Broken Pretty Things by Amber Faye

Chapter 3

Barkley:I need to talk to you.

Barkley: I can’t believe you’re back in town.

Barkley: Please answer me. You know who this is.

Barkley: Have you deleted my number??

I turn off my phone screen and set it upside down in my lap.

Dimitri has a sturdy silver Porsche Cayenne that flies through the fancy Torrent Bay suburbs, barely slowing down for stop signs and hurtling around corners. By the time I recognize the school parking lot, I’m barely even scared about my first day here anymore. After the morning I’ve had, I’m just lucky I’m still alive.

Unlike…

Dammit, no. I erase the thoughts from my mind before they rise from my stomach into my throat. But it’s too late, I’m trembling. Sweating. Dimitri pulls into a spot and hums a song that just played on the radio, switching the car off and turning to me.

“Oh, since you used to go here, let me ask you something,” he says, pulling out a joint and squinting one eye at it before shoving it into his jeans pocket. “You ever had English Lit with Dr. Calvert? Is he always— What’s wrong?”

My chest is rising and falling and I hadn’t even noticed how unsteady and wrecked my breathing is. I’m back here.

Back here.

I’ve been successfully avoiding shit-talking my mother for this decision, but right now, I feel so angry at her I could cry. To move me back here because she didn’t want to do long distance with her brand new boyfriend? They’d started dating just before we moved to the West Coast. Then they’d done the phone call thing, the occasional visit over the last six months. Then, “It’ll be fine, Andie. Nobody actually hates you for what happened. That wouldn’t make any sense!”

You know what else doesn’t make any sense, Mom? Teenagers. Teenagers who think I hurt the best, most popular guy in school. Hurt him so bad he hanged himself.

But that’s not why I’m choked up right now. It’s not because everyone here hates me, most of all my old group of best friends. It’s not because I have to deal with the stares, the gossip.

It’s because the last time I was here, at this school, I was arm in arm with Cole Waller. We were bantering back and forth, teasing, making each other laugh so hard we could have peed. It’s because he used to pick me up and drive me to school, sling his arm protectively over my shoulders if a guy leered at me. Cole wasn’t just my boyfriend, he was my armor. To everybody else, he was the king of the school. To me, though, he was a crutch. An exoskeleton. He saved me, and everybody thinks I broke him.

He had everything, and more. Perfect grades, a ton of great friends, varsity quarterback. Scholarships for college ready and waiting.

There’s no way he would have thrown any of it away.

I clutch my backpack as I exit Dimitri’s car and hold it close to my chest. Inside is my notebook, filled with stuff nobody can see. A list of names, a list of details, a list of clues.

Somebody fucking killed my friend. Left him there like garbage for all of us to find. And I don’t know why, and I don’t know how.

If there’s a single silver lining here, it’s that being back here means I can finish what I started the day we found him there. I remember the cold air, the flashing lights, the wailing sirens, and I remember knowing, even then, that that moment was pivotal. That none of us would ever be the same again.

I’m going to find out whoever did this to him. To all of us.

I shut the car door and a familiar peal of laughter sounds out across the parking lot. My head jerks up at the sound and I feel the blood rush from my head. I knew this moment would come, but I couldn’t have prepared myself for it. My best friends in the world, what’s left of them, are leaning on Logan’s flashy new sports car. Larissa’s hand is over her smile, and her eyes are hidden by huge sunglasses, but I know she’s looking over at me. Her shoulders shake with laughter, her long blonde curls swaying. Gunnar sits on the low hood, knees apart, and beautiful redheaded Aurelia is between them, leaning back and nuzzling his neck.

Logan turns as Larissa says something, her lips moving as if she wants me to read them, but I can’t. And I want to look away, but I have to walk right past them to get to the building. Logan and Larissa are staring at me, forced smiles on their faces, heads tilted. Logan has a backwards baseball cap on, his perpetually messy fair hair sticking up in waves from underneath it, and his lazy blue eyes sparkling as he grins at me.

Aurelia leans in closer to Larissa and whispers something through her curly hair. Larissa shrieks with laughter, and I roll my eyes. Aurelia never said anything funny in her life, not on purpose. Her flaming red hair is long and impossibly shiny. Her boobs got bigger again, and her round ass is straining against denim short shorts. Every passing month since freshman year just increased Aurelia’s attractiveness. I don’t think she’s ever even had a zit.

She’s definitely never choked almost to death on a pancake.

