Machete Read online

  I winced when I sat up, and I had to close my eyes for a few seconds. Don’t throw up. Don’t throw up. My stomach felt like someone took a bat to it, which wasn’t far off. I needed to ignore it.

  “Do you have friends?” I spat out because my filter was broken. “Oh God,” I said. “Sorry. That was so rude of me. I didn’t mean... I mean, do your friends go to another school or something? I don’t see you with anyone.”

  “I don’t,” he said, “have friends. People are quite repulsed by me.”

  Fucking hell, stab me in the heart, why don’t you. “Why?”

  He looked down at himself, then back up to me. “The way I am, I suppose.”

  I stared down at my tray, unsure of how to respond. So, I was honest. “Then fuck them.” I popped a piece of bread into my mouth and watched the boy. “They don’t matter if they’re going to be dicks about it.”

  Becket blinked, and then went back to eating.

  Because I didn’t value my own life, I sipped on my soup bowl, letting the cold contents get all up in my mouth. I made poor choices but I would have gotten sick if I skipped another meal.

  Hands slammed down on the table, making me jump. Becket didn’t stir but we both looked up at the shadow to the side of us.

  Julian leaned down, smiling wide at me. “Ah, I see. You like it a little strange, huh? What, does he bend you over gravestones?”

  I sighed at the boy, deciding suddenly that being nice wasn’t working for me. He didn’t take no as an answer, so I had to kick it up a little. “I don’t recall inviting you to join us.”

  “Oh,” he laughed. “Is that so?”

  “It is.”

  He set his sights on Becket. “Easy pickin’s for you, I guess.”

  Becket looked right at him. “Is she easy pickin’s when she turned you down immediately?”

  Julian’s neck turned red. “If I really wanted her, she would already have her ankles behind her ears.”

  “Hey!” I said, louder than I intended. A few heads turned. “I would rather fuck myself with a chainsaw than let any part of you inside me. You’re a pig.”

  “Better than a creep,” he responded, and then went back to Becket. “So, are you planning on turning her skin into a scarf or something? Or are you more of a Norman Bates kinda guy? If you do it right, you could keep her corpse around for a while. Then you’ll finally have someone to talk to.”

  While I fumed, Becket responded. “A corpse wouldn’t make for very good conversation, and I do not think skin would work for a scarf.”

  I knew immediately that he wasn’t trying to make fun of me. He spoke so flatly, and so plainly, that I thought he was stating facts as he believed them to be.

  “You would know,” Julian said, unable to come up with something cleverer.

  “How about you leave now,” I said, keeping my voice even.

  Julian got closer to me, his face a few inches from mine. “Or what?”

  I smiled. “Or I have my friend here do something real mean to you in front of the whole school.”

  “Can’t fight your own battles?”

  My grin widened. “If I did, it would be a slaughter.”

  It ended there, with Julian walking away, shooting one more glare to Becket as he left. My blood felt hot.

  X

  I pressed my hands harder against my throat, holding them there. My sticky feet shuffled on the bathroom floor, glass slicing through my skin. I wasn’t fucking paying attention. They always said I didn’t pay attention.

  Air couldn’t slip into my lungs as my fingers tightened on my neck, and I replayed what I’d just done. I had been brushing my teeth, and went to rinse my mouth. The glass slipped out of my hands and shattered on the tile floor. I fucked up because I was a fuck up. Couldn’t do a thing right, and I never would. Worthless.

  I gasped, stumbling back as I released my throat, crushing more glass under my bare feet. My ass landed on the covered toilet seat as I tried righting myself. The glass needed to be cleaned but I couldn’t leave the blood on my foot either.

  I turned my body, putting my feet in the bathtub while I ran warm water over them. I sat there letting the water clean me, watching the glass rush into the drain and the tub turn red under my wounded feet. My fault. It was always my fault.

  When my feet were clean, I picked out the remaining glass and waited for the wounds to stop bleeding. Once they eventually did, I wrapped both feet in gauze before I put on a pair of thigh highs. No one would notice what I’d done after I cleaned up the glass.

  I’d gotten up early, so I had plenty of time before school, even with the fuck-up. I dressed in a sweater and jeans before I walked out of my bathroom.

  Both of my parents were in the kitchen, with my mother at the table reading, and Dad leaning against the counter while he ate an apple. He greeted me. I responded quietly as I hurried over to the fridge.

  “Eat a sandwich for dinner tonight,” he said. “The meat is about to go bad.”

  “No problem,” I said as I fished out something small to eat.

  I sat at the table with my mother, not saying anything at all to her. We didn’t talk. I didn’t talk with anyone, unless it was a sentence or two. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a conversation that meant anything at all.

  We sat in uncomfortable silence for a bit, until the front doorbell rang. Dad went to answer it while Mom and I stayed sitting. The front door was about ten feet from the kitchen, so I watched my father walking. When he opened the door, I saw that two police officers stood on our porch.

  “Can I help you gentleman?” Dad asked.

  The man on the left, whose badge said White, spoke first. “Are you Nathan Hodkin?”

  “I am.”

