And then I pull back and he lets me go, frowning, like he isn’t quite sure of my motivations, like he suspects that I’m up to something. He’d be right, of course, but he’s also a dick with a dick. That comes first, right?
“Come with me,” he repeats, sticking the lollipop back in his mouth, as if he didn’t just let me kiss him, as if I didn’t have his sweat on my palms or the sweet taste of watermelon candy in my mouth.
Works for me.
With a shrug, I follow Barron around the edges of the revelry, to the bright yellow splotch my car makes against the green and brown of the woods. The sun’s already gone down, leaving the bonfire and the scattered torches to give off the only light. Not too far from us, there’s a makeshift stage set up with a band—all dressed in masks of their own—testing their instruments.
Live music, what an upgrade.
I suspect we have the Knight Crew to thank for that. From what I hear, the public school—Devil Springs High—has these outrageous, wild parties in an old junkyard, with music blasting from the open doors of a car someone borrowed from their parents. The beer is cheap, the masks are rubber Halloween decorations or shitty paper cutouts, and the Devils’ Day Party is legit.
It feels forced out here, with the stuffy faces of the Crescent Prep students, the fancy masks, the over-the-top outfits, like two different faerie courts battling it out to see who can be the worst, the most lewd, the most wanton, ribald, and lascivious. Although the Devil Springs High party sounds like more fun, I have no doubt who would win in a contest.
Nothing refines cruelty like unlimited resources.
“Looks like Trailer Park didn’t take our warnings seriously,” Raz bites out, pretending to smile beneath his mask. But his eyes look irritated and weepy from the gravel I threw in them earlier, although it seems he didn’t bother to take his contacts out. He’s shirtless, the tattoos on his chest impossible to make out in the low light from the fire. “Or maybe she just likes a firm hand?”
Sonja chuckles, seated beside Calix, her red hair up in a bun, a crown on her head made up of thorny branches and gold glitter. She watches me with eyes like emeralds, ready to lap up whatever drops of blood or tears I might shed.
Calix says nothing, one long leg extended, the other bent at the knee. His eyes are as black as the night sky above the trees, starless, moonless, depthless. He, too, has a crown on his head, but his looks less like a prop and more like the real thing. There are berries threaded onto the ends of the branches and as I watch, one of them drips red onto Calix’s forehead, like blood. He swipes it off with a single finger and then sucks it into his mouth.
“I’m fairly certain I asked you not to come tonight,” he muses after a moment, clearly not concerned with hurrying this conversation along. After all, he has all night to torment his fellow Crescent Prep students. There’s a girl named Pearl that he really doesn’t like. She’d probably be a part of our little group of misfits if she didn’t call April a whore, Luke a freak, and refer to me like all the others—as Trailer Park. “But then, you started the day off by crashing into my car.” Calix’s face tightens up slightly and he sits up, slinging an arm across his knee. His eyes are ringed with liner beneath the mask, his lids shadowed with black. But it’s his mouth that really gets me, a slash of awful menace that curves to the side in a smirk. “You’re not particularly concerned with consequences today, now are you?”
“You don’t tell me what to do,” I snap back, feeling my anger ride hot and wild inside of me. For years, I’ve tried to keep my cool, but my patience is wearing thin. “None of you do. If I want to be at this party, I have every right.”
“Mm.” Calix looks to Sonja, then Raz, then Barron. “What do you think? Should we lock her up?”
“Lock her up,” Raz agrees, grinning as Calix hops off the car and I feel my heartbeat pick up speed. But I prepared for this. Fuck, I was hoping for it. I yank the keychain off my belt loop, the one that looks like lipstick. Twisting the top off, I press down on the nozzle and shoot pepper spray in an arc, not caring who I hit.
And then I turn and run.
See, trouble found me. I just retaliated.
I can hear screaming and groaning behind me—pretty sure I nailed every member of the Knight Crew and most of their followers, too—but I don’t stop running. Shoving my way through the crowd near the bonfire, I make my way past the tables laden with alcohol before bursting into the abandoned train that sits behind the entrance to the cave.
There are plenty of people in here, too, and it’s standing room only, but that doesn’t stop me from working my way through the crowd to the front of the train. On either side of me, couples are entwined in intense make-out sessions … and more. There’s a lot of sex happening on this train, but even with all the kissing and groping, the masks stay on. The illusion is there. I wonder how many of these hookups are Devils’ Day tricks? Each kiss like a venomous bite that won’t be felt until morning …
Inside the locomotive itself, I find the conductor’s seat empty and slump down on it, panting hard and holding my hand to my chest. My heart feels like it’s about to explode from my body and go bouncing, bloody and wild, down the length of the train. But I can’t rest, not yet. My plan is only half-executed.
After all, I can’t enjoy the party with the Knight Crew hunting me.
I check the grimy windows to make sure I don’t see any of them waiting for me and then slip back outside, pulling the rusted key from my pocket.
There’s only one place out here for the Knight Crew to wash their eyes—and that’s inside the Devils’ Den.
The shadows keep me hidden as I creep back around to the front of the cave. The entrance is about fourteen feet wide, maybe seven feet tall, at most. Just a few steps in and I’d have to crouch down. The thing is, I don’t plan on putting a single foot inside this cave.
On the right side of the entrance, there’s a metal sign that talks about the importance of the Devils’ Den and Devil Springs in general. During the spring and summer months, it draws quite the crowd. Supposedly, the waters found deep within the cave have healing properties.
Guess the Knight Crew will find that out firsthand, huh?
There’s a rusty gate made up of spiky metal poles in varying sizes, so that when it closes, the cave and the spring beyond it are completely off-limits. It’s supposed to be locked through fall and winter, and then opened on the first day of spring, but somehow, year after year, the students of Crescent Prep find a way to open it.
