Jack leans in and this time, it’s a kiss, and it doesn’t sear my soul or make me woozy like the books say but I can taste him and smell him and he’s kissing me, me of all girls, and when he pulls away he’s smiling the sort of kind smile I only ever saw him give Sophia, except now it’s on me, all golden and sweet and genuine as he rests his forehead on mine, and that smile is better than fireworks.
“Moron. There would be no pretending,” He says. “Because I love you, too.”
I freeze, trembling, not daring to believe it.
“D-Do…do you mean that?” I whisper. “Do you really really mean that? Because…because I don’t want to get my hopes up again – I just – I couldn’t take it if they were smashed again, you know? It hurt.”
I laugh, on the verge of tears, and Jack cups my face in his hands, ice eyes locked on mine, clear and bright.
“I love you,” he says.
BRUTAL PRECIOUS
A novel by Sara Wolf
Book 3 of the Lovely Vicious Series
For Nemesis. I’m sorry. I wrote a bad book about us. (Not sorry.)
-1-
3 Years
43 Weeks
2 Days
When I was nine, Dad packed up and left. It was clear and sunny. I was wearing overalls and the air smelled like blackberries and I watched him until he got in the cab and it sped away. I tried to run after him, a little, but my legs were too small.
He taught me something really important that day.
When things get hard, people leave. Not that I blame them. Hard things are real tough to deal with, and sap your energy and time and attention. So people leave, because it’s easier, and they can use that time and energy elsewhere, on something that isn’t so difficult. Dad left because Mom was nagging too much because she was stressed about raising me, and they were constantly short money because they were raising me. It was stressful for him, and her. But that was because of me. Mostly it was my fault. They’d be happy if they didn’t have me. I’ve never worked up the guts to say sorry to either of them.
But now, I’m going off to college. I’m older. I don’t need them quite as much, anymore. I’m different from the little girl who tried to run after the cab.
The sun tries to choke my eyeballs. Waking up at two every day means I’m a rockstar. Or a zombie. Possibly both. Rockstars do cocaine and cocaine is basically zombie dust, right? Right. I know so much about drugs. I’m going to college and I know so much about drugs. I’ll be fine.
“Isis?” There’s a knock on my door, and Dad’s voice filters in. “Why are you mumbling about drugs? Are you doing pot, young lady?”
I jump out of bed and throw on jean shorts, and smooth out my sleep-crumpled t-shirt. I fling the door open. Dad’s disproving face stares down at me, hair dark and streaked with silver age, his eyes the same warm brown as mine.
“Oh yeah, I’ve drunk three whole marijuanas,” I announce. “Four-twenty. Blaze it. Something something Bob Marley.”
Dad’s face remains unamused. I hug him and prance downstairs, past dozens of family portraits. The walls are clean and white, and the carpets plush. The banisters are shining cheery wood, and the flight of stairs leading down is massive, like something out of Cinderella.
“There you are, Isis! Good morning.”
“And there’s the wicked stepmother,” I mumble. She is not actually wicked. On the scale of Angelic to Wicked, she is definitely a four, which is like, Absently Selfish or something. The same level as substitute teachers and guys who blast their car bass way too loud when you’re trying to sleep. I just call her wicked because it makes me feel good. Wicked good.
Kelly looks up from the entrance hall, blonde and blue-eyed, with wrists like a thornbush and enough makeup to choke a drag queen. I’ve never seen her undone and messy, not even at night and not even on Sundays. She’s nearly seven months pregnant, but even then she looks like she walked out of a Sears catalog. I have a sneaking suspicion she’s an android, but I haven’t found her battery charger yet.
“There’s croissants for breakfast, and I made your favorite – whipped cream pancakes! That is your favorite, right? Your father said it was.”
“Yup. I loved those. When I was, uh, four.” I grin until it becomes awkward. Dad doesn’t know anything about who I am now. “Look, thanks a bunch for going through all that Martha Stewartian effort! But I’ve got other breakfast plans.”
“No, you don’t.” She says lightly.
