by L V Chase
Roman deserved retaliation, but nobody is calling an ambulance. Nobody is disciplining Klay. If I’d slapped someone, there would have been a more drastic response.
As Mark and Nathan struggle to carry Roman out of the room, I see a spatter of blood that had landed on the shoulder of his blue shirt. The stark red shade shivers in my mind, reminding me of blood on a brighter blue shade. It wasn’t cloth. Rubber.
They were rubber gloves.
I slowly sit down as Mr. Miller starts talking about cells. In my mind, I follow the memory of the blue rubber gloves up to a pair of arms smooth with muscle.
“Sadie. What are you doing here?”
The voice had pressed a layer of fear into me, but I can’t recall exactly what the voice sounded like, why the one speaking had bloodstained gloves, or why, above the layer of fear, there was a layer of attachment towards him.
It’s all as nonsensical as what just happened.
Klay and Ethan walk back into the room. I keep my eyes down on my hands. Klay sits down beside me while Ethan takes his seat in front of us. The air of uneasiness continues to permeate the room, but nobody says anything to either of them. When Mr. Miller stops by our table to check on our worksheets concerning cell-cell recognition, he only commends me on my cell drawings and moves on, ignoring Klay.
During my two-year memory gap, something happened. The way the world worked before collapsed, and it was replaced by something that makes no sense.
Or maybe I’m just going crazy.
5
Klay
“Times New Roman, size 12 font, double-spaced,” Mr. Miller says. He quickly looks past me as he scrutinizes the class. “Don’t try to fool me into thinking it’s longer than it is, because I’ll be checking the word count.”
Mr. Miller knows my family’s influence more than most Marshall residents. His brother was running for mayor eight years ago. During his campaign, he criticized my father for owning three private hospitals in the area and how public hospitals would serve the community better.
Several newspapers printed an old arrest report of his DUI four years prior.
Rumors began to spread that Mr. Miller had slept with a few of his students and that his brother had covered it up with promises of power to the families.
His wife was accused of hurting some of her elderly patients at the nursing home she worked at.
He lost the election by a landslide
Mr. Miller can’t be certain my father had anything to do with it, but Mayor Acosta wasn’t calculating or cold-hearted enough to pull off his opponent’s overwhelming downfall on his own. And the conspiracy theories about what had really happened were already everywhere.
I knew Mr. Miller wouldn’t dare punish me for anything I did. When I punched Roman, I hadn’t thought of him at all. All I knew in that moment was that Roman put his hands on Sadie, and I was going to return the favor.
As everyone rushes to the door to leave, Ethan turns in his chair and winks at Sadie.
Of course, everyone wants to punch Roman in the face, he’d told me in the doorway. I commend you for it. You’re third on my list of heroes after Johnnie Cochran and Jesus. But if the Society finds out that you’re out of control like this, they’ll eliminate you and your family. They despise what they can’t control. You know that. But, most importantly, when I win, I want to be winning against the best. And even Roman’s father knows he’s not the best.
I have no doubt Ethan has given Roman a similar speech. A thousand criticisms could be brought down on Ethan’s head, but nobody could deny that he could have a way with words. Being raised by lawyers tended to turn little boys into manipulative monsters.
But I need Ethan to remain placated. Ethan and Roman are both desperate for some control after their whole game plan was destroyed by the change in the rules. I can keep Ethan from becoming too desperate by making him think his words have power over me.
Roman is a whole other problem. He’s letting all his worst impulses out in an attempt to pretend he’s only acting out his role as an alpha male. It’s always the slowest in the pack who overcompensate for their weaknesses, and Roman is slow as fuck.
I should have kept slamming my fist into his skull and let the shards of bone stab into that miserable excuse of a brain.
I grab my backpack as everyone starts to shuffle toward the door. When I feel a hand on my arm, I know it belongs to Sadie. I drew too much attention to myself. I fucked up badly, but I don’t regret it.
