The Merciless (3 page)

“B
oo!”

I jump at the sudden voice, sending the pen I'd been sketching with sailing to the ground. Grace leaps up from behind the wooden bench I'm sitting on and doubles over in a fit of giggles.

“You're so easy to scare,” she teases.

“Maybe you're just scary.” I pick up my pen from the ground and throw it at her. When it bounces off her shoulder, Grace raises her hands in surrender.

“Hey! I come in peace. Riley asked me to find you.”

“Oh, yeah?” Mom took Grandmother to a doctor's appointment today, so I don't have to race home right after school. All that's waiting for me are last night's leftovers. And Grace has a wicked glint in her eye. “What for?”

Grace straightens her leopard-print headband and perches on the bench next to me, staring at the basketball hoops in front of us. The outdoor basketball court is far less impressive than the football field. The concrete is all cracked and grungy, and there aren't even nets hanging from the hoops. The only other kids around the court are clichéd loiterers, sneaking cigarettes and passing around a gallon jug of generic-brand iced tea.

“We're headed to the house,” Grace says. “Want to come?” Her fingernails are painted an electric blue that looks neon against her dark skin.

“Whose house?” I ask.

“Don't get your panties in a twist. You'll see.” Grace winks. “And you'll
love
it.”

I gather my pen and sketchbook and follow Grace away from school and through row after row of perfect suburban houses with Mississippi flags hanging from their porches. The extra-high platform sandals strapped to her already long, skinny legs make Grace move like a gazelle.

“This is what I love about small towns,” she says as we walk. “Look at how safe and boring this whole neighborhood is. Back in Chicago, my dad would've called the police if I didn't come home right after school. But here?” Grace spreads her arms and spins in the street. “No one thinks we could get into trouble here. Can you taste the freedom, Sof?”

“Oh yeah,” I say. “It tastes like—”

“Red wine,” Grace interrupts. “And chocolate.”

I laugh, jogging to keep up with her long strides. “I lived in DC for a couple of months freshman year. My friends and I skipped class once—just
one time
—and my teacher thought we'd been abducted.” I decide not to mention that this was during my very brief Goth phase, and we skipped class to get fake IDs so we could see a band at a place called Club Trash. “The principal called the cops and everything.”

“Nice!” Grace says, laughing. “You move around a lot, then? Are your parents military?”

“Army.”

“Me, too,” Grace says. “My dad's a combat engineer. We moved every two years of my life until he decided I needed an ‘authentic high school experience.' Whatever that means.”

I kick a rock with my sneaker and watch it skitter over the dusty sidewalk.

“And you like it here? The whole safe-and-boring thing never gets old?”

“Not if you're creative about it,” Grace says with another wicked smile. “Honestly, I didn't expect to like it here. When we first moved, some racist assholes at school used to make fun of my hair. But then I started hanging with Riley, and she made it clear that anyone who messed with me would pay.” Grace shakes her head, like she still can't believe it. “When someone talked shit at my old school, you just kept quiet and hoped it stopped, you know?”

“Yeah,” I say. I'm instantly hit with a memory from my last school of Lila Frank's high-pitched jackal laugh. “My old school was like that, too.”

“Well, Riley doesn't stand for it. I'd walk through fire for that girl.”

“What about Alexis?” I ask.

“She's a sweetheart. Practically Riley's double, though.” Grace rolls her eyes. “It's kind of adorable, actually—you'll see.”

Grace crosses a packed-dirt lot and ducks through a pocket of trees. A patchwork quilt of land unfolds around us. It's disturbingly empty, nothing but flattened dirt and twisting paved roads, all leading nowhere. The land is flat enough that I can see across the entire development, all the way to a far stretch of bare trees that were never cleared by the bulldozers.

I follow Grace down a block of vacant land and old construction sites. Two houses stand side by side where the road dead-ends. The first is unpainted, with heavy plastic tacked up where the windows and doors should be. When the wind blows, the plastic billows and collapses.

The second could be a completed house, except for the unfinished wood peeking through streaky white paint. Grace walks up the steps like she belongs there.

“Riley's dad's company owns this whole subdivision,” she explains. “The land, the construction equipment—everything. Apparently, these houses never sold after the economy tanked, so now they just sit here taking up space. Since they technically belong to Riley's family, we borrow them from time to time.”

