Chapter XXIV: Should Have Known Better

There was something disconcerting about the last look Josh had given me on his way to detention, but I, like a fool, shrugged it off. I was a daft idiot who thought the war was over when, really, it had just begun.

In my defense, the renewal of my friendship with Britt and the end of her relationship with Josh had given me a false sense of security. All was well in Charmaine Eilerts's universe once again—that is, except for the issue with the Savvonskis.

My parents called me approximately fifteen seconds after the final bell released me from school. Britt and I were walking down the hall, about to meet up with Dave, when my cell phone began vibrating in my jeans pocket.

Surprised, I pulled it from my pocket and looked at the screen. Mom appeared on the screen, and my stomach sank. It had been easier to ignore the inevitable when I'd had no contact with my parents, but now that I had to talk to them, it would be harder to avoid the topic.

"Hey, Mom," I said, trying to sound normal—whatever normal sounded like.

There was a pause. "Hi."

This cannot be good. "Mom? Is everything okay?" It was only after I had said it that I realized I should have kept my mouth shut.

"No, Maine," my mom said slowly, her voice sounding slightly muffled over the phone, "everything is not okay."

I swallowed. Then I asked her what was wrong although I knew the answer. My mom also knew I knew, but she expounded anyway.

"I got a call from Mrs. Savvonski today. She told me that you no longer work for them."

Rubbish. Rubbish. Rubbish. "Uh…" I trailed off, glancing at Britt nervously. Britt gave me a curious look before pushing the exit door open. We had left jail, so why did I feel like I'd just stepped into prison?

My mom's voice sounded through the phone again. "Pam also told me the reason you were fired." She stressed the word fired just to rub it in. Then, after taking a deep breath, she continued to deliver the worst of it. "According to what I heard, you and Ashton were engaged in…promiscuous activities on Sunday evening."

I nearly choked on my spit. Stopping in my tracks, I exclaimed, "Mom! We did not—"

She cut me off straight away. "Did or did you not kiss him?" I had no answer to that, but my silence was answer enough for my mom. Letting out a loud breath, she declared in her best condescending tone, "I am very disappointed in you, Charmaine."

Not this again. I tried to apologize, but I could not seem to find the right words. That was not the worst of it though. The worst was that I didn't even know what I was apologizing for. What had Ash and I done that was so wrong? Sure, maybe kissing was not the wisest thing we could have done, but wasn't fighting worse than kissing?

I knew my mom would not want to hear that, so I took another approach. "I'm sorry, okay? I should have seen it coming, but I guess I was just too naïve."

My mom scoffed. "Naïve? That's an understatement. I told you this would happen! But you wouldn't listen to me. And now here you are—jobless."

I shot Britt another look, and she smiled weakly at me. She must have figured out what this conversation was about. Sighing, I tried again with my mom. "Look, I'm sorry, Mom. I don't know what else to tell you."

She jumped on that. "Maybe you could tell me why you thought it was a good idea to kiss that loser."

Never mind the kiss. "He's not a loser!" A few students on the sidewalk gave me weird looks, but I was too intent on what my mom was saying to care.

She laughed and then said in disbelief, "He's not?" I opened my mouth to reply, but she beat me to it. "I've done my research, Charmaine, and from what I've heard, that boy is quite the loser."

I couldn't believe her. I could not believe her. "Have you talked to anyone who cares even the slightest bit about him? Because if you had, I'm sure you would not have come to that conclusion!"

"Trust me. I would have come to the exact same conclusion. Do you even know what he's done? That kid has done drugs and—"

"No! Mom!" I exclaimed in distress, bringing an anxious hand to my head. "Whoever told you that stuff clearly doesn't know him!"

"Oh, I think they know him a lot better than you think," she countered. "Besides, I was right about leaving you two alone. Why wouldn't I be right about this?"

"This is totally different, Mom! He's not a druggie, and even if he were, he isn't anymore!"

"How do you know?" she challenged me, her voice sharpening further.

"Because I know him! He's not that kind of person! Yeah, he has some issues, but who doesn't? I thought you told me to love everyone, even my enemies! I can't believe you!"

That silenced her for all of five measly seconds. "I can't believe you! Why are you defending this—this punk who got you fired because he couldn't control his hormones?"

