Pretty Reckless: A Reverse Grumpy/Sunshine Stepbrother Romance (All Saints High Book 1)

You

Make me

Want to grow

Even though you act so small

I want to put you in my pocket and save you from yourself

Penn

“Yo, Penn, heard your balls are softer than Tom Brady’s. Maybe you could use them as stress relievers.”

Some tool from All Saints High burps behind me, crushing an empty bottle of Gatorade in his fist and throwing it in my team’s direction. We’re standing in the tunnel leading to their football field because All Saints High has a fucking tunnel like it’s the NFL. Their entire facility is top-notch and cost the parents a pretty penny. Yet the locker rooms for our use, the guest team, are closed due to flooding (read: Gus being his usual dickhead self). So we’re in one tunnel. Together.

An All Saints player faints like a bitch—they mumble it’s too hot in here, but I bet his lady corset is probably too fucking tight—and both our coaches hurry to get him to an ambulance and find a replacement.

It’s the first game of the season, and it’s a fucking shitshow before we even get on the field.

We haven’t lost to All Saints High in five years. Let that shit sink in for a second.

Five. Fucking. Years.

Coach Higgins talked to the local news yesterday. He said if we concentrate, we have this in the bag. To our faces, though, Coach is anything but optimistic. He gives us less credit than he’d give a bunch of fainting goats in football uniforms. Which is total bullshit, seeing as we’re number one in the state (ASH is number two—commence eye roll).

Coach also says I should keep my head cold and my legs warm and not vice versa. He knows ASH has mastered the form of trash talking, but other than Knight, their sophomore quarterback, their defense is nonexistent, and their plays are pretty predictable. Coming to Gus to mend shit wasn’t my plan, but I did it because Higgins suggested we put an end to the rivalry off the field. Only I didn’t count on Gus bringing Skull Eyes with him.

I haven’t spoken to her since the kiss in the locker room yesterday.

We passed each other in the hallway, avoided eye contact at dinner, and then ignored each other while doing homework at the kitchen table, where Bailey broke a record of talking about absolutely nothing for two hours straight.

But Daria stood up for me against Prichard—something no one else has ever done—and at this point, I know she talks shit to cover her good deeds, so I was unfazed by her excuse for why it happened. She’s a little pathetic, though, what with the way she thinks I have a girlfriend and still lets me have my way with her. Then again, rich, spoiled girls are self-indulgent. Why shouldn’t I take advantage of that?

I watch Daria on the field, doing her number with the cheer squad. Her little blue and black outfit barely covers her tits and crotch, and I know I’m not the only one who notices. It’s like looking at a scalloped picture, frayed at the edges. Everything blends in the background, and she stands out.

Las Juntas colors are red and white, so it’s easy to see that there’s less than zero attendance of our parents and friends on the bleachers. Todos Santos, on the other hand? Every second shop closes, hanging the same sign on the display windows:

Closed: Gone to the game

(You should, too. Go, Saints!)

Most people on our side of San Diego roll onto their busy night shifts on Friday nights. Hard work, however, is a concept most Todos Santos folks seem to be allergic to.

I look up into the bleachers and spot Jaime, Mel, and Bailey. Sitting next to their neighborhood friends, they’re wearing All Saints High blue caps and burgundy shirts. The shirts are inside out so nobody knows what’s on the other side. But I do. I know because they’re my shirts. With my number—22.

“Sylvia and Penn, always come in twos.”

The All Saints version is a little less endearing. They call me Double Deuce—Twice the shit.

Last night, Mel took me aside and told me that she has people looking into Via’s whereabouts. She asked me if we have any relatives she should check with. I told her I have a father and a grandmother who have been traveling from city to city for the past decade, trying to start a crazy Christian cult, an aunt in Iowa I’ve already checked with, and a half-uncle in Ohio neither of us ever met.

The Followhills are not bad. My only issue is how they try courting my ass to a point they might blow my cover to the sky. They practically did everything to make people suspect I live with them other than flat-out tattooing the announcement on their foreheads. I mean, red shirts? For real?

Luckily, they just purchased uniforms and gear for my entire team for the season, so this could pass as them being their pretentious, charitable selves.

“What’s Scully smiling about? Reminiscing about his time with his favorite dildo?” Gus stretches behind me, and Camilo shifts from foot to foot, his shoulder brushing mine. He wants to answer. I bet they fucking want that, too.

