Chapter Text
Monday, October 7th
Nathan thinks he might be sick as he stalks his way into the girls’ bathroom.
It wasn’t supposed to go down like this. His plan was incredibly, stupidly simple. Drug Chloe, snap a few pictures while she’s out of it, get them back to Jefferson, and show him that he's capable of replicating the work they do together.
In hindsight, it should’ve been easy. It was not.
He pauses at the door to ensure he’s the only one inside, sneaking a glance underneath the stalls. He’s alone, but not for long. Ignoring the stench of stale piss and cleaning supplies, he makes a beeline for the sinks and digs his nails into the porcelain to stop his hands from shaking. It doesn’t help. His nerves are shot.
“It’s cool, Nathan. Don’t stress,” he says, forcing himself to take a deep breath. He swallows a gulp of air and stares at himself in the mirror. A pallid face with dark undereye circles stares back, a sight not unfamiliar to him, but one he hates nonetheless. “You’re okay, bro. Just count to three.”
Counting obsessively in his head, one-two-three, one-two-three, his eyes flit to the clock on the wall. The little hand is sneaking past four, mocking him with each revolution of its longer counterpart. She’ll be here any minute, if she’s still planning on showing up.
Instinctively, Nathan reaches into the inner pocket of his jacket for the pistol he stole from his dad's gun locker, fingers closing around the grip and feeling for the safety catch. He doesn't plan on firing it, but flashing it should Chloe decide to get pushy with him. Nothing more than an intimidation tactic, even though he'd love to bust a cap in her sorry ass.
“Don’t be scared. You own this school,” he says to the mirror, his reflection scowling. He closes his eyes and takes another deep breath, trying to remember any helpful advice that his hack of a psychiatrist gave him. “If I wanted, I could blow it up. You’re the boss.”
As if on cue, the bathroom door cracks open. A head of blue hair peeks in, turns side to side, and then enters. Nathan’s grip on the porcelain tightens, grasping it so hard that his knuckles turn white.
“So,” he snaps, looking down at the basin. “What do you want?”
“I hope you checked the perimeter, as my step-ass would say,” Chloe replies, pushing a few of the stall doors open. She looks satisfied, as though she'd expected him to wrangle up a few friends, hide them in the toilets, and have them jump her during their negotiation. Not a bad idea, honestly. “Now, let’s talk bidness.”
Nathan sneers. “I got nothing for you.”
“Wrong. You got hella cash.”
“That’s my family. Not me,” he says. It’s a half-truth. His dad gives him a monthly allowance, but it’s only a fragment of the Prescott fortune. At the end of the day, all he cares about is having enough in his account to buy weed and blow, which he usually does.
“Oh, boo-hoo. Poor little rich kid,” Chloe says, leering over him. “I know you’ve been pumpin’ drugs and shit to kids around here. I bet your respectable family would help me out if I went to them. Man, I can see the headlines now.”
“Leave them out of this, bitch,” he hisses, his voice trembling. The air feels staticky, the hair on his arms standing at attention. Stay calm. Stay calm. Inhale, count to three, exhale.
Chloe shoves at his shoulder, her eyes flaring open. “I can tell everybody Nathan Prescott is a punk ass who begs like a little girl and talks to himself—”
It’s all he needs to hear. Nathan pries his hands off the sink and reaches into the confines of his jacket, pulling out his pistol. The coolness of the metal does nothing to soothe the heat of his anger. He feels it in his chest, blinding, white-hot. “You don’t know who the fuck I am,” he seethes, leveling the gun at her head and placing his finger on the trigger, “or who you’re messing around with!”
The fear in Chloe’s eyes makes him feel better than he’d like to admit. She stumbles backward until her shoulders hit the bathroom door, arms outstretched to hold him at bay. “Where’d you get that?” she asks, breathless. “What are you doing? C’mon, put that thing down!”
Nathan closes in, pinning her against the door and pressing the pistol to her stomach. “Don’t ever tell me what to do!” he spits, punctuating his words by slamming his palm on the tile behind her. “I am so sick of people trying to control me!”
Chloe, looking frantically for a means to escape, places her hands on his chest. “You are going to get in hella more trouble for this than drugs,” she warns, and Nathan knows that she’s right, but he doesn't care. He’ll flash some money at the cops or Principal Wells and everything will be swept neatly under the rug. Just like the time he tried to steal that totem pole from the dorm lawn. Just like when he cussed out the janitor for bumping into him in the hallway (which he admittedly felt bad about later on, because Samuel is one of the lesser evils at Blackwell).
