“What the fuck?” Vic asks, halfway to pulling his shirt down. He just stands there for a minute with it caught up around his waist. Finally, he seems to pull himself together and drags the fabric down the rest of the way. Clearly, we’re going to be late for class today. No matter. There are no challengers for my place as valedictorian. That’s what’s important, that I win. “Jesus, it has to be Ophelia, doesn’t it?”

“Who else would care about some useless slag of a social worker?” I ask as Bernadette blinks in shock, flicking her gaze between the two of us.

“Leigh is dead?” she repeats, like she’s trying to wrap her mind around it. “Why would Ophelia kill her? She’s her contact; she supplies her with girls.”

“We brought Leigh to heel, and she lost her usefulness,” Victor muses, sighing and rubbing his hands over his hair. The way Bernadette watches him, hunger in her eyes even now, fills me with a terrifying and righteous sense of jealousy.

She should be looking at me like that.

And I have only myself to blame if she does not.

“It’s gotta be pretty easy to just snag a new lackey, right?” Cal asks, stretching in the sun near the sliding glass doors. He’s fully dressed in long, black shorts, and another of his signature sleeveless hoodies. “I’m sure Ophelia has other contacts in DHS and CPS.”

“This has Mitch and Charter Crew written all over it. Grunt work. I bet she isn’t even paying them yet, just giving them new cars and guns as toys, and promising rewards for later.” Victor works his jaw some more and nods. “Shit, this is out of control. I should’ve strangled my mother when we were at the beach house.” Victor grabs his boots and sits down on the sofa, right over the spot where the bloodstain is.

Well, there are many bloodstains on it, but I mean specifically the one that Bernadette and I left there.

“We’re still playing it too safe,” I say, tucking my phone into the pocket of my slacks. I take great pride in stealing these suits and not getting caught. I then have them tailored by a woman that lives in the Southside. She gives me containers of hot soup to take home, too, whenever I pick them up, but I never eat it. Part of me wonders if I should. “We need to move law enforcement down our list of priorities and take some action, regardless of the risks of getting caught. It’s that or end up with our heads severed from our bodies.”

I don’t show Bernadette the picture my boys managed to get of the crime scene.

I won’t, unless she asks.

“Well, fuck,” Bernie says, scrubbing at her face. “Leaving Leigh alive was brilliant; we had names. We knew when deals were going to take place. This isn’t good, is it?”

“It’s not,” I confirm, looking over at Vic and meeting his eyes. We need a new plan. We’ve always moved slow, kept things tight, foolproof. The last place on earth I want to end up in is prison; I would rather die. But things are escalating, and we cannot allow them to get any worse without getting the upper hand. “You know, the easiest way to kill something is to cut off its head.”

Bernadette shivers, but she fills in the metaphor for me as Hael comes tromping down the stairs like an elephant, Aaron close behind him. I ignore them both.

“Like say, if the Charter Crew’s head was made up of Mitch, Logan, Kyler, and Timmy?” she asks, and I smile.

The way it feels on my face, I’m not surprised that Bernie gives me a long, studying look. I’m sure it’s hideous.

“Exactly that,” I say, and then I find my iPad on the coffee table and start to plan.

I’ll still go to school today. I have a calculus test, after all, but that doesn’t mean I can’t plot murder at the same time, now does it?

Bernadette Blackbird

Wednesday at Prescott High is interesting in that it's so unremarkable that it becomes remarkable. Mitch is as annoying as always; Kali continues to gossip and spread lies, even with her lips swollen and disfigured. Stacy Langford is hilarious and has taken to wearing a t-shirt that says Wreak Havoc while making out with her boyfriend in the hallway.

The police do not come on Wednesday; I do not hear from Sara Young.

“Do you think I surprised her with that video?” I ask Callum, sitting at the peninsula in Aaron's kitchen after school. He, on the other hand, is outside hanging Christmas lights. We're a bit late to the game, and we most definitely did not get the tree the day after Thanksgiving like I wanted.

Instead, it's lying on the living room floor now waiting to be put into a stand, just one week before Christmas.

“I think you made it very difficult for her to want to continue her quest to bring someone to justice over Neil’s disappearance.” Callum adds some chopped-up fruit and veggies to the blender he’s using and turns it on. Once it’s finished, he takes a spoon and tastes it, grinning a bit before pouring the chocolate-colored mixture into two cups. “Here. Chocolate-blueberry smoothie. Ridiculously healthy. It even has kale hidden in it.”

I give him a look and a wrinkled nose.

“Kale, Callum? Really?”

He pushes the drink toward me and then jabs a metal straw into it.

“I was trying to be a professional dancer, remember? Trust me: I know how to make a health food smoothie that tastes alright.” He winks at me and starts sipping his, flipping his hood off at the same time. As Victor’s smoking and chin rubbing are tells, so is Callum’s hood. He puts it on when he needs time to think or when he feels the situation might get uncomfortable. He only takes it off in good company.

I smile down at my cup and then drag it close. Tentatively, I wrap my lips around the end and Cal leans forward to smirk at me.

“Don’t suck on that so slow and sensual. Might give me ideas on what we could be doing together next.”

I almost choke on the smoothie as I try not to laugh. Shockingly enough, it really is good. Tastes a bit like brownie batter actually.

“Ideas, huh?” I retort as Hael moves into the room and starts laying guns out on the counter. Thank fuck the girls are, once again, at Jennifer’s house. She’s a decent babysitter, and she lives in a stupid gated community with a dad who works for the sheriff’s office. As many issues as we have with the police currently, it’s still a safer place than here.

Especially tonight.

“Look, silencers,” Hael says, lifting up a piece of metal and then screwing it onto the end of one of the rifles. He holds the damn thing against his hip, like he’s in a fucking action flick or something and grins. “This should be fun.”

I take another sip of my smoothie and do my best to keep my nerves at bay.

Victor wants us to go out tonight and clean up the Charter Crew. Not all of them, obviously, because like he said: you can’t kill several dozen kids at the same school without a media circus. But if you pick off the leaders …

Mitch Charter. Logan Charter. Kyler Ensbrook. Timmy Ensbrook.

Kali is pregnant, so for now, she’s getting a pass. Nobody’s mentioned Billie.

There’s a race being held tonight, at the track that Aaron and I used to escape from Sara Young. Since Mitch’s crew essentially runs the races now, they’ll be there, no doubt.

Knowing we have to kill four people tonight though, that’s a tough one.