What I’m smiling about is the fact Daria just did a pike and her abs and ass looked so fine while she did it, my dick almost broke free from my football pants and ran across the field to say hello.

“We can’t afford the legal fees if we break their noses,” I clip loud enough for Gus to hear, pushing Camilo to the front of the tunnel. “Let them vent. We’ll crush them on the field, just like Gus’s friends crush his mama when they are drunk enough not to give a shit what they dip their dicks into.”

“You sonofa…” But Gus never finishes the sentence. His team pulls him back when he tries to charge toward me. I stretch my arms out and laugh.

My players are bouncing and shifting next to me, ready to burst. The games with All Saints High are not only about points and stats and rankings. They’re about pride and socioeconomic justice and revenge. Historically, the two high schools have been known to prank each other on the hardcore side before and after games. From us burning down their mascot costumes to them putting dish soap in our fountains because we’re dirty, poor trash. We positively hate each other.

Josh, Malcolm, Kannon, Nelson, and the rest of my team have good chemistry on the field. I’m not gonna pull the whole “we’re family” crap, but we’re tight. Everyone’s got a story on this side of the tracks, and we’ve all helped one another at some point during high school. Where we come from, there are two surefire ways to get rich: become a rapper or an athlete. None of us can sing for shit, so we might as well try for the other route together.

That’s why I’ve felt guilty these past few weeks. None of my teammates know I’ve moved. Not even Kannon and Camilo.

“Pennywise,” Knight hollers at me from the bowels of the tunnel. I twist my head, my body still facing the field. I don’t know what it is about him that makes me not hate him. He and Vaughn obviously know I moved in with the Followhills, and for some reason, I trust them with this information.

There’s a certain irony about assholes—they usually don’t give a shit. Knight and Vaughn are like that. They’re not good guys by any stretch of the imagination, but unless you actively piss them off, they’re not after your neck.

I jut my chin to him. We both wear war paint. But I swear, his looks like a makeup artist applied it. He grins.

“After the game. Party hard at Blythe’s?” He moves his hand back and forth as though he’s spanking an invisible girl.

I don’t shit where I eat, and I don’t mix with the All Saints crowd. Blythe was a one-off. An indulgence saved for a night in which I made Vaughn piss red and couldn’t move my face. Besides, as Gus pointed out, I have a piece of tail—a girlfriend, if you will—and I should probably stop messing around with other girls in public.

“Pass.”

“She asked about you.”

“Maybe he gave her chlamydia, and she wants him to pay for the treatment.” Colin, ASH’s linebacker, hiccups, and everyone but Knight erupts in laughter.

“That’s rich from someone whose face looks like genital herpes,” I pipe out.

“Come at me, bro!” Colin bangs his chest with his fist.

“I would, but I don’t hit chicks,” I drawl.

When we get on the field, we “accidentally” tear through the Go Saints! sign made by the cheerleaders. Daria growls as I push through the fabric she is holding and shit all over her effort. The blinding bright lights and the fresh grass promise a big, green opportunity. The only one I’ve ever had. Rhett used to say that it’s not coincidental that grass is the same color as money—top athletes swim in it.

It’s the only semi-clever thing I’ve ever heard him say.

The game starts, and All Saints gets the ball. At first, I’m focused and loose. But by ten minutes in, I know something is off. That something is my defense. My useless, crappy, nonexistent defense. Seems like Josh, Kannon, Nelson, and the rest didn’t bother showing up to the game. Physically, they’re here, but they’re dragging their feet, missing the ball, spacing out, and averting their gazes to the bleachers as though they’re waiting for something bad to happen. I’m getting zero play time while Gus is going at it like a frat boy at a whorehouse. Coach Higgins is having a coronary on the sidelines and tries hard to balance his screaming so people won’t think he’s going to commit murder at halftime. He’s making changes to both the offense and the defense, running some adjustments, but his orders fall on deaf ears. Even the kicker looks pissed, and Daria is on the sidelines, cheering on ASH the entire time.

When halftime finally rolls around, I tear off my helmet before we even get to the locker room, trudging toward it. My teammates know better than to approach me. Once we get inside, I crash my helmet on a bench with a snarl.

“What in the actual fucking fuck is happening?” I yell at them, straining my vocal cords before Coach darts in.

