Sang's P.O.V.
"This is quite a change of scenery," I say awkwardly.
"It's a jail cell," North says.
"Excuse me for trying to put a positive spin on things," I say. "And it's a holding cell, actually."
He grunts, but doesn't say anything. He's pissed. All three of us are, and I know the others are too. This situation is completely unfair.
I adjust my head on Raven's thigh. When I woke up this morning, this is not how I thought my day would go. All fifteen of us were actually having a good day, until that bitch ruined it.
Confused? I should probably catch you up.
Earlier This Morning.
"I'm sorry, you told Coaltar what now?," Gabriel asks.
"He already found out about the Academy," I defend myself. "But he was jumping to conclusions and he would expose all of us. It was the right call to just tell him everything."
After I came back upstairs last night, I convinced North to just go to bed so we could all talk about it in the morning. So as soon everybody woke up, I had the pleasure of explaining what happened last night, excluding a few unimportant details.
"And this hacker friend of his?," Axel asks, "Did he mention a name?"
"He did say a name," I pause to think for a moment. "Doyle. That's all he said about him."
"I don't like this," North shakes his head. "I don't trust him."
"Okay, guys I know this isn't ideal, but has he really given us any real reason to not trust him?" I say, "The only thing we had was him meeting gang members, but he had a pretty good reason for it. And proof of what he was doing."
"Okay, so he's getting drugs off the streets," North says, "But that doesn't mean he's trustworthy."
I resist the urge to roll my eyes.
"Why would he be looking into all of us anyways?," Brandon asks.
"Turns out he didn't buy the whole pornstar thing," I say.
"Shocker," Gabriel shakes his head.
"I was already going to be working with him on this technically, so it's not like much has changed," I point out, "He's just in the know now."
"Have you told Dr. Roberts?," Axel asks.
"I'm meeting him at the hospital tomorrow to discuss it," I nod. "And hopefully he'll have good news about Sophia."
"Has she texted you?," Corey asks.
"Oh, yeah," I nod. "She texted me after I had fallen asleep last night. She's having some trouble sleeping right now."
It breaks my heart. I hope Phil finds somebody to take care of her soon. She deserves somebody who is willing to put in the work to take care of her.
"About Mr. Coaltar," Mr. Blackbourne redirects the conversation. "You're right. It was better for him to know the full story rather than him exposing us. I also agree with Mr. Taylor, though. We have no way of knowing his true intentions."
I don't think anything I say will make them trust him, I guess only time will tell. And it's fair I guess, he was somebody we were investigating, but I trust him.
"Well," I shrug, "There's no changing anything now. He knows and we're just going to have to trust that he won't say anything to anyone."
Nobody seems happy about it, but in the end they all agree. I think deep down they know I'm right, they just don't like him for whatever reason.
Once the topic of Blake has passed, Gabriel says, "We should do something today. We don't have to do anything until we go to the club tonight."
"That sounds good," Axel says. "What do you guys think?"
The rest of the boys agree. "I'm down," I nod. "What do you guys want to go do?"
"We could go to the mall," Gabriel suggests.
"No," all of the guys seem to say at the same time, which is honestly kinda creepy. They must really hate the mall.
"There's that one place we went to one time. I forgot the name but it had an arcade, bowling, laser tag, and bumper cars," Corey suggests.
"Yeah, Stars and Strikes," Victor says.
"Sounds good to me," I shrug. I'm not picky. I haven't really done any of that stuff before, except for the arcade part. Axel and I went a few times, but it's not like we had much money. And when we did have money, we were trying to save it for the day we got to leave.
"Me too," Axel says.
The rest of the boys agree.
Mr. Blackbourne nods. "Alright, then everybody go and get ready. We'll meet downstairs in about an hour."
Everyone goes off to their own apartments to get ready.
After taking a shower, I quickly dry my hair and get dressed. Thankfully I don't have to dress up
or do my makeup, because it would take me more than an hour.
I grab my phone and the key to the apartment, before meeting the boys downstairs.
We take three separate cars to this place. When we arrive, we decide to try laser tag first.