“Nobody would ever even miss your punk ass, would they?” Nathan spits. Their faces are so close that he can feel her terrified breathing coming out in short, ragged gasps against his cheek. He can see the underlying panic, the slight quiver in her lower lip. She raises her hands in a placating manner, an attempt to appease him, but he doesn’t take it. He doesn’t want to take it. He wants to see her squirm under the barrel of a loaded gun.
Somewhere behind him, glass splinters. The fire alarm blares, loud and piercing.
“No way,” he utters, lifting his head. His grip on the pistol wavers for a fraction of a second, and Chloe seizes the opportunity, throwing a good punch at his stomach. Nathan’s knees immediately give out beneath him, and he falls backward, head hitting the floor with a sickening crack. The gun is lost to him as it flies out of his grip, and for a moment, all he sees is white. It lasts until her blurry, blue figure steps closer, hovering above him. Bristling.
“Don’t ever touch me again, freak!” she shouts, mouth drawn back in a snarl as she staggers away. She turns on her heel and leaves quickly, the bathroom door slamming shut behind her, and it’s clear she’s won this battle. Not the war, though. He’ll make sure of that.
His vision pulses as he writhes around on the ground, one hand clutching his stomach and the other blindly feeling for the pistol. She’s surprisingly strong, although he should’ve realized that when she broke his lamp coming out of her state in his bedroom, apparently unaffected by how much drug he’d fed to her. He hisses when he reaches around to feel at the back of his head, pain blossoming under his fingers, and decides he’ll end her life if he’s concussed. Unless Jefferson ends it first, that is.
The thought of Jefferson sobers him up entirely. Fear surges through him as he pushes himself to his feet, and he turns to escape, but only makes it a couple of steps when he notices something white poking out from underneath his shoe. He hesitates briefly, and then bends to pick it up.
The ripped remains of what looks to be an English essay. That’s what he thinks it is, at least. The notebook paper is crumbled, torn into two halves, the writing small and childish. In the upper left-hand corner, he can barely make out the red Sharpie pen left behind by a teacher. A circled seventy-two.
Nathan snorts at the trash. His fingers open to let the paper flutter back to the floor but pause when he sees a name opposite the poor grade. He strangles it in his grip, his blood going cold.
Warren Graham
It’s so messy that Nathan has to squint to read it. He reads it once, and then a second time. A third. It is unmistakably Warren’s paper. Warren was here. His breath hitching in his throat, Nathan stuffs the paper and the pistol into his varsity. He needs to find out how much he's seen, if he's seen anything at all.
He only gets a couple of paces out the door when he slams full force into another body, causing him to stumble backward. "Move," he growls, still dazed from his spill onto the tile. His head is throbbing, a kaleidoscope of shapes and colors swimming in front of his eyes.
“Just what do you think you’re doing?”
Nathan sighs inwardly, because even with his fucked vision he can identify that voice anywhere. In front of him looms David Madsen: head of security, killer of fun, pain in the ass. In their limited time of knowing each other, Nathan can tell exactly what type of person he is. A textbook example of an ex-soldier with a hard-on for power, who enjoys lording his authority over teenagers and confiscating good weed. In other words, a dick.
“None of your business,” Nathan snaps, trying and failing to move around him. Madsen has him boxed in, his arms crossed as he assesses the situation. "Give me a fucking break, man."
“That’s ‘sir’ to you, and watch your tone,” Madsen says curtly, mustache raising with the curl of his lip. “Male students loitering around the ladies’ room is my business. Care to explain what you were doing in there? Creeping on girls?”
“There were no girls in there,” Nathan says, tensing up when he feels the gun shift around inside his jacket. “It’s above your paygrade to interrogate me. Piss off.”
“I suggest you tell me the truth before I get you expelled.”
“I suggest you hop off my tip.”
“Gentlemen, is there a problem here?”
Nathan’s head swivels. Principal Wells is standing within earshot, looking exhausted and slightly hungover. The students who frequent his office and have the balls to snoop around (much like himself) have intimate knowledge of his drinking problem. He’s seen the half-empty handles of Johnnie Walker peeking out of filing cabinets, the familiar, amber-colored Fireball shooters shoved haphazardly into his desk. As far as Nathan is concerned, everyone has a secret at Blackwell, and Wells’ is his desperation to find happiness at the bottom of a bottle. It is, perhaps, the only thing they have in common.
