by Vera Hollins
Terror clutched me when I raised my eyes and caught a sight of the blackboard. There, all over it, was one denigrating word written countless times in many sizes with a white chalk.
Murderer.
It was flaring. It was omnipresent. It was stabbing me like a thousand needles all over my body, and I began panting, unaware of the sounds and movements around me as the world blurred. It was too much.
“How does it feel, murderer?” Natalie whispered into my ear, standing right behind me. Shivers ran down my spine, every muscle in my body tensing. I moved to get away from her, but she grabbed my wrists and pulled me back, pressing my hands against my back as she held me in place.
“Running away won’t save you now.” Her voice was chilling, inducing the worst kind of fear in me.
She dug her long nails into my forearms, and I bit into my lip so I wouldn’t cry out in pain, refusing to let her know just how much she was hurting me. I jerked my arms to set myself free, but Christine appeared in front of me and clamped her hands on my shoulders, preventing me from moving. No.
“Where do you think you are going?” Christine asked with mocking face. I needed to get out of here.
“Let me go.”
“You want to leave so soon? But we’ve just started having fun,” Christine said, grasping my shoulders painfully, and fear took over me. I had to escape. Everyone was just standing there, letting Natalie and Christine get away with this, and it was horrifying. No one would help me. No one.
“Let me go! Our teacher will be here any moment—”
“And then what?” Natalie spoke into my ear. My heart pounded furiously, my shallow breaths failing to give me enough oxygen. “You think that would make any difference? You think we would get punished?” She twisted my wrist. A yelp tore from my lips.
“Please, let me go!” My heart... It was pumping too fast.
“If there was real justice in this world, you would have been punished a long time ago. How can you sleep soundly during night knowing someone died because of you?”
I was about to scream, but then they released me, pushing me to the floor before they stepped away. I was a broken mess, already losing it.
The last thing I remembered before I succumbed to my darkness was dashing away from the classroom, running into the unknown.
I SAT ON A BENCH IN the schoolyard, staring at the scarlet red scrapes on my forearms that were a vicious reminder of Natalie’s brutality. I’d lost track of time, having spent hours on this bench. I was too numb to even move let alone care about skipping classes. My tears had dried a long time ago, leaving only emptiness in their wake.
I knew something bad would happen today. I knew I shouldn’t have even bothered to get out of my bed.
Wasn’t I punished enough? How much more would I have to endure until justice was “served”? How much more until I could forgive myself and move on?
“I found you!”
I glanced to the side and saw Jessica walk in my direction. She was carrying two lunch bags and bottles of orange juice with a smile on her face. Was it lunch time already?
“When you texted me about this place, at first I wasn’t sure where exactly—” She halted in front of me, frowning when she noticed my face. “Are you okay?”
I looked over the students that occupied other benches under the trees, their smiling faces as they chatted with their friends differing from the frown that tugged at my lips and eyebrows. It was such a nice, sunny day, but the sunrays bathing the backyard in warm tones didn’t bring color to my inner gloom.
“Not really.”
She frowned and sat down next to me, giving me a lunch bag and a bottle of juice. “You didn’t say anything, but I brought you lunch.”
“Thanks.” I accepted it, but I had no intention of eating. I should just find some strength and go home.
“So, what happened?” She gasped and caught my wrists. “Sarah! You’re injured!”
“It’s nothing.” I pulled my arms out of her grasp, unused to someone being concerned about me. “It’s pricking a little, but it’s not that bad.”
“Who did this to you?”
“It was Natalie.” I filled her in on what happened before calculus. “Don’t worry, that was nothing. It could have been a lot worse, considering today’s date.”
She frowned. “What do you mean?”
I was about to respond her, but a gut feeling that something bad was going to happen cut into me.
I took in our surroundings, searching for any glimpse of Hayden and his friends. This place was far away from the lunchroom and it was quiet and peaceful, but for some reason, this didn’t appease me.
You’re being paranoid, Sarah.
I looked at the students on the benches again and spotted one guy glancing at me before he returned his attention to his phone. It looked like he was texting someone.
I shook my head to myself. I needed a distraction from these daunting thoughts, so I decided to tell Jessica the whole truth about Kayden.
“You know, I had a best friend here.”
“Really?”
“Yes. He was the best. He was kind and so, so funny.”
“Where is he now?”
My chest hurt with long-suppressed emotions. “He... He passed away.”
“Oh.” Her eyes were big as pools as she looked at me in sympathy. “I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah. It’s still difficult to accept that he is gone. Today is his death anniversary.”
“Jesus.”
She covered her mouth with her hand, her other hand clutching the lunch bag on her lap, and I realized that my timing wasn’t so good. After all, speaking about a deceased friend and the tragedy behind his death wasn’t a topic that should be talked about during lunch.
“I’m sorry for mentioning this now.”
“It’s okay. What happened?”
I sighed, finding it difficult to share this distressing story. Would she judge me like everyone else? “He was Hayden Black’s twin.”
She gaped at me. “What?”
“Yes. Here’s the thing, Hayden and I are next-door neighbors. I met Kayden, his twin, the first day I came to Enfield. He was friendly from the very beginning, always so sweet and helpful... Soon, we became best friends.”
