Logan groans. “I told you we shouldn’t have brought him.”
Lachlan repeats the question.
Leo says, “It’s a guy who likes other guys.”
“Why is that bad?” Lachlan questions.
“It’s not,” I tell him. “Come here.” I rear back so he can sit in front of me and see what’s going on. Then I point to Benny Watson. “See that kid getting on the bike?”
He nods.
“He wasn’t very nice to Liam. He hurt him.”
“Inside or outside?”
“Both,” I tell him. “And you remember Cam and Lucy’s friends Jake and Big Logan?”
He nods again.
“They’re here to help him understand why it’s wrong to hurt people.”
Benny starts to pedal, and it takes less than three seconds for the bike to lock up. The little punk flies over the handlebars and falls on all fours, and I almost feel sorry for him. But then I look over at Liam and the damage on his face and arms and that feeling fades real quick. My brothers stifle their laughs while they watch part two of Middle School Mayhem come to fruition. Big Logan and Jake rush toward him, perfect in their display of fake concern. Cam puts his phone on speaker, connected to Jake's phone so we can hear what they're saying. “You okay, mate?” Jake asks. He and Big Logan squat in front of Benny, a hand on each of his shoulders.
“That was rough, dude,” Logan says, his voice dripping with worry.
Benny looks up at them, tears in his eyes, and I wonder what Liam was like when he was copping a fucking beating from this asshole.
“Here.” Jake slips a backpack off his shoulders and unzips it. “You look like you’re about to pass out. You need to eat something.” He pulls out the gourmet dog shit/peanut butter sandwich I crafted and hands it over to Benny. “You’ll feel better,” Jake pushes.
Benny takes a bite, munches a few times before spitting it out and cursing. The minivan erupts with laughter while Jake shakes his head, his brow bunched. “What’s wrong, little man?”
Benny’s still splattering everywhere, his tongue out, trying to get the taste of shit off his tongue. “What the hell is that?”
Jake shrugs. “Peanut butter and vegemite. Sorry, man. Must be an acquired taste.” He takes the Logan-piss-filled drink bottle from the backpack. “You want to wash it down with something?”
Without a thought, Benny takes the bottle from him, tilts his head back, lifts the bottle, and squeezes. As soon as the liquid hits his tongue, his eyes squeeze shut, and he coughs and spurts everywhere.
Dying. We're fucking dying in the minivan, watching it all go down, and Benny tries to stand, but Jake keeps him in place. Benny's nothing but flailing arms and legs. “What the fuck?!” he shouts.
Big Logan says, “Ur-ine a lot of trouble here, kid.”
Jake chuckles.
“Who the fuck are you?” Benny screams.
“We’re delivering a message from Liam and Lincoln,” Jake says. “You fuck with the Prestons, you fuck with their friends. You so much as look in their direction, you’ll be eating more than dog shit and piss. You got it?”
I’d put money that Benny’s pissing his pants right now. “Y-y-yes, sir.”
They smile brightly at him and help him to his feet. “Have a fantastic day!” Big Logan exaggerates. “Asshole.”
Middle School Mayhem is great.
Later in the afternoon while I walk to my truck, Cam calls out, running up to me.
“What’s up?” I ask.
“We need to talk.”
“I have to pick Laney up from work.”
“It's quick,” he says. “You know that check you sent us to give Cooper?”
“Yeah?”
“I can’t find him on campus.”
“What do you mean you can’t find him?”
He shrugs. “He hasn’t been in his dorm for days, and I asked Jake to ask around… jocks, you know, they stick together.”
“And?”
“And Jake says no one on the track team's seen him for a while. He's missed training the last couple days. That jerk's AWOL.”
I keep this information from Lane when I pick her up from work which I don’t feel too bad about. It’s not like she’s asked, and come to think of it, her phone hasn’t been blowing up the way it used to. At least not when I’m around.
I tell her about what happened today, the shit sandwich and piss bottle, and she’s sad she missed out on it. I thought she’d be disappointed in the way we chose to retaliate, and I tell her that. She shakes her head, says, “You know, I followed that little punk home from school one day so I could see where he lives and speak to his parents. His dad’s just as vile and pathetic as he is.”