“I caught him leaving the girls’ toilets,” Madsen says, putting a firm hand on Nathan’s shoulder that is quickly shrugged off. “Whatever he was doing, it wasn’t any good.”
Wells sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose in exasperation. “I’m sure Mr. Prescott had good reason for being in there. Probably searching for a friend after the alarm went off. Isn’t that right?”
Nathan nods, his face expressionless as he tries to feign innocence. The corners of his mouth turn up slightly when he meets Wells’ gaze. If he were any other student, he’d be sent right to detention, doomed to two hours of sitting in a cold, sterile room and contemplating his mistakes. Being the son of the school’s largest benefactor has its perks and has acted as a very convenient safety net over the years.
“You can’t be serious,” Madsen scoffs, looking between them. He gesticulates angrily, jabbing a finger in Nathan’s direction. “You really expect me to believe—”
“Please, Mr. Madsen, let Nathan go. This is a non-emergency. And turn off that fire alarm, since that’s your job.”
Madsen’s jaw ticks, but he doesn’t protest. He shakes his head and steps aside. Nathan shoots him the meanest look he can muster as he walks by, one that he hopes says do not fuck with me or I’ll have you replaced, because he can and most certainly will. There are droves of unemployed, middle-aged lowlifes in this town, ones who are a lot less nosy than he is. Pick any random person down by the wharf and they would make a perfect Madsen 2.0, guaranteed.
He gets as far as the front doors when he hears Wells call out his name from behind, and he slows, glancing over his shoulder. “Uh-huh?” he drawls, in the same bland way he’d respond to his dad’s nagging. “What?”
“Be more mindful, please.” The crepe-like, paper-thin skin around Wells’ eyes crinkles as he looks him up and down, disapproval etched into his aging features. “I don’t want to contact your father. He has more important things to deal with.”
Nathan turns away from him again, disinterested. “Sure,” he says, although there’s a sliver of truth to it. As flippant as he is, as much as he likes to pretend it doesn’t bother him, he knows he ranks low on his dad’s list of priorities. It’s been that way for as long as he can remember. Even as a kid, a good kid, he knew his place and knew how little he mattered in the grand scheme of things. He’s almost a man now—eighteen, as of a couple months ago—and nothing has changed.
Pushing the door open with his shoulder, he slinks into the courtyard, conversation decidedly over.
Aside from the incident in the bathroom and Madsen’s attempt at screwing him over, Nathan has to admit that it’s a nice day. The sky is clear, the air crisp, the leaves on the trees turning golden with the onset of fall. It’s the kind of October candle companies try to bottle up and sell with names like Cinnamon Pumpkin Patch and Spiced Apple Chai and Maple Mahogany Whateverthefuck. It’s not the autumn he grew up with, but he’d be lying if he said there wasn’t something wonderfully cozy about it.
He misses Florida. He misses the humid summers and the mild winters, the way the heat rose off the asphalt and stained the soles of his feet black. He misses the lizards that skittered across the pavement. Julys on his dad’s yacht, Decembers in the beach house on the Keys. What he had there wasn’t perfect by any means, and maybe it’s nostalgia warping his memories, but he longs for the familiarity of it all. Florida was predictable, steady in its own way, even if his life there wasn’t.
Gray and rainy half the year, moving to Oregon wasn’t his choice. He sulked for weeks when his dad announced the decision to leave during the beginning of his fifth-grade year, citing it as a business opportunity. Interestingly, he didn’t seem thrilled about leaving either. Oregon is for hippies and liberals, he’d loudly professed over dinner one night, the setting for most of his soapbox rants. The place where dreams go to die. But the money in it was good, and it would allow them to expand the Prescott empire, and so the boxes were packed and off to Oregon they went.
He isn’t happy here. He knows this and reminds himself of it often. If he’s being perfectly honest with himself, though, he’s not sure he’d be happy anywhere.
Watching the remaining evacuating students trickle out of the main building, Nathan scans the courtyard for Warren. The lawns are populated with their classmates enjoying the nice weather, sprawled lazily in the grass or chatting in small groups. He figured he’d be hanging around his geeky friends, the ones on the same bottom rung of the social ladder, but he’s nowhere to be found. He’ll have to look harder, and that means hunting down that Max girl.
