Page 20 of Necessary Cruelty

Seven

Jake Tullyfinally works up the nerve to talk to me again while I’m hiding out in the library during lunch.

I want to be impressed with his persistence, then I remember he just moved here and doesn’t understand the forces that are set up against him. It isn’t the same thing as bravery when you’re just too stupid to realize how afraid you should be.

Ignorance is bliss, I guess.

I notice him as soon as I walk in, because usually the librarian and I are the only ones who ever come here. Deception High isn’t exactly at the forefront of technological innovations, so the computers are so ancient they might as well be bricks, and most of the books are moth-eaten or missing pages. Most students don’t even bother trying to use the limited resources and opt for a drive out to the county library.

But Jake is here. He sits at a table in the very center of the rectangular room, an iPad with an attached keyboard set up in front of him. That cements for me he has to be living on the better side of town. No one from the Gulch would dare flash a piece of tech that expensive, assuming they could get their hands on it in the first place.

The sharp division between the haves and the have-nots makes Deception what it is. Anybody who wants to study the long-term of income inequality and economic stagnation should pay us a visit. Million-dollar mansions on the Bluffs are balanced by families living exclusively on food stamps in dilapidated trailers around the Gulch. The town’s history made some of this inevitable — the children of the migrants brought in to work the mines or clean houses never climb out of the poverty trap. Social mobility is little more than a fantasy here — anybody who betters themselves does it by getting the hell out.

It’s hard to imagine what this place must look like to an outsider.

I finally choose a spot as far from Jake as I can get, close to the reference section and a large bay window letting in dreary light from the overcast sky. Setting my bag on the table, I make a point of slowly removing each item I need from my bag one by one: textbook, binder, pencil, pen, calculator.

Too bad they don’t allow pepper spray on campus.

When I finally look up, I’m not exactly surprised to see Jake hovering over the chair across from me, obviously trying to decide if he should sit down or not. I don’t help him make the decision, simply staring up at him silently as he awkwardly stands there.

No one in this world has ever made things easy for me. I don’t have a problem with paying that forward just a little bit.

“Hey,” Jake murmurs, finally taking a seat.

A sharp rapping from the main desk silences whatever he might say next. The librarian, Mrs. Markel, glares at us over a pair of bifocals. Her wrinkled lips are pursed in extreme displeasure as she brings a withered finger to her lips.

Despite the general shabbiness, this is what I love most about the school library. Silence isn’t only acceptable, but encouraged practically on pain of death. Mrs. Markel has a reputation for eating disobedient students alive and then lecturing the remains about decorum. Even the Vice Lords know better than to tempt fate by getting on her bad side.

But Jake isn’t that easily deterred. He reaches across the table and snags a page from my open binder, the ripping sound of paper echoing off the low ceiling as Mrs. Markel continues to glare.

If she ever figures out how to force choke like Darth Vader, we’re all dead.

When he catches me watching, a slight smile curls his lips as he scrawls something with his pen before shoving the paper towards me so it skids across the table.

I glance down at it, because I can’t help myself.

Will you go with me to the Founder’s Ball?

Once a year, the Cortlands open up their magnificent home to the riffraff in celebration of our town’s founding. It’s a little bit debutante ball and a whole lot of showing off for the people in town trying and failing to keep up with the first family of Deception.

It’s been years since I went to a Founder’s Ball, and I hadn’t planned on breaking that winning streak anytime soon. Zion will likely make an appearance, if just for the free booze, and stay exactly long enough to convince one of the girls from the Bluffs to slum it with him for the night before cutting out early.

Then I think about the look on Vin’s face if he saw me walking into his house, his domain, on the arm of Jake Tully. That was almost enough to make whatever came next seem worth it.

I take the paper and hunch over it, hiding what I’m writing. Jake tries to peek, and I shift my arm up to block his view.

He eagerly leans forward to read what I’ve written when I slide the paper back.

Vin would either kill you or break every tooth in that pretty smile.

That same smile widens as he reads, seeming unbothered by the specter of threat represented by Vincent Renaldo Cortland. Or maybe some mild flirtation is enough to distract him from the fact that he risks serious pain over a girl he barely knows. For a surreal moment, I wonder if Jake might be the only sane person in Deception, like Alice right after she falls through the rabbit hole into Wonderland. The rest of us are operating under some shared delusion, that a senior in high school has the power to control an entire town.

Then I remind myself of the things Vin has done, and I go right back to believing.

Jake slides the paper back, and this time the writing is larger. I wonder if that’s an unconscious signal of something.

But he isn’t your boyfriend?

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