“How about Hayden? Was he your friend too?”
“No.” I laughed bitterly. “He was my enemy from day one. I have no idea why, but he always disliked me.”
“I guess he wasn’t happy about Kayden’s and your friendship if he felt this way about you.”
“Yeah, and that’s an understatement. He did everything possible to hurt me. Anyway... Kayden died when he rushed in front of a car to save Hayden from being hit.”
“ Oh gosh ,” a sorrowful whisper slid over her lips.
At this point I felt a heavy lump in my throat, and tears began pricking my eyes. It felt worse when I talked about it. It hurt me to say that he died because I made a foolish mistake.
“I was with them that night. The accident happened because of me.” I swallowed, hoping to clear my raspy voice.
“What? How?”
“I was crossing the road looking at my phone. I looked both ways before I started crossing, but since my attention was on my phone while I was on the road, I couldn’t see that car on time...”
No. Don’t lose yourself in pain. Not again. Take deep breaths.
“The driver was driving too fast. He swerved to the side to avoid me, but that led him directly to Hayden, who was on a sidewalk... Kayden jumped to save him a moment before the collision. They were both hit, but Kayden was the one who took most of the blow.”
I took a deep breath, barely able to look her in the eyes, and wiped away a tear that had escaped down my cheek, recollecting the moment Kay and Hayden fell from the hood of the car to the unyielding asphalt.
“Kayden died on the spot.”
Jessica took my hand in hers. “I’m so sorry, Sarah.”
I searched her face for any tra
ce of accusation, but I found none, and it took a moment for this to sink in. She wasn’t blaming me for his death. She was genuinely compassionate, which touched deep parts of me that yearned for someone’s understanding and sympathy.
“I keep thinking, if only I hadn’t been so stupid—”
“It’s not your fault.” She squeezed my hands reassuringly. “You couldn’t know.”
“But he wouldn’t have died if I’d been a little more careful. It haunts me. I put Hayden’s life in danger, and as a result, Kayden was forced to save him.”
“Still, he was the one who chose to save his brother.” She said exactly what Mrs. Black told me after the accident.
“But he’s his twin. Of course he’d save him.”
“But there are other factors to consider. Like that driver. You said he was driving too fast? What happened to him?”
“He’s in prison. Sentenced to six years.”
“Only six years? That’s—” She froze, and I followed her gaze. Blake, Masen, and Josh were coming toward us.
Oh no. No, no, no. Alarms went off in my head, followed by the urge to pull Jessica with me and run away.
They surrounded us in a threatening manner, which drew the attention of the students around us.
“You think you can hide from us, Sars?” Blake asked me with a scowl before he sneered at Jessica. “Playing friends with ugly Fats? Figures. Both of you are disgusting creeps.”
He snatched Jessica’s bottle of juice, opened it, and poured the juice over her. Oh my God. I tried to stand up, but Masen immediately pushed me back down, and my lunch bag slipped out of my hand to the ground.
“Sit down, bitch,” Masen hissed at me.
Josh signaled to Blake, who took a shot of Jessica with his iPhone and sniggered, the sound of his laughter grating on my ears. “This goes online immediately.”
“She looks so wet,” Masen remarked, his words filled with sexual innuendo, and a few students who observed us from a short distance laughed. It was vicious.
Jessica was shaking, her tears welling up in her eyes. No. No more.
“Leave us alone,” I said weakly. How could we get out of this? What could I do to make them stop?
“Not until you get what you deserve,” Josh responded, his sinister eyes piercing me with hatred that was beyond comprehension. He grabbed my backpack.
I jumped to my feet and tried to take it away from him, but Masen shoved me down again. “Sit down,” he sneered in my ear, making my insides crawl.
“Give it back.”
My imploring voice did nothing to convince Josh to listen to me. In fact, it fueled him to do the opposite. He opened my backpack and turned it upside down, letting all its contents drop to the ground.
He reached for my sketching notebook, as if he knew that of all my notebooks it was the one that was the most precious to me since it contained some of my most important drawing notes and ideas for new drawings. I watched in horror as he began ripping the pages, shredding them into pieces.
“No!” I shouted at him and jerked upward, but Masen didn’t let me move, keeping me glued to the bench.
Blake was filming Josh, who was throwing the pieces of my now-ruined notebook in the air like confetti, and tears escaped my eyes. All my ideas were gone. They were lost forever.
“This goes online too.”
I felt like I was going to vomit any moment. I hoped to meet Jessica’s eyes, but she was constantly staring at the ground, ashamed and terrified. I just wanted this to end.
A hushed whisper carried on between some students, their pale faces painting my grim reality. One blonde girl pointed at the school, glancing between us and the building as she argued with the girl next to her. She seemed torn.
“Please, no more,” I implored. “You did enough.”
“It’s never enough,” Blake said. “You know the date. You have to pay for what you’ve done.”
Masen and Josh picked Jessica and me up and put us over their shoulders like we were two sacks of potatoes, further degrading us.
“Put me down,” I screamed at Josh, wincing at the pain in my stomach when I hit his hard shoulder. Where were they taking us now?!