  The second officer said, “We regret to inform you that there was a break in at your jewelry shop last night. May we come in?”

  Dad moved aside, letting them enter before closing the door. “A break in? How am I just hearing about this?”

  White said, “I honestly don’t know. But we need to ask you a few questions about a man named Mike Ross. One of your employees, am I correct?”

  Dad sighed. “Did Mike take something? Let me tell you right now, you have the wrong man. I’ve known him for the better part of a decade, and I know he would never steal a thing from me.”

  I wanted to move closer, to get a better view of the conversation. It got me interested but my dad wouldn’t want me involved in anything to do with the business. He made it clear that I wasn’t going to be a part of it, that it was all going to Lane when he was older. It left me without direction in my life.

  The two officers stood in the middle of the attached family room, and I saw quick look they exchanged. The second man, Gunny, ran a hand through salt and pepper hair. “So, you haven’t heard.”

  My mom got up and joined my father in his harsh stance. He shot her a glare when she opened her mouth. “Heard what? What happened?”

  “Mike Ross was found dead in your store a few hours ago.”

  I blinked, wondering if I’d heard him right. I had known Mike since I was a kid, and he was always nice to me. I could remember him buying me French fries once because my mom forgot to pick me up from school and sent him instead. He had just handed them over, saying that he was sorry my mom got busy. I knew even then that he was lying, and that Mom had just spaced out on me. It wasn’t the first time, and certainly wasn’t the last.

  Now, he was dead. Here one second and gone the next. And the way the officer said it was so casual that my hands balled into fists. He must have seen this kind of thing every day, so it wasn’t a big deal to him. I didn’t care because it was still a life lost, and they should have shown respect. Showed something...

  “What happened?” my mom asked again.

  Officer White looked over at me, and then back to my father. “Do you want to talk privately? It’s a little sensitive.”

  Dad scoffed. “Don’t worry about her. Just tell me what happened in my store.”


  They did.

  “The alarm wasn’t tripped,” the second officer said. “So, we suspect whoever broke in knew what they were doing. Mike Ross was found behind the counter, with a single wound on his neck. He was slashed in the throat with an unknown weapon. We believe he died instantly,” he added.

  “What was taken?” Dad asked.

  Of course, he asked what was taken because he was probably thinking about all the trouble he would have to go to for this to get sorted out. Calls with the insurance people, better security, a new hire. I wondered how much he thought about Mike, and the fact that he was no longer living.

  I sat at the table, staring hard at the wood under my hands. I’d never known anyone who’d died before, and I wasn’t sure what to think of it. It was like there was some block in my brain that kept me from believing it was real, and I assumed I would see Mike later on this week.

  I was wrong.

  “Nothing,” the officer said.

  “What?” Mom responded.

  “Nothing. Nothing at all was taken. They didn’t steal any money or jewelry, and they didn’t break a thing. Not even the door on their way in. The only thing amiss was the body on the floor.”

  I winced.

  We’d never had as much as an attempted robbery in all the years the store had been opened. The store had been passed down from generation to generation, and the owners were always respected by the community. The fact that anyone would come in and pick a fight with our family... it was insane. My father knew people, and we had enough influence to make anyone’s life a living hell. Not something that we resorted to, as far as I knew. But there was a first time for everything...

  “How is that possible?” Dad asked. “Who could have broken in, and not at all shown any sign of breaking in? Only three people know the code to get in, and one of them is dead. The other is my wife.”

  “We don’t know much yet,” White said. “We got a call that said someone passing by had seen blood leaking from around the counter. Then we found the victim. We need you to come down to the station and answer some questions for us.”

  My father plucked his coat from the rack by the door, saying that he would go with them right now. No sitting around and waiting on this one. Not with a cooling body, and someone who could go through the door like it was nothing at all. Was it one person, or more than that? The real question was, why would someone do this?

  I didn’t know the ins and outs of my dad’s business but I really didn’t think anything shady was going on there. Not something that would get a family friend killed like that. A quick, cold death, to a man that didn’t deserve it at all. I would have understood if they did it in a robbery but not a thing was taken. It would have been more than easy to smash the glass and take thousands of dollars’ worth of things from us.

  So, who would break in just to kill a good man?

  I didn’t understand.

  I stayed sitting at the table, trying to figure out what the hell this world was. Good men dying and innocent boys getting tormented for the fun of it. Nothing made any sense to me.

  Would the kids at school have heard about this by the time I got there? Some of them might be interested enough to ask me questions about it, thinking it would be good gossip. Normally, I went unnoticed by the people around me but something like this could make me the center of attention. That sounded horrendous, and I almost wanted to fake an illness to stay home for the day. Too bad my mom would never go for it. She wouldn’t be so kind as to spare me.

  Chapter Five

  How to be a Good Host

  Becket

  I stood out in front of the school. The other students had all huddled around out front and were talking. I didn’t want to get in their way, so I decided to wait until they went inside before heading to first hour. I thought it would be smarter than getting into another scuffle with them.

