Page 20 of Chaos at Westbrook High

“It’s for your own good, Hailey. You don’t belong there. You never have and you never will.”

He’s not wrong, but I’m still furious with him all the same. He set me up, went out of his way to ensure everyone saw us together. Derek Kingston—my older brother and probably the most hated guy in Westbrook. Because they hate him, so everyone else hates him too. And now they’ve seen my loyalty to him, they’ll hate me by association. Which is great. Just fucking great.

“Will you stop sulking if I say I’m sorry?”

“Will you mean it?” I fire back.

“Yeah,” he says, but I’m not stupid, and he’s still just as full of shit as he was when I first met him six years ago.

I was eleven when we were introduced, sitting with our aunt Valerie in our favorite diner in Bridgeport. She used to take me on Wednesdays after school, but on Saturdays, she went without me. I used to think she was dating or meeting a friend, until one Saturday in November, she took me with her.

I remember sitting on the inside of our usual booth in the corner next to the window, slurping on a chocolate shake while Valerie tried to explain how important it was that I keep this meeting a secret.

“You can’t tell anyone. No one, Hailey. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

I nodded. “Yes.”

She nodded too, wrapping her arm around my shoulders to kiss my head. “You know the rules,” she said gently, her eyes on something in the parking lot outside. “If I tell you to run, you run to the bathroom and lock yourself inside?—”

“And I don’t come out until you tell me to,” I finished for her.

I never really understood what she was so afraid of back then, why she had all these rules for me to follow, but I knew better than to ask. Every time I did, she would get upset, sometimes even angry, so I learned to keep my questions to myself. Not because I was afraid of her, but because I didn’t like the pain it seemed to cause her.

That’s when a fourteen-year-old, dark-haired boy walked inside the diner followed by a man I’d never seen before. I assumed they were father and son at first, but I’d been wrong.

Valerie got up out of the booth, and I noticed her body lose some of its tension before she hugged the boy and held on tight. At first it seemed like he thought he was too cool to hug her back, but then he wrapped his arms around her and hid his face in her shoulder. She said something to him, and he said something back, but I couldn’t make it out from my spot at the table.

He and the man were dressed in designer clothes, and I assumed the badass Aston Martin parked outside belonged to them. I thought it was cool as hell. When I said so out loud, the man chuckled, the boy pulled back to look at me, and Valerie cocked a brow.

“Since when do you like cars? You hate my car.”

I shrugged and tipped my head at the Aston Martin. “Get one like that and I’ll like it.”

The man was rubbing his lips to hide his laugh, and Valerie rolled her eyes at him, but she was smiling and shaking her head as she sat down next to me.

The man and the boy took their seats across from us, and Valerie introduced me to them by name. Elijah Kingston and his nephew, Derek Kingston. The adults seemed to be holding their breath, like they were waiting for me and Derek to say something to each other. I didn’t know what the big deal was at the time, so I looked at Derek, and he looked at me. He had a bruise just below his left eye, and I cocked my head as I studied it.

“What happened to you?” I asked.

He smiled, but it wasn’t a very nice one. “I got jumped by a homeless guy outside. He let me go because he prefers little blonde girls.” He made a point to look me over. “He’s probably gonna snatch you up as soon as you walk outta here.”

“Derek,” the man gritted out, but I knew Derek was lying to try to scare me, and it made me snort.

“He’ll have to catch me first.”

His face changed then, and he looked at me more closely. He looked at Valerie’s features, then back to mine, then at my clothes and the chocolate shake I’d gone back to slurping on.

“You want some?” I asked. “It’s really good.”

“I’m not a little kid,” he mumbled.

When the waitress came over to take our order, he asked for a soda. Then he spent the rest of our lunch date sneaking sips of my shake when he thought Val and Elijah weren’t looking. I couldn’t stop smiling every time he did it. I liked him. I wanted him to be my friend, but he became more than that. He became my family.

“Hailey.”

The memory fades at the sound of his voice, and I find him staring at me while he taps the wheel with his thumb. We’re parked outside the coffee shop.

“I’m not dropping out of Westbrook.”

---