“I don’t know, but something’s up.” Camilo raises his helmet slightly to pinch one nostril and shoot snot through the other one on their locker room floor. Everyone grows eerily silent. Coach walks in, and the guys immediately look down at their feet. They know they suck. Fuck, UFOs from other planets can see how hard we suck.

“This is the worst I’ve ever seen you,” he grumbles, quiet and stern, and I think it’s because he doesn’t want to have a heart attack.

“Those people out there?” He points at the door. “You don’t have their respect. You need to hustle. To bring ’em hell. Yet you’re completely out of sync. You’re lying there letting them screw you over. You need to wake up. Do you hear me?”

“Yes, Coach,” we all say in unison, eyes on the floor.

“You need to compete, hit them, destroy them. Then everything else falls into place. Somebody needs to fix this for me. You need to play fast, play hard, and most importantly, play for each other. The offense is getting no play time because. Of. You. Those kids out there?” Higgins laughs, slamming his open palm on a locker. “They don’t need this. This is fun for them. The shit they’re gonna show their kids in a few years in fancy photo albums. They have trust funds and colleges secured for them. You? You depend on this. For your college applications. For your scholarships. Hell, for your pride.”

I see the goose bumps raised on people’s arms and hope like hell he managed to get through to them.

When we leave the locker room, bumping fists and barking, “Yes, Coach, Yes, Coach, Yes, Coach,” I think we’ve got this.

I’m wrong.

The game ends with the scoreboard reading 38-14. We lose, and all fourteen points are because of touchdowns I scored. To say I’m crushed would be the understatement of the century. We’re starting the season with a huge loss to a bunch of preppy douchebags we haven’t lost to in five years. On my watch.

So this is what death feels like.

The coaches meet on the field to talk. Before the buses pull up to take us back to school, I take Coach Higgins aside and ask him if I can bum a ride with Knight Cole.

“Just wanna see what happened here,” I lie.

“Sure. Sure, sure,” Higgins says. He allows me this one-off because Camilo and I were the only functioning players on the field in red.

The Followhills descend the stands, and I snatch my duffel bag and meet them on the sidelines. The only reason I’m hanging out with them in public is I know no rich motherfucker would ever think the Followhills are stupid enough to take a hood rat under their roof. Most people see me and think of how I’d tarnish their daughters.

They’d be right, too.

“Tough game.” Baron Spencer runs his arctic eyes over my face. He is tall and good-looking in a Dracula sort of way. Pastier than a freshly painted wall. I know that he used to play for ASH at some point. I also know he wasn’t any good, so I don’t even bother smiling at him.

“No shit,” I mutter, and now I have his attention.

“Shit indeed, but you were damn good.” Another man with lighter hair and green eyes—Knight’s dad, Dean, I suppose—nods. He was a football player, too. They all were. Cocky bastards with their photoshopped wives and impeccable clothes and padded bank accounts.

“I’m sorry. Were you watching another game? They dry-fucked our asses so hard I won’t be able to sit down the entire semester.” I wipe my forehead, my gaze darting toward the locker room.

Baron arches an eyebrow. Dean suppresses a closemouthed laugh.

“Doesn’t matter how your team played. You were good, and that’s worth something.” Jaime tousles my hair and pulls me in for a hug. I don’t know where this is coming from. Maybe I look as bad as I feel.

Knight saunters to us, freshly showered, in one of his over-the-top outfits. He is wearing some sort of a pilot’s khaki jacket and oversized shades. He’s the definition of a fashion victim. Somewhere in New York, a designer’s snorting sixteen lines of coke his daddy has paid for. Next to him is a girl with dark brown curls and big gray eyes. You can tell she’s not the typical All Saints princess. She is wearing jeans two sizes too big and an oversized Lazy hoodie. The opposite of her flashy boyfriend. She looks like a tough cookie, and he looks like a smashed birthday cake.

“This is Luna.” Knight slants his chin to her, taking her hand in his and squeezing hard, pissing all over his territory. Daria groans next to me, and I ignore her, reaching for a handshake. Luna flashes me a lopsided grin. Her shake is firm, but her skin is velvety and warm. I can see why Knight likes her. I can see why Daria doesn’t, too.

“Penn,” I say.