  “What are you doing?” someone asked from behind me. I turned around to see Manny. She had dressed for the cold weather in a sweater that looked too small on her. She kept messing with the sleeves. I pulled open my backpack and removed the sweater that my father had made me bring. I didn’t want to use it because I liked the cold. When it bit into my skin until it hurt, it felt the best. When I went numb, nothing could make me go back inside the house.

  “Would you like this?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “No. That’s fine. I don’t want to take your sweater.”

  My brow furrowed, and I turned the sweater around in my hands. “I do not care about the sweater,” I told her. “Take it. It would only get musty from being in my backpack all the time.” I held it out to her again.

  She pulled on the sleeves of her own sweater again before taking mine. She pulled the small one over her head, changing it out with the larger one. It was dark gray and went down to her knees, almost. The sleeves swallowed her whole. “Um... thank you,” she said.

  I tried to smile at her but it felt wrong on my face. Brittle somehow. I dropped it before she got scared, and tried to run away from me.

  “What are you doing out here?” she asked, while stuffing the too small sweater into her bag. She peered up at me through her hair. The white-blond obscured her face somewhat, so I couldn’t read her expression. I couldn’t tell if she wanted me to go away. Not that anyone ever admitted that to me. They’d play around the actual words, and it was confusing that they wouldn’t just tell me to leave.

  “I’m waiting,” I told her.

  “For what? School is going to start in five minutes.”

  “For all of them to leave,” I said, looking over at the group of kids. “I don’t want to bother them.”

  Manny’s eyebrows rose. “It seems to me that they bother you more than you do them.”

  I shook my head. “No. They don’t bother me. They definitely don’t like having me around, though, and I don’t want them to think I’m being rude. My father says that I’m rude a lot.” I frowned because I didn’t understand why he thought that. I never meant to be rude. Could I still be rude if I didn’t mean it?

  “They spend a lot of time picking on you,” Manny said.

  My head cocked. “Not really. Most of them would rather not deal with me, and that’s okay. I understand. I scare them...” Even when I didn’t mean to.

  Manny cleared her throat. “All right then,” she said. “Well, I’m going inside, and wouldn’t mind it if you walked with me. You know, so that no one bothered me. If you want, that is.” Her eyes shifted away from me, like she was embarrassed by something. I didn’t understand how she could have anything to be embarrassed about.

  “Would they bother you?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she told me, turning to stare into my eyes. “They would bother me, and I wouldn’t like that at all.”

  She started walking, and I fell into step behind her. I didn’t want anyone to upset Manny. Several of the students looked up as we walked past, and I could feel their stares on me. I wanted to scratch until they stopped looking but there were already so many scars I had to hide. Dad said that people wouldn’t understand where they came from, so I couldn’t let anyone see. Even if that meant wearing long sleeves in the middle of summer.

  The thought of tearing at my skin until the flesh broke, though... Until blood soaked my shirt and left it a sopping mess. I couldn’t get the images out of my mind, and they brought a strange comfort. The comfort of darkness and thoughtlessness. The comfort of complete quiet.

  “Becket,” Manny said.

  I blinked, looking at her. We stood outside English, and she had ducked her head so that she could stare into my eyes, which had been trained on the floor. “You okay?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Do I not look okay?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. I thought she had lied, and I frowned over that. I didn’t want to be lied to. I would have asked again but Mrs. Flannigan came to the doorway. Her eyes went from me to Manny, and back again.

  “Are you going to stand in the hall, o
r come in here?” she asked.

  Manny went into the classroom first. I went to my corner, and she started to follow me but Mrs. Flannigan stopped her. “Manny? Why don’t you sit over here, next to me? I could use someone who takes thorough notes to help me out.”

  Manny’s face scrunched up in confusion but she sat where she was supposed to. I took my own seat, and stretched my legs out in front of me. Class started not too much later, and Mrs. Flannigan stood in the front of the room. She started writing on the board, telling us about a book that we would start reading next week, since we had finished the last one.

  A few minutes into class, her shoulders slumped and she tilted her head back. “All right, we don’t have much to do today. Why don’t you guys partner up and start quizzing each other on the vocabulary test next Friday?”

  All the students moved around but I stayed seated. I pulled the sheet out of my notebook and stared at the words. Manny approached me, setting her backpack on the desk next to mine.

  Mrs. Flannigan came rushing over. “Um. Manny? Why don’t you partner up with Joyce, instead?”

  The girl in question raised her head, sneering. “I don’t want to be partnered with her. I want to work with my friends. Let her sit with the creep. The two of them seem to be getting along just fine.”

  “Joyce!” Mrs. Flannigan snapped. “If you cannot hold your tongue, then I will send you to the principal’s office and have them call your mother. She can deal with you after that.”

  “I don’t want to work with Joyce,” Manny said. “I want to work with Becket. He doesn’t have a partner.”

  “I’m sure he doesn’t want one,” Mrs. Flannigan said.

  “No,” I said. “I like Manny.”

  Mrs. Flannigan got quiet, her eyes darting between all of three of us kids. With a deep breath, she touched Manny’s arm, whispering, “Can I talk to you over here for a second?” When Manny nodded, the two of them stepped away. Into the aisle, where they could talk without my overhearing.