Riot Rules (Crooked Sinners)

by Callie Hart

Rule no. 1: If someone asks who you are, lie. Even the smallest kernel of truth will unspool our hard work. A fraction of truth leads to another. Be careful what you say. Rule no. 2: Friends are for the weak, kid. You don’t want them. Don’t need them. A friend is a vulnerability and a distraction. You can’t afford either. Rule no. 3: No boys. I repeat, absolutely NO boys. No dating. No falling in love. No nonsense of any kind. I mean it. NO BOYS! Rule no. 4: If you’re discovered, don’t hesitate. Not even for a second. RUN.

THE DARK LORD. THE SUN GOD. THE ANARCHIST.

Next to me, Mara Bancroft, Wolf Hall’s sweetheart, quirks an eyebrow, handing me the phone I just dropped. It’s six-thirty in the morning but she’s wearing a full face of makeup and not a strand of her jet-black hair is out of place; as always, she’s photo ready. “Whoa, girl. I was only asking if you were going home for spring break.” She smiles easily, because for her, going home means reuniting with her disgustingly wealthy family in the Hamptons. For me, going home…well, there is no going home. Wolf Hall, with its dusty corridors, endless, narrow staircases, macabre stained-glass windows and hidden rooms is home for me now. While most high school juniors are dreaming of body shots in Cabo during spring break, I have all I can ever hope for right here: Some semblance of normalcy. Safety. Sanctuary.

I’m no stranger to rules; I’m used to living by them. But there are rules that can be bent on occasion, and there are rules that can be flat-out broken.

A stealthy coffee-run down the hill in Mara’s G-Wagon is usually overlooked, though. Any teacher up early enough to catch us rolling out of the student parking lot usually doesn’t say anything. Denying us caffeine only guarantees we’ll be grouchy ’til midday, and they’d much rather turn a blind eye than deal with that.

Managing to Have Fun.” Mara leads a charmed life. Like most of the students at Wolf Hall, she’s never wanted for anything. Ponies, nannies, ski trips, and private tutors—anything she’s ever wanted has been handed to her on a silver platter. As far as she’s concerned, Wolf Hall is the dullest, most desolate place on earth.

Her fictional handbook is the kind of thing kids where I come from pick up at a cash register and flip through, fantasizing about a life they’ll never be able to afford.

“You’d know. Weren’t you, like, twelve when Marcus was born? I bet you’re still traumatized from the sea of shit.” Marcus is my younger brother. Marcus does not exist. He’s just another fictional element in the landscape of the fictional life that I’ve created for myself. The devil’s in the details. Any good storyteller knows that to hook a reader, you need the minutiae—the stories, and experiences, and the little details that flesh out the skeleton of your tale. They put meat on a story’s bones. Marcus is the lynchpin of many of my stories. How many times have I regaled Mara and my other friend, Presley, with such classics as, ‘The Day Marcus Broke His Arm” and, “The Day Marcus Swallowed the Penny’?

“Yeah. Hate to say it, but kids are no fun. They’re cute as hell for the first couple of days, but it’s all downhill after that.” “Think you’ll ever have one?” “Hell no. You?” Mara fake-barfs. “No way, dude. I like my vagina the way it is, thank you very much. Oh—my, my, my. Would you look at that?”

Mara purrs her approval. “Goddamn, what I wouldn’t give for a shot at that.”

Mara snorts, taking a sip of her coffee. “Wren. I’d give my right arm for half an hour on the backseat of a car with him.” The Dark Lord. The Sun God. The Anarchist.

The Sun God reaches the fountain first. Dashiell Lovett, Fourth Lord of the Lovett Estate in Surrey, England, hollers at the top of his lungs, startling a flock of starlings from one of the naked trees down by the lake. The tiny birds take flight, pinwheeling across the stark, cloudless sky. The Dark Lord and The Anarchist shove and jostle their friend, The Dark Lord wearing a broad, shit-eating grin on his face. The Anarchist’s expression is savage as he attempts to get Dashiell into a headlock, his corded arms full of tattoos.

The three boys turn and look at us, then, and my first instinct is to hurl myself sideways into the bank of rose bushes to avoid their gaze. I am such a chickenshit. It takes sublime effort, but I stand my ground.

“Wren Jacobi.” Mara sighs his name like the guy single-handedly cured cancer. She holds the lip of her coffee cup to her mouth, smirking deviously. “I bet he fucks like a demon.” There are plenty of girls down in Mountain Lakes who would be able to confirm or deny that suspicion. Rumor has it that Wren has no qualms with screwing women who are much older than him, or married, or inappropriate for a whole slew of other reasons.

