Jett

42

Before he could bite back, Naziah clicked her fingers and continued on in a fake cheerful voice. "Oh! Perhaps we should get out some Ouija boards and tell our parents we love them?"

From the driver's seat, Kayden caught Jett raise her brows at the mocking suggestion. Rather than chiding her on the inappropriate nature of the comment, as Kayden would expect from Jett, the dark haired girl just said, "you hate your parents."

"That's besides the point," Naziah waved off.

Kayden took her slight distraction to finally speak up. "Then, please do tell, what is the point?" He hadn't realised that he had spoken until all heads turned in his direction. His first instinct was to take the words back but he refused to just sit there and let Naziah speak to him as if he were a moron.

"The point, Kayden, is that you don't belong here," the tone was a lot more levelled than it had been before, colder even, which made it worse, "that much is clear from the kinds of questions you ask. The point is that while you were on the phone calling mummy dearest, Jett was contacting a weapons dealer. The point is that of course we're going to talk about seemingly nonsensical things before we do our jobs. We don't go in preparing ourselves to die; we don't have big dramatic pep talks or anything else you'd see in movies. We go in, get the job done and then go back to school and talk about more nonsensical things and focus on the stats rather than the fact that we're basically glorified murderers."

Kayden felt a small amount of his irritation deflate at the hard look on her face. Her words felt like some sorted twisted rehash of what Jett had said to him a few nights before.

"If I let myself care about all the people I've killed I wouldn't make it a week without hanging myself."

He couldn't believe that he had forgotten them. Everyone just seemed so unfazed most of the time that it was easy for his mind to believe that they didn't even register the deaths anymore. He opened his mouth to try and rectify the situation but Naziah hadn't finished.

"Then you just waltz in and demand to be a part of it all," her volume had risen with her incredulity, "as if what we do is some spectacularly exciting thing. Full of suspense and action. It's a real life movie to you, a chance to be a part of something filled with action and secrecy. You may even get to feel like a hero." She paused, probably to take a breath considering the words hadn't stopped spilling from her mouth and everyone was too stunned by the outburst to try and interrupt her. "Here's the thing, Kayden, when all the fun and excitement is over, you get to go to your warm little home with your loving mother and live the rest of your life completely untouched by whatever goes down tonight. Meanwhile, we have to deal with the clean up and the guilt and the reality of it all—"

"Naziah," Jett finally cut in, her tone firm as her eyes focused on the road, "that's enough."

Kayden felt relief overcome him as Jett stepped in. Normally he would have tried harder to get her to back off but it seemed that his very existence was the thing bothering her. So no matter what he said, it would have made the situation worse. He had completely forgotten his place in the scheme of things. It wasn't that he had thought he was qualified, he wasn't a complete idiot, it was that he had forgotten he was in such a privileged position. He was a PINOP, his very job was to be protected so he could leave untouched by whatever happened that day. He hadn't realised that the fact that he was free to just leave would cause one of them to resent him.

"Oh come on Jett," Naziah didn't seem like she could stop even if she wanted to, "you were thinking the exact same thing yesterday when you told Kayden he couldn't come with us. Then my sister says a few words and you suddenly change your mind? I guess what they say at Saint Helena's is true, she does have you on a leash." The last part was sneered, obviously more meant to hurt Jett than it was because Naziah truly believed the words. In fact, as soon as they were out of her mouth even she seemed shocked that she had said them.