“Uh, yes, I do. With friends.”
“Which friends? You don’t have friends here in Georgia.”
“I’ll have you know I have friends all over the space-time continuum. And some of them have telepathy. And like, fireball-making powers. Do you like fireballs? I hope so. Because they don’t especially like people calling me friendless.”
Kelly’s perfect porcelain face hardens. It’s familiar, since I’ve been here two weeks and she makes that face every single freaking time something comes out of my mouth. She hates what I say, and who I am. I can tell. I don’t fit into her perfect mold of what a teenage girl should be. She wants to tell me I’m ridiculous, or over the top, but she wants me to like her, first and foremost. I brush past her and grab my purse and keys from the table in the hall.
“How about some shopping?” Kelly offers when I’m halfway out the door. “You and I could go wherever you’d like! There’s a great place downtown –”
“How about some no?” I say. “With a side of no thanks?”
“That’s too bad,” Kelly forces a smile. “I’d really like to get to know you.”
“You really wanna know me? You wanna know, what, that I shit my pants in third grade? That I like bad pop music and merry-go-rounds and the color orange?”
“That’s a great place to start!” She says.
“You want me to like you. You don’t care about who I am, you just want me to like you. But it doesn’t work like that. It doesn’t happen overnight.”
“What’s going on down here?” Dad asks, coming in to view over the stairs. “And why are you using that tone of voice with Kelly, Isis?”
“What tone?” I half-laugh, half-scoff.
“There it is again. Don’t use that tone with me, I’m your father.”
A hot knot works its way into my throat.
“Sorry. It’s kind of hard to remember that when you haven’t been around for eight years.”
I slam the door behind me. Gravel crunches under my furious steps. Kelly unwisely gave me free use of her ‘old’ black BMW that’s practically pristine. She has five of them, all in different colors and with different drop tops and pimped out tires. I get in and slam the door, starting it and pulling away from the landscaped lawn and palm trees in stately rows. Even the kid’s playhouse out back is made of marble, with its own tiny working fountain.
This is the lap of luxury and I’m sitting in it like a whiny, farty kid on a mall Santa.
It takes the entire drive to the beach to calm my raging nerves. I agreed to come for the summer because Dad sounded like he genuinely missed me and wanted to see me off before college. Somewhere in the vast and fabulous labyrinth that is my head, a game-show buzzer goes off. Bzzzt. Wrong. Dad just wanted me here because he feels guilty, and is trying to make up for a huge amount of lost time. But he can’t. Unlike Mom, he never came back for me. Kelly hasn’t changed – I have. I can’t stand her anymore. I’m a different person, now. Two years ago when I last visited, I was quiet. I was sad. I didn’t fight or argue. I was in the middle of dealing with Nameless. The last time I came here, it was right before -
I shake my head.
The last time I came here, I was pure. And simple. And clean.
Dad still thinks I’m that little girl of two summers ago, and so he tre
ats me like her. Like I should respect him. Like I should care about what he says.
But I don’t.
Because he left me. Twice.
Can’t ever say that to his face, though. That’d mess up what little family dynamics I have left. Dropping the news I wasn’t going to Stanford didn’t help improve his view of me, either. He’d already gotten a stupid ‘MY KID GOES TO STANFORD’ t-shirt and everything. Who gets those, anyway? Tourists, and people with no fashion sense. Dad wouldn’t know fashion if it bit him in the history professor ass, and he was definitely a tourist - staying in my life for only a few weeks at a time, complaining whenever anything isn’t picture perfect like it was in the Macy’s magazines.
I heave a sigh and park. Goldfield Beach is tiny, dune grasses swaying between gentle swells of gray sand. The water is choppy and dark today, like a really pissed off witch making a Brew To Doth Kill Many Dudes. It’s the Atlantic - the Atlantic I grew up on. The smell of salt and sun-baked stones fills my nose. Seagulls politely scream at each other over pieces of crab. The ocean is big and doesn’t really care what tone of voice I use, or whether I go shopping or choose Ohio State over Stanford.