I turn to her.
“I think I should thank you,” she says.
Let’s dissect this shit of a situation: I disclosed the truth to Sadie, and it led to a complete breakdown. Everything’s worse. As the two of us go through the rest of this like two corpses in waiting, I’m expected to act out my role as the nice guy.
What dumb shithead would keep smiling as the world burned and a Neanderthal put his hands on Sadie? Who the fuck would politely ask him to please, pretty please, act more like a man and less like an enema?
And who would I be if I didn’t protect a woman who’d lost her memories because of me?
She clears her throat, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “Could you show me to my next class?”
She’s looking up at me with an innocence that’s almost unnerving. This is how she looked when we first met. She didn’t know about the Society, she didn’t know that my life was a rolling ball of shit, she didn’t know that I could infect her life just by staying near her. Now, she knows. Or, rather, she did before her mind was fucked with again. And I’m the fucker that did that to her.
Ethan’s slowly filling his bag, making as little noise as possible. He’s listening, of course, the little leech.
“Sure,” I say, slapping on my certified nice-guy smile. “What class is it?”
“Algebra II,” she says.
“That’s taught by Mrs. Whitmore. It’s the same room as our homeroom.”
She shrugs, her shoulder barely raising. “I have a short memory and no sense of direction.”
When her memory had been reset before, she’d been less forward and more cautious. Possibly because I was cruel, and possibly because she was less certain after being convinced she was unstable. This is new territory, and new territory means she could be taken out by a predator more easily.
I quickly survey the remaining faces around us. Nobody is watching us now, but Ethan and Roman’s fathers were suspicious of cheating, so I have no doubt they’d send out flunkies to ensure there wasn’t any cheating, while doing whatever they could to gain an advantage themselves. Like Greg. I push away the bloody memory.
“Let’s go,” I say, leading the way out of the class.
As we step out, she picks up her pace to walk beside me. “Do you think he’s okay?” she asks. “Roman, I mean.”
A genuine version of me would tell her the truth, that the only reason I would care if Roman was healthy was so that I could make sure he’s not. And, unless he’s dead or suffering from a traumatic brain injury, his parents will vent to the Society but not call the police on me. The families enjoy too much control to ask for assistance from the local authorities unless they deem it necessary, and the Shaws have the weakest relationship with the police.
“He’s fine,” I say, my response coming out shorter than I meant it to. When I first heard we were switching up the goals and rules, I thought I’d be able to get Sadie to fall in love with me this time and win the Hunt. But the new rules make the end result far worse than it would have been before.
As we make our way up the stairs, she falls behind me. She nearly bumps into me near the top of the stairs and her warm vanilla scent wafts over me. Fuck. This is harder than last time. We’d had sex so recently, the urge to shove her up against the wall and feel her melt under my hands is screaming through every one of my cells.
But it’s not what a nice boy would do.
I stop outside of room 211. “Have fun in algebra.”
“Thank you, Klay,” she says.
She remembers.
She blinks, and the same innocence returns to her face. She gives me a quick smile and steps into her classroom. I stay there, staring at the lockers across the hall.
I want to bash in Roman’s skull even more.
6
Sadie
I feel like I’m trapped in a nonsensical nightmare. My classmates are dressed up like hippies. Meanwhile, I’m trying to take quizzes and complete worksheets while I can’t remember any of my past lessons.
I keep checking my body to make sure that my clothes haven’t vanished, fulfilling the only part of this nightmare that’s missing. It’s strange and unnerving, but after a couple of classes, I’ve found it’s possible to go through the motions, and nobody will notice that I have no idea what I’m doing. I’m a ghost, haunting the past and present, witnessing a classmate wearing a leather fringe vest sneaking a peek at his cell phone or a girl with a floral headband insisting that she’s soulmates with a cast member of a reality TV show.