Victor has an app that chooses names randomly, which is really good for a group this big when they can't make decisions. So, that's how we choose our teams, to make things easier.
I end up on a team with North, Corey, Mr. Blackbourne, Nathan, Marc, and Gabriel. The other team consists of Axel, Luke, Silas, Brandon, Sean, Kota, Victor, and Raven.
We have to sit and listen to the rules before we can play. Each of us have five lives and one-hundred and fifty gun shots. My team will have blue lights on our vests while Axel's team will have red lights. When we are shot, the light will change to white for thirty seconds while they recharge. Whichever team kills the other five times will be the winner.
Once we've gotten our vests, we begin. Most of us go our separate ways, but I stick with North for awhile. However, it's impossible to sneak up on anybody with him around, so I go off on my own.
I don't see anyone around for a few minutes as I sneak around. Suddenly, Luke jumps out of nowhere and shoots at my vest. I didn't even hear him coming.
I groan as the light on my vest turns white and Luke laughs before running off. I continue moving on and try to stick to the walls.
The next boy I run into is Raven. "Wait, I wasn't going to shoot you," he raises his hands.
"Oh, you weren't?," I raise an eyebrow.
"Nope," he says, "I just wanted to take advantage of this opportunity."
I think he's full of shit. But I'll play along.
"Well, go ahead," I grin.
While I might not know him well, I think it's safe to say Raven does not take things slow. He presses me against the closest wall and kisses me roughly.
It's hard not to get lost in the moment, for more than one reason. I have to remember where we are and somebody could discover us any second. And, I want to win, so I can't have him distracting me.
But I want to, so bad. I love the way the cool metal of his lip ring feels and I enjoy when his hand slides up underneath my shirt to rub circles on my hip.
But, I'm able to shove him back slightly before pointing the gun at his vest and shooting.
He chuckles lowly. "I'm going to get you for that one."
"Good luck with that," I say breathlessly before making my escape. I have thirty seconds before his vest recharges and I have to make the most of it.
The next few boys are some on my own team. But the next one I see from the opposing team is Axel and I get him before he can ever see me coming.
"Shit," he laughs. When I try to get away, he wraps an arm around me waist and pulls me back.
"Oh no," he laughs. "I'm not letting you go just yet."
His tone is teasing, but there's something about the way he says it that has my heart squeezing in my chest.
"Axel Toma, you are such a cheater," I try to wriggle out of his arms. "You always were."
"I think you're not remembering correctly. Because when we would race each other in the lake, you cheated all the time. This is just payback."
"You cheated too, and you know it."
I know Axel's vest is close to being charged back up, so I finally break free with a victorious laugh. "See ya."
The game continues and as I figured, my team wins. Next, we go to area that's for bowling and decide to split into three groups of five. We were originally only going to split up into two lanes, but the system they have only allows you to put six names in per lane.
This one, I have a feeling I'm not going to do so well at. I've never bowled before, so this should be interesting.
In lane seven is Axel, Luke, Sean, Mr. Blackbourne, and North. I'm in lane eight with Nathan, Silas, Victor, and Brandon. And then Marc, Gabriel, Kota, Raven, and Corey are in lane nine.
We all have to grab bowling balls and I choose one of the smaller pink ones before sitting down and putting our names in the system.
Nathan is the first to go in our lane and he only knocks a few pins down on his first try. But on his second try, he gets the rest.
I watch the next lane as Mr. Blackbourne is up and he gets them all in one try. He doesn't even seem to put in much effort and he gets them all. I think he's the type of guy to be annoyingly perfect with everything he does.
Silas gets a strike as well. Victor completely misses the first time, and knocks over a few on his next turn. Brandon gets a spare like Nathan did. When I go up, my ball goes straight into the gutter both times.
I walk back to my seat with a pout. I don't like bowling. On my next turn, I completely miss the first time again.
"Alright, I can't watch anymore," Nathan says before standing up and walking up to me. "Here's what you need to do."
He shows me exactly how I need to stand and how to throw the ball. With his help, I knock over all of the pins this time. I raise my arms in victory and wrap my arms around him in a quick hug.
