The Rebel of Raleigh High (Raleigh Rebels Series Book 1) Read online

  “Hey, man. There a problem?” He folds his arms across his chest. “You didn’t seem like you wanted to talk a moment ago. Now you look like you’re about to ask me for the next dance.”

  “Tell your coach I’ll join the team,” Alex bites out.

  Amused, Jake makes a show of looking Alex up and down. “That’s not how it works, Homie. Just ’cause you’re new doesn’t mean you’re special. You gotta try out, just like everyone else.”

  A muscle pops in Alex’s jaw. The air is laden with tension, to the point where my feet feel like they’re glued to the ground. Horror courses through the highways and byways of my nervous system, making me vibrate with uneasy energy as Alex swipes a wave of his hair back out of his face, his nostrils flaring. “When?” he grinds out.

  “Coach’ll probably put you through your paces over lunch if you think you’re ready for it.”

  Alex doesn’t say anything further. He just smirks and walks away.

  6

  ALEX

  Pretending to learn guitar is a complete and utter waste of time, and playing a sport is pretty much identical to signing up for voluntary torture, but I have no other choice. There really is no way I’m joining the fucking debate team, and I have to make an effort to show Rhonda that I’m taking this shit seriously. If that means I have to strum out a few chords and bulldoze a handful of jocks on a football field, then so fucking be it.

  The apartment issue’s going to have to wait for now. I have a roof over my head, but Rhonda was right; no judge in their right mind is going to look at the trailer I call home and sign off on it as a safe, secure place for a child. I’m going to need to bust my ass to make some cash for a deposit on a better place, in a better neighborhood, but that’s not really a concern right now. The money’s there to be made if I want it. And that in itself is my main problem. Getting another job that pays as well as my position at the bar is going to be challenging to say the least.

  If only I could get paid to lie for a living, I’d be rolling in cold, hard cash by the end of the fucking week. I barely even blinked back in that bathroom when I told her I wasn’t interested in her. I sounded seriously unimpressed by the very idea that I might be into Silver, that I was laughing at the very concept of an attraction between the two of us. I managed to sound that way, even as I was fighting the urge to pick her up, wrap her legs around my waist, pin her to that vile yellow tiled wall behind her and shove my tongue down her throat.

  From the moment she dumped that bag on the desk in front of me, she’s been plaguing my thoughts, day and night. I tried to tell myself on the way to Raleigh this morning that guitar lessons were nothing but an easy way to get where I need to be with the family court, but I’m no fool. There are other reasons why I chose her…

  I saw the embarrassment creeping into her expression when I cut her down; I know I got a rise out of her. And inside, in the very pit of my stomach, that hadn’t exactly felt good. I did tell her the truth, though. I don’t want any drama, which means no romantic bullshit, no miscommunication, no stupid, childish games, and absolutely no distractions. Ben’s the only thing that matters right now, and I can’t afford to deviate from this course of action, no matter how weirdly drawn to her I feel.

  Silver.

  Who calls their kid Silver? I read about a kid named Bus Shelter in New Zealand once, so I suppose it could have been much worse, but still…

  I make a conscious effort not to speak to another living soul for the rest of the morning. I’m so accustomed to existing in a heavy, sullen silence that having to string so many sentences together the moment I stepped foot inside the building this morning has put me in a bad fucking mood, and so I button my lip and keep myself to myself. Sam Hawthorne, one of the meatheads that was hanging out with that Weaving asshole in the hallway, tries to start shit with me. As I make my way to a back-row seat in Spanish class, second period, he shoves me, standing in the way, but I hold the fucker’s gaze, making it plain what'll happen to him if he doesn't move. He deflates like a popped balloon and scuttles off to sit by the window on the other side of the room.

  After that, I wait for lunch to roll around, boiling away on a constant simmer. My best friend, Anger, has an issue with personal boundaries. It shows up uninvited nearly every day and makes a nuisance of itself, roaring in my ears, too brash, too loud, until I can’t hear anything over it. I’ve come to accept anger as a constant in life, just as I’ve accepted that the sky is blue (or rather grey, here in Washington), and that night follows day; it feels completely normal to be consumed by my own bubbling rage as I forge a path down the hallway once midday arrives, heading for the locker rooms.