Gunnar still doesn’t look my way, but his grip on Aurelia’s exposed midriff tightens as I get closer. His long fingers are splayed over her pale, tight stomach. I can’t be sure from over here, but I think he closes his lips over her earlobe. Or something, because Aurelia’s eyes flutter shut and she melts backwards into his body.

I guess they finally hooked up. She’s been trying to get him to notice her since tenth grade, so … good for her.

“Something got you down?” Dimitri prods from beside me, and two feet higher. I stare up at him, briefly wondering if my new family member might actually be able to offer me some respite here, for the rest of the year. Didn’t he say something about preppy assholes? He must fucking hate my old friend group.

The popular kids, quarterbacks and cheerleaders, tend to set the tone in each year for the way kids treat each other. Cole was always nothing but kind and generous, which meant, for the most part, everyone tended to get along with our group pretty well. But from what I’m seeing here, and the way the others glance their way as they head to the building, I assume that Aurelia and Gunnar have taken our place as king and queen of the school, and things aren’t going to be the same around here.

“It’s nothing,” I finally respond to Dimitri. “It’s just, those guys used to be my friends.”

He frowns down at me, a picture of concern. “Used to be?” he asks, resting his hand on my shoulder. I should shrug it off, considering the stuff he said to me this morning, but I let it stay there. I let it comfort me. “What happened, Champ?”

Something tugs at the side of his lip, just as we pass by Logan’s car. I get a split second to try to decipher why he’s fighting back a smile so hard, but no more, because Dimitri spins me around by my backpack strap and shoves me across the parking lot. I barely manage to stop myself from sliding across the tarmac by catching myself on someone’s Buick hood, knees bent and my shirt riding up. Logan snorts with derisive laughter.

“What the hell, D—” I just about get out, but before I can say his name, let alone get back up to my feet, he makes a confusingly wide movement with both arms.

And whatever he was holding in them.

Thick, cold liquid splashes across me, covering my face, my hair, my chest, my legs. I instinctively part my lips and gasp for air, and some of the viscous goop slides into my mouth. I bend to the side and cough and sputter, finally getting my bearings enough to scoop the stuff from my eyes and nose, smearing it off my face.

It tastes like … corn syrup. And when I finally get my eyes open, I see bright red everywhere. So much for my first-day I-give-no-shits outfit.

Rest in peace, pretty flowery skirt and white blouse.

So long, cute salon highlights. They’ll probably stay splotchy pink for a while now.

I try to get to my feet but my shoes slide in the goo. I give up and sit there for a moment, hearing the laughter. I’ve helped set up enough of Gunnar’s infamous Halloween-slash-birthday parties to know what the taste is. The world’s biggest fan of cheesy gore movies just had to learn how to make his own fake blood for the best, most realistic costumes. This is Gunnar’s recipe. I helped him perfect it.

Figures he wouldn’t be the one to throw it in my face himself.

I squint up at them, and see Dimitri leaning against the car with them, head tilted back as he belly laughs. Larissa and Aurelia are bent double, and Logan has a slack look of amusement on his face and his phone raised, pointing right at me.

I guess he’s still livestreaminghis life. Whatever the hell that means. He’s never going to be an influencer, or Insta-famous, or any of that. But now, with footage like this, I might be.

Gunnar’s gaze flicks over me as if I’m nothing, and then he looks away again. If I didn’t know what a fascinating spectacle I am right now, I would believe he hadn’t even noticed me down here.

A literal bucket of fake blood is dripping off of me, so it isn’t surprising when some freshman kids scream when they see me. Dimitri claps and lurches threateningly at them with a manic look on his face. They flee.

I get to my feet, flicking my hands through the air. It sprays Aurelia’s bared stomach and clothes with fake blood and, to my fairly muted satisfaction, she lets out a horrified scream. Then I taste my fingers, eyes on Gunnar. “You got sloppy,” I say. “Not enough food coloring, too much syrup.” I turn around and walk away, wishing I wasn’t limping.

The autumn air bites at my wet skin and goosebumps prick as I hear him finally speak up from behind me.

“The problem we all had before, Andie, was we didn’t know you were a killer bitch until it was too late. There were no signs.” Gunnar’s voice is low, measured, but I still hear every word. I stop walking, but I don’t turn around. “This way, we won’t have that problem again.”

“Bye, Killer Bitch,” Dimitri shouts, and now I’m jogging away. I can’t get away from them fast enough. KB. Killer Bitch. Looks like I have a brand new nickname this year. Lucky me. But, and I’m really stretching trying to be positive here:

At least I’ve shed my old nickname.