I grit my teeth. Taking a deep breath so that I wouldn't lose it right here in front of Britt, I said in a more controlled voice, "He wasn't the one who got me fired, Mom—I got myself fired. I could have stopped him, but I didn't. Was that a failure on my part? Yes, I suppose it was, but this is not Ashton's fault!"

"No matter whose fault this is," she said, her voice turning icy, "I don't want you to ever see that boy again. Is that understood?"

My heart sank at those words. I liked Ashton. I'd never admitted it—even to myself—but I liked him more than I'd ever liked a guy before, and now my mom was telling me never to see him again.

Sure, I was a fool, and maybe this would go nowhere, but I wanted a chance. I wanted Ash to have a chance. I didn't want him to be misunderstood any longer.

"Do you understand?" my mom repeated mercilessly, and I felt the first tear roll down my cheek.

Swallowing hard and wiping the pathetic tear away, I bit down my pride and murmured, "Yeah. I understand." Before she could say anything worse, I pulled the phone from my ear and ended the call.

Britt was staring at me with wide eyes, clearly not expecting that kind of ending. I hadn't been expecting it either. I had been expecting some sort of magical words to come from my mouth that would exonerate Ash and win him favor with my mom. I had been expecting her to forgive me and move on. But that had definitely not happened. And I was feeling weaker than ever.

Wincing, I asked Britt pathetically, "Why is something always going wrong?"

She shrugged her shoulders sadly, not knowing the answer either. When she opened her arms, I stepped into them. "My mom told me to never see him again," I mumbled into her shoulder, the reality of it hitting me like a ton of bricks. "And I agreed to it."

Britt brushed her hand over my back comfortingly. Almost immediately, I felt guilty. "I'm supposed to be the one comforting you. You just broke up with Josh—and watched him turn into a beast."

We both laughed weakly at the last comment, though it wasn't all that funny. Josh really had seemed beastly. At least he had been sent where he belonged—detention. It was too bad Ash had been sent there as well.

There I went again. Thinking about Ash.

If only I could think of a way to make my mom give him a chance. All I could think of was that I'd lost so much just because of a single phone call. I had finally come to terms that I liked Ashton, and, unless I was sorely mistaken, he liked me back. But now everything was over.

Thankfully, Ash was nowhere to be found after school, so I did not run into him on the way home. David accompanied us to the park, where we spent an hour talking about random things, and then he and Britt left together.

I wasn't sure why they were together, but I figured Britt wanted him to do some explaining when they were alone. Maybe he'd tell her why he had helped her hook up with the biggest dirt bag of Central Meadow High. To be honest, I was still confused about that myself.

I had a long time to think after we split up at the park, but my mind did not dwell on Josh or Dave. It was too preoccupied brainstorming about Ash and my mom. How was I going to convince my mom that he was actually a good guy? And before then, how was I going to distance myself from him?

The job was one thing—I'd already been fired—but there was still the matter of school. He was going to be there. I was going to be there. And we shared two periods. Rubbish.

Deep in thought, I climbed the steps to the door and took out my key to unlock it. I discovered that it was already unlocked, so I assumed that I must have forgotten to lock it this morning. I easily could have done that, since I had been distracted by a lot of things today. What was a little lock on the door?

Pushing the door open, I stepped inside the house and stumbled toward the kitchen. The sun in Meadowfield, Michigan had already begun to set earlier than usual, so it was rather dark in the house. I didn't mind the dark so much when my parents were home, but a shiver passed down my spine this evening as I searched for the kitchen lights.

As I flicked the lights on, I tried to shake the feeling off, but I couldn't deny that something felt wrong. I had no idea what it was, and I tried to ignore it best I could as I opened the refrigerator door in search of food. Finding nothing of special interest, I closed the door and heaved a sigh. It wasn't that there was no food. I just seemed to lose my appetite as soon as I saw the food.

As I left the kitchen, I thought for a second that I had surely heard a creak in the tiles of another room, but I shrugged that thought off. I was overreacting—probably because Britt had taken me by surprise the other night when I'd found her crying in my house.

Just as I entered the hallway leading to the stairs, I heard a voice behind me. "Welcome home, freak." Terror seizing me, I spun around blindly. For a split second, a face resembling Josh's flashed before my eyes, and then something hard came down on my head.

