Acting Brave (Fenbrook Academy #3) (21 page)

I got my first gun when I was 15. A chromed 9mm my brother had taken from a member of a street gang with a Chinese-style flame pattern engraved on it. He taught me to shoot it, endless rounds going into cans and bottles down in an old dried-up riverbed. I had to use it a few times, shooting over people’s heads or into walls when I needed to scare them. By then, I was running errands for my dad. Collecting small amounts of money for his regulars. Ferrying bags of weed in my school bag—the cops wouldn’t think to search a kid. At least, not a white one.

As I got older, it got worse. There was a different kind of fear, a fear I’m not sure if you can understand unless you’re female. Men caught the scent of me, for the first time. I became something they leered at and followed with their eyes and tried to grab. I knew that there was a new risk, now, a risk that they’d hurt me in a different way, to get at him.

I didn’t realize that the real threat lay closer to home.

It happened not long after I’d turned eighteen. I hadn’t had the time or the money to do anything to celebrate. Any other teen would have been prepping for college but the idea of me going anywhere was laughable. My dad certainly had the money, but he jealously guarded it all for himself. My brother and I had to support ourselves, working dead-end jobs to buy food and clothes. The one time I’d raised the idea of moving away and doing something with my life, a few years earlier, he’d broken my arm in two places.

It was sometime after eleven when I arrived home, exhausted from my shift at the grocery store. The bar was only half full, but getting steadily noisier as people got drunker. There were nods as I passed through on my way to our apartment upstairs. I’d been around the bar my whole life, so everyone knew me.

My dad lumbered out from behind the bar and stopped me just as I got to the door that led to the stairs. I knew from the way he moved that he was already steaming drunk. “Stop,” he said. “Drink a drink. It’s your birthday.”

I knew better than to tell him it had been days ago. I expected him to pour me a beer, but he gave me a double shot of Scotch instead. He took me behind the bar and presented it to me like it was the elixir of life. “You’re old enough for the good stuff, now,” he told me.

I put the shot glass to my lips, the fumes from the whiskey scorching my nose. I didn’t want to, but a double shot wouldn’t do me much harm and a beating would be much worse.

I drank.

The door to the back room opened and three guys emerged. Brady, a dark-haired guy in his forties, one of the cops my dad had on his payroll. Thomas, a young Scot in his thirties who’d started off as one of my dad’s debt collectors but moved rapidly up the chain to become a trusted lieutenant. And Earl, an older guy with long, straggly brown hair he kept pulled back into a greasy ponytail. He was weird and jumpy and did too many drugs, but he controlled all the dealing at one of the big colleges so my dad tolerated him. I wasn’t sure how old he was—he was kind of scrawny, his skin stretched tight over his skull so that he didn’t wrinkle much, but from his eyes I figured he was late forties, at least.

I’d known all three of them for years. Served them drinks, when my dad had made me do unpaid, illegal shifts behind the bar. Made them food, when they were hungry and drunk. When I was a kid, I’d had to put up with their teasing and jokes about my red hair. Then, when my curves had appeared, their attention had changed. I’d started to walk more quickly through the bar when they were around. But they’d never done more than look.

Now, though, all three of them were drunk. Not stumbling and helpless drunk. Mean and fired-up drunk. The sort of drunk you get when you’ve been sitting planning something all night long, drinking and drinking to work up the courage to do it.

Cold, sick dread started to seep into every pore of my body.

“I told Emma she’s old enough for the good stuff,” said my dad.

“She is,” said Brady. “She’s old enough.”

My mind refused to believe what my ears and eyes were telling me.
You’re wrong,
I told myself.
Or they’re just kidding around.

It didn’t feel like kidding around, though.

I looked toward the door to the stairs, the one that led to our apartment and a bolted bedroom door and, maybe, safety. But my dad was leaning against it.

“I need to go,” I said, trying to make my voice into an annoyed mutter. But my fear made it come out high and weak.

“Have another drink,” said Thomas. And, without me accepting, he picked up the bottle of scotch and poured me another double. He held the glass in front of me, his knuckles almost grazing the twin peaks of my breasts under my sweatshirt.

Earl came and sat on the bar in front of me, his body blocking anyone in the bar itself from seeing me. We formed a tight little crowd. Even if anyone in the bar had had any protective urges toward me, they just would have seen me having a drink with some of my dad’s friends.
And look—her dad’s with her. Everything’s okay.

“Drink up,” said my dad.

I swallowed, trying to think of something I could say, something I could do, to stop this happening. But then Thomas was pressing the glass to my mouth, the hard lip of it sliding between my teeth, and the burning liquor was being tipped down my throat. My mouth trembled, the first warning that I was going to start crying, and a little of it spilled down my neck. But most of it went down.

“There,” said Thomas.

This is not really happening. They’re not—it’s not—

I looked into their eyes and I knew it was. I knew they’d been thinking about this for a long time. Maybe me turning eighteen was some sort of dividing line. Maybe it had just taken them this long for them to work themselves up to it.

I looked at my dad, the man who was meant to be my protector. My lip was trembling more, now. I’d never known you could cry out of sheer fear, before.

Brady opened the door to the back room a little wider. We started to move as a group, with me in the middle and the men pressed tight around me. My dad brought up the rear, grabbing the bottle of Scotch from the bar as he passed.

Why aren’t I screaming?
“No,” I said, my voice choked. “No.”

Sometimes people tell you that if you say
no,
it won’t happen, like it’s an incantation. They’re lying.

Just as he followed me into the back room, my dad smiled at me.

This was his revenge for eighteen years of the humiliation of raising another man’s child. He couldn’t do it himself, of course. That would be wrong.