I kick my shoes off and run. Running and me got a divorce after I lost enough weight. But right now, running is the best. Even the BMW’s got Kelly’s stench all over it. Running is the only way I can truly leave the bullshit behind.
It’s a fun and unique experience. There’s a lot of sand. I trip on a rock and stub my toe so hard I possibly now have weird deformed hobbit feet. I feel like vomiting. A seagull almost shits on my arm.
“It’s okay, buddy!” I shade my eyes and look up at the sky. “Luckily for you, I am both stunningly good-looking and benevolent. I forgive you!”
He drops a fat deuce on my shoulder in gratitude.
I sigh. It could be worse. I could be surrounded by people. On the moon. And one of those people could be Jack Hunter.
My stomach twists like a yoga prodigy. Icicle eyes fill my mind and I summon what’s left of my fire to melt them away. Not now.
Never again.
I’m far away from the car. Its fancy German headlights can’t watch me contemplate life in the incredibly wistful-yet-also-somehow-sexy manner I am famous for. Infamous for. Am I even gonna be infamous anymore? At East Summit I left my mark, but at Ohio State I’ll be nothing. I’ll be the gum on a busy New York lady’s shoe. Less than that! I’ll be that one piece of bread no one eats because it only has one open face and is sort of always stale no matter when you buy it!
I hadn’t given myself time to worry about a new school. But now that it’s less than a week away, I’m starting to freak. I’m almost a goddamn college freshman! I’ll have a dorm and a roommate and actual classes where grades actually matter! They’ll define the rest of my career slash life slash future prospects with Johnny Depp. I have to start taking things mildly seriously, now! Ugh! Just the word sends shivers down my spine. Serious. Seeeerious. Cereal-ous. Trix are for kids. College is not for kids. College is for grown-ups.
I don’t feel like a grown-up.
I’m more worried about Mom than anything, but she and I planned weekend visits, and I’m going to drive up every Wednesday. Even her therapist says she’s doing better, especially since Leo’s imprisonment. In the Columbus airport when she saw me off, the color in her cheeks was back, and she’d smiled more in a week than I’d seen in my whole life.
Or maybe she was just trying extra hard for me.
I pick up a flat, smooth rock and try to skip it. It drowns instead.
East Summit High sort of wilted after Sophia died.
Nobody would come out and say that, of course, except me. Avery came to school less and less, and finally stopped coming altogether. We learned the day before graduation she’d been in a mental hospital, undergoing intensive therapy. Prom was out of the question. The social order of East Summit was thrown in the blender and turned on high – girls scrabbled to fill the void and take the Prom queen crown. Avery showed up to graduation though, and she walked up to the podium when her name was called and got her diploma. She looked pale and haggard, and her parents were in the crowd giving thin-lipped smiles of dry encouragement. I got the feeling they’d thrown her in the loony bin for show, to get her ‘better’ quickly and without really caring about her well-being. Before any of us could blink, she was whisked away to a private college in Connecticut, instead of UCLA like she’d planned for. Even if she was a bitch, I keep hoping she’ll end up alright. Or at least happier. But Sophia was her redemption, her idol, her friend. If I lost all three of those, I’d be broken, too.
Wren was the first to cry at the funeral, and the last to stop crying. Kayla helped him through the worst of it, visiting his house every day and staying with him in the nurses’ office during school when he crumbled. It broke her heart and my heart to see Wren so horribly, twistedly sad. I reminded him to eat – brought him burritos and pot pies - and when he couldn’t eat, I texted to remind him to sleep. I probably didn’t help much. I probably could have done more. Prom came and went, but none of us attended. We spent it at Sophia’s grave, instead.
By graduation, Wren was learning to smile again. MIT was still a very real thing for him, and he’d left early in the summer to earn a few extra credits, or to escape Sophia’s death. Both, probably. Kayla was torn up by it, but since she’s going to school in Boston in September anyway, she’s hurting a little less. They’d been growing closer after Sophia’s death. Dunno if they’d done anything serious – Kayla mostly just hugged him. No kissing that I could see, and Kayla refused to dish on what they do, more out of respect than embarrassment. She’s grown so much by helping him. She only talks about Vogue once a week, now.