Max Caulfield. He didn’t know a thing about her until the second week of school, at which point Victoria had developed a concentrated hatred for her. From what he can glean about the situation, Max had embarrassed Victoria during their fifth period with Jefferson (something about a critique of a photo turned in for an assignment), but this recollection of events distorted over time. A few days later, Victoria was harping about Max insulting her work, or her clothes, or her family, the narrative twisted so thoroughly with self-victimization that Nathan isn’t sure exactly what happened. All he knows is that she somehow became Victoria’s latest target, and by extension, his own.
He has no personal grudge against her (not yet at least), but he’s loyal to his best friend, and that means keeping an eye on her enemies. Especially when they have information he needs, because he’s seen her milling around Warren enough to know they’re close.
He pivots and heads for the girls' dorms, where he finds Victoria seated on the front steps, flanked by friends Taylor and Courtney. She looks pretty today, her face glowing in the late afternoon as she tilts her head back and laughs. It’s a rare sight—Victoria genuinely laughing—and he debates disrupting her good mood with questions about her newest enemy, but sacrifices have to be made.
“Vic,” he calls out as he approaches, shoving his hands into the frayed lining of his pockets. His voice pulls her attention away from the conversation, and her laughter fades as she gives him a once-over.
“Hey, you,” she calls out with a smile, her glossy lips curling into a smirk. “Password?”
Nathan rolls his eyes but plays along, knowing better than to challenge her little games. “Queen Victoria reigns supreme,” he mutters familiarly. He’s been through this enough to know that any deviation would only prolong the interaction, and he doesn’t have the patience for that right now.
Victoria’s smirk widens, clearly pleased with his compliance. “Good boy,” she teases, leaning back against the steps. Taylor and Courtney exchange amused glances, but stay quiet, content to let their leader handle the conversation. “I’m thinking about changing it. I’ll let you know when I do.”
“Knowing you, it’ll be something Mark-related.”
Her cheeks go scarlet, and she leans forward to playfully swat at him while her sidekicks hold back their laughter. Her crush on Jefferson—which he finds both hilarious and horrifying—isn’t a secret. He sees it every time he walks by his classroom (Victoria practically bent over his desk, wearing one of her most revealing tops) and hears about every time her attempts to seduce him are met with polite indifference. He doesn’t have the heart to tell her that Mark Jefferson, a man twice her age, has no interest in her. The only girls he likes are the ones he can drug and photograph on the floor of their darkroom, and he’s done everything in his power to keep her from filling that role.
“Anyway,” Victoria says quickly, eager to steer the conversation away from her love life, “what’s up? You need something?”
Nathan frowns and looks away. "Looking for Max. You seen her?"
As expected, Victoria’s expression sours at the mention of her name. She scoffs and reaches up to brush a lock of hair off her forehead, the silver charm bracelet on her wrist jingling. “Max Bitchfield?” she sneers. “What do you want her for?”
Nathan forces himself to keep his composure, even as Victoria’s reaction grates on his nerves. He doesn’t have time for their petty rivalry, but he knows he needs to play this carefully. Victoria’s sharp, and if he’s not careful, she might pick up on something being off. The last thing he needs is for her to get involved and endanger herself.
“Nothing major,” he replies, shrugging. “We need to have a chat.”
Victoria purses her lips, displeased with his lack of elaboration. “She was here a few minutes ago. She asked us to move, but I wasn’t having any of her twee hipster bullshit,” she says flatly, admiring her nails. He sat with her a few days prior as she painted them Hot Hibiscus, an obnoxiously bright shade of pink. “I told her to take the back entrance instead and to go fuck herself.”
Nathan lets out a low whistle. “Feeling a little feisty today, huh?”
“You know me. I don’t do half measures.”
His mouth quirks when he thinks about how different the old Victoria was—the one he befriended freshman year. That was before they started ruling the school. Before they took over the Vortex Club and elevated it to an entirely new level of exclusivity.
She was a people-pleaser back then, still finding her footing. Something along the way changed her, because the Victoria he knows now is all bravado and sharp wit, always utilizing her arsenal of cutting remarks, always on the defense when it comes to him and other things she loves. He can’t say he misses the way she used to be, but he sometimes wonders what—or who—made her build her walls so high.
“I’ll hunt her down,” he says, watching as Victoria gives Courtney a nudge. She stands obediently, clearing a path just large enough for him to slip through their serried ranks. “Thanks.”
