I pause before I hit call. I'm a smart kid. I know what will happen if I call emergency services. There are girls in my class being abused by their foster dads. I could just run away. I could leave and let the neighbors call it in when the smell finally hits them. It's tempting, but then I think about the girls kneeling in the gas station restroom, and I finally hit the call button.
My voice shakes.
I am only nine years old.
* * *
As the recording of my 911 call plays over the PA system, I have two choices. I can give in to the chaos of my trauma, or I can retreat into the dark and survive. It’s not really a choice.I can never lose myself again.I had climbed out of the pit of Mounts Bay tooth and nail. I would never be forced back into the desperate form I’d once been.
I let the calm wash over me instead.
I let everything drop away from me. Everything that is destroying the little scraps that remain of my soul slips away and, instead, I open the box in my mind, and I let my senses out to play. I’d honed these senses for two years under the watchful eye of the Jackal. I’d learned how to walk in and out of a building without a single eye touching me. I’d learned how to endure extreme, bone-shattering pain without screaming out. I’d learned how to kill a man. I’d left all this behind me when I’d arrived at Hannaford, but now I let it all out.
I’m surrounded. There are two exits, the door I just came through and one on the far side of the room. I see a familiar flash of blond hair, but I put that aside. I don’t need to be distracted by gorgeous, intelligent, ruthless boys. There’s wooden bench seats in neat rows, littered with students gaping at the scene playing out before them. Joey has chosen the spot with careful consideration to maximize the audience and my humiliation. I don’t have any allies in this room, I don’t have my knife, and there isn’t much I can do to stop the recording. The damage is done.
Joey is smirking at me, and he’s flanked by his usual group of guys. Every last one of them has approached me for sex, every single one has tried to win the bet. I look at each one of them long enough to commit their faces to my memory. I will never forget their willing participation in this. The girls who flock them are all laughing behind sly hands, fanned out. If they try to attack me, I know exactly what to do. I may not have my knife, but I don’t truly need it. As long as my busted leg holds together, I know I have a chance of getting out of the room. I doubt the girls have ever raised a fist in their lives, and the guys… well, I doubt they’ve ever had to fight for their lives. I don’t make the first move. I don’t need to. One of Joey's flunkies grabs my arm in an attempt to stop me from leaving.
Big mistake.
My body is in survival mode. Not private school, I'm-so-sad survival mode, but true life-or-death survival mode. The type of survival you need when your back is against the wall and a guy three times the size of you is coming at you for blood. The type you need to survive your leg being smashed to pieces and someone looming over you with a knife. The type of thing none of these rich kids could ever understand. My eyes lock with Harley. He's standing at the end of the chapel, and he's the only one not laughing. He's the only one who can read the cold, dead calm in my eyes. He doesn't call out to help the girl who's touched me. He just stands witness.
Good.
Let him watch.
I swing the textbook that's in my arms and listen to the satisfying crunch as Harlow Roqueford’s nose breaks, shatters completely under the sheer force of my swing.
Her blood goes flying, I'm spattered in it, and the room explodes with her screams. She drops to her knees and cradles her face with both of her hands. I get a fist full of her hair, and her hands scramble at me pathetically. I tighten my grip until she squeals, and her hands drop to her side. Her eyes meet mine and they’re wide, petrified. Devon lurches toward us, but he stops when I jerk her body closer to mine. The PA system is still playing the 911 call, it's on repeat, and I can hear the nine-year-old version of me screaming, but the fifteen-year-old me, standing here covered in blood with a fist full of some rich bitch’s hair—she is hollow. She is carved out until there is nothing but cold, dead calm.
She is the Wolf.
“Let her go. You can't take us all.” Devon tries for commanding, but his voice trembles. Pathetic. My eyes stay on Harley. He's watching me with such a grim satisfaction that I wonder what this group has been doing to him. I wonder what torture his cousin had been putting him through. I wonder what he did to the twins today. I answer Devon without bothering to glance at him.
“Are you sure?” My voice doesn't tremble. It does, however, push them all back. Everyone except Joey takes a step away from me. He holds his arms out and grins at me.
“Looks like you're out, Mounty. This school is a zero-tolerance establishment. The principal has no choice but to throw you out like the trash you are.” His words should inspire some sort of dread in me, but nothing can penetrate my frozen walls. I pull Harlow up to stand by her auburn hair, and her whimpers fail to incite any sort of remorse on my part. She’s crying. Fat tears are rolling down her face and mixing with the blood pouring from her nose. I think about pushing her, bending her and seeing how quickly she breaks. I doubt it would take much. Her eyes are pleading on mine. Truly pathetic. She would never survive the Jackal. She’s a child playing at a game she has no real place in.
“Run,” I whisper, and then I let go. Harlow flings herself into Devon's arms and he pulls her out of the chapel. The other students part, and some follow them out. I see that the crowd is dispersing, and then I hear why.
“Miss Anderson. My office. Now.”
The principal has arrived.
Joey looks at me, and the sick pleasure I see in his eyes melts the ice I’ve encased myself in a little. He thinks he’s untouchable. Maybe. Maybe he just hasn’t found the right opponent yet.
Chapter 12
Mr. Trevelen leaves me in his office to go and check on Harlow.
He’s not happy with me, but he also hasn’t expelled me yet. Joey didn’t just play the recording in the chapel. I have to face the fact that the entire school has now heard the call. They all know about the worst thing that has happened to me.
Or so they think.
I wait for two whole minutes before I reach out and take the phone on Trevelen’s desk. I punch in Matteo’s number and I wait for him to answer. My eyes dance around and focus in on the watercolor painting of lilies over the bookshelf. It’s pretty, but bland. There’s no real passion in the strokes, just like every kid at this school. Pretty, vapid, empty, useless.
“How did you get access to the principal’s landline?” he answers, and I wonder again if he has eyes in the school.
“They’re going to expel me. I broke a girl’s nose.” My voice is flat, emotionless. My eyes trace to the blood drying on my hands with detached interest.
