Very Bad Things (2 page)

Finally, some of the pain and darkness that had been wrapped
around my soul fell away.

I smiled for real this time without even trying.

It felt good to be bad.

“I
never met a girl I couldn’t say goodbye to.”

–Leo
Tate

WHAT THE FUCK just happened?

One thing for sure, Little Miss Buttercup just blew my mind.
When she’d first walked up there all prim and proper, looking like she’d just
stepped out of a Gap ad, I’d expected to suffer through some boring speech
about Briarcrest Academy. But, she’d surprised me by telling us all to fuck
off. Amused, I watched the reactions of the country club audience, most with
their mouths gaping open, staring at the girl who’d just dissed the elite of
BA. Welcome to Highland Park, Texas, an affluent suburb of Dallas and home to
conservative past Presidents and white-gloved debutantes.

Nothing like my beloved Los Angeles, where I’d spent most of
my life, first as a musician and then as a businessman. Yet, the move here was
a good one. We had relatives in Dallas, a cousin or two. And supposedly, this
school was the best and that’s all I wanted for Sebastian, the chances I never
had.

I checked out the girl on stage. She wasn’t a classically
beautiful girl, or maybe just not the kind of pumped-up pretty I’m used to
seeing at Club Vita, yet there was something compelling about her that had
gotten my attention. From the moment she’d taken the stage, my eyes had
followed her. Probably because she was tall and blonde and wealthy, a prime example
of an American princess-type. I bet she was popular and the quarterback’s
girlfriend. I bet she had a pet Chihuahua she carried around in her purse. No
doubt, her parents gave her anything her heart desired. She was spoiled rotten
and didn’t know shit about the real world.

Nora Blakely was everything I avoided when it came to girls.
Her kind expected love and commitments, two things I’d run away from a long
time ago.

But still I stared at her, now focused on her pouty, sexy
mouth as it tilted up in a smile.
Fuck
. I looked around guiltily,
wondering where the hell that thought had sprung from. Bad, Leo. Buttercup was
not
sexy. A pretty piece of jail bait, definitely. And I wasn’t touching that.
Ever.

“Dude, she just said fuck,” my seventeen-year-old brother
declared, grinning. “That’s what I call entertainment. Good choice on the new
school, bro.”

I smacked the back of his head. “Language, Sebastian.”

He smirked.

We both looked back to the stage-spectacle where Buttercup
was still standing. I couldn’t seem to stop my eyes from running over her
long-as-hell legs and curvy breasts and—I made myself stop right there. Why was
I daydreaming about some school girl anyway? I knew plenty of girls my own age
who were available. It was just too damn hot in here, that’s all. You’d think
they’d have enough money to pay for better air conditioning, considering the
price tag of this place. I picked at my collar and wished I was back at Club
Vita. I wanted out of this suit and back in my jeans.

Excited, Sebastian leaned forward to get a better view,
whereas five minutes ago he’d been complaining about how bored he was. Now his
gaze has lasered in on the girl like she was his prey.

“Check her out, Leo. I mean, she’s got that smokin’ hot
librarian look going on and that attitude of hers is a total turn-on,” he said,
perusing her with a confident smile that was typical Sebastian. He was cocky,
no doubt about that. “First day of school, she’s all mine. No one can resist
the Tate charm when I crank it up.”

I scowled, not happy with the idea of Sebastian hitting on
Nora Blakely.

We looked back at the stage and saw two faculty members and
a man and woman who’d bolted up from the front row surround her. After some
heated whispering and skillful maneuvering, they moved her toward the stage
curtains. Nora seemed to be resisting their efforts, pulling and tugging to get
away from them, but it was four against one and they were winning. I wondered
what would happen to her now. Would she be denied registration or suspended
before classes even started? I felt a bit sorry for her until I considered that
in all likelihood, she was a brat who’d probably been pissed at someone and had
wanted to spout off.

