Fucking Devils and their phone tree. How sad is it that a secret band of eleven fuck-ups, criminals, and sad sacks are a better family to me than my own flesh and blood?
Very.
“Fine. I didn’t get the all clear yet, but I should before the season starts.”
He nods, seeming satisfied with this. And then he looks around. “Christ, dude. This place is looking rough.”
“What?” I turn to the room, scratching idly at my jaw. “Nah, it’s not rough. It’s just—”
“Messy,” he finishes. “Yet somehow also weirdly empty. How do you even do that?”
I flip him off. “It’s a bachelor pad. Don’t be jealous you’re still sharing a double with Ben.”
“You need a couch. And a rug. And possibly an industrial-strength vacuum cleaner. How the fuck does the resident let you keep it like this? I get chewed out for a messy closet.”
I flash him a grin. “Money, power, influence—”
“The fact that he’s super gay and you have that face.”
I shrug, not bothering to deny it. I’m cute as fuck, so sue me. But Carlton does have a point. There are empty pizza boxes on the floor—no table yet—and socks strewn everywhere. It doesn’t look like someone lives here, so much as someone’s been… squatting. I rub the back of my neck, looking over the room. “I guess I’m not really here much.”
I don’t need to say why.
Liesel used to say that my mom has the downs, but I have the ups.
It feels like I can’t stay still. Being down this long because of the concussion has been a first. I don’t have anything to ease this electric, turbulent thing flowing through my veins. The second I step through this threshold, I get the itch to leave, find something to do. I’m not the kind of person who sits in his room, fucking around. I go out, I fuck, I fight, I find something to get into. These days, that list keeps growing shorter and shorter.
Carlton must sense this, because he suddenly says, “So there’s this meet-up tonight. Under the Peach Street bridge. Midnight.”
I perk instantly at this, my frustration melting away. “Oh yeah? You taking the ‘Vette?” I’d helped Carlton find this sweet ’68 Corvette that needed a lot of work but is on its way to glory.
“I probably won’t race it, not until I upgrade the engine, but I’m going to show it.” He leans against the door. “You should bring the Shelby.”
Jasmine. My Ford Shelby. God, she’s the most beautiful thing in my life. I do like showing off my girl. “Yeah, okay. We’ll have to get around Buster.” The ancient campus security guard is notorious for being slow and tired but can still put a wrench in any good plan. “How about we just meet down there.”
“Good idea.” He holds up a fist for me to bump before wandering off down the hall.
Carlton’s the one who got me into the car meet-ups. They’re a mixture of street racing, burnouts, and car show. He found out about them through his side hustle—selling weed and pills—because it’s a good place to push product. He invited me down because I was idle. Bored. Angry. Fucking painfully restless. Unable to fight due to the last concussion, I had to pull back on my workouts, and other than a few hook-ups here and there, I’ve had fuck-all going on.
The meet-ups are pretty last minute, passed through word of mouth around the community. Carlton’s usually the first to know, since everyone wants him there with his merchandise. It’s not at all unlike fighting. The whole set up is illegal and a complete, sloppy rush. Once the crowd converges, the roads are blocked, and mayhem explodes. It’s a massive adrenaline rush, and it’s not the same. It’s not physical enough to even come close to the fighting. But sometimes, when my hands are on the wheel and the smell of rubber burns my lungs, I can almost feel this dark, angry thing burning itself out of me.
But the best part, by far, is that my brother has no fucking clue this world even exists. It’s the one thing in my life he hasn’t tainted yet.
If I have anything to do with it, he never will.
2
Sugar
“Are you sure you have everything packed?”
I lug the suitcase down the front steps and try to hide the impatient, antsy thing crawling under my skin. It keeps screaming ‘go, go, go’. It’s a miracle I don’t just fucking evaporate from the force of it. “I don’t need much,” I say to my mom, trying to paint my impatience as upbeat optimism. “We wear uniforms every day.”
The house behind us looks as cluttered and toppling as I always feel. I won’t miss it. ‘Safe as houses’ people always say. Those people have obviously never seen this shit shack. It’s squat and old. Drafty. All at once too loud and too quiet. Sometimes it feels like the faintest wind could knock it down, reduce it to rubble. I’ve spent the last eight years bracing for it, bones aching, muscles protesting, just wishing for one moment where I can finally relax.
The truth is that I want to bring as little as I can from this place. It’s a ridiculous fear, this worry that the hostility and constant, pressing unease might infect wherever it is I’m going, like an offensive smell. But I want to start Preston Prep fresh, with as little baggage—literal and figurative—as possible. I’d applied for the scholarship on a whim, thinking there was no chance I’d get it this late in the year. Even my own family thought trying was foolish. Why would a small-town girl like Sugar Voss want to go to a snobby, rich-kid school like Preston?
To get away from him.