey Langford.

I’m going to miss that bitch.

My brain is locked into survival mode at this point. Get myself out, get one of the stashed guns, come back and save the boys. That’s not just it, Bernadette, I realize as I keep my footsteps light, moving as fast as I can without letting my soles squeak against the linoleum. You’re just like Hael. You’ve always wanted to be the good guy.

There’s a part of me that I can’t crush that wants to save Ms. Keating and our gay blond math teacher Miss Addie and even stupid ass Billie because I feel sorry for her kid.

And that’s why I couldn’t kill Kali.

Because it hurt me to look into her eyes with my hands wrapped around her throat. Not because of her. Me. I didn’t want to see someone who used to be my best friend dying underneath me in the dark woods.

I start running when I hear a door open, and then I just dive to the floor on instinct. Bullets pepper the front entryway of the school as I roll to one side and end up pressed against the door to the security office, a bank of lockers on my left protecting me from the gunman temporarily.

This is Vic’s locker, I think, glancing over at it. The same fucking locker he was standing in front of when I called out Havoc. The feeling that gives me is surreal as I shove myself up to my feet, knowing that no help is coming from the dark and empty office.

For the first time today, I managed to sneak a small switchblade on campus, right past the metal detectors and the cops and the drug dogs. Asking Cal to teach me a few tricks might’ve just saved my life. Thank fuck, because that’s the only weapon I have. That, and the pencil I accidentally took with me when Mr. Darkwood banished me from the classroom.

His body isn’t too far away from where I’m crouched, a pool of crimson spreading out beneath him. There’s a possibility that he’s still alive since his fingers keep twitching. Stacey, on the other hand … well, I just won’t look at Stacey’s body.

In a few seconds, the gunman will come into view and that’ll be my one and only chance to make a stand. I slip the knife from my back pocket, hunker down, and ready myself to lunge at this motherfucker the first chance I get.

The man appears a second later. He’s anticipating me being here, but he doesn’t expect me to throw myself forward and stab the blade into his upper thigh. He stumbles backward in a sea of blooming red as I rise up and then throw myself into his stomach. We hit the floor together as I whip the pencil from my pocket, slamming it down as hard as I can into the man’s eye.