  This might actually be fun. Get out onto the field. Run so hard your lungs hurt. Feel your muscles burn. Remember you’re alive.

  The track pants and the red ‘Raleigh High, Home of the Roughnecks’ t-shirt Maeve gave me fit well enough. I’d tossed them into my locker, fully intending never to use them, and yet here I am, two weeks into my Raleigh career, donning them in the hopes that I’ll be accepted onto the football team. At Bellingham, I did more than scorn the football team. I made it my own personal mission to disrupt as many of their games as possible. I flooded the field, stole the posts, spread manure from goal line to goal line, put Ipecac in the team’s Gatorade, until the principal finally began to suspect I had something to do with the repeat incidents and banned me from attending events or going within a hundred feet of the field. So now, stepping out onto Raleigh’s pristine, highly manicured field, this is all beginning to feel a little…hypocritical.

  A tall guy with a ginger mustache is yelling at a kid on the other side of the grass, getting in his face as the kid stares down into the football helmet in his hands. He has to be a freshman. Must be. He’s reedy. Small, even for a fourteen-year-old. His immature physique isn’t helped any by the fact that he looks like he’s about to cry.

  “How you’re related to your brother, I don’t fucking know. Your mom always was a little free with her affections. She spread her legs for a different dude every week when she attended Raleigh. Maybe she fucked the mailman and you, Oliver, are the unhappy byproduct. I don’t wanna see you back on this field until you’ve grown some fucking balls. You hear me? I don’t care if your brother runs this entire school. You won’t be embarrassing me by wearing that uniform until you’ve damn well earned it.” The coach glimpses me off to the right, watching the exchange, and he sets his jaw.

  I learned at a young age to assess men very quickly; when you’re passed from pillar to post as often as I was, performing an accurate threat assessment on the guy who’s supposed to be looking out for you becomes a vital skill. This man is one of the worst kinds. I read a lot on him in the first three seconds when he straightens and faces me: power hungry, because inside he feels unvalued and worthless; ex-military, was probably deployed but sent home on health grounds. Mental health, I’m guessing. Guys like him don’t accept a fifty-one-fifty lying down. He probably fought it. Railed against the decision that he was unfit for service, and then became embittered and soured against the world when they forcefully ejected him from active duty.

  He grew up without a father, which is how he inadvertently ended up here, pretending to be one to all of us poor, misguided miscreant youths. In the morning, when this harrowed, worn, rejected man gets out of bed and looks at himself in the mirror…he’s so unhappy with what he finds staring back at him that he takes it out on the world around him.

  I have met his type before, and let’s just say this: it has never ended well.

  “Alessandro Moretti. You don’t look Italian to me,” he says. There’s a large embroidered ‘Q’ on the left breast pocket of his ultra-white polo shirt. Presumably, this stands for Quentin—I already know this is the guy’s last name. It’s plastered all over the local newspaper clippings that are tacked to the notice board inside the locker room.

  “Coach Bobby Quentin leads Raleigh Roughnecks to State.”

  “Raleigh loca
l, Coach Quentin, whips Roughnecks into shape pre-spring training.”

  It all seemed pretty masturbatory. Grab a blue light and shine it on that notice board, and I’m fairly sure the whole thing’d be covered in Coach Bobby Quentin’s jizz.

  I sigh down my nose. “What does an Italian look like?” I offer. “Isn’t that the same as telling someone they don’t look American?”

  Quentin’s top lip curls up, signaling his confusion. “Don’t get smart with me, boy. You know what I mean. You’ve seen an Italian on T.V.”

  This…is just about the strangest, weirdest, dumbest…fucking…thing I’ve ever heard in my life. “So…I’m supposed to look like Tony from the Sopranos? Five foot seven? Pudgy ’round the belly? Balding? Spaghetti sauce around my mouth?” I pretend to wipe something from my lip.

