Chapter Four Barbarians and Librarians

CHAPTER FOUR BARBARIANS AND LIbrARIANS

‘This is literally the scariest thing I’ve ever had to do.’ Millie slammed her locker shut, and the clang of metal reverberated inside my eardrums. She hitched her bag on to her back and expelled a dramatic breath. ‘Seriously, Soph. I don’t know why I agreed to do this. I can barely live with the anxiety.’

‘There, there, Millicent.’ I patted her on the shoulder. ‘I’m sure you’ll rise to the occasion.’

She clenched her eyes shut. ‘That’s easy for you to say, you don’t have to deal with all this horrible pressure .’

A part of me wanted to burst out laughing – a horrible, screeching, humourless laugh. If only she knew how close I was to committing the most soul-changing act in the world. If only she knew how ragged my soul was now, how much time I spent replaying all the ways the Marinos had stung me, all the ways I wanted to hurt them. As far as she was concerned, I was just lying low at the Falcone compound. If she really knew what I was going to trade for their acceptance, she’d have my head on a plate.

‘I have to organize an entire school dance,’ Millie wailed. ‘Can you even imagine that kind of stress?’

I snorted, trying to grasp on to the hint of amusement and not the thick, cloying dread that had taken hold of my insides since yesterday, since the sight of my mother’s car burning on the threshold to the Falcone underworld started haunting my every waking thought.

‘What was I thinking? I barely have a month to pull this whole thing off and no one has come up with any good theme ideas. I am working with a pack of idiots .’

‘You’ll be fine. I have full faith in you.’ I linked arms with her as we made our way to English class, pushing my own worries down, down, down. School was for the old Sophie. Not the new one. Not the real one.

We took our seats at the back of the classroom. I slumped into my chair and kept my head down, but I could still feel the gazes drilling into the side of my head, the whispers scuttling around the room like spiders.

She never smiles any more.

I heard it was her uncle who set fire to the place and now they can’t find him anywhere.

I heard she set the fire. She’s a psychopath just like her dad.

If I had my way I would have dropped out of school the day I showed up on the Falcones’ doorstep, but they were adamant about having me continue my studies to retain ‘some level of normality’ in my life, and Millie… well, I had made her a promise. We were going to do senior year together, and only a bad friend would break such a big promise. I was determined to be a good friend. So that meant essays and calculus and dance planning and football games and the slow creeping doom of a future I wasn’t sure I had any more.

Millie ripped a page out of her notebook and began furiously scribbling on it as Mr Simmons, our English teacher, swept into the room. He was dressed entirely in tweed, like he had just tumbled out of the early 1900s and couldn’t quite figure out where he was.

‘What are you doing?’ I tried to ignore Erin Reyes, who was one desk over and leering at me. I had already been a source of amusement to her, but now I had graduated to the shelf of ‘tragic’, and that meant she wanted to stare at me at least twice as much. Without looking at her, I rubbed my cheek with my middle finger. She muttered something under her breath and I let the satisfaction paint the smile across my face.

‘For your next assignment, I want you to pick a piece of writing that you can identify with on a deep emotional level, and explain why,’ Simmons began cheerfully. ‘So with that in mind, today we are going to dive into some poetry.’

I’d rather dive into a volcano.

Millie passed me the piece of paper. ‘I don’t have time to dive into anything,’ she whispered. ‘We’re picking a dance theme.’

‘Who is?’ I unfolded the paper.

‘Us,’ she hissed. ‘By the time this class is over, we’ll have nailed it.’

I scanned the list of possibilities. Pimps and Pirates, Heroes and Villains, Childhood Cartoons, Barbarians and Librarians.

‘That last one is you just rhyming random stuff,’ I felt compelled to point out. ‘It makes no sense.’

‘Shhhhut up.’

At the bottom of the page she had written and then crossed out, Sexy Fruit? I side-glanced at her. ‘Permission to have absolutely nothing to do with this at any point ever at all?’

‘Permission denied.’ Millie slid a glitter pen on to my desk. ‘Now get creative, Gracewell.’

I glanced warily at the piece of paper. Old Sophie would help with this. Old Sophie was the friend Millie deserved. School was for her. I swallowed my feelings down, and got to work.

What about balloons? People love balloons.

I slipped the note to Millie and watched her face contort. She scribbled back.

Consider me offended by this first attempt.

Mars? Mars is topical.

Against all possible odds, your suggestions have actually gotten worse.

This is why I’m not on the dance committee.

If you were, I’d have to fire you immediately.

What about Under the Sea?

Sophie!! We’re not going to a five-year-old’s birthday party!

I wish we were. At least there’d be cake.

You don’t even like children. Remember that time you tried to shake a baby’s hand?

You’re underestimating how much I love cake. And I was just trying to be cordial.

By the end of class, I had twenty-nine rejected dance themes under my belt.

Millie got to her feet. ‘Well, that was a bust. I can’t believe I thought you’d be good at that.’

‘To be honest, neither can I. I mean, as much as I’d like to, I can’t just masquerade around here like someone who’s expec—’

‘Sophie!’ Millie’s eyes looked like they might fall right out of her head. ‘You’re a genius ! I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before, but of course it makes total sense, especially with it being around Halloween!’ She raised her hand above us, unveiling a picture only she could see. ‘Sophie, I give you… Cedar Hill High’s Masquerade Ball. Classy, sexy, mysterious…’

‘Masks.’ I could almost taste the irony. ‘You want us to wear masks.’