“Which one would you do?” Mara asks. “Y’know. If you had your pick?” Ask any female member of the Wolf Hall student body this question. If they tell you they couldn’t care less, then they’re a dirty, dirty liar. I’ve had so much practice at lying now, though, that when I do it, it sounds like the honest to god’s truth. “Jacobi. Definitely Jacobi.” Mara nods, swallowing down this falsehood like it was the only natural answer. She picked Wren. Most people would. Not me, though. Every Saturday for the past year, I’ve crept out of bed and tiptoed down to the orchestra room in the small hours of the morning to listen to the Sun God play. No one talks about his talent. I don’t think anyone knows he even plays. At first, watching him sit at the piano in the dark, his long fingers flying expertly up and down the keys, was something I did because of the music. The pieces he chose were so somber and sad that they made my soul ache. At some point, that changed; I realized I was sneaking down there because watching him made my soul ache, too. So, yes. I’d choose the Sun God any day of the week. Not that I could ever have him, of course. Aside from Dashiell being rich, arrogant as hell and a...

“Lady Margaret Elspeth Decatur Lovett? Drive? Don’t be stupid,” Wren chuckles from the front passenger seat. “That witch didn’t know how to operate a can opener. She couldn’t drive.”

It’s unsettling that Wren knows so much about my relatives. He’s a researcher. A snooper. His nose is always firmly inserted into business that has absolutely nothing to do with him. He can’t be stopped, dissuaded, cajoled or bribed from participating in this little hobby of his. It’s a part of him, firmly affixed, just like his wavy, dark hair, or his unsettling green eyes. His need to know things often comes in handy and works in our favor. Other times, it’s just fucking annoying.

“What were you even doing to it, anyway? I know you’re into some kinky shit, man, but there are limits. If you have to hurt yourself in order to get off, maybe just…go a little easier next time?”

“I cannot have a fucked-up dick, guys. I cannot be walking around with a franken-frank in my pants. If they can’t make it look beautiful again, tell ’em to just let me go. I don’t want any drastic measures. Sign a DNR if you hav—”

“Assholes. Neither of you fuckers know what it’s like to have a vital piece of your manhood just…just…just fucking snap!” Pax howls even harder. “God, the accent just makes it funnier.”

Mountain Lakes, New Hampshire, is a tiny town, perched high in the hills of the Black Mountain State Forest. In light of the settlement’s tiny stature and it’s dwindling population, its hospital is also tiny. Honestly, it’s a miracle the place even has a hospital. An urgent care facility would have been more likely, or a glorified GP’s office, but it seems as though lady luck is smiling on me and my broken dick today. I’ll get to see a proper doctor, and they’ll be able to fix this terrible genital injustice.

“No! No vacuum cleaner! What the hell, lady!” If I sound a little indignant, it’s because I am. This is already humiliating enough. Now there are middle-aged women thinking I’m some sort of deviant who sticks his cock into electrical appliances? Fuck’s sake, somebody shoot me now.

English? English class? This aphro-fucking-dite goes to Wolf Hall and I haven’t noticed her before? How can that be even remotely possible? Three years? I’ve overlooked this girl for three years? I don’t think so. “Yeah. Well…English is a bore, right? Gotta stay entertained somehow.”

“You,” she continues, stabbing her index finger in my direction. “With your fancy, well-to-do English accent, and your fancy car, and your fancy clothes—”

It feels like the axis of the earth has shifted. Marginally. An imperceptible fraction. Enough that I can notice the difference, and now everything feels…off kilter.

“Gotta wait five days for that stitch to dissolve before you let your dick get hard. Wouldn’t wanna tear again, man. ’Til then, you’re better off not daydreaming about Carina Mendoza.”

Wren talks, laughing with Pax, but I’m no longer in the car with them. I’m back in the waiting room, looking up into a pair of irate brown eyes and feeling about an inch tall. Carina Mendoza. Carrie, with eyes like dark cinnamon. Carrie, who already made my dick hard by scolding me like I was a naughty kid. I’m still back in the waiting room, replaying the interaction I had with the girl in my head on a loop, when Pax pulls down the driveway that leads to Riot House and spits out a string of curse words so colorful that I’m yanked into the present.