Victoria tips her head back to look at him with an appraising gaze. “Last room on the right,” she says, her tone stilted. “You’re really not going to tell me what’s going on?”
“I’ll text you.” He won’t. Not about this.
Victoria’s eyes narrow slightly, and for a moment, he worries that she’s going to press further. But then she gives a small, almost imperceptible nod, as if she’s made up her mind to let it go—for now. “You better,” she calls out as he heaves one of the large oak doors open, stepping inside. “Au revoir.”
The door closes behind him with a muted thud, sealing him in the quiet corridor of the girls’ dormitory. The air is thick with the faint scent of floral perfume and a lingering trace of disinfectant, a world away from the slumlike conditions of the boys’ dorms next door. Generously donated by his grandfather years back, the building bears his family name on a silver plaque outside, the letters brassy and tarnished with age. THE PRESCOTT DORMITORY. Est. 1998.
As he approaches the last room on the right, just as Victoria had instructed, Nathan hesitates. His hand hovers idly before finally rapping three times against her door, tutting at the blank slate beside it. No doodles, no silly quote. Even Kate Marsh’s WILL BANG 4 JESUS is better than nothing, although he’s confident the girl waging the campus abstinence campaign didn’t write it herself. It has the mark of Victoria all over it.
Eventually, the door creaks open, and Max stands before him, her brow furrowed. “Nathan?” she says, caught off guard by his unexpected visit. “Can I… do something for you?”
Something about the way she says it makes Nathan’s frustration flare. “Where’s your friend?” he demands, the confusion on her face only fueling his anger. “Warren. Where the hell is he?”
Max recoils slightly at this sudden burst of aggression but stands her ground, arms crossed over her chest. “Why do you want to know?” she asks defiantly. “So you and your Vortex Club goons can terrorize him?”
Nathan grunts. He doesn’t terrorize Warren, aside from an occasional shoulder check in the hallway. They’ve hardly interacted during their time at Blackwell, the two of them running in vastly different circles. Warren is a year below him, anyway, a junior. They have little to nothing in common.
“Do you think this is a game?” he says. “I asked you a question.”
“Maybe I’d answer it if you weren’t such an asshole,” she fires back, and Nathan suddenly realizes why Victoria hates her so much. Her refusal to be cowed pisses him off in a way that few things do.
“Fucking spit it out,” he seethes, the muscles in his jaw working as he tries to rein in his temper. “Or I swear to God, I’ll—”
Max huffs with exasperation, hands moving to rest on her hips. “Fine,” she snaps, cutting him off mid-threat. “He’s in the parking lot. I was just about to meet him there, but I swear, Nathan, if you—
He turns away before she can finish her sentence, hearing her snort indignantly behind him as he abandons their conversation. Storming out of the dormitory and down the steps, Victoria and her friends now missing from their spot on the stoop, he cuts back through the courtyard with renewed vigor. The end of this wild goose chase is in sight. As is Warren, who he can see leaning up against his car in the distance.
Car is a strong word for the blue hunk of junk he calls a vehicle. It’s more rust than paint, dents and scratches marking almost every inch of its surface. Nathan watches him sit back against the hood, and then stand, his hands fidgeting nervously as he waits for Max to arrive. When he lifts a palm to his mouth to check his breath, Nathan cringes. People like them are made for each other.
“Hey!” he shouts, fists balled at his side as he crosses the lot. Warren’s head snaps up, the blood rushing from his face as he debates whether he should run, but Nathan gets to him before he can decide. He grabs a handful of his shirt and twists it around his fist, yanking Warren closer with a force that makes him stumble. “What the fuck is your problem?”
“I—” Warren starts, his eyes wide with panic as he struggles to find his voice. His hands come up to grip Nathan’s wrist in a futile attempt to loosen his hold, his body leaning back against the hood again. “Nathan. Hi. I don’t—I don’t know what you’re talking about. Sorry.”
Nathan studies him for a long moment, although there’s really no need. He can tell he’s lying, his dark eyes flitting deceitfully from side to side, fear rolling off him in waves. “Like hell you don’t,” he says, reaching into his jacket and pulling out his essay. He shoves it at his chest, pinning his gawky frame against the car with the tattered paper. “C-minus, huh? That’s gotta sting for someone like you.”