She doesn’t say anything, just offers me a noncommittal half-shrug. There’s a lot of gaze shifting going on among everyone before Knight clears his throat, and says, “Luna’s not big on talking.”

“Good. Most people only have stupid things to say, anyway.”

Luna salutes me. Baron smirks at Jaime.

“Keeper.” Baron jerks his finger in my direction. Jaime nods.

“He reminds me of your miserable asses when we were kids and helps with the yard work.”

They all look at me, hoping to find some joy or gratitude on my face, but I’m mostly annoyed the fuckers are talking about my living there so openly. I spit phlegm onto the grass and check the time on my phone.

“So you’re sure about Blythe’s party?” Knight shoulder-bumps me.

After getting my ass kicked on the field? Yeah. Not about to come to an ASH party and become a human piñata.

“Hard pass.”

“All right. Good game.”

Knight shakes my hand and pulls me into a bro-hug.

We make a quick stop at the house so Daria can shower too, then head to the pier. I analyze the game in my head the entire way there. Bailey is talking nonstop. The kid’s cute, but man, she can talk your ears off. She was the one who decided we must celebrate my birthday—even if a week late—by getting ice cream at the best parlor on the Todos Santos promenade. I’m not big on ice cream, and I’m even less of a fan when it comes to celebrating birthdays since Via disappeared. Not that they were tolerable before, but at least we had the tradition of making each other shitty cards and stealing candy from the street vendors.

“Do you want to talk about the game?” Mel slides into the stream of Bailey’s words as the latter explains to us how New Amsterdam became New York. Daria shifts in her seat beside Bailey, who is on the hump between us in Jaime’s Tesla. Rich people love Teslas. They’re clinical, impersonal, and futuristic. Anything to make them forget they take a shit and pick their nose like everyone else.

I grunt, giving her less than words but more than nothing.

“We’re here for you,” she pipes.

“Thanks for the pep talk. Where’d you get it, AA for Dummies?”

“I’m so sorry, Penn. I just blabbed and blabbed. Do you even want to hear more about history?” Bailey catches her lower lip in her braced teeth.

God, no.

“Sure. History’s fine.” I nudge her shoulder with mine, and she launches into another lengthy explanation about how the British claimed New Amsterdam. They were brutal, she explains, and Daria says that cruelty is underrated. Sometimes you “gotta do what you gotta do” to make your point. Then Jaime says that diplomacy is the best weapon and killing people with kindness leaves no evidence or legal consequences behind.

“Doesn’t matter which way you conquer a place as long as you do,” I hiss, producing an apple I brought from lunch from my duffel bag and tossing it in Daria’s hands. She knows what I mean by it and groans.

When we get to Gelato Heaven, Mel claims that the type of ice cream you order says a lot about your personality. “It’s a fact. I read it in Cosmo.”

Daria rolls her eyes. I think it’s a reflexive movement for her by now. Like breathing. “Old much, Melody?”

“Reading magazines is old now?” Mel’s eyes widen, and she looks back and forth between her daughters, pretending to be scandalized. She is trying too hard, but Daria is still oblivious. It’s like being on a first date with your all-time crush and trying too hard to impress. That’s Daria and Mel. Constantly dancing awkwardly around each other.

“Might as well read hieroglyphics on Egyptian walls.” Daria snorts.

Mel proceeds to ask the chick behind the glass counter for one scoop of low-fat vanilla ice cream in a cup.

Jaime shoves his fists into his front pockets and whistles.

“Cosmo is definitely wrong. Nothing vanilla about you, baby.”

Daria makes a gagging sound, and this time, I’m in her camp. People behind us snicker, and I know she wants the floor to open and swallow her whole. My mama and Rhett, they would embarrass the shit outta me in countless, creative ways, but I’ll give them one thing—you could never accuse them of PDA.

Jaime tells the teenage girl behind the counter to choose any two scoops she thinks would complement each other for him.

“Adventurous and trusting,” Bails mulls over his choice.

This family is so first world and rich, I bet they shit potpourri.

Bailey orders one chocolate scoop and one strawberry in a cone.

“A conventional genius,” Mel exclaims.

Kill me.

Daria shifts her gaze to me, then to the row of ice creams, and then to me again. We’re both hyperaware of what the other one will order. I hate her ass, it’s true, but that ain’t gonna stop me from fucking her. It’ll be poetic justice at its finest. She took my sister, so I’ll take her vanity.

