How to Wreck My Bully's Heart novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: North Stairs

Drake claims it is spam, so Maisy sets a trap on the north stairs, confirms he is Nightcrawler, and decides to make him fall in love with her before she wrecks him.

I made it to the end of the hall before my knees gave out.

Cassie Brill caught me by the elbow outside the A/V booth and pulled me inside. She shut the door and locked it.

"You are the color of printer paper," she said. "Sit."

I sat on a stack of cable crates.

Cassie pushed her round glasses up her nose.

She ran every screen at Ridgemont, and she had watched the whole thing on the cafeteria camera feed.

"He dropped your tray on the floor," she said. "Again. I can pull the clip and send it to the dean."

"The dean has Hargrove money on his office wall."

"Then I'll send it to a lawyer."

"Cassie." I put my phone in her hand. "Read the top message."

She read it. Then she read it again.

"Nightcrawler," she said slowly. "Your Nightcrawler. The one who says keep climbing."

"He signs off 'keep climbing.' He tells me I'm brave. He's been in my pocket since July."

"And Drake's phone lit up with your words."

"Moth. My name. My comma."

Cassie sat down on the crate beside me. For a while neither of us said anything.

"Okay," she said. "That is the worst thing I have ever heard."

"He doesn't know I know."

"You're sure?"

"His hand was shaking. He shoved the phone in his pocket and walked out."

Cassie's mouth twisted. "So what do you do? Expose him?"

"If I show people, he says it was a joke and his father makes it go away."

I turned the phone over.

"And I never get to ask him anything."

"Ask him what?"

"Why."

My phone buzzed in her hand.

It was one line, from Nightcrawler. "Sorry I went quiet. Rough day. You okay?"

Cassie looked at me.

I took the phone back and held it a minute.

He was asking if I was okay.

He was asking it hours after he stood over my table and dumped my lunch.

"I want to be sure," I said.

I typed, "Better now. Can we meet? Not online. Real. I'll be on the north stairs after last bell. Third landing. Please come."

Cassie's eyebrows went up. "You've never asked to meet him."

"He's always said no. Too busy. Too far. Too shy."

"Because he sits two tables from you."

I hit send.

After last bell Cassie walked me to the north stairs.

She went to wait in the old library with her headphones around her neck.

The north stairs were the old stairs, and nobody had used them since the new wing opened.

I stood against the rail with my phone in my hand.

I had never been so scared in my life.

At four fourteen, a door opened on the first floor.

Footsteps came up. Slow, then slower.

Then they stopped on the landing below mine.

I leaned over the rail.

Drake Hargrove stood at the bottom of the second flight with his bag on one shoulder.

He gripped his phone in both hands. His face was gray, and he was staring up at me.

"Rafferty," he said.

"Hargrove."

"What are you doing here?"

"Waiting for someone."

His throat moved. "Who?"

"A friend," I said. "He's late."

He looked at his phone. Then at me.

I watched him decide what to say. I watched him decide fast, because he was a good liar, and I should have known that sooner.

"I come up here to be alone," he said. "It's not a meeting place. You should go."

"I'm not going anywhere."

"Then stay." He took one step back. "I'm just lost."

"Lost," I said. "In your own school."

"Yes."

A phone buzzed. It was not mine.

He stood very still and let it buzz in his pocket.

I had sent the message myself. Two minutes ago, from the top of the stairs, I had typed "Where are you?"

He pressed a hand flat over his pocket and did not look at it.

"I have practice," he said. "Don't wait for your friend. He's not coming."

He turned and went down. His footsteps were fast now, and uneven.

When the door at the bottom banged shut, I sat down on the step.

I put both hands over my mouth.

Cassie came up two stairs at a time. "Maisy."

"It's him."

"I know. I heard the phone."

"He stood right there. He looked right at me and lied to my face, and then he wrote me the sweetest thing."

I was shaking, but I was not crying.

I was angry in a way I had never been, and it made my hands feel strong.

"So?" Cassie said. "Now do we burn him down?"

I thought of eight months, and his hand on my tray.

"No," I said. "Burning is too fast."

"Then what?"

"He wants Moth. He doesn't know he has me."

I stood up.

"So I give him Moth. Every night, everything he wants, until he falls so hard he forgets how to breathe."

Cassie stared. "And then?"

"And then I wreck his heart. In front of everybody."

Cassie nodded once.

My phone buzzed again at eleven that night, in bed, with my mother's shift three hours from done.

It was Nightcrawler.

"I know I'm a coward about meeting. But I have to say this somewhere. I think I'm in love with you."

I lay still with the screen lighting my face.

Then I typed, "Me too."

I sent it, and I smiled at the ceiling for a long time.

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