I grin as I follow her up the stairs. An abandoned house surrounded by empty land definitely has the potential to be not boring. “I hear other teenagers have to hang out in their bedrooms.”

“Poor teenagers,” Grace says. She hesitates on the porch. “Almost forgot. Don't mention Josh unless Riley brings him up.”

I frown, suddenly lost. “Wait, who?”

Grace pauses, her hand pressed against the door. “Josh is Riley's boyfriend. They got into this huge fight after lunch, and now Riley's all pissed at him. That's why we're doing this. Ri needed a girls' night.”

“Got it—no Josh,” I say.

Grace pushes the door open, and we make our way into the shadowy living room together. Afternoon light filters through the windows, but the cloudy blue plastic hanging over the glass keeps it dark. My eyes blur and I have to blink a few times before I can see. I hear fumbling and giggling in the darkness, then the sound of gas hissing to life, and the room fills with golden light. Alexis picks up a blue lantern and carries it over to us.

“Hey, Sof.” She slips an arm around my shoulders to pull me into a hug. The sleeves of her lacy white shift dress scratch against my neck. “Ooh, I've been dying to get my hands on your hair,” she says as she pulls away.

“Do
not
let her touch you!” Grace says. “Her idea of beauty is back-combing and Aqua Net.”

Alexis pouts. “You make me sound trashy. Not all of us can pull off the color-blind diva look you've got going on.”

“Hey, no need to take a swing at the ensemble,” Grace says. I see Alexis's point. If anyone else tried on Grace's blue sequined skirt, leather jacket, and leopard-print headband they'd look like they got dressed in the dark. But Grace looks fierce.

“Where's Riley?” I ask, turning in place. Sleeping bags and pillows are scattered across the living room, and an upside-down milk crate acts as a side table, holding a Bible and an empty wine bottle. Cutouts of boys from magazines and postcards of old European churches cover the walls, along with hundreds of pictures of Riley, Alexis, and Grace.

I pull back the corner of a poster torn from a magazine and find a photograph of Riley and Alexis as little girls with long, skinny legs and goofy bows in their hair. They're dressed identically.

“Lexie and I have been friends forever,” Riley says. I jump and whirl around—I didn't hear her come up behind me. She's barefoot and wearing a silky, kimono-style dress, her curls wild around her shoulders. It's like she got dressed up just for us. “You like our wall?”

“It's great,” I say, my eyes moving over the pictures. Robert Pattinson's face peeks out from behind photo-booth snapshots, movie tickets, and stickers. I snicker. “
What
is this?”

“Grace had this huge crush on him for, like, a day,” Alexis explains, stretching out on the floor. “But now she only has eyes for
Tom
.”

“Shut
up
,” Grace says, launching a pillow at Alexis. Alexis catches it and wedges it beneath her head.

“Ooh, who's Tom?” I ask, and Grace's cheeks redden.

“He's my boyfriend's older brother,” Riley explains. “We all met when we were, like, seven.”

Grace clears her throat.

“Excuse me,” Riley says. “Everyone except for Grace. The rest of us have been hanging at the lake since we were kids. See?”

Riley leans past me to smooth out a creased photograph of her and Alexis with two other guys all lounging in front of a huge house. It's a gray modern-looking house with steel-toned siding and gigantic floor-to-ceiling windows. Everything about the house looks sleek and intentional, from the Mercedes SUV parked out front to the perfectly trimmed leafy trees dotting the lawn and the long wooden dock artfully jutting out into a clear, still blue lake.

“This was at my family's house at Lake Whitney,” she explains.

I lean in to look at the photograph. Alexis and Riley recline on the grass, tanned and gorgeous in their skimpy bikinis, their hair dried into beachy waves around their shoulders. Sitting between them is the cute boy from the cafeteria.

“Hey, I know him,” I say, pointing to Charlie. He's wearing a damp white T-shirt over his swim trunks, and his messy hair is slicked away from his face, as if he just got out of the lake.

I turn back to Riley, but she isn't looking at Charlie. Her eyes are locked on the preppy boy next to him with a cleft chin and hair that hangs shaggily around his neck and forehead. The infamous Josh, I'm guessing.

