His shoes have a wide, orange stripe around the soles.
“So you beat up on girls now,” I say, letting my rage simmer just under the surface. Everyone stops to look at me, but Heston doesn’t even have the sense to look worried. “Between that and picking on twelve-year-olds, it’s almost like you’re a complete chicken-shit.”
Xavier’s eyes ping between us. “Did I miss something?”
Emory pipes in, “You’re blowing the poster thing out of proportion. It’s just a joke.”
“What if it’d been Vandy up there?” I turn to him, blood boiling. “You think she’s safe just because you’re a Devil? You think these guys aren’t whispering behind your back all the time about how she’s pathetic and crippled, but—and I’m quoting Ansel verbatim here—perfectly bangable?”
Emory looks at Ansel, jaw clenching. “Is that a fact?”
Ansel gapes at me like a fish. “Bro, what the fuck?”
“Time out!” Xavier makes a ‘T’ with his arms. “What poster? What girl? What the hell is g
oing on?”
Heston steps in. “Our boy here got him some rotten-ass pussy, and now he thinks he’s better than us.”
My lip curls. “I’ve always been better than you, Heston. Gwen had nothing to do with it.” I shrug out of my jacket and turn to the others, ordering, “Here’s what you’re going to do. The two of you are going to go down to the field and take that fucking poster down before people start seeing it. The poster, the programs, all of it.”
Emory rolls his eyes, still eyeing Ansel with an edge of hostility. “Why the fuck do we have to do it?”
Ansel agrees, “It was Heston’s idea.”
“Because,” I explain, rolling up my sleeves, “in about three minutes, Heston’s not going to be moving very much.”
I don’t miss the gleam of anticipation in their eyes, and I’m not even surprised. Animals. They’re all fucking whacked-out, high on the whiff of their own testosterone, and will turn on one another at the drop of a hat. For all the talk of the Devils being about integrity to our families’ legacies, there’s no actual loyalty here.
“Jesus, another fight?” Xavier huffs. “Is violence really necessary here?”
Without breaking my gaze from Heston’s, I say, “He kicked Gwen in the face, and then vandalized the school by committing a hate crime against her little brother.”
There’s a moment of stillness, silence.
Xavier exhales. “Yeah. So that’s all systems go on the violence thing, I guess. Come on, guys, help me move this.”
Xavier, Ansel, and Emory start moving the couch, butting it against the wall. They move the coffee table next, clearing the middle of the floor.
Heston scoffs at me. “I’m not fighting you.”
“Oh, I know.” I bend down to tighten my shoelaces, just in case. “I’m neither a girl nor a twelve-year-old. You’re too much of a pussy to take someone your own size.” I straighten, shrugging. “Doesn’t exactly put a damper on my plans.”
His face is stony and blank, but I can see in his eyes that he’s starting to get nervous. “Lay a finger on me, and I’m not going to bother with the dean. I’ll just call the cops.”
“Seems smart, given the mountain of charges you’d be facing.” I glance at the others. “I mean, we have witnesses and a mountain of evidence. You’ve got jack shit.”
Emory narrows his eyes at Heston. “Are you really that much of a little bitch?”
Heston’s jaw clenches as he looks between us all, realizing that the only way to even remotely save face here is to take it like a man. “You’re pathetic,” he says to me, walking to the middle of the room. “You think beating my ass is going to prove anything? At the end of the day, you’re still the piece of shit who turned his back on his own fucking people. You don’t deserve to be leader of the Devils.”
“There are no Devils anymore.” I step up to him, letting the searing anger boil under my skin, imagining what his face is going to look like after all this is over, and how satisfying that’ll be.
Once I do that, it’ll be better.
It has to get better.
When my fist crashes against the hard edge of his jaw, I don’t feel a thing.