The Bad Ones (2 page)

“Are they gone forever?”

“No, the memory card should be fine.”

“Got any other cameras like that one?”

“Nope, that was it.”

There was an awkward silence. Well, Dulcie felt awkward. Con looked completely at ease. She was beginning to wonder if anything made him uncomfortable.

“Thanks for the help,” he finally said. She shrugged.

“Your welcome. Can I ask a question?”

“Go for it.”

“Why did you set someone's car on fire?”

She thought maybe it would rattle him – her thinking he'd actually done it. But of course it didn't. He chuckled, and she was treated to a patented Masters grin. It started at one corner of his mouth and eventually moved to the opposite corner, slowly revealing perfect white teeth and a razor sharp smile. He leaned close to her, and as his lips pressed against her ear, she could've sworn the temperature dropped.

“
Because I thought it would be fun.
”

Dulcie Travers. What the fuck kind of name is Dulcie? Con had looked it up one time. It was a British name, and came from the Latin word for “sweet”.

It was very fitting for her. She had sandy brown hair, almost a super dark blonde, which she usually wore in a messy braid over one shoulder. She was on the shorter side, with a slender frame and no figure to really speak of. Her large, expressive eyes were an amazing whiskey color – almost amber, and topping it all off was a wide mouth and almost heart shaped lips that were made to smile, but rarely ever did.

She was soft spoken. Soft mannered. Soft in generally everything she did. Unobtrusive to the maximum. She slipped around unnoticed. Had become so good at it that by the time they were all upper classmen, people hadn't realized what a beauty they had in their midst. What an interesting soul.

He was obsessed with her.

Of course, her living in a trailer park on the outskirts of town worked against her, not to mention the fact her mother used to be a pro over in Charleston and her step-daddy supplied the outlying communities with most of their meth. Her older brother, Matthew Reid, was a known meth head and had already been arrested for armed robbery. Several times.

Constantine was the star quarterback. All-American, three years in a row. He had a full scholarship to Ohio State, he was homecoming king, and his father was the mayor. Maybe of a tiny little middle-of-nowhere town, but that was almost worse. In a small town, everyone knew everyone, so being mayor was a big deal. Being the son of the mayor, almost just as big a deal. Con didn't hang out with the kids from the trailer parks. He didn't hang out with chicks like Dulcie. No, Con did what Con was expected to do – he dated cheerleaders, he hung out with jocks, and he went to awesome keggers. He had lots of sex and played a lot of beer pong.

Even as he did those things and played his little part in the universe, he watched Dulcie. As she walked down the hall. As she tried to hide in the library. She called to him, and she didn't even know it. Didn't know that he understood why she worked so hard to remain obscure – because she didn't want people to see the real her. A feeling he was very familiar with, since he always kept a large part 7of himself hidden.

Maybe, just maybe, their hidden pieces matched.

Con very much wanted to see the real her.

*

Detention wasn't so bad. It meant missing practice, but Con owned the football field. Had practically built it. He could say he needed the afternoon off to go fuck the coach's daughter, and the man would probably just tell him to go easy on his arm.

Detention was held in the library, and he strolled in after the last period and immediately sat down with some friends, slapping high five, laughing and being loud. When Dulcie entered the room a couple minutes later, he didn't acknowledge her, just kept talking to his buddies. But he watched out of the corner of his eye as she disappeared down an aisle. There were study carrels in the back of the room, offering more privacy. She was probably heading to one of them.

She'd saved his ass, Con was very aware of that – as well as completely surprised. While he'd been noticing Dulcie, she'd never once seemed to pay any attention to him. But the way she'd stared at him, like she'd known him. Really
seen
him, through and through. A little scary.
A lot
exhilarating. Then she'd opened her mouth and covered for him. No hesitation, no questions asked. Well, at least not until the end.