Riley purses her lips and presses her finger over Josh's face, so I can only see his polo shirt.

“Big fight?” I ask. I know Grace told me not to mention it, but isn't that what tonight's about?

“Big enough that I either have to dump the jerk or somehow forget how pissed I am at him.” Riley crosses the room, grabbing a half-full bottle of wine from behind a rolled-up sleeping bag. She waves it at me. “Guess which I chose.”

“Forgetting by way of wine? I approve,” I say.

“You know we've been together for three years?” she says. Riley yanks the cork out of the bottle. With her sexy dress and wild curls, she makes heartache look romantic. “We used to be so in love. Like Romeo and Juliet.”

“Romeo and Juliet died at the end of that play, Ri,” Grace points out. She crouches next to the milk crate and pulls out a bag of caramel corn and a plastic jar of Nutella. “Not a great sign.”

“Whatever.” Riley lifts the wine bottle to her mouth and drinks, deep. “This is just a blip. Josh and I are forever.”

Grace hands me a spoon. “You eat it like this,” she says. She unscrews the jar and dumps the caramel corn inside, then stirs the mixture with a spoon. “It tastes like heaven. Seriously.”

I take a tentative bite. It's salty and sweet and crunchy at the same time. I dig another spoonful out of the jar. The corner of Riley's mouth hitches into a grin.

“So what's going on with you and Charlie?”

“What?” I stick another spoonful of Nutella and caramel corn in my mouth to cover my embarrassment. “There's no me and Charlie,” I say, swallowing.

“Oh please. I saw the way you undressed his photo with your eyes.” Riley collapses onto a pile of pillows and lifts the wine bottle to her mouth again. “You
want
him.”

“Does Sofia have a crush already?” Alexis asks.

“It's not a crush,” I insist, heat creeping up my neck with every word. “I just . . .like his arms.”

Alexis falls back onto the pillows, laughing, and Grace makes kissy noises at me as I hand over the spoon and Nutella.

“My, what fabulous taste you have. Charlie's a ten.” Riley smoothes her dress down over her thighs. “I could probably make that happen for you. If you wanted.”

“Make that happen?” I say. “We're not dogs. You can't throw us in a room and hope we mate.”

“Can't I?” Riley fixes those pale blue eyes on me, and I immediately realize how wrong I am. Riley clearly gets whatever she wants, no matter how insane it sounds.

“Wait a second,” Grace says. “How come I never got this offer with Tom?”

“Tom doesn't know what the hell he wants, Gray. You could do so much better. But Charlie . . . Charlie I could work with.”

Riley pushes herself to her knees and leans forward, brushing the back of her hand against my cheek. “And just look at Sofia. Isn't she completely gorgeous? She was made to have someone fall insanely in love with her.”

My skin tingles where Riley touches it. Her words spark something inside me. I picture Charlie sliding an arm around my shoulders and pulling me close. I feel the heat of his lips against mine, and my body tightens with want. My past boyfriends have always been more of the fumble-around-in-the-dark variety. There was never any talk of love.

I shake my head, suddenly embarrassed. “I'm confused—I thought Charlie was friends with Brooklyn.”

Riley frowns, staring at me over the top of the wine bottle. “Why would you think that?”

“No reason, really. He just said hi to her in the lunch line yesterday.”

Alexis's lips move as she counts the kernels of popcorn in her hand. “That boy is too nice for his own good,” she mutters.

“We all used to be friends, you know,” Riley says. “Brooklyn, too.”

“I would once again like to point out that this was BG,” Grace says. “Before Grace. Otherwise known as the Dark Ages.”

“It's also before Brooklyn started dressing like an Urban Outfitters catalog,” Riley adds, fingering the hem of her dress. “She used to be really sweet, but once we started high school, she just . . . changed.”

I think of the way Brooklyn narrowed her eyes at Riley in the cafeteria, aiming an imaginary gun at her head. “Why?”

“No one knows.” Riley spins the wine bottle with her fingertips, leaving a red ring behind on the floor. She picks it up and passes it to Alexis. “Sometimes I wonder if it's a cry for help. Like maybe God wants us to save her. But we've all tried to talk to her, and she won't listen. I think there's just too much history between us.”