I skip another rock. It flies over the waves and jumps twice before sinking.
I’ll miss Kayla. I already do.
The summer was mostly me and her, having last sleepovers and last quiet bottles of wine in cow pastures while looking at stars. We didn’t go to parties. I didn’t feel like it. She hadn’t been friends with Sophia, but it was still a death that affected her closest friends. We’d promised to text every day. And instagram. And tweet. And facebook. Basically, we’d made a promise to talk. A lot. We might not see each other so much, but a warm blanket of comfort settles over my heart when I think about her. She has my back. I have her flawless backside.
Jack Hunter didn’t cry at the funeral.
He should have, but he didn’t. He stood in the corner by his mother, who cried enough for the both of them, her black dress and his black suit mingling as she leaned on him to keep standing. His hair had been gelled in perfect place, his face an opaque mask of the darkest ice I’d seen yet. The skin below his eyes was bruised with exhaustion, and his cheekbones seemed somehow sharper. I shivered looking at him. He wasn’t putting on the lifeless, emotionless act anymore. He just was lifeless. He was empty. The spark had been sucked out of his eyes, leaving pale shells behind. His entire body, his entire physical presence seemed like a shell – an illusion made of mirrors and brittle frost that would shatter at the slightest touch. He was chilling to look at; like something that shouldn’t still be living, or still moving. A mannequin. A zombie puppet.
I tried once. To bring him back. At the wake, in the musty-smelling funeral home laden with sorrow-cookies and sad-cakes, I said something about Sophia, how the priest who said she was a selfless and beautiful girl didn’t really know her at all. Jack had been holding a cup of water, staring into it as he stood in a corner away from the noise and crying people. He looked up at me, took in my face - red from my own crying - and closed his eyes.
“It’s over,” he said, too calmly.
“What is?” I asked, my stomach roiling. He pushed off the wall and walked away with one last word.
“Everything.”
He stopped coming to school, after that. I talked to Principal Evans about it, and he said Jack had dropped out. Harvard hadn’t revoked its early acceptance, and Jack could still
theoretically go even with straight F’s for his last two quarters. But both of us knew he wasn’t going. He didn’t care, anymore.
When April came, at the almost-two-month mark of his absence, I went looking for him. I wanted to. Fuck, I really wanted to. I fought not to. I thought he needed space, thought it would help. The last thing that’d help would be seeing me. Having the crazy girl who was once your nemesis track you down would be stressful for even the most practiced Vulcan. Besides, I wouldn’t know how to help. I would just mess things up more. Say the wrong thing. Do the wrong thing.
But when Ms. Hunter came to my door one late afternoon, crying and begging for me to find him, I knew I had to start looking.
I waited until spring break. And then I started chasing a ghost.
Ms. Hunter gave me the note Jack left – it was simple and on plain white paper. He said he was leaving, not to call the cops, and that he loved her. Ms. Hunter had, in her desperation, gotten the bank to hand over his account information. The money for Sophia’s surgery had been refunded to him, and he’d then gifted most of it to someone, taking a mere four thousand for himself. Four thousand was enough to live on for a bit, sure. But almost-three months was pushing it.
He’d left all his stuff in his room, too. The only thing he took was his father’s cigar box with Sophia’s letters inside. I looked for any sign of him at Tallie’s grave. Nothing. A rose was left on Sophia’s grave, wilted. It had to be weeks old. If he’d come back after that, he would’ve put a fresh flower.
I checked the hospital. Mira and James said Jack came to see them on March 2nd – the day after Sophia’s funeral. He told them he was going away for a long time, and gave them each a brand new, massive teddy bear as a farewell gift. They’d been Sophia’s friends, but it was more than that. Sophia loved them. They were like Tallie to her - the child-Tallie she could and would never have, and Jack knew that. Jack treated them like that.
I called the Rose Club as a last ditch attempt. The operator insisted Jaden left months ago.