“Blue moon, green tea, and cheesecake, please. With sprinkles and a dash of caramel in a cone. And can I have a cherry on top?”

“Sure can.” The girl piles all this mess into a cone and turns to me. As do the Followhills.

“What’s the most disgusting flavor you got?” I lean forward, parking my elbows on the glass.

The girl turns a nice shade of maroon, her eyes darting to the yellow-green pile on the far right.

“That’d be the Key lime pie. People say it’s so sour it makes them sick. But it’s the owner’s daughter’s favorite, so we keep it.”

“I’ll take a scoop in a cone.”

“Are you sure?” The girl gasps.

She melts into a puddle when I wink at her. Easy prey. My favorite snack.

I ask for her number. Straight up.

“I…isn’t she your girlfriend?” she stutters, her eyes shifting to Daria, seemingly for permission. I tsk.

“Foster sister and a real bitch.”

“Penn!” Melody booms. “Oh, my Marx!”

“Sorry, ma’am. Sorry, sir,” I tell Jaime and cover Bailey’s ears, muttering, “You didn’t hear that.”

The girl starts shooting out the number quickly. I pretend to program them into my phone while playing Fortnite. No chance of me ever calling her, but sticking it to Daria feels good. I’d throw Adriana in her face, but she is too good for those kiddie games. Besides, I’ll save the best reveal for last.

We all settle at a round table on the parlor’s balcony overlooking the beach. The sun is setting, the sky is pink and orange, and people saunter on the boardwalk hand in hand, the perfect postcard of SoCal. The sound of laughter and waves breaking on the shore and kids yelling fills the air. They recently added a Ferris wheel, mini golf, a carousel, and a roller coaster to attract more tourists. It made Todos Santos even more packed and touristy. I miss San Diego. Miss real ass people and real ass places and views that don’t look like they’ve been filtered to death by some chick who thinks she’s a professional photographer just because she has an Instagram account.

Melody complains about my slip of the tongue in the background, but I block her out. I take a lick of my ice cream.

“That’s awful,” I say flatly.

Daria takes the bait, just as I knew she would.

“Shocker.”

“Play nice.” Mel stabs her plastic spoon in her ice cream, swirling it around methodically. Bailey is a lick-it-straight-from-the-cone type of girl. Daria probably won’t touch hers. My guess is she doesn’t do real feelings or refined sugar.

Who the fuck are you to talk? You’re the tin man.

“Would you like mine?” Bailey volunteers.

Two sisters. Same genes. Same blood. Different hearts.

“Actually, Daria’s looks good.” I grin at my opponent.

Daria stares at me, her gigantic ice cream still in her hand, unlicked. She thrusts it in my direction.

“Jerk,” she mutters under her breath.

“Marx, you are going to regret it when I ground you both for eternity.” Mel sighs. Jaime chuckles. I noticed they replaced the word God with Marx. That’s…I don’t even know what the fuck that is. Quirky. Weird. Trying too fucking hard.

I take her ice cream and give it a good lick, handing her my Key lime ice cream.

“Please,” I say, forcing her to eye contact. “It would mean a lot to me if you eat it.” I’m not talking about the ice cream, and we both know it.

“I’m on a diet,” she snaps.

“Consider it my belated birthday gift.” I cock my head, feigning virtue. There’s loaded silence and a whole lotta staring. Then she sits back down, acutely aware of the fact her parents are watching. She takes a lick of the ice cream. Winces. Our eyes are still locked, and I wonder if she makes the same connection I’m making.

Us. Licking each other’s ice creams.

She is tasting my sourness.

As I devour her sweetness.

“So what do you think happened on the field?” Jaime turns to me.

“They cheated,” I say.

“You think?”

“I know.”

“Ever heard of being gracious in defeat?” Daria folds her legs on her chair. She is getting used to my ice cream. Doesn’t even make a face anymore after each lick. I take a bite of her ice cream, swallowing it without tasting it. Her throat bobs with the meaning of what I want to do to her.

Part of me wants to chase her. To watch in slow motion as she collapses underneath me and I rip her to shreds. The other wants her to stand toe to toe with me so we can battle it out until we’re both bloody and exhausted.

“Wise words, Daria. How about you live by them when someone you’re jealous of gets something they don’t deserve?”