I’m relieved that seventh period is gym, because it means I won’t be asked questions about the Seventeenth Amendment or the hyperbola equation. And everyone will be wearing clothes from this decade. At this point, I’m fairly certain this is reality, but I still get struck by the fear that I’m a second away from having a hallucination about Confederate soldiers and cavemen.
That relief vanishes as I step out of the locker room, enter the gym, and see both Roman and Klay in the line of boys on the other side of the gym.
They’re standing about twelve feet apart from each other with three other boys between them, but the way Roman keeps glancing over at Klay, they might as well be close enough to throw a punch. Roman’s left eye is swollen, and a crimson red circle stains the space beneath it.
As more girls come out of the locker room, I pretend to be intrigued by the PE teacher setting down three plastic bases and a plastic home plate, but in the corner of my eye, I watch Klay.
He’s not my type. Since I was eleven or twelve, I’ve crushed on those intellectual types, the skinny boys with the sweater vest or the indie band t-shirt.
Klay was a beast in comparison. The rigidity of his face might hint at some faint semblance of intellectual prowess, but his body could only be taught with a strict, hands-on approach. I could be his favorite pupil.
He turns. Our eyes meet. When he looks away, it’s almost in a lazy manner, and I don’t buy that he’s ever been lazy in his life.
“Roman. Klay.” The male PE teacher nods over to the two of them. “Kickball. Start picking teams. Klay’s team is kicking.”
The class flocks toward the center of the gym. Nobody seems to mind that those two were chosen for team captains.
As Roman and Klay approach us, Roman rubs his hands together like we’re meal options while Klay studies his options with careful consideration. He looks right past me.
Roman takes a step aside, looking over at Klay and gesturing toward the group. He’s offering us up to Klay. Roman is leaning to the right as if most of his weight is on his right foot and he’s prepared to run from Klay. I’d find it funny if I didn’t clearly remember Roman’s body slumping to the floor.
Klay and Roman make their selections until there are only two people left—me and Carrie Long. As far as I can tell Carrie Long is neurotypical—she just has a deep, unsettling fascination with acting like a cat. She spent most of English class meowing every time the room was silent and laughing about it.
“Sadie,” Klay says, a twinge of reluctance in his voice.
I take a step toward him as Carrie hisses in reply. As Klay, his team, and I head towards the home base, Roman puts his hand on Klay’s shoulder, stopping him.
“Don’t think that you’re in the clear after what you did to Greg,” he mutters.
It takes me a second to understand what he said before he pulls away from Klay, continuing to walk to the pitcher’s mound. Klay, an amused smirk on his face, watches him walk away.
Greg must be somebody else Klay hurt—one of Roman’s friends. The altercation between the two of them may have had nothing to do with me. I guess Klay is simply the violent kind, which contradicts the gentleman he’s pretended to be in public.
I quickly jog over to Roman. He raises an eyebrow at me.
“I just…you mentioned your friend Greg. Is he okay?” I ask.
He sneers at me. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Greg. You mentioned his name.”
He shakes his head. “You must have misheard me. There’s no Greg in this school.”
It’s true. I haven’t met a single Greg or heard about a Greg until right now, but, still, I was certain I’d heard correctly. As I turn to head to the home base, I see everyone on Klay’s team watching Roman and me. I look over to my other side and see several members of Roman’s team watching us as well. Three of them are looking at Klay. They shift their gazes away.
“Play fair!” the PE teacher calls out, bouncing the rubber ball to Roman. Roman smiles at me, but like everything else today, it feels insincere and malicious.
With my amnesia issue, I thought my most difficult class would be Algebra II. I struggled to understand anything in class, resorting to trying to copy the girl beside me. But it’s my eighth period class, Spanish, that’s the real test of my sanity. It turns out that if you miss two years of Spanish classes, you miss the two years that they start requiring you to always speak Spanish during the class, and they only teach the lessons in Spanish. Every time anyone speaks in class, I only understand a quarter of the words they’re saying before I give up figuring it out and simply try to decipher the novel given to me.
