Havoc at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys, #1)

by C.M. Stunich

Stacey is right: I really do hope I know what I'm doing here. But the phrase is fight fire with fire, right? And I, I need an inferno.

My first day back at Prescott High is tense as hell. I'm witness to three separate fights, and a sophomore getting busted for bringing meth to school. Like, literal methamphetamine. Other schools freak out if a student is caught with a joint. Here, you're just lucky if you don't get hot-boxed while you're taking a piss in the girls' bathroom.

If I have to choose between victim and aggressor, I'll pick the latter every time. My life as an innocent has long since slipped from my grasp.

They’re all smoking. Because that’s what bad kids like us do, right? “That stuff’ll kill you, you know,” Ms. Keating likes to say. Once, I heard Hael smirk and shoot back, “we’re counting on it.” He’s right. Every step closer to the grave is one step further away from this hell we call life.

Sometimes, when I feel like this, I'm certain that I'm a ghost, come from the grave for vengeance. There's no way I could be alive, not with the way I feel. Living things shouldn't be so full of misery.

Predators. That's what they look like, like predators. The thing is, I'm nobody's fucking prey.

“Am I in trouble here?” I ask Hael, turning to look at him. His gaze is on the cafeteria door, jaw tight. He moves his honey-colored eyes over to me, but he can't seem to force that cocky smile onto his face. “I thought this was part of me joining Havoc. I recall Vic using the word 'plaything'.” My own jaw is clenched when I say that. It's a cop out, I know. Me and Hael, this has nothing to do with me trying to be a good Havoc Girl and perform my duties, and everything to do with trying to piss Victor off. Apparently, I'm succeeding. “Are we not allowed to fuck each other?” “Maybe we're just not fucking each other to their specifications?” he muses, shaking his head.

“Sometimes pain is pretty, to the people who have too much of it,” he tells me, and then kisses me on the cheek. “You’re gorgeous, by the way.” Cal pulls back and heads up the stairs toward the bathroom, leaving me gaping after him and trying to figure out what that last comment just meant. Pain is pretty. And I’m made of it.

“When you’ve been lied to by everyone around you, when you have nothing else, you realize the one currency you can carry is truth. So a single word does have meaning. A promise does hold importance. And a pact is worth carrying to the grave.”