I glanced at the program, and it said her mom was an anchor
woman for the show
Good
Morning, Dallas
. I flicked my eyes back
up to the stage, this time recognizing the lady from the crowd as the star of
the number one morning show in Texas. Everyone watched the show, even me. As I
sat there watching the family drama play out, the mother seemed to lose her
cool a little bit, her claw-like hands grabbing Nora’s arm, forcing her
backstage and away from the whispering crowd.

Yeah, I predicted a hefty school contribution on behalf of
the Blakely family.

I glanced down at Sebastian. “I didn’t pay for this school
so you could screw around with girls. You’re here to play football and get good
grades so you can get into a decent university. Stay away from Buttercup,” I
said, pointing my finger at him.

He chuckled. “
Buttercup?
Oh, man, do you have a
hard-on for the smartest girl at BA?” He wiggled his eyebrows.

“No, asshole. I just meant she’s got all that blonde hair…”
I drifted off, gesturing up toward the now empty stage, hoping I didn’t sound
as stupid as I thought I did.

“You’re lame, dude. And too old for her,” he told me,
shaking his head and wearing a grin.

“Shut it,
baby
brother.”

He just snickered quietly.

After the open house had resumed with several heartfelt
apologies from the headmaster, I looked for her. I don’t know why. But she
never came back to the folding chairs that had been set up in the gymnasium. We
finished getting Sebastian registered for his honor classes and received a
print out of his schedule. After talking to most of his new teachers, I met
with the football coach, Mr. Hanford, who told an animated Sebastian he’d be
starting the season as running back. I grinned at Sebastian, damn proud.

As we walked out of the gym, he turned to me and said, “Hey.
I don’t know if I ever said thank you for moving us here, but I am.” He stared
at the ground and shrugged. “You gave up a lot to be with me.”

“I didn’t give up shit,” I said but that wasn’t exactly
true. I’d given up seven years of my life, and it hadn’t always been easy.
Yeah, we’d had some rough patches after our parents had died, especially that
lean year before the insurance money had kicked in.

“I wish mom and dad were here to see you,” I said, reaching
out to scrub his hair. I often wondered how much he remembered about them. My
fear was that he’d forget them, forget what a great family we’d been. He’d only
been ten when they were murdered right outside our house.

“Hey, let’s order in a pizza tonight and maybe pull out some
old family albums? We can make fun of dad and his Hawaiian shirts,” I said,
chuckling.

He nodded and we made our way through the parking lot to my
black Escalade, the first big-ticket item I’d purchased when I sold my second
health club in California. As we reached it, I glanced over at the car parked
next to my driver’s side. Inside a dark-blue Mercedes sat Buttercup in the
backseat, her head leaning against the window. Her eyes were closed, and I
found myself wondering what color they were.

As if she sensed me, her eyes opened, and when her green
ones found mine, I swear, it felt like someone hit the pause button on the
universe, and she was all I could see. Within that suspended piece of time, my
gaze ate her up, trying to figure out who she was and why she fascinated me.
Whatever it was, I felt the crazy urge to comfort her, to smooth her hair out
of her face and tell her life would get better. I wanted to see her smile
again.
What the fuck
, I thought, shoving away unexpected feelings. Since
when did I care about some random girl—who wasn’t even legal?

Thankfully, the universe resumed when Sebastian honked the
horn at me to get in the car. I jerked out of my trance and turned away from
her, feeling disoriented. “Yeah, yeah,” I muttered at him, opening the door and
sliding in the driver’s seat. I sat there for a few seconds, not looking back
at her. Because no matter the strange pull I felt for her, I was letting it go.
That girl was a forbidden fruit I could never taste.

“What were you looking at?” Sebastian asked, his head
nudging toward her car.

I shrugged, acting like it was nothing. “Nora Blakely.”

“Damn. I wanna see her,” he said in a rush, leaning over and
straining to look out my window.

I pushed him off, maybe a bit harder than I needed to.
“Dude, ease up. She’s probably been kicked out of school. Give her a break,” I
said.

