Tonight, I do something I never thought I’d do.
Something I promised myself I wouldn’t do, in fact.
Tonight, I sleep on the street. Okay, sleep is a little dramatic, but I’m feeling pretty melodramatic right about now. I mostly just wander around until the sun comes up.
It’s not a conscious decision more than it is just the way things are. I cannot go back home—literally and figuratively. I need to let Ry calm down, I need to process all the information that I’ve just discovered, and the buses don’t run from Pierce’s neighborhood to mine in the middle of the night.
I kick little rocks and walk in what seems like circles for the longest time until I get to this gas station at an intersection in the middle of nowhere. I can see the city lights of Vegas twinkling in the distance. Gold, pink, purple, and green swirling around and around. It seems fitting that I was born in Sin City. I wonder what my mom would have said about all this. About what became of Dad and me. About Pierce.
I take out my phone that I found tangled up in the just-fucked blankets of Pierce’s bed—it’s not my camera, but it’ll do—and capture the moment a homeless person walks out of the food mart next to the station with a sandwich in his hand and gives it to a homeless woman who is sitting on the side of the road.
The papers I found in Pierce’s envelope made no room for misunderstanding. He sat on Ryan’s information a long time and produced everything that could incriminate him. I was confused, upset, and frantic to leave. I barely made it back to Pierce’s porch to put some shoes and pants on and grab the evidence against Ryan before I left. And now I’m wondering, was Ryan right all along?
He said Pierce was playing me.
He said Pierce had an agenda.
He said I was bound to get hurt.
All of those things happened. Pierce has hurt me more than anyone else ever did before, no matter how hard he pretended to want to protect me. My heart broke under his watch.
I walk over to the bus station the minute the clock hits six and get on the first bus back home. On the way there, I think about what I might find. Will Dad and Ry even forgive me? Is there anything to forgive, anyway? And do I tell Ryan everything—about Pierce’s insane agenda against him, why on earth is Mr. James after my brother, anyway?—or simply keep it to myself and make do with the fact that Pierce doesn’t have any access to all this evidence now.
When I get back home, everyone is gone. The living room is a mess. I feel lonelier than ever.
I walk over to my bed, bury my face in the pillow, and cry.
I cry until I fall asleep.
I cry until my hatred toward myself, and Pierce, and even Dad and Ryan turns into numbness.
I cry until there are no more tears left in me.
I arrive at work in a particularly sour mood the next morning.
The fact that I’m sporting a shiner and a cut lip doesn’t help matters either. I look like I’ve been in a dogfight. I feel like it, too. The way I left things with Ryan was bad—but getting back home and seeing my bed naked of her and my office desk naked of the evidence I gathered against him for months upon months is nothing short of tragic. My whole existence, everything I have and want and is worth living for, is suddenly out of reach, and I’m contemplating doing things I shouldn’t even be thinking about.
To Ryan Anderson, mostly. But to the rest of this fucked-up place, too.
Because I won’t delude myself. Remington Stringer was a troubled girl before she got here…but she is lost and gone now because of us, too.
The first class is a blur. I don’t even bother to pretend like I care. I look ridiculous with my white dress shirt and slim black tie and those preppy blue dress pants that are supposed to make you look sophisticated. I’m anything but right now.
“What happened to your face, Mr. James?”
“I fell.”
“It’s on your arms, too.”
“Fine, I got into a fistfight with a junkie.”
“Ha-ha. Come on, what happened?”
Well, can’t say I didn’t tell the truth. First period passes, and then the second one is Remi’s. She’s not here, and I’m not surprised, but her empty chair is taunting me. I can’t wait for the hours, minutes, seconds to pass so I can rush over to her house and smooth things over. Only I’m not sure I still can.
At lunch, Headmaster Charles catches me in the hallway. I’m breezing through students—through life—about to make an exit out the door and get myself some cigarettes and a Coke. I almost forgot about my vices. For a minute there, I stopped smoking. But then she left and I drowned right back into despair.
“Mr. James, a word?”
“Perhaps even a few, if that’s what it takes to put your point across.” I smile easily to him, clasping my leather courier bag under my arm. The headmaster falls into step with me, and we both stare ahead.
“Miss Stephens’ parents called me this morning.”
It takes me a second to remember because my mind is elsewhere. Mikaela Stephens. The girl who bullies Remi. I nod, wondering where this is heading.
“Her parents found text messages about a fight that supposedly happened in your class with another student. Remington Stringer?”
No point in denying.
“Yes?”
“Were they disciplined?” I can hear the worry in his voice. The dread.
I stop by the door leading to the stairway to the street.
“They were both let off with a warning.”
“Whose decision was this? The student board?” Headmaster Charles strokes his chin in my periphery. Oh, yes. That’s the part where I should mention that in this fancy little school, people get judged by the student board. They’re like the judge, jury, and executioner around here.
“I never brought it up to the student body,” I say curtly.
“Why not?”
“Because I’m a grown-up capable of making my own decisions.”
“That’s not how things work around here.”
“That’s how things work for me.” I turn around and leave him to stand there.
“They were also concerned that there may be something inappropriate transpiring with you and Miss Stringer. They said Miss Stephens confided in them about it this morning. I don’t have to tell you how serious this allegation is, Pierce. Tell me now if there’s any truth to it.”
I’m sure their daughter fed them the only truth she knows. That Mr. James and Miss Remington have been known to stay in the classroom long after the bell has rung. Maybe she even knows that we locked the door a few times. I wasn’t exactly careful the last few times.
“There’s a little truth in every lie,” I say. And that’s the only information he’s getting out of me.
I have no time for the Stephens. I have no time for Headmaster Charles. Quite frankly, I have no time for my students either. I decide on a whim that for the first time in a long time, I’m going to do something different. Something that isn’t for anyone else but me.
I walk toward my car in the teachers’ lot, start the engine, and drive to the bad side of Vegas.
To the only place where I want to be.
To her.