Everything went black.

When I opened my eyes, I was no longer in my house. I was still surrounded by darkness, but the cold metal chair I was strapped to felt nothing like the ones my family owned. And then there was the smell, of course. This place smelled like rotten eggs and something else—something unfamiliar but equally nauseating.

As I wrinkled my nose in disgust, I became aware of the dull throbbing in my skull. It was undoubtedly from the blow I had received from whoever took me here. The memory of his face flashed before me in the darkness. And then the reality came crashing down on me.

Joshua Presley. I had been kidnapped by Joshua Presley.

My heart began to pound feverishly in my chest as I imaged all the possibilities. Was I going to be tortured? Josh had already slapped me. What was a little torture to him? Was I going to be raped? No. Josh was repulsed by me. Then was I going to be left here until I rotted? Would I vanish from existence? Would no one come looking for me?

That question had me considering another scenario, but just as the thought entered my mind, an orange light hanging from the ceiling switched on. A popping sound followed and I looked up to see that this light was hanging loosely from a hook and flickering from what I assumed was faulty connection. It was directly above my head.

A second later, I flung my gaze straight ahead and kicked myself for even looking up. Never mind the light. What about the person who had turned it on?

He was standing not ten yards away, shadows obscuring his face but not hiding his wicked smirk. Distrust for Josh was nothing new to me, but I had never even considered that he was this much of a freak. How had all of Central Meadow High been fooled by this psychopath?

I probably should have looked away, but instead I fixed a fiery glare on him. I was so done with him. With his attitude. With his behavior. With his stupid face. But even as I glared at him, his smirk widened, and he stepped into the circle of orange light.

I pressed my back rigidly against the metal chair. It felt like ice against my skin, which brought to my attention the fact that my flannel was nowhere to be seen. I found this fact rather befuddling, but now was not the time for theories—especially when Josh had drawn so close.

He leaned down to my level and smiled slowly, as if savoring my slightly frazzled reaction. I tried to refrain from shivering but failed miserably. What was this freak going to do to me?

"Cold?" he asked, already knowing the answer.

"Where's my shirt?" I demanded, trying to push my fear down.

Josh appeared more amused than anything else. "Well, it's—somewhere."

I bit my tongue to refrain from saying anything rash. I was in no position to be talking back. But I wanted to. I so wanted to.

Josh seemed to sense this, for he goaded me further. "I wonder," he said slowly, leaning back and turning to stroll in a circle around me. "I wonder where your shirt disappeared to."

I knew he meant to irritate me with the meaning of his words, but it was the grammar that got to me. "Disappeared. Don't add a to at the end."

He stared at me, not understanding a word I had just said—or just not believing it. After a long moment, he finally said, "I don't think now is the time to be correcting your captor's grammar."

Since I had already made that blunder, I threw away restraints this time and spit, "I don't care! And I think now is the perfect time to correct your grammar, you—"

I was officially a fool. Somehow it took getting slapped a second time in the face for me to understand that. And only when my stinging face was flung to the side did I realize that this guy was going to do anything he wanted.

Before I could swing my head back, his cold hands were on me. One was pressing my face back, and the other was gripping my shoulder. His hands weren't what had me screaming though. It was his tongue against my neck and the gargling laugh in the back of his throat.

Reeling, I tried to break my arms free, tip my chair back, do something, anything, but nothing worked. My arms and legs were trapped, and the chair seemed to be bolted to the floor. I was stuck under this freak that was licking me and laughing sadistically.

Is this real? Tell me it's not, I pleaded with myself, but as his tongue inched south, I knew even my peculiar mind would not dream this up. As a guttural scream worked its way from my throat, I knew that no one was going to save me now. No one except myself.

In the end, it was the scream itself that saved me. Josh seemed to find its shrill ring maddening, for he suddenly pulled back and hollered into my open mouth, "Shut up!"

I screamed even louder, to which he responded by swinging his hand hard against my face for the third time. My head fell limp, but I knew I had won for now. And somehow after he'd left, I fell into a miserable sleep once again.

I had no way of determining the time, so when I awoke, I found myself in an even more confused state. Had I been here just for a night? Or was it longer? It couldn't have been longer. So why did I feel as if I'd been in this same position forever?