“Kids,” Mel warns for the third time. I like that Jaime and Mel don’t put us on leashes and expect us to behave. Part of me suspects they brought me here to set her straight. She is a spoiled little princess who always gets her way. And me? I’m the exact opposite.

“I’ll look into it.” Jaime wipes the corners of his mouth with a paper napkin, slam-dunking the rest of his ice cream into the trash can. Not that he hasn’t been nice to me so far, but he is also smart enough to remind me daily that if I touch Daria, he will kill me (“literally. And, yes, I literally mean the word literally”). I wish he knew his daughter was banging her principal. My tapping her ass would be a vast improvement. A public service, really. Jaime should thank me.

“I’ll figure it out. Thanks,” I say.

“You sure?”

“Positive.”

“Has it ever occurred to you we might’ve played better? Just because Penn says something doesn’t make it true.”

“It doesn’t make it untrue either,” Jaime points out.

“You should show more loyalty to All Saints, Dad. You’re an alumnus. And you”—she turns to Mel for the first time this evening—“you were a teacher. Before you got fired for sleeping with your student.” Daria licks the last of her ice cream and tries dumping it into the trash can, like her dad. She misses, and it falls on the floor.

“Daria, you’re being Hulky again.” Jaime pins her with a look, like she knows what the hell that means.

“Why? Because I brought you and Melody up? It’s okay to say gross things to her in public, but I can’t point out that you’ve ruined my life by sending me to the same school—the same class, by the way—you hooked up in?” She juts her chin out, standing up.

“Don’t excuse her behavior, Jaime. You invented the Hulk because you wanted to separate Daria from her bad behavior. The truth is, she needs to learn to rein in her anger when she’s upset,” Mel says, and this is going off-track, fast. I scan the Followhills individually, assessing the situation. Bailey’s eyes are glued to her iPad, and she looks like she doesn’t have a care in the world. The kid’s used to this fucked-up dynamic. Daria’s eyes are locked on her mom’s.

“Mother.” Daria plasters an arsenic smile on. “Do we have a problem here?”

Melody sits back and folds her arms over her sensible cardigan.

“Why can’t you be a little more like your sister?”

Daria’s physical reaction to those words suggests she’s been shot. She darts up from her chair, and it falls back from the momentum. Everyone around us snaps their heads to our table. Melody jumps up from her chair, too.

“I didn’t—”

“Don’t.” Daria lifts a finger. Her eyes are shining, but her face is stoic. She shakes her head. “Don’t say you didn’t mean it, Melody, because every fiber of you did. And maybe I should be more like Bailey. But you? You should be more of a mom.”

She turns around and storms away, taking the three stairs to the sidewalk and running to the street. She flings herself toward the boardwalk, bursting into traffic, and when a car brakes and honks at her, she jams her fist on its hood.

“Fuck you! This is Todos Santos. Your daddy will buy you a new one,” she screams.

My mind is telling me to sit this one out and let the shitshow unfold without my intervention. But my legs are assholes and so is my rusty conscience because they carry me down the stairs. Mel warns my back that when Daria’s Hulky, she doesn’t like to be interrupted. I think she needs some tough love and to be grounded until the next decade. She needs to be asked some hard questions. Questions like:

Are you fucking your principal?

Is your foster brother fondling you in the locker room?

Are your friends assholes who run betting rings in an illegal fight club?

What in the actual fuck is Hulky?

At the risk of sounding like a Dr. Phil wannabe, I keep this shit to myself. Jaime and Mel are still ten million times better than my parents. They care. Mel is just scared of her daughter, and Jaime…well, Jaime is a dude.

The light turns red, and I have to wait for cars to pass before I can cross the road. Unlike Daria, I don’t have a good health insurance plan and can’t go around slapping moving vehicles. I spot her sneaking into the dwindling line of the Ferris wheel and buying a ticket. She slips into a seat. My eyes flicker back to the traffic light. When it turns green, I sprint across the road. Since I left my wallet—which Jamie padded with a couple of hundred—at the house, I hop over the fence and slide into her booth a second before she closes the metal bar and locks it. The guy operating the wheel has already pulled the handle, and the wheel starts moving. He shoots me a look and shakes his head. I don’t mean to laugh in his face, but he should thank his lucky stars that Kannon and Camilo are not here with me. We’d have found a way to steal the entire Ferris wheel and sell its parts to travelers.