The game goes on, most of the conversation is filled with the boys teasing the others when they missed.
Eventually, we decide are hungry so we pause so we can eat. I go up with Raven, North, Corey, Luke and Victor to order.
As North is ordering, Raven asks me, "Veselo li tebe?" (Are you having fun?)
"Da. Priyatno zanimat'sya chem-to drugim, krome raboty." (Yes. It's nice to do something other than work.)
I hear a scoff and I look over to shoulder to see a family close behind us.
"This is what I was talking about," the woman says to her family. "People come over here, steal our jobs, and then don't even have the decency to learn to speak American."
"American isn't a language," I tell the woman. "Dumb ass."
The woman looks at me in shock. I don't know if it's because I understood her, or because I'm saying something back. "Don't say that in front of my children."
"Right, because you're obviously being a fantastic role model for them," I nod. "Just because you hear somebody speaking in a different language, doesn't mean they don't speak English. And even if they didn't, that doesn't give you the right to say stuff like that."
I turn around, ready for this conversation to be over with. I take a deep breath to calm myself. I've said what I needed to say.
Raven looks upset by what the woman said, but he doesn't say anything.
"This is America. I can say whatever I want," the woman retorts.
Is this woman serious?
I flip back around. "Oh, people can say whatever they want here? So, wouldn't that apply to speaking a different language?"
The woman stammers over her words for a minute, but then she looks angry.
"Excuse me," she moves around us to speak to the teenage boy working behind the counter. "I think you should ask these people to leave."
The poor boy looks so uncomfortable as he stares at all of us. "I-I just take the food orders."
"I don't care," she snaps before looking at Raven. "I don't feel comfortable with that man around my kids. He probably isn't even here legally."
"You have no idea what you're talking about," Corey says to the woman.
""Do you have any idea where I could find a manager or someone who could help us?," I ask the boy in the nicest tone I can muster. It's hard, because at this point I'm seeing red but he's just a kid trying to do his job.
Before he can say anything, all hell breaks loose. The woman knocks into me so hard, that if North weren't right behind me I'd be on the ground.
He goes to grab the woman, but I beat him to it. I end up trying to restrain her from doing anything else, but a large arm goes around my neck and pulls me away from the woman. and I assume it's the husband finally doing something.
Before I can get him off me, Raven and North are on the guy. Corey and Victor seem to be trying to keep them under control. Luke is trying to distract the kids. I hear more people arrive and I assume it's the rest of the boys but my hands are full with restraining the woman.
Not even ten minutes later the cops arrive. And after they get everyone's statements, things do not go the way I expected.
Raven is the first to be put into handcuffs.
"What the fuck?," I ask. "Why aren't you putting her in handcuffs?," I point to the woman who started all of this.
"She said you three threatened her," the officer tells me. "In the state of South Carolina, a verbal threat is enough to bring up charges against you."
"Are you kidding me?," I ask. "I didn't make any threats against her. Everybody who saw it would say the same thing."
The officer ignores me and before I know it, I'm getting my hands zip-tied behind my back and North is getting the same treatment from the other officer.
"Sir," the nervous teenager who was behind the counter approaches the officer. "The other woman started this. This girl didn't threaten her or anything."
He must have mentioned this in his statement. So, why is this officer hellbent on arresting only us?
"Stay out of this kid," the officer tells him. "We're the good guys. We know what we're doing."
The kid looks at us and says he's sorry before walking away.
The family approaches, the parents looking smug.
"Thank you, Brad, for protecting and serving your country from these people," the wife says.
"This is such bullshit,"Axel tells the officer. "You know these guys, that's why you aren't arresting them."
At this point he's in the officer's face. "Sir, calm down or I'm taking you in with them."
Axel takes a step back, but he's clearly pissed. "You're making a big mistake."
"Axe," I say slowly. "It's fine. We're fine. Don't get yourself in trouble too."
He looks between me and the officer, with his jaw clenched.
It's not ideal, but we'll be released eventually. Unfortunately, we probably won't be out before being booked, which is not a fun experience.
"We'll meet you there," Mr. Blackbourne says before grabbing Axel's arm. "Let's go."