“Go on,” Dad says, nudging me forward.
I crouch and grab Mr. Darling’s shriveled old dick in one hand and the knife in the other. He screams so loud my ears ring, but I don’t hear him. Even through gloves, the squirmy sensation of his dick in my hand makes me retch. It’s so limp and impotent. One slice and the thing comes away in my hand. I stand and shove it at Dad.
“There’s your fucking souvenir,” I say.
If I could put him on the floor next to the asshole I cut, I’d do it. It makes no difference to me. He’s every bit as responsible.
“You did good, son,” Dad says.
Even though I know that revenge won’t make the nightmares go away, at least I know justice has been served. At least to one generation of Darlings.
Mr. Darling is still screaming, and blood is pooling around him. I crouch and cut through the ropes. He’ll have to drive himself to the hospital. He won’t die. I didn’t even make him suffer. I did it quick, with one cut.
Like I said, I have a conscience.
Dad claps me on the back again. “He’s the last one. It’s over.”
It’s not over.
But for him it is, and that’s all he thinks about. We’ve avenged ourselves to his enemies, the Darling parents who shunned him twenty years ago. But I know the truth. There are more Darlings in this town, hiding like cockroaches, not bearing the name.
His war is over. Mine is just beginning.
one
Harper Apple
I have to find a way out of this fucking town. It’s slowly wearing away my soul, grinding it down to dust that will hang in the air like the stink from the papermill on a sweltering summer afternoon. As Mr. Behr drones on, I scrunch down in my seat, resting my feet on the rack under the desk in front of me. If only I had a teacher interesting enough to make me learn something, I might have a chance. But the teachers at Faulkner High are as trapped and hopeless as the students. Maybe more so. They’ve had longer to realize they’re never getting out, that their whole lives will be spent in this sweaty armpit of a town.
I sigh and let my mind wander as I stare out the narrow window at the balding lawn, patches of dust showing through the dead spots. The good teachers go across town to the private school where the air conditioning always works, the building doesn’t get mistaken for a prison when out-of-towners drive by, and the powerful people’s kids supposedly have as much passion as money.
I wonder what that’s like. Power. Passion. Money.
“Harper, would you care to answer this one?”
Even delivered in Mr. Behr’s monotone, my own name cuts through my zoned-out haze.
“Can you repeat the question?” I ask as a couple kids snicker. There’s only one place I’m special, and it’s sure as fuck not in the halls of Faulkner High. Here, I’m bottom of the pack all the way. Fine by me. It’s easy to avoid attention in a big school with too many drama queens.
“Why don’t we let Chase get this one,” Mr. Behr says, turning away.
I shrug and slouch down in my seat again.
“Oh, and please see me after class, Miss Apple.”
Damn it. Premature relaxation.
“Whatever,” I mutter, turning to stare out the window again.
Two years to go. I feel like I’ve already done my time, though, including summer school after Mom didn’t bother making me go to school most of freshman year. At the time, I thought I had it made. I mean, who the fuck wants to go to school? And it’s not like anyone expected me to think ahead, to consider the consequences.
Now I know what a dumbass I was to skip basically an entire year. I’m in a bunch of classes with sophomores, and I fell out with the friends I had before that. Not that they were real friends. Just more people with the same hobbies as anyone in a small, pointless town. Fucking, fighting, and going fast in their shitty cars.
At least having a deadbeat mom and no dad doesn’t make me special at Faulkner. Lots of kids have more fucked up lives than I do. There are girls who get Slut Club invitations dropped on their desks and realize their reputations are toast, and boys who get busted up on the football field and whose glory days will always be high school even when they’re bitter, middle-aged alcoholics. Foster kids and those who live with various uncles and grandmas because their parents are in jail. Kids who smell like cat piss and chemicals because they live in meth labs. Kids who get shot or have to shoot other people for their gangs.
Fuck all that. I need a ticket out.
I just haven’t figured out how to get one.