Unlike the last time I was awakened, I actually had time to assess my surroundings this time. Josh had left the orange light on, but he was nowhere to be seen. As far as I was concerned, I was alone right now. So my eyes raked over my prison—over what little I could see of it. I needed to find a way of escape, but that was difficult, considering I had no idea what the nature of my prison was.

Was I underground? Perhaps. That would explain why it was perpetually dark down here. How large of a room was I in? I had no idea, but I thought I could see the outline of a door about twenty yards ahead of me in the darkness. That filled me with hope for all of five seconds, until I realized that a door wasn't much good if I could not even reach it.

Sighing at my plight, I hung my head. As I did so, my eyes landed on my tank top, and I discovered a streak of dried blood drawn across it. This bewildered me, for I could not recall receiving an injury there, nor could I feel any pain in my abdomen—save the ache from having been in the same position for who knew how long.

The blood on my tank top took back stage a second later, for I had a visitor. No, I had visitors. As soon as the door ahead of me opened, I became aware that Josh was not the only person involved in this ridiculous kidnapping. Four figures followed Josh into my large cell, and when they approached me, I made out that it was three men and one girl.

One of the men spoke into the silence, "She's awake."

Fear was not the first emotion I felt when he said it, but perhaps that was because there was another female in the room now. Somehow that made me draw the conclusion that they had not come in here to rape me. As Josh flicked on another light and my eyes fully focused on the girl herself, I felt an immediate spark of dread.

I would recognize that face anywhere. I had never met another girl with such inky black makeup or such perfectly Gothic apparel. As I reached into the recesses of my memory, I recalled her name.

Fern.

Somehow I refrained from dropping my jaw, but that did not stop me from addressing Josh in horror. "Rowlett? You're with Rowlett?"

He seemed amused by my reaction, as if he had been waiting for it. My head hurt instantly. This was almost too much to grasp. How in the world had Joshua Presley managed to associate with a gang and go on unscathed by the same rumors that had tarnished Ashton's reputation? How had Ash not known about it?

To Josh, it was all a breeze. "Of course," he told me with a slow laugh. Then, looking at his feet in what appeared to be feigned hesitation, he added, "You know, I always knew you were a dumb nerd, but I kind of thought that at least Savvonski would figure it out. But guess what? He's an idiot."

I bristled, but Josh only seemed to feed off of my reactions. Grinning, he went on. "He's such an idiot that he couldn't even tell that his 'best friend' was part of the same gang he was trying to run from. What a complete moron. Your little boyfriend—"

"Is a lot smarter than you think!" I cut him off, my eyes bleeding holes into his skull. "He was smart enough to ditch you when he did. And he was smart enough to know that Rowlett's gang is not something he should be a part of!"

Josh frowned, not liking my words. "No," he said, no longer trying to smile. "He's not smart at all. If he was, then he would've known you can't escape from Rowlett. Rowlett lets you go—you don't let yourself go. That's something even newbies around here understand." I glared furiously at him, but he seemed in a daze when he said in a loud voice, "Isn't that right, Rowlett?"

My breath caught in my throat as I heard footsteps behind me. Before I could turn my head, a large hand landed on the top of my head, seizing a fistful of my snarled hair. My head still hurt where it had been hit, and the pain was only worsened by what I assumed was Dane Rowlett's domineering hold.

But I could not even wince when I heard his low, deceptively composed voice. "What do we have here?" he asked calmly, as if he were asking for a cup of tea. I knew better.

The last time we had seen each other was the day I had jumped on his back and kicked him like some sort of wild monkey. That was not exactly the best first impression I could have made, and for once, I felt somewhat regretful. I would be fortunate if I made it out of this one alive. Before I started worrying about my life, I needed to figure out why Rowlett and Josh had orchestrated my kidnapping.

In as careful a tone as I could muster, I greeted the man whose hand was still gripping my hair. "Good morning, Rowlett."

"Evening, actually," he said in feigned cordiality.

"My mistake," I whispered.

"Yes," he breathed, stepping into view finally. "You made the mistake of underestimating me. And you made the mistake of underestimating Savvonski."

Savvonski.

The sound of his name sent a sword of ice into my stomach. Why was Rowlett mentioning him? In what way had I underestimated Ashton? What had Ash done? What was he going to do?

"So that's why," I barely whispered, finally understanding.