“What are you doing here?” Daria looks the other way toward the ocean. She is holding the metal bar in a chokehold. The wheel moves slowly, and our cart sways back and forth.

“Shit was getting real, so I decided to split.” I take out my pack of cigarettes, and she knocks it out of my hands, letting it fall to the abyss of tourists underneath us.

Why am I here? Because I recognize that, although she’s a brat, she’s got a case. Daria isn’t seen. Her mother barely talks to her, and when she does, it’s to tell her to stop being horrible. She’s normally left to her own devices, and other than a generic “How’s school?” I’ve never heard her mom ask about her friends or dates or cheer. It’s a vicious cycle because in order to get attention, Skull Eyes keeps on acting up.

You’re only lonely if you’re not there for yourself.

Some pearls of wisdom by the man himself, Dr. Phil.

“Cut the bullshit, Scully. What do you want?”

“A rematch, greasy burger, and your cunt on my face. In that order exactly.”

She scrunches her nose. “You’re disgusting. I can’t believe my parents took your side. We won because we kick ass, even if you guys didn’t look bad.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll meet you at the play-offs, by which time Gus will make the full transition from a dry vagina to the basic pussy he is.”

Now she full-blown laughs, shaking her head. We’re getting farther up, and people and places and palm trees are starting to look smaller. The lights dance across the horizon, and the ocean looks too blue and too infinite not to admire.

“Release the bar,” I tell her, out of nowhere.

“Why?” Her fingers are still curled firmly around it.

“Because I want to see if you trust me not to open the handle.”

She stares at me with the same wild gaze that made me give her the sea glass four years ago. As though I’m the most fascinating creature in the world. I want to pocket that look and save it for the next time the world lets me down. Which should be in the next twenty minutes.

“But I don’t trust you.”

“Let’s rectify that.”

“Thanks, I’m good.”

“Did you hear a question mark in my voice? It wasn’t an offer.”

She turns to me. “Tell me something real about yourself.”

“Like what?” It’s hard not to stare at her lips. She has great lips. She’s always had great lips. And the rest of her body is the kind of stuff that got Edgar Allan Poe and Pablo Neruda into writing poems about chicks. It saddens me that I can half-understand how rich, gorgeous girls like Daria turn out the way they do. Too smug to feel, too bitchy to be tolerated. They are so much yet so little. They have everything, but they earned nothing by themselves. It’s like winning the lottery and expecting to make wise investments on your own without any financial background.

“Why do you cut holes in your shirt?”

“Don’t go for the jackpot before you win the fluffy teddy bear at the fair,” I warn. “Ask me something else.”

She rolls her eyes at me, sighing as though I exasperate her. “What kind of name is Penn?”

“Release the bar, and I’ll tell you.”

“How do I know you won’t open it?”

“You don’t.”

Her face is so close, and I’m starting to realize why people love Ferris wheels. It feels like we’re alone in the universe, isolated. She lets go of the bar, almost in slow motion, and tucks her hands between her bare thighs.

Don’t look at her thighs, bastard. I can practically hear Jaime inside my head.

Why? Her thighs would make great ear warmers, I mentally answer back.

“Close your eyes.”

She does. Just as she did when we were fourteen. I like that she is obedient when we’re alone. I make a mental note not to abuse that power. Daria answers to no one and does whatever the hell she wants—except with me.

“Before drugs made my mom fall down the rabbit hole, she was this poetry chick with nerdy glasses and a library card. She met my dad at church when she was seventeen as a part of some Christian scouts program, and he knocked her up. Then a chain of really shitty things happened all at once. She was involved in a car accident that almost killed her and broke most of the bones in her body. My dad decided to leave with his mother and start a Christian cult. Mom got hooked on painkillers, then illegal drugs. I used to read poems to her when she was in the hospital, going in and out of there for one of her trillion surgeries. Anyway, her favorite poets are—were,” I correct myself, remembering she is no longer alive, “Sylvia Plath and Alexander Penn. So she named us after them.”

“Who’s Alexander Penn?” Her cheeks flush.

She doesn’t want me to think she’s stupid. We are reaching the highest point.

“He was this Israeli-Russian communist poet dude. Off the rails certifiable. He was desperately in love with this chick named Bella. She rejected him, so he tried to commit suicide and shot himself. Failed. She was so enchanted by his love and devotion, she decided to marry him.”

