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“Oh, I’m not,” she says, raising an eyebrow. “Do I need to remind you—”
“Nope.” I shake my head. “I remember.”
“So, what’s up?” she asks, looking down the empty hallway. “Did the world end and it’s just you and me now?”
“That will make repopulating extremely difficult,” I tell her.
“We’ll figure it out,” she says, tipping me a wink.
“Even if we make kids, who are they going to have sex with? You? Me? Each other? This is why the whole Adam and Eve thing—”
“Boring,” Hailey proclaims, investigating the tips of her hair for split ends. “I’ve told you before, I don’t care to have biblical literalism lessons.”
“Maybe,” I say. “But you still remember the phrase, so you were listening.”
“You’re so smart it’s annoying,” Hailey says. “Not because you’re smarter than me—you’re not, by the way. It’s annoying because you think you might be.”
“I believe that we have the same level of intelligence,” I tell her. “But you’re the cunning one.”
“You’re damn right I am,” she says, and we fist-bump. She glances at my knuckles, gaze sliding over a slash I got cutting duct tape away from the bait dogs’ muzzles, so they wouldn’t bite the fighters.
“How’s that going?” Hailey asks, nodding toward my hand.
And just like that, reality is back, staring me in the face and challenging me to be anything other than what I am. Because I’m not an alpha male sort of flirting with his best friend’s girl; I’m a coward and a pushover, an absolute pussy and a massive piece of shit.
“It’s ugly,” I say. “It’s disgusting and heinous. It’s a sin on top of being a crime, and I don’t want a goddamn thing to do with it.”
“Eh,” Hailey says, waving my words away. “That’s what Ethan said the first time I talked him into butt stuff, but a person can get used to anything.”
Her tone is light, her words right on the money—even if I know she’s just going for shock value. Hailey is flippant about everything, but her eyes give her away; the sparkle in her tone isn’t making it into her irises.
“You hate it, don’t you?” I ask, and she glances up and down the hall again.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she says, dismissing me as she reaches for her phone.
“You hate it,” I say, this time as a statement.
“You know what I don’t hate, asshole?” Hailey hisses at me, and I turn to look at her. The cloudiness in her eyes is gone now, replaced by a vibrant snapping.
“I don’t hate money,” she says, stabbing her finger into my sternum. The nail digs deep, taking some skin away when she twists it. “But you wouldn’t know fuck all about that, would you, Micah Harding? You don’t have a goddamn thought about money, because you don’t have to.”
“Hailey, whoa,” I say, grabbing her wrist and pulling it away from my chest. “I don’t—”
“I know you don’t,” she seethes, leaning into me. “Don’t have to work for your car, don’t have to pay for your phone, don’t have to hope the roof over your bed won’t collapse the next time it snows.”
I watch her carefully, chasing the emotions that cross her face.
“Don’t have to crawl into bed with the biggest asshole in school just because he’s coming into real cash someday?” I ask.
“Fuck you, Micah,” Hailey says, pulling back. But not before I see the glisten of tears. “You don’t know a goddamn thing about me.”
And maybe I don’t, I realize as she scrambles to her feet and walks off, because I know better than anyone the secret self that hides deep and doesn’t share. I might lie in bed and worry about Mom dying in a nonexistent house fire, but Hailey lies in bed predicting her possible futures, and she knows that they’re pretty fucking bleak if Ethan decides the grass is greener elsewhere.
I’d debated in the past whether Hailey had no self-respect or was just so secure that she didn’t care when Ethan openly shared the fact that he had other girls’ pics or commented on who he would—or would not—fuck right in front of her. But maybe she does care. Maybe she’s choking on hate and swallowing bile, because she doesn’t think she has a choice. She does, though, she’s Hailey fucking Wagner, and she could get any guy she wants. Hell, she could have me if it wasn’t for—
“Oh, shit,” I say, and it’s not because I just got too close to thinking about Hailey in ways that aren’t allowable, or because my thoughts just brushed up against the big bad thing I’m always trying to forget about. It’s because my eyes finally focused on the student art display, and words I’m familiar with jumped out at me.
The darkness inside