Warren flinches, his hands fumbling to catch the essay before it falls to the ground. He glances down at the red-inked grade, cheeks reddening. “Not my finest work,” he mumbles. “Not everyone can coast through life like you.”
Nathan’s eyes flash with anger at the jab, and he leans in closer, his grip on his shirt tightening. “You think you’re better than me, Graham? Just because you’re some shitty little science nerd?” he snaps. “The dirt on the bottom of my shoe is worth more than your life.”
Wincing, Warren swallows hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. “I wasn’t trying to—I’m not—” he stammers. “Can you let me go?”
“Not till you tell me what you were doing in the bathroom.” When he doesn’t reply fast enough, Nathan jostles him, the bumper creaking under the force of his conviction. “Tell me what you saw.”
Warren’s eyes continue darting before finally landing on Nathan’s forehead, too nervous to look at him directly. “I saw you waving a gun at that girl,” he says, his voice lowering an octave. “So I pulled the alarm, alright? Look, you were going to kill her if I didn’t do anything. I had to—”
He saw everything, then. He could’ve sworn he checked all the stalls, but it’s possible he missed him. Chloe and her blackmail had been at the forefront of his mind. “Stay out of my way,” he hisses, his teeth gritted. “Forget everything and keep your mouth shut.”
“What if I don't?”
“I don’t think you want to fuck around and find out.”
Nathan’s grip on Warren loosens slightly at the sound of his ringtone, his phone vibrating in his back pocket. He’s almost certain it’s Victoria, nosy as ever and hungry for gossip, but he freezes as he reaches to pull it out. His real phone is tucked safely in his varsity. It’s his burner phone that’s going off.
Almost two years ago, Wells had announced that a new photography teacher would be coming to Blackwell Academy. Mark Jefferson, a socialite feted by the art world for his edgy photos of 90s Seattle, had been invited to teach his craft. He had taught at some of the most exclusive private schools in the country and would make a good addition to Blackwell’s faculty, inspiring a new generation of photographers. Photographers like Nathan, who he’d noticed right away.
A couple of months later, as he was slipping out of Jefferson’s Photography in the Digital Age class, he was told to stay after. Jefferson had asked to see his portfolio, and Nathan had handed it over with shaking hands, fully expecting to be torn apart by his critique. Instead, he had flipped through the black-and-white photos of roadkill and barren beachscapes with a strange, calculating smile.
You’ve got potential, Nathan remembers him saying. But you need guidance, someone who can help you refine this raw talent into something… extraordinary.
Extraordinary. To be remarkable. Nathan hadn’t thought such a thing was possible for him. Jefferson offered to take him under his wing, to help him sharpen his skills, to propel him into a career in photography, all in exchange for his trust and loyalty. The old, abandoned barn on his family’s property was converted into a state-of-the-art darkroom and their private lessons began, paid for by parents who believed they were investing in their son’s future. What they were really financing was the slow erosion of his autonomy.
Friday, February 24th, 2012. That was the date Jefferson had brought their first girl back to the darkroom, and the day Nathan was taught how to strip away one’s innocence with a nifty little drug. It was the day he was handed his new burner phone, which they’d use to communicate off the record about their new business: drugging girls, taking their pictures, selling the evidence. A joint venture. An art.
When he tried to back out, Jefferson promised to kill him, the threat delivered with unsettling calmness.
“Um,” Warren says, snapping Nathan back to the present. He peeks around to look at his ringing pocket, shifting anxiously from one foot to the other. “Are you going to get that?”
Inhale, exhale. Inhale-fucking-exhale. Holding another breath, Nathan releases his shirt but keeps him pinned against the bumper, their eyes locked. The phone rings and vibrates for a few more agonizing seconds before finally going silent, and only then does he step back, hands dropping to his sides. “Fuck off and stay out of my way,” he says again, softer this time. “Got it?”
Warren nods and says nothing more.
Back in the safety of his bedroom, Nathan pulls the burner out and unlocks it. It takes him a few tries with how sweaty and shaky his hands are, but it opens after he successfully punches in his birthday, the screen lighting up to reveal Jefferson’s missed call. Fingers flying, he sends a text that he hopes will save his skin.
[You, Today 4:48 PM]
srry. had 2 take care of smth
The phone buzzes twice in quick succession, his heart skipping a beat as incoming messages flood in. Anxiety gnawing at him, he taps on the screen, bracing himself for Jefferson’s response.