We go to her house to pick up her sewing machine to go with all the other crafting supplies she keeps in our little apartment where we still haven’t had sex because we’re taking it slow, doing it right. And then we go back home where we save dinner by “helping” Lucy in the kitchen, which means taking over without Lucy realizing it. After we eat, I help Lachlan with his bath and his bedtime and his one minute, and Lucy invites us to hang out at the cabin. Lane says she wants to shower, so she does that while I wait in the living room. Then her phone rings, and I know I shouldn't look, shouldn't answer. But I do look, and I see Cooper's name flash on the screen, and I do answer because I want to know what the hell he still wants and where the hell he is.
I don’t speak when the call connects, just listen to him breathe. “Lois?” he says, and I keep quiet. “Why haven’t you answered any of my calls, baby?” Baby? Seriously? At least I know she’s not talking to him, listening to his blended, spoon-fed bullshit. “I need to see you. Just once. Please, Lo.” He exhales into the phone while I hold my breath, waiting for more. “Please, baby.” And I’ve had enough and I hang up because he’s nothing but poison in her veins, and the sooner he’s out of her system, the better off she’ll be. I go through her phone, through the missed calls and messages. If he’s been messaging her, she’s been deleting them because there isn’t a single one there. But there are a lot of missed calls from him. Too many to count. She's probably tried to delete that evidence, too, but she doesn't know how to because she's one of the few in our generation who can survive without an iPhone glued to her hand. I delete the call just made, the one that shows I picked up, and when she gets out of the bathroom, her hair still wet, I pretend like nothing happened. Because really, nothing did happen.
At the cabin, I tell Cameron about the interview with Lachlan's teacher and how she recommended Lachlan get into some form of organized sport. “I was looking into getting him on a baseball team during the summer league, but they're all full. But, the league’s still accepting new teams…”
He eyes me sideways. “So what? You want to start a whole new team?”
“Not just me. You and me, and I thought the twins could help assist, you know, give them something to do during the break? We can throw in a few bucks, get the company to sponsor them, get some uniforms. It's not too late.”
He thinks about this a moment. “You know, if we do that it'll be a bunch of Lachlan's friends, and you've met Lachlan's friends, right?”
I chuckle. “We could name the team The Misfits.”
Cameron says he’s in and that it’ll be good times. Then somehow, the conversation switches to the senior prom. Lane smiles at me from across the room, and I wonder if she remembers the pact we made on her sixteenth birthday; that regardless of who we were to each other, we'd go together. I don't think either of us would've imagined that we'd be where we are, her practically living in my apartment and making plans for our future while subconsciously dodging the fact that come August, I'll be two and a half hours away and she has no real idea what she'll be doing. “Tickets go on sale next Monday,” Lucy says, and how she knows this stuff about a school she left three years ago, I have no idea. She must see the question in my eyes, because she laughs. “I still get the high school newsletter emailed to me.” She looks at Laney. “Are you excited about it?”
Laney nods once, her gaze distant, and I know she, too, is lost in the memory of fancy restaurants and lobster and bracelets and Wonderwalls.
Chapter Thirty-Two
LOIS
I sit in my car on the Prestons’ driveway looking between the main house and Lucas's apartment, and I have no idea how I got here. The sky is dark, the stars bright, and I've never felt so much silence. I wipe at my eyes when the porch light comes on, look at the clock. It's 4:30 am. Tom's leaving for work. Shit. I had no concept of time, no idea how long I’ve been sitting here. I try to scoot down in my seat, hoping he’ll assume I’m just spending the night with Luke. My heart pounds, the tears come again. Knock knock on my window. “Lane?”
I wind down the window, do my best to smile.
“Why are you sitting in your car?” he asks, concern dripping in his words. He looks at the apartment. “Does Luke know you’re here?”
“No, sir.” I shake my head. “I finished work late last night and I didn't want to go home and I just started driving, ended up here, and I know Luke's got so much going on with his meet this weekend and I didn't want to wake him, so I've just been here…” A sob creeps up my throat, forces its way out of me. “I'm sorry. I'm just going to go.”