His response was to clamp his fingers around my calves, digging his fingers into them too hard. It would leave bruises.
“Keep talking and I’ll break your jaw,” he gritted through his teeth silently so only I could hear him.
I twisted to the side to see where they were taking us and cried out at the sight, my breathing turning erratic. We were heading to the nearby dumpsters.
This was not happening.
“Say cheese!” Blake took a shot of me.
I just wanted to die.
Blake started chanting, followed by a couple more students, engulfing me with misery and darkness. “Trash. Trash. Trash.”
“Put this trash where it belongs!” one guy shouted.
“You hear this, bitch? A dumpster is where you belong,” Josh said, a tone of something deranged eliciting the most intense fear in me. “How about we chop you into pieces first and then dump you?”
Masen threw Jessica into the dumpster first, evoking more chuckles from some of the onlookers, but this time I didn’t quite hear it. The only thing I heard was the constant ringing in my ears, and it got louder and louder. I was beside myself with terror.
Before I could even brace myself for it, Josh threw me into the other dumpster, and I landed among the various litter, banging my head against the lid. My vision became blurry when I scrambled to my feet, managing to find my footing among the bags of junk that produced a terrible stench. I barely saw Blake take a photo of me while laughing with a couple of other students who pointed their phones at Jessica and me. I closed my eyes, feeling numb.
How could all of them be so cruel? Where was their humanity?
Everything hurt—breathing, thinking, seeing their thrill at our pain... I wished my body was weak so I could just faint and escape this humiliation.
“Stop this immediately!” Principal Anders rushed in our direction with two teachers and the blonde girl from before by his side, and everyone scampered to the side, tucking their phones away. “This is outrageous! Do you have any shame? Jones, Brown, and Akers! I want to see you in my office right now!”
Mr. Xiong and Mr. Smith, my biology teacher, approached to help us. Mr. Xiong picked me up from the dumpster and helped me out. “How are you feeling, Sarah? Can you walk?”
No, I feel weak, and I might faint any second. “I’m all right.”
“Do you want to see the nurse?”
“No, I’m okay. Thank you.”
“I’m sorry this happened to you,” Principal Anders said, but despite everything, he didn’t sound too concerned. He seemed like he wanted to solve this situation as quickly and covertly as possible. “I’ll make sure the perpetrators are properly punished.”
I wanted to snort at that, completely doubting it, but nothing I did or said would change the fact that some people around here were privileged and some were not.
“Are you able to go to your last period?” Anders asked Jessica and me, and I was relieved that he wasn’t forcing us to go to his office too.
Jessica looked completely lost and unable to say a word. It was clear that she was in shock and couldn’t understand what had just happened. I couldn’t understand it myself, but I managed to find something in me that helped me stay sane through this.
I put my arm around her shoulders, surprised at how fragile she felt. Her shivers gave her inner struggle away, so I squeezed her hand to let her know she wasn’t alone.
“If it’s okay with you, I’d like to take Jessica to the counselor. She isn’t okay.”
“I see. All right, then you two are excused from your last period.” He faced Blake. “Boys, to my office.”
Masen and Blake followed Anders and the teachers to the school. I couldn’t stop quivering, wanting nothing more than to be far away from here. I could only hope they would at least
get detention.
Josh approached me, exuding deranged vibes that paralyzed me, and got into my face. He grabbed the wrist that Natalie had twisted this morning, cutting my circulation short. I whimpered in sheer pain, about to beg him to let me go.
“This isn’t over yet,” he snarled. “Not by a long shot.”
Chapter 16
“I MISS YOU, KAY. IT feels like it’s been forever since I last saw you. There are days when I wake up after a terrible nightmare... You would be in it and you would bleed again... There would be so much blood, and I would keep screaming.”
“You would say such horrible things, things that somehow feel true. You’d say that everything was my fault . I was supposed to die then, not you or Hayden. You had such a bright future. You were a gem. You had such perfect dreams, and you wanted to help the world. Who am I? Nobody. I’m just some coward who desperately clings to her own dreams so she can escape her demons.”
I knelt on the ground, holding onto Kay’s headstone. I read the epitaph poem on the stone so many times, yet it managed to strike me to the core even now.
“Breaking into pieces, bleeding so deep,
wishing I was the one who went into eternal sleep.
You’ll never be forgotten, you pure soul,
you left a crushing emptiness, you left an immense hole.
Rest in peace, my dear brother, and sleep tight,
know that I’ll always love you with all my might.”
Hayden wrote this soon after the funeral with a permanent marker.
“Even this year, there is nothing new I can tell you... I wish I could finally come here and say ‘Hey Kay, I became stronger, I conquered my demons, and I fought against my tormentors.’ I think you would be so proud of me because of that, right?”
“You, for some reason, always believed in me. You always thought I was strong and would find a way to save myself—not only from others, but from myself as well. I want to be strong. Not only for myself. I have a new friend, and I think you’d like her. Everything is pretty new since we’ve just met, but I have a feeling she’s a really good person.”
My tears kept flowing, and the pressure built in my chest. It was so difficult to breathe as I kept sobbing, curled into a ball. I pressed my head on my knees, trying to find some comfort.