[Unknown, Today 4:48 PM]
I’m going to go out on a limb and assume you had something to do with the alarm going off today.
I told you to keep a low profile while you cleaned up your mess.
[You, Today 4:49 PM]
she didnt make it vry easy for me
[Unknown, Today 4:49 PM]
Did you find a way to shut her up?
Nathan sucks in a breath and takes a seat on the edge of his bed, mind racing. He’s sure Chloe won’t say anything, but the thought of her talking, of spilling everything, makes his stomach roil. Chloe is unpredictable, rebellious—the kind of person who might expose everything if pushed too far. If she does, his life is over, and not just in the metaphorical sense. Jefferson made that abundantly clear.
Thank God she was expelled. Her less-than-sterling reputation gives her no credibility. Ultimately, it’s her word against his.
[You, Today 4:50 PM]
yes
[Unknown, Today 4:51 PM]
Good. I need you to get a grip.
Tomorrow night. 9 pm. Meet me there.
[You, Today 4:51 PM]
whtvr
Nathan resists the urge to chuck the phone at the wall. Instead, he grabs a clear plastic bag from his nightstand drawer and slips the burner, and then the gun, into it. He doesn’t want to look at them. Doesn’t want to think about what he’ll be doing tomorrow night. Shoving it beneath his couch, he hopes that out of sight will mean out of mind, at least for the next twenty-four hours. Until he’s back in the darkroom again.
He's careful to avoid the glass from his broken lamp as he rises to his feet, tiny crystal-like shards littering his carpet. He accidentally stepped on a piece of broken lightbulb while getting dressed that morning and had to yank it out with tweezers, an ordeal so painful he almost texted Victoria for help. He knows he’ll have to toss it out at some point, but the thought of carrying it to the dumpsters feels overwhelming. Everything feels overwhelming.
His phone vibrates. His real phone this time.
[Victoria, Today 4:55 PM]
did you ever find your photo skank?
[Victoria, Today 4:56 PM]
UGHHH i can’t stand her. you should’ve seen how she was kissing up to mark after class. totally trying to get in his pants
i think she's trying to sway him into picking her for the contest. typical
i'm going to get in his pants AND win
Nathan lays back against his bed and sighs, holding his phone above his face. For the past four years, Jefferson has held a nationwide competition for high school students. The Everyday Heroes contest is the pinnacle of recognition for aspiring photographers, the winner flown off to San Francisco to have their work hung in a gallery. For someone like Victoria, someone who craves validation, winning would mean more than just the accolades. It would mean solidifying her place as the top student in Jefferson’s eyes. They’d be alone together for an entire weekend.
It would be a dream come true for her. For Nathan, the stuff of nightmares.
[You, Today 4:56 PM]
yh i found her. i was after her friend tho. figured shed know where he was
[Victoria, Today 4:56 PM]
who?????
[You, Today 4:56 PM]
warren
the beta cuck across the hall frm me
[Victoria, Today 4:57 PM]
idk what’s gotten into you but you have to stop hanging out with all of these weirdos
come over to my place? movie marathon tonight. legally blonde 1 & 2
He makes a face. He likes movies, his collection of limited-edition DVDs stacked neatly on his shelves a testament to that fact. He's more of an American Psycho kind of guy than a chick flick fan like she is, but he's not about to remind her of that, because he knows how she operates. These movie marathons are her way of keeping tabs on him, of making sure he doesn’t spend too much time by himself. He hates it as much as he appreciates her for it.
[You, Today 4:58 PM]
booze??
[Victoria, Today 4:58 PM]
duhhh
[You, Today 4:59 PM]
be there in 5 babe
[Victoria, Today 4:59 PM]
<3
Dropping the phone onto his chest, Nathan stares at the ceiling, trying to muster the will to head over to her place. His eyes flutter shut as he rolls onto his side, and when he eventually opens them, he finds a set looking right back. One of Rachel Amber’s missing posters, ripped one of the bulletins around school and tactfully taped over a framed photo on his desk. His memorial to her.
168 days. Almost six months. That’s how long it’s been since she went missing, since she vanished from Arcadia Bay without a trace. Except she isn’t really missing—not to him, at least. He knows exactly where she is. Dead and buried in the junkyard across town, her body hidden beneath the grime and detritus of a place where no one would think to look.
He forces himself to look away. Her smiling face stares him down, and continues to stare as he gets up and leaves.