  Quentin eyes me like he’s trying to figure out if I’m fucking with him or being serious. Man, the guy must have played football in high school himself. He’s definitely taken a few knocks to the head. After a long pause, his eyes narrowing further and further until they’re nothing more than slits, the coach slides his clipboard underneath his arm and points a finger at me. “I don’t appreciate your attitude, boy. And I didn’t like the Sopranos either. If you want to be a member of this football team, the sass has gotta go. Is it permanent, or is there an off switch? ’Cause if it’s permanent, you might as well walk off this field right now and don’t come back.”

  Holy shit, I’d fucking love to do it—walk off this field and never come back. But I think of Ben, stuck at that bitch’s house, waiting for me to go get him, thinking I fucking abandoned him there and just left him, and I swallow down the fire in my throat. Hard. It’s really fucking hard to do. “I’m just here to try out. Nothing more. You won’t get any trouble from me.”

  Quentin squints. Funnily enough, he looks just like James Gandolfini when he does it. “You a team guy?” he asks.

  The winning smile I send his way must dazzle the shit out of him. “Sure am.” I refrain from mentioning that Maeve’s file on me clearly states, ‘Does Not Play Well With Others’ in big, bold letters on the very first page.

  “Alright, then. Suicides. Move. And don’t you dare stop running ’til I say you can stop.”

  SILVER

  I’m sure he can’t see me, but I feel the need to duck down behind the bleachers all the same. Pathetic, really. Technically, the fact that I’m here, watching Alex try out for the football team is not my fault. I can’t help it if I just so happened to decide to eat my lunch here today…

  This should be the last place I’d want to come, really, what with this being Jacob’s territory, but the team is rarely out here during lunch. On the odd occasion Coach has them out here running drills, I make sure I’m far, far away, usually in the library, or taking refuge in my car. Today, I figured I would risk an unwelcome encounter in the hopes that I could watch what goes down with New Guy.

  I keep calling him that in my head, hoping the tactic will force some mental space between Alex and me, but so far it hasn’t been all that successful.

  I don’t even know why I care about him. Yeah, he’s attractive, but before, when I was hanging out with Kacey and the girls, I would have screwed up my nose at him, deeming him too low on the social food chain to warrant my attention. The tattoos alone would have had me hugging the opposite walls of the hallways whenever he was around, purely so the other girls wouldn’t have thought I was interested in any way. There was a lot of that kind of stuff before—me acting in particular ways, to make sure I was always seen in a particular light by Kacey and the Sirens. Mostly Kacey.

  But now…it’s almost freeing in a way, my exile from the glory of Kacey Winters’ good graces. I find that I’m learning more and more about myself every day, now that I’m no longer trying to be her. And it turns out, for better or for worse, that I’m reluctantly attracted to the hostile bastard that’s currently sprinting back and forth up and down the length of the football field.

  I unwrap the sub I made myself this morning and take a bite. I relish the burn of the hot sauce I slathered all over the sandwich, enjoying the reaction in my mouth as Coach halts Alex and sets him to linemen drills, getting him to alternate between hitting and blocking on the padded blocking sled he’s set up on the field. Alex doesn’t even break a sweat. Correction: Alex does break a sweat. A large, dark patch forms in the red material of his t-shirt, right between his shoulder blades, and I find myself transfixed by the idea that he would fall prey to such a regular, normal physical response; it feels as though he should be exempt from all mundane, everyday bodily functions.

  What I mean to say is that he makes every single challenge Coach Quentin throws his way look easy. Far too easy. He’s going to ace this tryout, and then he’s going to be on the fucking football team. Alex may have made a show of being disagreeable with Jacob this morning, but there’s no way he can join the football team and not be in Jake’s back pocket. Literally no way. Jake’s father paid for the damn college-level field Alex is standing on right now. Mr. Weaving also pays for a team nutritionist, a sport’s physiotherapist, and a masseuse for the players before especially big, critical games. Darhower would never allow anything to jeopardize that. Alex could be the best football player in the world, and he would still be booted from the team if Jake decreed it so.

