There’s nothing like starting your first day at a new school with your dad tossing a gun into your lap.
“Dad!” I gasped, snatching the nine millimetre Glock into my grip and shoving it back at him. “Are you crazy?”
His usually smooth brow wrinkled in that way that told me he was about to show me the sterner side of him. We were closer than two knotted necklaces and just as inseparable, but when his usually long fuse ran out, he was one scary son of a bitch. My fuse was longer than his, but I didn’t think I could pull off the Freddy Kruger stare he was pointing at me right now.
“Tatum, I’m only going to say this once.” He reached over into the back seat of our Audi A4 Wagon, hooking my backpack off of it and unzipping the front pocket. He stuffed the gun inside before I could voice any more complaints and barrelled on. “This is for your protection. You’re taking it with you.”
“Dad, it’s a boarding school for the richest kids in Sequoia State and beyond. What could possibly happen to me here?”
He released a sarcastic ha!, pushing his glasses up his nose. They were the only thing cliché about him being a virologist. He was a gun enthusiast, a black belt in karate, had scars on his knuckles from the fights he’d been in in his youth and his favourite hobby was doomsday planning. Like, he had legit bought a house in Elmwood Forest a few hours north of here with a bunker stashed with enough tinned food to get us by until the year three thousand.
To put it lightly, he was any teenage boy’s worst nightmare. That was probably why I kept my dating life brief and to the point. Besides, with the way we moved around all the time, one night stands were a good way to defend myself from a broken heart. If I had no intention of making something last more than a few hours at a time, then I never had to worry about heartache and all of those other lovely things I’d rather avoid. I’d already had my fair share of that when I was a kid anyway after Mom had up and left us.
Dad gripped the back of my seat, leaning in close and giving me a firm look. “I’ve seen a lot of life, Tater-tot.”
I rolled my eyes at the nickname and turned away, gazing through the iron gates ahead of us. A huge gravel driveway led up to the gothic manor house at the far end of it. It looked like something plucked out of a horror story, the clouds above not letting in a crack of light to brighten the ancient grey walls. Who even built a place like that all the way out here in the middle of nowhere? Count Dracula?
“Look at me, kiddo,” Dad growled and his tone set my pulse racing.
I turned to him, frowning as I tried to figure out why he was acting like a lunatic over me going to boarding school. It wasn’t like I’d wanted to come here. He’d been the one to push and push until I agreed. He had to work, he said. He needed to travel all over the country, he claimed. But why couldn’t I just go with him? I’d been doing it my whole life. Why stop now?
“You need some stability. And with the Hades Virus taking a grip in the world, I’m needed now more than ever.”
I clucked my tongue. The virus. For the past couple of months ‘the virus’ had been like a pissy next door neighbour in our lives who let his dog shit on our lawn and peeped over our fence any time we got too comfortable in our own space. It was an ever-present, lonely pervert of a neighbour who needed to get a life.
I knew Dad needed to do this. He was important. He was working on a cure to save millions of people when this disease got out of hand – which it would apparently. But there hadn’t even been a single case of the Hades Virus all the way out here in northern Sequoia. Not even in the next state over yet. The number of cases in America as a whole was only in the hundreds, but Dad was a virologist and he knew more about it than the government were letting on right now. If the virus got out of control, shit was gonna get bad. Like, really bad.
The problem was, Dad was also the only person in my life. It may have been selfish, but I didn’t want to give him up. We moved around so often that the only friends I had were short-lived and fair-weather. Over the years, I’d turned to the company of books more than people when Dad wasn’t around. Characters could never escape me. Not when I could trap them in my kindle for the rest of time. Suckers.
I bashed my head back against the seat, knowing it was petulant but not caring in that moment as I threw a growl of frustration into the mix too. “Why can’t I just come with you?”
“Don’t drag up that old argument, Tatum. This has been a long time coming. It’s not like I want to leave you here.”
I turned to him, finding so much love in his eyes that it made my heart hurt. Dad was my one constant thing in this world. As much as I hated to admit it, stepping out of this car into that scary-ass horror movie of a building was kinda freaking me out. And with the frantic look Dad was giving me and the gun he’d just stashed in my bag, I wasn’t exactly getting the calming vibes I needed right now. Sure, I was trained to shoot, fight and forage. But this wasn’t the apocalypse. I reckoned that would have been a walk in the park compared to this. Because this was the one thing I actually feared. Bonding.
Normally, I could fly in and out of people’s lives like a breeze, never getting attached. I was a pro at that. But here, I was going to be immersed twenty four seven in the company of other teenagers. I was going to have to ‘make an effort’, ‘get out of my comfort zone’ and – heaven forbid – ‘mingle’. Though the idea of making real friends had always appealed to me, the reality was that I was always ready to up and leave them behind. For my scenery to change and for the faces around me to change with it. But this wouldn’t be like that. Dad had enrolled me for the entirety of my senior year.
“Don’t hate me,” he said softly and I pursed my lips. I was seventeen. A year later and we wouldn’t even have been having this conversation. Why did fate have to be such a bitch?
A guard ushered us through the two immense iron gates and Dad pushed the stick into drive as we sailed through them.
“Have you got your pepper spray?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“And your tactical pen?”
“Yup.”
“And your self-defence keychain?”
“Yes, Dad,” I groaned. “You know I’m not actually allowed any of this shit inside the school gates, right? If I get caught-”
“I taught you too well to get caught,” he said proudly and a smile tugged at my mouth.
“Well that’s true,” I conceded and he shot me a grin.
We pulled up alongside the huge wooden doors and I tried not to feel intimidated by a building. It was working its hardest to look like a mean bastard though.
A guy appeared around the side of it, strolling towards us up the path and the sight of him made the breath stall in my lungs. Like, had the air actually just turned to stone? I couldn’t get a single ounce of it into my chest.
He wore a Titans football jersey in the school team colours of forest green and white, the material clutching his powerful frame. His face could have charmed a snake from a mile away, every line and feature the kind of angular I’d only ever seen in magazines. His inky hair fell into eyes that were the colour of jade and his boyish smile looked like it needed to feed regularly on innocent girl’s heart’s to keep it intact.