The car that was now a burned out husk belonged to the junior varsity quarterback. A punk kid who had long been giving Con shit. Beyond a punk, the guy was a bully and also had a reputation for getting aggressive with girls at parties. He cast a bad light on the whole football team, which made coaches and teachers come down harder on them. It was already hard enough for Con to sneak off to indulge in his own wants and needs; he didn't appreciate the extra eyes on him.

If junior varsity boy didn't watch his step, he'd find more than just his car on fire.

“Masters! Got your costume planned out?”

Con snapped back to attention, dragging his eyes away from the aisle Dulcie had gone down.

“What? Oh. Yeah, I got something,” he answered his friend.

“What is it?”

“You know I can't tell you.”

“Just a hint, man.”

Halloween was only a couple weeks away. The holiday was a big deal in Fuller. The high school went all out, putting on a carnival and then having a large masquerade ball. People went nuts for it, traveling into Huntington and Charleston to get costumes, or having them handmade sometimes. Con always kept his outfit a secret.

“Okay, a hint,” he started, and slid out of his seat. “It's something historical. In fact, I gotta look something up for it.”

The teacher who was presiding over detention was sitting behind the check out counter, reading a book. He glanced at Con once, then nodded and went back to his novel.

She was hunched over in front of her carrel, a pair of large headphones covering her ears. Con stood behind her, his hands in his pockets, and he just watched her. Her right hand was moving rapidly, brushing back and forth, and it took him a second to realize she must have been sketching something. She was known for being quite the artist; Con was very familiar with the sketchbook she carried everywhere.

He moved up behind her, close enough so he could hear the music trickling out from her headphones. She had a smell like clean linen and it suited her. He would've bet money that she was a virgin. Wondered if she'd ever even kissed a boy.

Wondered if she'd been waiting for him.

He couldn't get a good view over her shoulder, so he began moving around the carrels. When he got to hers, she still hadn't noticed his presence, so he tilted his head to the side, trying to get a good angle on her drawing.

He couldn't quite tell what it was, at first. She was drawing with a pencil and dark shading covered the top of the sketchbook paper. In fact, it covered most of it, though it lightened at the center of the page. There, she'd sketched out a figure. An exaggerated image of a man with impossibly long legs, giving him an eerie, skeletal look. His shoulders were broad, coming to razor sharp points. He was extending an arm down, and like the legs, the appendage was ridiculously elongated, ending in sharp, pointy fingers. They were all hooked, like he was about to snatch something.

Just under the hand was what appeared to be a little girl. She was small and wearing a dress with a hooded cloak, and immediately Little Red Riding Hood came to mind, though there were no colors. The picture was haunting in its nature. A shadowy figure with a claw for a hand, reaching out of the blackness to snatch away an innocent little girl. Very dark.

But as Con looked closer, he noticed other small details about the picture. The hood of the cloak hung down in front of the girl's face, hiding her eyes and nose in shadows. Her mouth was visible, though, and upon closer inspection, it almost looked like she had fangs. Tiny little fangs, biting over her bottom lip.

And the shadow man. There was more to him, too. He was completely shaded in, there was barely any detail to his form. But his thin waist and broad shoulders seemed familiar. Then Con saw it. It was barely noticeable, but on the chest of the figure, there were two letters. They were barely bolder than the shading surrounding them, but they were there. A jagged F, and a jagged H.

F.H.

Fuller High.

He glanced down at himself. He was wearing his letterman jacket, and on the left side of the coat was a patch – a football, with a very clear “F.H.” on it in big, bold letters. They rested in the exact same spot on his chest as they did on the man in Dulcie's sketch.

Very intuitive. And if that's me, are you the little girl?

“Nice,” he said in a loud voice.

Dulcie shrieked and jumped in her seat, the pencil flinging out of her hand. She glanced up at him before slamming her sketchbook shut.

“Jesus, you gave me a heart attack!” she hissed, pulling her headphones away and letting them rest around her neck.

“I've been here for a while,” he commented, leaning his forearms over the back of the carrel. He watched as her face lost some of its color. She cleared her throat.

“You have? I didn't even notice you,” she replied.