“I don’t care what Dashiell Lovett thinks of me.” What. A. Fucking. Joke. Even I laugh my ass off at that. Internally. I haven’t surrendered all self-respect just yet. If I openly admit that I have a crush on the guy to Presley, the charade will be over. I’ll have to acknowledge that I’m just as susceptible to his pretty face as all the other swooning morons who fall down at his feet.

Out of the all the students at Wolf Hall Academy, only three of them aren’t resident borders. Only three of them are permitted to live off campus on their own. Freshmen are packed into dorm rooms, ten to a room, for the first year of their internment at Wolf Hall. Once you’ve completed your first year at the academy, you’re given your own room, thank god. But Pax Davis, Dashiell Lovett, and Wren Jacobi? They’re special cases. Individually, their families are richer than the rest of the remaining student body’s families combined. That kind of wealth scores you crazy perks at a place like this. And so, that is how Dash, Pax and Wren came to live at Riot House, and how they, in turn, became Riot House boys. They’re supposed to have an adult guardian living in the house with them, but everyone knows it’s just the three of them, even Principal Harcourt, the head mistress of the school. Such utter bullshit. I can see the lights from Riot House if I turn and face east and lean out of my window a little. Not that I’d want to do that, though. That would be weird.

Her words are supposed to be reassuring, but she sounds gloomy; she wishes what she just said wasn’t true. The Riot House boys don’t like crashing townie parties. Dashiell won’t be there, which means that Pax won’t, either. I’m stubborn for refusing to acknowledge my crush on Lovett, but Presley isn’t like me. She isn’t bound by the same rules. She’s as true as an arrow. When she announced that she was in love with Pax eighteen months ago, standing outside Gilbertson’s Coin Operated Laundry and Video Game Arcade, I believed her without question. Once Presley settles on something, or someone, that’s it. The end. She’ll be loyal to that person until the end of time, regardless of whether her feelings are reciprocated or not. She’s been in love with Pax Davis for nearly two years now, and I can’t for the life of me reason why. The guy needs to be lobotomized.

I sweep my eyes up and down her tall, slender frame. She’s classically beautiful, with a regal look to her. It’s pure insanity that Pax hasn’t noticed her yet.

I’ve never once tried to dress in a way that might snag Dash’s attention. What would be the point? I hear Alderman’s gruff voice in the back of my head, reciting rule number three in an adamant tone, the way he always does whenever he calls: No boys. I repeat, absolutely NO boys. No dating. No falling in love. No nonsense of any kind. I mean it, kid. NO BOYS! I’m not supposed to fantasize about Dashiell Lovett. I’m not supposed to even think his name. The trouble is that Dashiell’s incredibly difficult not to think about. He’s a fair-haired, hazel-eyed colonial at a private American school, and he descends from nobility, for fuck’s sake. English nobility. Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility-type nobility. Even if I wasn’t living under Alderman’s edict, it wouldn’t really matter what I chose to wear. I could dress in the most constricting, ridiculous Jane-Austen-approved attire known to man and it still wouldn’t matter. I’d still be unworthy and overlooked. He proved that the other day when he looked up at me like he’d never set eyes on me before in his entire, spoiled existence. Arrogant motherfucker.

Alderman would say there is no such thing as a simple party. He’d come up with a million reasons for me to stay behind at the academy and shut myself away in my room with my little telescope. But y’know what? Alderman isn’t here. He’s back in Seattle, doing whatever it is he does in that dark office of his. I’m the one stuck here in New Hampshire, so he can suck it.

I let go of the doorknob and face her, placing a hand on either one of her shoulders. “Listen up. I’m only gonna say this once.” I clear my throat for added gravitas. “Who…Gives…A…Fuck…What…Other…People…Think.” I really mean it, too. This isn’t just some bullshit designed to make her feel better. I couldn’t care less what anyone thinks of me. Every single person I meet on the street, in a hallway or a classroom makes their minds up about me in the breadth and space of time that it takes for a healthy heart to beat. They’re going to think whatever they’re going to think. That’s just what people do.

Alderman would prefer me to toe the line. His policy is that of all concerned parents: he wants me to conform. To fly under the radar. Preppy little cardigans and blue jeans aren’t effective armor for me, though. I tried wearing that shit and it didn’t help. I tried straightening my hair and taming it down, so that it wasn’t so wild. I wore the kind of stuff that future Yale and Harvard girls might wear to their college interviews, and the only thing I accomplished was making myself feel uncomfortable. Now, I wear whatever the fuck I feel like wearing. Presley, on the other hand, isn’t quite as impervious to other people’s judgment.