He was going to watch.

Chapter 25

Jasmine

Now

I was lying on my back in my bathroom in New York. I’d cried and cried until there were only dry groans left.

It was over.

I stood up. By now, the water was ankle deep. One end of the lake was tainted brown from the Jack Daniels, traces of it still unwinding from the chunks of broken glass. There were red blossoms of blood in the water, too, from where the shards had cut my leg.

I drew in a long breath and started to clean up.

When the glass was gone, the water was mopped up, and my leg was adorned with plasters, I went to stand in front of the mirror again. My mascara had drawn long black lines down my cheeks and my lipstick was smeared where I’d savagely wiped my hand across my face. I was a mess. I’d have to remove everything, until I was nothing more than a blank slate, and then begin the process of reassembling Jasmine, piece by piece.

The only problem was, I wasn’t sure if all the pieces would fit back together. And, even if they did, I wasn’t sure if they would be enough to fool Ryan.

Chapter 26

Ryan

Idiot.

It was the day after the gym and I was waiting for Jasmine outside Harper’s, the little cafe/deli place just down the street from Fenbrook. Conveniently, there was a lamppost for me to bang my head against.

I’d had a chance. Somehow, when we’d been out doing our little mock patrol, I’d managed to actually impress her or intrigue her or hell, even amuse her. I didn’t care what it was—it was enough that it had made her agree to go to the gym with me.

And then I’d blundered in and grabbed hold of her, missing the signs that I was sure now had been there. I’d replayed the scene a million times in my head and I couldn’t get over what a big, lumbering moron I was. Anyone with half a brain could have seen she was scared, even before she got to the mat. Why hadn’t I?

Because I hadn’t wanted to think of her being scared like that. Ever. I hadn’t entertained the possibility of something happening to her that would make her react in that way. I mean, she was
Jasmine,
bright and beautiful and above all of us—she was like a goddamn angel, so the idea that someone must have—

The thought crept into my mind, unbidden, and I bent my head and folded, as if someone had punched me in the gut. I knew what made women react that way to being touched. I’d seen it on the job, all too often. The thought of it happening to my Jasmine made me want to throw up.

She’s not your Jasmine,
said Hux.

He was right, of course. She wasn’t, and she never would be. But that didn’t stop me worrying about her...or getting angry. When I got home from the gym and the reality of it had sunk in, I’d lost it completely. I’d punched the wall so hard I left a good-sized dent, then hurled the coffee table across the room hard enough that it splintered into pieces. I wanted to find the man responsible and tear his heart out right through his chest.

I read Jasmine’s text for about the thousandth time. Which was pointless, because it’s impossible to judge someone’s mood from a text. I knew it would be awkward. I knew she’d be pissed at me, or embarrassed, or upset, or most likely all three. I had a whole raft of apologies all ready to go, but I had a feeling none of them would do any good. How do you apologize to someone for sending them straight back to their deepest, darkest place?

I heard footsteps from around the corner. I turned and
braced—

“Hi hi hi!” Jasmine bounced around the corner, a firework of auburn hair and smiles. She was wearing a green, low-cut sundress—low cut even for her—that seemed to billow around in the wind and lick up her legs even as it clung to her top half. Her heels were cherry red and shiny, and she was clutching an outsize takeout cup of juice in each hand. “I didn’t know what you liked,” she said, “So I got you carrot, apple, and ginger. And I’ve got cherry berry surprise. I
love
cherry berry surprise. But we can swap, if you want to. Although I have had some of mine so, y’know. You’d be sharing my straw.”

I blinked. “What—” I started, but ran out of words.

Jasmine linked arms with me, shoving the carrot juice into my hand. “I’m taking you somewhere we can work on your acting,” she told me. “C’mon. Walk with me.” She started humming
We’re Off to See the Wizard
as she towed me along.

What the hell was going on? She should have been crying, or yelling at me, or telling me that I needed to drop out of the show—which I would have done in a heartbeat—but
this?!
What
was
this? This wasn’t like Jasmine.

“Talked to Karen this morning,” said Jasmine, taking a long pull on her juice. “You know Karen, right? Anyway, Connor’s taking her to her first baseball game. It’s pretty much his first one too, because he’s Irish. What is it they play in Ireland? Football? Cricket? Anyway, I was explaining to her about
hum, battah battah battah SWING
and she was like:
what?!”

And then it hit me that it
was
like Jasmine. But Jasmine turned up to 11. Super, max strength, concentrated Jasmine. I stopped walking. “Are we going to talk about yesterday?” I asked.

She turned and glanced at me and I saw it in her eyes for just a second.
Please don’t.

“Okay,” I said, falling into step with her again. “So, where are we going?”

***

Fenbrook Academy

Red brick and big windows. A shiny bronze plaque outside the door. I’d driven past it plenty of times with Hux, but that wasn’t the same as seeing it up close. From the car, you couldn’t sense the energy of the place. It was buzzing: everyone was between 18 and 22, just old enough to be free to do what they wanted and just young enough to still believe they could conquer the world. It was like I imagined college would have been, if I’d ever had the money to go, only with more glamor. College kids dreamed of getting a high-paying job someday, or starting their own company. Fenbrook kids dreamed bigger: Hollywood, the New York Philharmonic, Broadway…. And I didn’t begrudge them that, not for one instant. It just reminded me of how different we were, that Jasmine felt at home in a place like that.

She opened the doors and a wall of sound hit me. Everyone was talking about rehearsals or classes or auditions. Actors were running lines at each other, dancers were helping each other with steps right there in the hallway and two drummers, one of them with pink hair, were having an impromptu jam on a waste paper basket and the stair rail.