  I look down, finding to my surprise that my sub is gone. I’ve eaten every last bite without registering it, as I’ve followed Alex’s form up and down the field. My cold brew coffee’s vanished, too. Should have paid more attention. The cold brew’s usually my favorite part of lunch, and now I’m just sitting here with the sour, metallic taste of unease in my mouth. Justified, it seems, when Coach Quentin reaches out to shake Alex’s hand. If I needed a sign that this was a done deal, then the handshake is it.

  Coach Quentin gives Alex several papers—probably the team practice schedule and their calendar of preliminary games—then he stalks off the field, leaving Alex standing there, staring down at the papers with a bewildered, unhappy look on his face that I find instantly confusing. He was determined to gain extra credit. Like, determined. A guy like him, on his last warning before jail? There’s a reason why he needs that extra credit, and it’s an important one. I would have thought making it onto the team would have made him happy, but the look on his face is far from it as he clenches his hand around the papers and he slowly makes his way back toward the locker rooms.

  It’s lucky that I made him put his cell number into my phone earlier in the bathroom. I’m going to need to give him the bad news. It doesn’t matter if I’m attracted to him or not: if he’s going to wind up being just another one of Jacob’s puppets, then I won’t be teaching him guitar. I doubt he’ll lose a moment’s peace over it, but I also won’t be associating myself with him again. Whatever brief acquaintanceship was forged between us during our two, equally brief encounters just fizzled out and died an irreparable death. I, Silver Parisi, will never be speaking to Alessandro Moretti again.

  7

  ALEX

  I find the piece of paper wedged inside the vents of my locker door; I almost don’t even bother to unfold and read it, but my own damned curiosity gets the better of me. It’s a flyer. An invite, really.

  ‘Scuntapalooza – Chez Leon. Friday night @ 8. BYOB!’

  Scuntapalooza? I’m not even gonna pretend to know what the fuck that means. Printed on the red paper in black ink is a crude drawing of Big Foot smoking a giant joint, with veiny, bloodshot eyes. I laugh to myself at the BYOB remark. I haven’t been introduced to a Leon yet, but he’s a fucking sad sack if he hasn’t figured out how the hell to get his hands on a keg or two at the ripe old age of seventeen. I ball up the flyer in my hand and I lob it at the trash can; the projectile arcs perfectly through the air and disappears.

  “Nice. Didn’t even touch the sides.”

  I turn toward the female voice, half expecting to find Silver standing beside me, but it isn’t her. Instead, a girl with bright, sta
rtling green eyes and skin the color of honeyed cinnamon is leaning against the locker next to mine, her head resting up against the locker door. Her hair’s a wild mass of corkscrew curls, tumbling around her face to her shoulders. First thought: you’re pretty enough. Second thought: now go the fuck away.

  She smiles broadly, expectantly, like she’s waiting for me to drop down to my knees and worship her. I’m sure guys do that a lot around her. She could have been an Egyptian Goddess in a past life. “Shouldn’t be so quick to turn down an invite like that, though,” she tells me. “They don’t come around very often.”

  “Doubt I’m missing anything.” I dump my notebook in my locker and slam the door closed, pushing away. I’m hoping she won’t follow…but she does.

  “I’m Zen, by the way.” She rolls her eyes playfully. “I know. Weird name, right? My parents are the biggest hippies.”

  “They must be really disappointed in you then.”

  She falters, irritation flashing in her cat-like eyes. “I’m sorry?”

  “Hippies don’t often bring up daughters to lust after three-hundred-dollar purses.” I point down at the black leather obscenity dangling off her arm, and she slaps a hand to a chest, feigning surprise like she just noticed the damn thing hanging there.

  “Oh, wow. Yeah, this was expensive. Thank you. You get what you pay for with products like this though, right?”

  I grind to a halt, unable to keep the incredulity from my face. I’m about to ask her how the fuck she just took my backhanded insult as a fucking compliment, when I register the way she’s preening and figure it wouldn’t be worth it. “Can I help you with something? I’m trying to get to my next allotted torture session.”