A motherfucking A minus. That’s what I got on that paper. I rue the day the academy upgraded their reporting system to an online dashboard. We get our grades early and can keep track of our submissions, yeah, but who gives a crap? Principal Harcourt gave our parents access, too. My father, who rarely condescends to use technology—“Only poor people have mobile phones, boy. Nothing wrong with using a secretary”—now has Hansen, his personal assistant, check my work. If it’s anything less than perfect, you can bet your fucking ass I’m getting an email about it. That’s the only time when the hypocrite will utilize technology.

Pax has fucked half of their cheerleading squad. Wren’s fucked the other half. I made it my business to fuck the lacrosse team captain’s girlfriend last semester, so— Okay, okay. Fine. Hindsight. I’m at least seventy percent responsible for the sloppy blue dick that was painted on our front door, but let’s not dwell on that, okay? We’re going to a party. I’m still ‘injured’, so I won’t be participating in tonight’s little escapade. My job is to provide moral support and keep an eye out to make sure we don’t get busted. I can handle that. Be nice if we could all just stay at home, polish off a bottle of whiskey and play Xbox, though; these Edmondson parties are the worst.

“That’s the point. Was I s’posed to show up in a button-down and an ascot? I’m sure I’d have gone totally unnoticed wearing a Tom Ford suit to a fucking kegger.”

He thrives on this kind of chaos.

I own regular clothes. Informal clothes. Clothes that were not sent from Brooks Brothers of London, in neat garment bags to save them from getting rumpled. At least half of my clothes are casual. Yeah, your workout clothes, a smug voice reminds me. Asshole.

Some people are always ready for disaster. Some people are always prepared for an emergency. Pax Davis is always ready for a brawl. His hands are fists more often than they’re not. His teeth are permanently bared at the world.

“Means I should be back at the house, in my bed, with an ice pack resting on my dick. If I tear my stitches—” “Stitch,” Wren corrects me. “—I’m gonna be livid. And not just a little bit. A whole lot.” Pax frowns at Wren. “Has he always been like this? I don’t remember him being such a little bitch.”

“If you’re that keen for a fight, all you had to do was say so, man. It’ll be really annoying, having to go get fixed up at the hospital again, but it might just be worth it if they end up admitting you, too.”

“Don’t be a dick,” Wren warns. “Say it. Out loud. I wanna hear it. I promise I won’t be a psychopath.” The look on Pax’s face isn’t very promising; neither his shit-eating smile nor the wicked look in his eyes inspire much hope that he’s going to behave. Still, he repeats the words as directed. “I promise. Cross my heart and hope to die. I will not be a psychopath.”

Napoleon Bonaparte was a bad motherfucker. When he was exiled, he escaped his island prison and started stirring up trouble for the English all over again. After he lost the battle of Waterloo, he was exiled a second time, to St. Helena, and that was the end of him. The English like exiling people when they misbehave.

When the time came to punish me for my sins, my father decided against exiling me to a tropical island. He chose Wolf Hall, because he figured I wouldn’t be able to get myself into any trouble halfway up a mountain in the middle of New Hampshire. He figured I’d be confined to a room, so desperate for something to do that I’d actually throw myself into my schoolwork. If he’d done his research, he’d have realized that there was another public school within Mountain Lakes’ town limits. And if he knew absolutely anything about teenagers, stranded in small towns with very few amenities, he’d have known that bored kids find ways to entertain themselves.

“Haha! Check it out, Lovett. It’s your old man!” How can the world be this small? Demonstrate to me that you can do better. I hear the fucker’s voice loud and clear, like he’s standing right next to me, whispering the words into my ear. I haven’t been able to shake the worthless feeling that consumed me when I read his email; the feeling only worsens when I see his disapproving expression scowling out at me from the photo. I can never escape his judgement. I can never escape him.

Pax searches the faces of the revelers as we pass them. “Most of these fuckers are rolling.” “And? You gonna narc on them?” Wren prods. Pax growls, his lip curling upward—an expression that’s preluded a number of violent disagreements between our group members in the past. At least he isn’t aiming it at me this time. “Screw you, man. I’m just wondering where the fuck they got the Molly from.”

The kitchen’s lousy with bros. There are backward-turned baseball caps, wife beaters, board shorts and Ray Ban sunglasses everywhere I look. My immediate response is to leave as quickly as possible, but my escape plan’s thwarted when Wren grabs me by the back of the neck and thrusts me into the melee.