He shrugged and settled back in his seat, but not before
giving me an odd look. “You stared at her for a long time, bro. Like, for a
whole minute.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“You did,” he said, arching his brow at me.

“Huh,” I said. It hadn’t seemed that long.

He grinned. “Usually you let the girls chase you, not the
other way around.”

“I wasn’t hitting on her. I need a run, that’s all, so I can
work off some of this pent-up energy.”

“Uh-oh, here comes Mrs. Blakely,” Sebastian said, his
attention caught by the anchor woman who was marching across the parking lot,
her arms swinging from side to side. Her face appeared annoyed, and her hands
were clenched into fists.

“And she’s pissed,” I said, deciding to wait a minute to
crank the car.

The lady scanned the parking lot, her eyes seeming to skim
right over my tinted windshield. She strode over to Nora’s door, flung it open
it and went ballistic, a flood of obscenities pouring out of her mouth as Nora
slinked back further into the car. It was fucked up, seeing this pretty lady
that was on TV, waving her hands about like windmills as she let loose with
words I’d never use on Sebastian.

The way she stood there cursing at Nora made my blood
pressure shoot up. I put my hand on the door handle when Sebastian grabbed my
arm. “I know you want to rescue her, but don’t do it, bro. Don’t make it worse
for her when she gets home.”

“Fuck,” I muttered, easing back from the door. But I wasn’t
leaving until things calmed down.

Right about then, the mother shut up. She slammed Nora’s
door and got into the front passenger side, her face now a polite mask, like
she was getting ready for the cameras to start rolling. She opened up her purse
and pulled out her phone, like nothing had ever happened. I kept waiting for
her to turn around, maybe check on her daughter. She didn’t.

And I couldn’t resist glancing back at Nora, and I think . .
. I think she’d
never
stopped looking at me.

Chills raced up my spine.

Sebastian said, “It’s over. Let’s go, dude.”

I nodded, but I didn’t move. It felt wrong to leave her
here.

“Yeah,” I said, finally tearing myself away from Nora’s eyes
and starting the car. Yet, before I pulled away, something completely insane
possessed me, and I kissed my first two fingers and sent the kiss to the lonely
girl in the back of a Mercedes.

“My
secret hobbies include people watching, composing lists, and knife throwing.”

–
Nora
Blakely

AUNT PORTIA’S HEAD popped up from
behind the pastry case she was cleaning up front. “Nora, sweetie, you want a
strawberry cupcake? Or a cinnamon roll? I got plenty left over,” she sang out,
trying to tempt me as I sat at a booth inside her bakery, Portia’s Pastries.

“You trying to fatten me up?” I smiled, eyeing the distance
between us, not wanting her to see what I’d written in my journal. She would be
angry with me if she read my list.

She laughed, brushing her wispy gray hair out of her face.
“Just wanna make you happy, that’s all,” she said.

I blinked at her words.
Happiness.
I believed few
people ever achieved it.

But my Aunt Portia has, and if you watch her, like I love to
do, you would see it. Right there on her content face when she smiles or hums a
song as she works. She even has this peppy little walk, like she’s doing her
own version of the jitterbug as she crosses the floor.

I asked her once when I was around fourteen why she was
always happy. I mean, she’d never married and, for as long as I’d known her,
she’d just been my dad’s sister, the chubby lady who ran the pastry shop where
I loved to visit. She replied that happiness is simply collecting and
remembering all the good moments in your life, kinda like beads on a necklace.

The analogy struck me. That day, I worked on picturing my
own moments, trying to imagine them as these pretty glass beads I’d string onto
a gold chain. Yet, here’s the thing. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t
make those beads turn out right in my head. Because my beads were vile pieces
of plastic shit that no one would want to wear around their neck.

Because I had no happy moments.

I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the window and cringed
at the young girl looking back at me, hating the deceit and secrets I saw on
her face. Who was Nora Blakely?

