“You’re staying in?” I ask, glancing at the large screen TV mounted on the wall, the reporter showing New Year’s festivities in some other country where it’s already past midnight.
Dad wraps a strong around me. “Of course we’re staying in, Sweetheart,” he says. “A quiet night in will be a nice change from the parties in New York. That was always your mother’s thing.”
I suddenly feel bad for wanting to go with my brothers and leaving him here alone.
“Actually, Dad, Crystal’s coming with us,” King says. “Don’t worry, she’ll stay in the car the whole time.”
Dad looks from me to my brothers, surprise evident in his expression. No one thinks I can do whatever they’re doing. “You really want to go out?” he asks.
Nowhe’s concerned about what I want. I nod, looking up at him, that stupid, childish part of me still aching for him to approve of my decision, to tell me it’s right.
“We might need a getaway driver,” Duke says with a grin.
The irony is lost on Dad. He hesitates, then gives a nod and drops his arm from around me. “I thought you were more of a homebody like me, but I guess I can’t keep my little girl from growing up forever.”
King checks his phone. “It’s time to go, Crys. You coming?”
I look up at Dad. “Do you want me to stay here with you?”
“No, go on and have a good time,” he says. “I’ve got some proposals to look over, anyway.”
“Okay,” I say, turning away from Dad, a hollow feeling inside my chest. It feels incomplete, as if there’s something else I’m supposed to say to him. But I know that if I stayed home with him, he’d spend most of the evening working, anyway. Only at midnight, he’d stop for five minutes to watch the ball drop.
“We’ll be back after midnight,” King says to him.
“Don’t come home until you’ve got the job done,” Dad says, clasping his shoulder.
A little shiver of trepidation goes through me when King agrees, but I don’t have time to ask. I’m swept up in the clomping feet of my brothers, in the twins’ excitement that buzzes through the air around us like an electric current.
We climb into the Range Rover and take off into the stormy night without a word. I try to figure out the reasoning behind the car and our positions. If we were going for stealth, we would have taken Baron’s Tesla. King’s Evija is too small for us to fit comfortably, not to mention I can make out boxes of different sizes all laid out behind the seat. Duke’s Hummer is the biggest, but maybe we needed quicker pickup. And then there’s the fact that King is in the passenger seat. King never sits in the passenger seat. If all of us are in a car together, he drives. He’s the driver, the leader, the king.
A few minutes later, we pull into a circular gravel drive, one I remember from the day I saw Mabel here in her little Prius and thought she was the help. The day we came looking for Royal. I lean forward, peering at the darkened house through the pouring rain. My heart begins to hammer. “What are we doing?”
“Watch and learn, baby sis,” Baron says, wrapping an arm around me and squeezing. Then he hops out with the others. Since there’s no one here, I figure it’s safe enough to get out and see what’s going on. None of my brothers argue when I step to the back of the car, where Duke has lifted the trunk of the car. Inside, I can see a massive stock of brightly colored boxes with cartoon pictures of explosions on them, along with several black tubes.
“We didn’t even have to get these illegally,” Duke says, peeling plastic off a large, rectangular box. “You can buy fireworks right off the side of the road in this state. Happy New Year, bitches!”
He and Baron run toward the house in the rain. Royal selects a different one, and King takes a fourth. I hear shattering glass, and a whoop, and Duke comes running back toward the car, his eyes full of wild, manic glee. A second later, light flares behind one of the big picture windows. Cracks and bangs echo through the night as the fireworks explode inside the house. More shattering glass, more streams of fiery light, more noise. Baron and Duke grab me and stuff me back in the car, the other two dive into the front seat, and the tires spit gravel as we skid around the drive and shoot back down it.
So, that’s what they’re doing. Up to some vandalism and mischief, the kind they did in New York. At least, I assume it’s the kind of thing they did. But then I remember Devlin saying this was where his parents grew up. I remember Dixie saying the party was at another one of Grampa Darling’s houses—but no adults would be there.
“Was anyone in that house?” I ask when the chorus of whoops, panting breaths, and laughter have subsided.
“I fucking hope so,” Royal says. “I hope it burns to the ground with him inside it. He deserves worse.”
Suddenly, it doesn’t feel like such a harmless prank. Suddenly, I wish I hadn’t come. Because the night is just getting started, and the trunk is full of fireworks.
I may not like the Darling patriarch, may even wish he was gone, but not like that. I wouldn’t cry over the asshole dying of a heart attack, but there’s nothing honorable about burning an old man in his sleep.
“What now?” I ask, my hands shaking as I pin them between my knees.
“Now we hit every other Darling house in Faulkner,” Royal says, his voice low and laced with hatred.
“You’re going to kill someone,” I protest.
“Nah, see, that’s why we make the loud noises,” Baron explains. “So they can get their asses out while the houses go up in flames. See, the funny thing about the fire department in a small town is that they only have a couple trucks. Which means they can’t save them all.”
“Those assholes laughed in our faces when we told them we were going to take over the school, the town, even their secret society. Guess they won’t be laughing tomorrow.”