What's a bad boy?

Chapter 21//The West Side

Chapter 21: The West Side

"So where are you from, 'friend of Hunter's'?" I ask curiously as I make my way from the bus stop to the 'party' with Jay.

"Well I've lived in the west side of town for a little while but I'm moving back to the east to transfer schools" he explains a bit mysteriously.

"The west side?"

"Um yeah. When it comes to the 'gangs', all of the rougher business goes down in the west side of town. Only the higher status members live in the east."

"Wait, so you've had to live in a community of muggers and hooligans all your life?"

I'm honestly astounded that the people running this town had the nerve to divide it in two like that.

"It's not like that. They're mostly just petty drug dealers and... the red guards" he whispers, looking around for any people.

"I'm sorry, the red guards?" I ask.

"Yeah" he says lowly, "each gang has a squad of red guards to do their dirty work for them. Majority of the time they are harmless unless you provoke them, except the red skulls. The Night Hawks and the Scorchers are normally ok. The Vipers squad are tolerable. But the red skulls..."

(A/N: as a reminder, the nighthawks are Violet's gang, the scorchers are Chad's gang, the Vipers's are Amanda's gang and the red skulls are Hunter's)

"What about them?"

"Hunter's dad, Dominic, is very territorial of his property and followers. Even as a member of the gang I have to tread on egg shells when I'm around those red guards and boy can they be terrifying. You see, they all wear these red masks that hide their true identity so no one knows who they really are. Some people at my old school used to say that the red skulls squad were demons raised from hell to wreak havoc on Dominic's enemies" his voice is low and menacing, as though he is imagining them at that very moment.

The very thought of such a presence had chills going down my spine.

"Is that why you've been hurrying me around since we got off the bus?"

He nods, looking straight ahead with determination.

"They've been looking for me since I transferred from my old school" he growls.

"Why?"

"I have some um associations with Dominic's enemies and he doesn't like the thought of me moving to the same school as the four heirs."

The question of whether he knows who I am or not immediately pops into my head.

"So, um how much do you know about the four heirs?" I inquire subtly.

"Well I've heard a lot about the first three, but apparently the new leader of the night hawks has a mystery heir that no one on the west side knows about."

I'm somehow relieved that he doesn't know who I am. It'll make it easier to tell whether he actually wants to be friends with me. Maybe if Heather and the guys hadn't known who I was we would have worked out... but there's no point dwelling on the past.

"So how far are we?" I ask, trying to change the topic.

"We're here actually" he says, stopping in front of an old brick house with cracked floor boards on the patio and bits of the banisters curving to the side at odd angles.

It looks a lot like the sort of house you'd see in a horror movie, except I'm not that scared with Jay by my side.

"I know it's not much compared to what you're probably used to on the east side, but it's all we got" Jay says with a tight lipped smile.