Teachers and tests told me I was smart. My piano instructor
said I had talent. Judges said I was pretty. I must be likeable since the
students at BA had elected me their class president. And then there was the
packaging, carefully designed by Mother so I’d fit in with all the other Parkie
girls. She didn’t want people to know what a disappointment I was, so she
controlled it by making all my decisions for me. She insisted on my hair being
styled by Jerry Lamonte, owner of the top salon in Dallas; she demanded I wear
two-hundred-dollar knit shirts from Neiman Marcus; she even chose my
accessories and makeup. She dressed me up and paraded me around like a doll.

But no matter what she did, I was still ugly on the inside.

“Nora? Did you hear me?” Aunt Portia said, untying her
flour-covered apron and tossing it on the counter. She turned down the soft
rock radio station she’d been listening to. “I’ve been talking to you for five
minutes, and you haven’t heard a word I said.”

“Sorry. What did you say?”

“That Mila called. She’ll be here in twenty minutes,” she
said, laying her cleaning cloth next to the register and glancing around the
empty shop.

Yes!
Mila was coming. I hadn’t seen my best friend
since the night of the incident at BA.

“Okay. I’m going to the back to clean up the dishes,” Aunt
Portia sighed.

“Already did them while you were out here,” I said, feeling
pleased at her relieved face. I guess, at fifty-three, running her own business
was tough, especially when you kept bakery hours, opening at 6:00 a.m. and
closing at 6:00 p.m. “And I took the trash out to the dumpster and laid out the
pans for tomorrow’s muffins. You’re good to go home if you want. I’ll lock up
and come by later.”

She picked out a giant cinnamon roll and came over to my
table. “Pretty soon I’ll have to start paying you for all the work you do
around here,” she mused, sitting the warm bun down in front of me.

“Just pay me with cupcakes,” I said, closing my journal.
“Besides you know this place is my escape.”

She gave me a sympathetic look. “Things any better at home?”

“As well as can be expected. At least my grounding is over,”
I said, picking at my fingernails, pushing the cuticles back until it hurt,
remembering how I’d been locked in my room for five days straight, without
anyone to talk to. “Dad left for a visit to Houston so who knows when he’ll be
back. Mother is staying at the station apartment this week and probably next
week—and the next.” I glanced up at her. “Looks like I might be staying with
you for a while. Mother said it was okay, and you know I hate being alone in
that monster of a house.”

She kissed the top of my head. “You can move in with me
right now if you want.”

I smirked at her because she and I both knew Mother wanted
me living at our fancy Highland Park address. Even if she was never there, I
had to be. “If I moved out, people would talk. And then Mother would be angry
at me.”

She nodded. “Yeah, I know how she is, but let me know if
things get to be too much. Okay?” she said, giving me one last glance as she
walked back up front. After a few minutes, she went into the kitchen area, and
I knew she’d be there a while, counting down the cash register.

I turned back to my journal and opened it, looking over the
list I’d written. I wondered if these bad things would make me a happy person.
The intelligent part of me knew they wouldn’t. Not really. I didn’t deserve
happiness anyway. But after pretending for so long and holding it all inside, I
simply sought
relief
, just like I’d gotten at the open house when I’d
let those hateful words come out of my mouth. And if saying bad things to
people made me feel better, then how much better would I feel if I took it a
step further? What would it take to bring me back from the shadow I’d become?

Whatever it took to save me, I was willing to do it.

Taking my pen, I marked through some of the items, getting
it just right.

Mila knocked on the locked shop door, and I hurriedly tucked
my journal inside my backpack before I got up to let her inside the closed
shop. She came in and plopped down at the booth where we always sat, wearing a
pink-and-cream Liz Claiborne-type ensemble with matching shoes and a purse. To
complete the look, she’d pulled her straight midnight-colored hair back with a
headband. Somewhere along the way, someone had forgotten to tell Mila she was
still in high school, not a career woman. When it came time to elect class
favorites this year, there was no doubt in my mind that she would take the
title Most Likely to Be a CEO.