“Just like Van Gogh. Only this girl said yes,” Daria muses.

“Yeah.”

“Kinda gross,” she says.

“Yeah.” I chuckle.

“Some fairy tales are screwed up,” she adds. She can’t shut up. She’s nervous. Her eyes are still closed.

“All the good ones are, Skull Eyes,” I say softly.

I unlatch the metal bar from its hook. She hears the click and sucks in a breath.

“What are you doing?” Her voice shudders.

“Tell me what’s going on between you and Prichard.” My voice hardens around the vowels.

Her eyes are still closed, not because she is still following my directions, but because she is freaking out and would probably faint if she looks down.

“You’re insane!” She squeezes her eyes shut.

“You bangin’ the old man?” I ignore her psychological assessment.

“You said I could trust you!”

“No, I didn’t. I asked if you did. For the record, you shouldn’t trust me. Our loyalties lie with different schools and people. But I answered your question, so it’s only fair you answer mine.”

“Dream on, Scully.”

I push the metal bar open. She can feel the breeze. I hold on to it, knowing I won’t be able to pull it back if I don’t, and that means I’m squatting, my ass in the air.

“Fine! Okay! Fine. No. We’re not sleeping together.”

I yawn loudly, so she can hear, dangling the handle from side to side.

“Not buying it.”

“We’re not!” she screams desperately. People from other carts can probably hear her and see this. Giving a damn, however, is not on my agenda.

“Then what are you doing together? Playing Caribbean poker?”

“That’s two questions,” she bargains.

“Since when are you good at math, Followhill?”

I know Daria would have a lot of fun rubbing the truth in my face. She knows I would never rat her out to her parents. Not only because she holds my residence a secret, but I’m just not that type of asshole.

“What do you care, anyway? Gus said you have a girlfriend.”

“Gus is an idiot.”

“It doesn’t make him a liar.”

True, and I notice she doesn’t ask me again about the girlfriend situation. Which is good, because she won’t like the answer, and I’m not done with her ass, literally and figuratively. I close the metal bar. She hears the click and lets out a breath. She opens her eyes and stares at me. It’s cool to see her like that. Vulnerable. Scared. She’s not the head cheerleader right now, and I’m not the football captain of the rival team. We’re just two teenagers who never stood a chance to be friends in this world, so we became what was expected of us. Enemies.

We reach the top.

“Ever been kissed on a Ferris wheel?” I ask.

“No.”

All your firsts, baby.

I take that as an invitation, pressing my mouth to hers, RSVPing that shit without thinking about her parents down below, the complications of it, or the consequences. Without thinking this is taboo, and wrong, and twisted, and can surely come back to bite me in the ass.

She opens her mouth, groans into mine, and we kiss, and we kiss, and we kiss until nothing else exists. My hand slips to her neck and squeezes it, and when she protests in the form of biting my lip, I laugh and lick her entire fucking face. Then she laughs, too.

“I thought you said you didn’t want all my firsts.”

“My mind changes according to my mood and how hot you look at that moment.”

“How very stupid teenage jock of you,” she murmurs against my lips.

“How very indeed.”

Our cart is an invisible cloak until it starts to lower. Her parents will be able to make out our faces if they’re standing underneath the wheel, waiting for us, which I’m sure they are because whether she realizes it—they give a shit.

We pull away together. Everything about us is a power game, and no one wants to be the side that got rejected.

My dick is hard and so is her expression. I think she’s regretting it. I should be regretting it, too. Not because of Jaime. Fuck Jaime. I never asked to crash at their house. But because of Adriana and Via.

But Via isn’t here for me to feel guilty about or sorry to.

Via left me, just like the rest.

“I still don’t like you.” Her whisper caresses my face.

“Me neither,” I say. About her. About me.

We spend the rest of the ride in silence. When we get out of the cart, the operator is tapping his foot, waiting for his money. Jaime slaps a twenty into his open palm, waving at us to join them.

“Keep the change. You two good?” He looks back and forth between us.

Daria says no.

I say yes.

We say it at the same time.

We look each other, and she rolls her eyes. I smile because it’s hard not to.

Melody complains about our level of cooperation when it comes to family functions.

On the drive home, Daria eats the entire apple I threw at her and tosses the core on my lap.

“Checkmate.”