I’m fairly certain it’s about a woman who either has long hair or a large horse, and she loves it.
As I walk back to my locker, I keep the Spanish novel opened to the second page while I dig through my thoughts to find the meaning of the word hambriento. I’m gazing down the hallway as if the answer will be written on a poster or the back of someone’s head when I spot Roman leaning next to my locker. I slowly close the book.
I don’t necessarily need to go back to my locker. I won’t be able to do my English homework, but at my level of inadequacy, I might not be able to do it with the book anyways.
Roman spots me. If I turn around now, he’ll know he’s gotten under my skin. I might as well tie a rope around my waist and tie the other end to a branch, so he can knock me around like a piñata.
He taps two fingers on my locker. I walk up to my locker like an obedient dog. My hands tremble as I struggle to remember my locker combination. He must think that my fear is making it hard for me to remember the combination. He’s not completely wrong.
I jerk open my locker and start putting my books and binders back.
“You know, this cutesy innocent act isn’t going to save you for long,” he whispers, gripping onto my locker door.
He shoves it forward, slamming it against my right shoulder. My left shoulder hits against the edge of my locker, pinning me between it and the door.
“Neither is Klay,” he says. “Once we’re alone, I’m going to give you everything you want. I’ll force you on your knees. You’ll take my cock like it’s a goddamn tequila sunrise, drinking it up, and you’ll beg for more. You’ll get it too because I’ll spread you open and pummel—”
“Sadie.”
Ethan moves so abruptly between Roman and me that Roman stumbles back, bumping into a girl behind him. I lurch away from my locker, rubbing the deep red indent left by the metal edge. Ethan swings the locker door open again, motioning for me to get what I want. I force a smile at him, taking out my English book while trying to keep my hand steady.
“I’ve got some time before student government,” he says, flashing me that premium smile. “How about I drive you home?”
“Sure,” I say, hurriedly. Anything to ge
t away from Roman.
I untwist my backpack strap and pull it over my shoulder. Ethan slams my locker door shut, sliding his arm over my shoulders. It’s uncomfortable as we walk together since he walks so much faster than me, but I just pick up my pace. After Roman, I’m not about to complain.
“You seem nervous,” Ethan remarks. “If Roman is being an asshole, just ignore him. He’s all talk. He looks like a tough guy, but he prefers to avoid confrontation because all that weight just gets in the way.”
He didn’t notice how Roman had pinned me down. As I try to unscramble my thoughts to explain how I couldn’t ignore him, I know it won’t make sense to him or anybody else. Why couldn’t I simply step back? Why wouldn’t I call out for help?
Because I was a coward.
Because I’d spent the whole day trying to be invisible, and I didn’t know how to step back into view.
“Are you friends with him?” I ask, trying to distract us both from my shortcomings.
“Our dads are friends, so we…we remain cordial with each other.”
We step out of the school. The sunlight glares down upon us. It’s disorienting after the dimmer lights in the school. We stop at the road as a bus passes by. We cross the road, joining several other seniors who are getting into their cars or laughing with each other.
Ethan stops at the back of his white Maserati, popping open the trunk.
Klay is beside us, leaning against the back of a black Jeep, as he talks to a blonde woman with breasts that are practically leaping out of her camisole. To his credit, Klay is keeping his eyes on her face, but with how often she’s touching the necklace that falls between her cleavage, he’ll be taking inventory of her assets soon enough.
“Hi, Klay,” I say.
He glances over at me. “Hey,” he says. His eyes flit over to Ethan before switching back to me. “How’s it going?”
“Great,” I say. “How about you?”
“It’s the end of the school day, so I’ve never been better.” He turns back towards the blonde. “Anyway, Mir, I thought the pre-calc test was fine until the last question. I know it wanted us to use the depressed equation, but I wasn’t sure what it was asking.”