A memory undusted itself deep in the corner of my mind. The first time I met Valentino at the old Priestly mansion in Cedar Hill. The mask he wore then. The masks he said we all wore for fear of the alternative – being our true selves, risking being rejected for who we are deep in our core, for what we really desire. Even now, I was pretending to my best friend. I was pretending to be happy, I was pretending to get better. Inside, I was twisted and raw.

I was already wearing a mask.

Millie was jumping up and down like an excited puppy and pulling me back into the hallway, where people spread out from me in purposeful arcs, as though I might cry if they brushed against my shoulder, or curse them if they looked me in the eye.

‘At least if we have to wear masks, people might start treating me like a normal person again.’

‘Bah!’ Millie twirled into her locker, throwing me a look over her shoulder as she fiddled with the combination. ‘Normal is boring. Weird is where it’s at.’

I tried to smile at her but this time it wobbled. I was conscious of where I was going next. Of which Falcone might be outside waiting to collect me. I was brushing off the old Sophie, and stepping outside, back to my new life, where murder and betrayal swirled around me like thunderclouds.

‘At least it’s Friday.’

‘What?’ I blinked her back into focus.

‘You’re looking very pensive and sad,’ Millie pointed out. ‘I thought maybe you’d forgotten it was Friday. You have all this extra time to make out with Luca now.’ She started making elaborate kissing noises.

‘Oh my God, shut up!’ I swatted her in the arm. I glanced over my shoulder, fearful that a rogue Falcone might be hiding inside a locker, or that Nic might be stuck to the ceiling. ‘That’s a secret. A huge secret.’

Millie wiggled her eyebrows.

‘He hasn’t kissed me since I moved in. He’s barely even spoken to me.’ He’s too busy trying to keep me as far away from him as possible, as far away from everything it really means to be a Falcone. I tried to pretend I didn’t care, but a big part of me couldn’t shake off the feeling of his arms around me, of his lips on mine, of how comforted he had made me feel. How the badness hadn’t seemed so bad when we were facing it together. But now that I was living at Evelina , things were different: it was like there was a pane of glass between us.

Everything, according to Luca, was temporary.

Temporary.

The word burnt inside me.

‘Well, he did make his entire family offer you sanctuary despite the fact that you’re… you know…’

‘A Marino,’ I supplied. ‘It’s not a curse. You can say it.’

‘Yeah, well, my point is he stuck his neck out for you, and from what I know of him, he doesn’t really seem like the type to do something like that so lightly. Maybe he’s biding his time… or,’ she raised her finger, ‘maybe he’s scared of something… or someone. It’s probably his twin. The boss-man. Old blue-eyes-creepy-smile. What’s his name again?’

‘You know his name,’ I said. ‘And can you keep your voice down, please? I’ve taken a vow of secrecy and anyone could be listening to you right now.’

Millie rolled her eyes.

‘And no, I doubt Valentino would be thrilled at the idea of me making out with his brother. Especially after everything that happened with Nic.’

‘You know,’ said Millie who was now narrowing her eyes, ‘for someone with such a romantic name, he’s a real killjoy, isn’t he? He’s all, Ooh look at me, I’m sensitive and kind and I have a beautiful long name and pretty eyes, and then BAM! Psyche! I’m going to shoot you. You know what I call that, Soph? I call that false advertising, and I’m pretty sure it’s illegal.’

Dom was sitting in the driver’s seat outside school, so I made sure to climb into the back of the SUV.

‘Do you really have to be so childish, Marino?’ he asked. ‘I’m not going to bite you.’

‘I just don’t want to get any of your hair gel on me. It’s impossible to wash out.’

‘Trust me, this is not what I want to be doing with my afternoons either.’

‘I told you I can make my own way back.’

Dom snorted. ‘Until you prove your loyalty, Valentino is not going to let you swan around Chicago unwatched. For all we know you could be passing intel back to Bitch Marino and her crew of idiots.’

‘After she blew up my mother’s car and nearly killed me?’ I said. ‘Even you couldn’t possibly believe that.’

He shrugged, eyes forward. ‘I don’t know what to believe any more.’ Him and me both. ‘How’s your hot friend doing? I haven’t seen her in a while.’

‘That’s probably because she still hates you.’

He side-glanced at me, a smirk twisting on his lips. ‘Good. I like a challenge.’

I shifted forwards so that my fingers trailed the side of his headrest. I tapped them along the leather and studied the silver scar that swiped across his eye. ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but if you and Millie were the last two people on Earth and the entire future of the human race depended on you two hooking up, she would not even graze you with her pinky finger because she is so deeply, deeply repulsed by your general existence, not to mention your complete selfish disregard for women in general. She would see the world shrivel up and die rather than populate it with any tiny versions of you and your general shittiness.’

He turned his attention to the road. ‘How could I possibly not take that offensively?’

I shrugged.

He matched my nonchalance. ‘That doesn’t offend me as much as you might think it does, Marino.’

I flopped backwards, as the trees in Cedar Hill blurred by me in streaks of autumnal oranges and browns. My thoughts drifted to my old neighbourhood, to my mother’s things still locked up in my house. It all felt so unfinished. ‘Well, that’s because you’re an asshole.’

‘And when you’re pointing a smoking gun at some guy’s corpse and screwing over every last bit of your Marino loyalty, what will that make you?’

With my gaze still on my old town and the graveyard it had become, I said, ‘I suppose that will make me a Falcone.’