She smiled widely. “Finally, you’ve returned from the
asylum! Gah, I’ve tried to call you like a hundred times.”

I sat down across from her. “I was grounded in my room with
no phone. But hey, at least I got all my summer reading done, and I made Aunt
Portia a new apron,” I said lightly, glossing over how much I’d hated being
denied human interaction.

“Did they feed you bread and water?” she teased.

“Only on the first day,” I joked back.

What I didn’t say was that Mona, our housekeeper, had
brought my meals to me each day. As per my parents, this meant oatmeal or a
protein shake for breakfast, a thinly sliced turkey sandwich with a side salad
of organic greens for lunch, and dinner was either grilled chicken or wild
salmon served with precisely two servings of vegetables. I picked up the still
warm cinnamon roll Aunt Portia had given me and took a bite, inhaling the
buttery smell and savoring the sugary icing that melted on my tongue. This was
heaven.

Mila leaned in over the table. “Well, I’m glad you’re free
now because Emma Eason and her cheer crew are doing a back to school mixer, and
moi
and you are going.” She held her hand up when I opened my mouth to
interrupt her. “I know you and Emma aren’t BFFs, but the entire senior class is
invited.”

“Emma Eason slashed my tires last year, and she calls me
Nerdy Nora,” I said, arching my brows. “And let’s not forget the other names
she has for me: bee girl,
geek girl,
blonde bitch,
and my
favorite . . . Amazon girl,” I said, ticking them off on my fingers.

“You forgot brownnoser. And she started the rumor about you
and the janitor.”

“Exactly!
She’s hated me since I beat her out of
class president. Why would I go to her party?” I asked.

Mila seemed surprised at my declaration. “When she started
the rumor about you and Mr. Bronski, you just laughed it off. Everyone thought
you didn’t care.
I
thought you didn’t care.”

True, her repertoire of insults had never hurt me. After
all, I’d had other more important things to worry about, like my essay on the
merits of Walt Whitman’s nature poetry or whether Finn would be coming home for
a visit that weekend.

“You should go and break out of this serious funk you’ve
been in since Drew. You haven’t even been out on a date all summer. You need
some male meat, chica,” she said seriously.

I bit back a grin because Mila had
never
had any male
meat. She was still a virgin, and if she knew what I’d done with my body, she’d
never speak to me again.

I nodded. “You know what, I
do
want to go. There’s
something I want to tell Emma about her quarterback boyfriend. I figured it out
last year, and she deserves to know,” I said, tapping my fingers on the table,
remembering what I’d seen.

Yeah, a bad girl wouldn’t let Emma Eason run over her.

“Don’t have a clue what you’re talking about, but if it gets
you to go, then I’ll take it,” she said with a triumphant grin. “But you gotta
tell me the scoop. You’ve got this evil gleam in your eye which means you know
something on somebody.” Her gray eyes focused in on me. “Yep, you’ve been
people watching again. Tell me what you know, chica.”

I laughed for the first time in over a week. “I’ll tell you
this much: it involves her best friend April Novak,” I said, rummaging through
my backpack. I pulled out dad’s silver flask. If I wanted to get to rehab, I
better get started. I had some catching up to do.

I unscrewed the metal top and sniffed it gingerly. Mother
had let me have glasses of wine and champagne on special occasions, but I’d
never tried vodka. I poured a healthy shot into the glass of Sprite I had.

Mila’s eyes widened as she took in the flask. “Are you
insane? What is that?” she whispered, furtively looking back over her shoulder
for Aunt Portia.

“Grey Goose vodka,” I said, taking a test sip and shuddering
at the harsh aftertaste. “I stole a bottle from dad’s liquor cabinet, and
according to the Internet, this particular brand is expensive and made in
France.” I raised my glass to her. “Therefore, it must be awesome, right?” I
tossed back another big gulp, trying not to grimace.

She shook her head, and her mouth gaped open. With her Emily
Post-type personality, it wasn’t surprising that she’d never taken a drink of
alcohol.