“Music must be too loud.”

He stared at her. He could tell it made her uncomfortable. Those amber eyes stayed locked on his for a moment, then she licked her lips and looked away. Shifted in her seat. Licked her lips again. He watched as her fingers clenched and unclenched around the edges of her notebook, and he smiled.

“Did you need something?” she finally asked.

“Is that me?” he returned her question with one of his own.

“What?”

She licked her lips again. He wondered if she had any idea how sexy her mouth was, or how much time boys probably spent thinking about it.

“Your drawing. It's me, right?” he asked again, and leaned forward enough so he could tap a finger on top of her sketchbook.

The color that had drained away came rushing back to her face, and the tops of her cheekbones turned a pale shade of pink. She slid her book further away from him, almost into her lap.

“Why would you think that?”

“Because it looks like me,” he pointed out. She frowned.

“It looks nothing like you.”

“Give it to me.”

Con held out his hand, and was honestly a little shocked when she immediately complied. She looked surprised at herself, too, but couldn't do anything when he took the book from her. She stared, wide eyed, as he walked back around the carrels while flipping through pages till he found the one she'd been working on.

“Shouldn't you be studying, or something?” she suggested when he came to a stop next to her. He snorted and leaned back against a chair.

“Shouldn't
you?
”

“
I am
– I wasn't lying, I have an art project due at the end of the semester,” she was quick to respond, her voice snide. He smiled. She had a backbone, it just seemed to be buried. It only came out when provoked.

“Gotcha. So tell me something,” he sighed, turning the book around so the picture faced her. “Why am
I
in your art project?”

“It's not you,” she denied it, but she wouldn't look at the picture.

“It's definitely me.”

“Why would you think that? It's a shadow, there's no face. No features,” she argued. Con turned it again so he could look at it.

“No. But still. Those shoulders, that hand,” he mumbled, smoothing his fingertips over her pencil strokes. It almost felt like he was touching
her,
and he took a deep breath through his nose.

“You think you look like that?” she asked, her voice soft. He glanced at her, then back at the picture. At the little girl. Then back at Dulcie. She was wearing a red plaid shirt.

“Sometimes. Yeah, sometimes I think I do. And this,” he traced a finger over the little girl. “This is you, isn't it?”

There was a long silence and he finally looked at her again. She was hunched over in her seat, her hands together and pressed between her legs. She looked small, almost vulnerable. But her eyes were wide and her mouth was set in a firm line. She wasn't intimidated by him. Nervous, maybe. But not scared. No, she was something else, entirely.

“Sometimes, I think it is,” she whispered, mimicking his own response.

Con did not want to be in school at that moment. He wanted to grab her by the arm and drag her out of the building. Take her into the woods and tear her apart. Become one with her, consume her. Find out what was wrong with him, and see if maybe she could cure him. Or even better –
maybe find out she was the same
.

“Yo, Masters, you slummin' it back here?”

Again, the spell was broken. Con glanced up to see his friends come around the end of an aisle. He smiled and stood upright. Dulcie hunched over even further and looked like she was thinking of making a run for it.

“Jesus, is that Matt Reid's sister? You scoring some drugs, Masters?” another friend joked.

“Nah, I told you. I was doing research for my Halloween costume. What do you guys think?” he asked, flipping her sketchbook around so they could all take in the picture.

Dulcie's gasp was audible and she instantly reached for the book, but Con lurched forward, moving away from the carrels. The other guys crowded around, looking over the drawing.

“This is what you draw? You're a twisted chick,” one guy commented.

“I don't get it. Why doesn't he have a face?”

“Who's got time for picture books? Let's get the fuck out of here.”

Everyone leapt on the last comment and in the moment of distraction, Dulcie yanked the book out of Con's hands. The she stood up abruptly, her chair coming out so fast, he needed to jump out of its way. She began shoving things into her messenger bag while his friends filed out a back door.

“You know,” she began, her voice low. “Just because everyone around you acts like an asshole, doesn't mean you have to, too.”