This year, Barron had the key.
And now it’s mine.
I pause at the edge of the cave entrance, listening to the snarling and cursing from inside. Someone’s lit paper lanterns all down the sloping path that leads to the water, stalactites dripping from above, stalagmites creating a maze of obstacles that make it hard to get in and out of the den without tripping.
It’s difficult to see from up here, with the angle of the sloping ground, but I can just make out Raz’s blonde hair and the deep rumble of Barron’s voice. Calix and Sonja got the worst of the pepper spray, so I just assume they’re down there, too, washing their eyes out with spring water.
My hand wraps the rusted edge of the gate and I start to drag it into place.
“I’m so disappointed in you, Karma,” Calix says, just before he wraps an arm around my waist and hauls me back. One of his hands clamps over my mouth as he puts his lips against my ear, breath fanning against the side of my neck. “Be quiet, and this doesn’t have to hurt quite so much.” My elbow goes back and hits Calix in the stomach, but his stupid abs are like rocks and the move doesn’t seem to have much effect.
He drags me back across the gravel as I struggle, reaching for my pepper spray again and accidentally knocking the keychain to the ground instead. If I don’t get free from him, he’ll call his friends up here and I’ll be outnumbered. Lock her up, they’d said. I’m not exactly sure what that means, but maybe they were planning to do the same thing to me as I was to th
em?
“Karma!”
Relief washes through me in a wave as Luke appears in her sparkly blue shirt, racing across the dirt toward me. April stands behind her, eyes wide, one arm banded across her belly. With a curse, Calix releases me, but it’s too late. Not for him, but for me.
“Where the fuck is she?” It’s Raz, ducking out the entrance of the cave with Barron and Sonja on his heels, a good half-dozen of their little followers on his tail. Two of the girls are dressed in diaphanous gowns of yellow and blue, but their faces are masked with long-tongued demons that hide their mouths. The boys that are with them are all wearing intricately painted monster masks that I recognize as coming from the shop next door to my moms’. Each one is worth several hundred dollars, at least.
“Don’t you dare lay a finger on her,” Luke warns. “I’m not afraid to call the cops, and you know it.” The thing is, she won’t have her phone on her; none of us do. In order to get past the gate at the end of the road, you have to give your phone to the gatekeeper. No phone, no entrance. They’re all stuffed into plastic bags, labelled with names, and then put into a net and hauled into a tree.
Told you the Devils’ Day Party was weird.
“Goddamn snitch,” Raz snarls, but it’s Barron who grabs Luke by her small wrist to keep her from bolting for help. The two demon-faced girls even have the audacity to grab April by the arms and march her forward, like she’s somehow a part of this, too.
“Leave them alone, and do whatever you want to me,” I say, feeling lightheaded and dizzy as I try to avoid Luke’s penetrating stare. You lied to me, is what she’s saying, but I didn’t, right? I didn’t seek the Knight Crew out. No, it was the other way around. All they had to do was leave me alone and none of this had to happen.
Sonja grabs for my arm, and I tear myself from her grip, the band on my black tourmaline bracelet snapping. Black beads fly everywhere as I clutch my arm to my chest, eyes narrowed, breath coming in violent pants. Some small part of me is excited by her red-rimmed, leaky eyes. Bet that pepper spray hurt, I think, but I’m not a violent person. I don’t like to have to fight all the time. I don’t like feeling scared all the damn time.
“Eye for an eye,” Raz growls out, his own eyes even more red and swollen than Sonja’s. He’s finally caved and taken his contacts out, his blue eyes feverish with anger behind his glasses. “Too bad it can’t be literally this time.” He’s holding the pepper spray that I dropped in one hand, but when he goes to spray it, nothing comes out and he chucks the pink container. “Where’s the key, Karma?”
“I don’t have the key,” I lie, beginning to shake as I scan the Knight Crew’s unforgiving expressions. I drew blood tonight, and I imagine I’m not getting out of here without them doing the same. I just don’t want Luke and April to pay for my choices.
“Let’s find out,” Barron says, grabbing me around the waist and trapping my hands against my sides with his strong arm. With his other hand, he searches my pockets, fingers sliding into the back right one to find the key. He lingers a bit too long there as I struggle, gritting my teeth as Luke’s eyes widen with fear. Barron cups my ass and presses his lips to the skin just behind my ear. “Clever, pretending to kiss me, so you could get ahold of this.” His breath smells like watermelon from those stupid suckers he’s always eating, and when he finally lets go of me and pulls away, I’m left with a smear of charcoal across my midsection.
“It didn’t have to be this way, Karma,” Calix says, his mask sitting on the top of his head. Black streaks run down his face on either side, making him look even more ghastly in the firelight. “But I can’t protect you now.”
“Protect me?” I choke out with a laugh. He smirks at me, and my temper flares. “What’s your problem with me anyway? Is it because I’m poor? Because my moms are gay?” I shouldn’t fan the flames, but I can’t help myself. Now that I’m standing here, looking into Calix’s dark eyes, I think I know why I hit his car. I snapped. I broke. There he was, at the gas station with his awful, awful friends, lounging next to a car that costs more than some people make in a decade. And yet … he looked miserable to me.
That’s what really pissed me off.
How can someone who has everything look so damn miserable? Calix is handsome, smart, rich, connected, normal. He fits into society like a puzzle piece while people like me and Luke and April, we’re singled out and cast aside like extras, like pieces to a puzzle that nobody wants to finish.
That’s why I hit his car.
And look where it got me.
“We were going to lock you in the treehouse, the one where you gave it up for Lix,” Raz sneers, circling me like a predator homing in on his prey. “But I think I like your idea better.”
“Put the others in with her, for company,” Sonja suggests, looking straight at Luke as she says it. Luke’s shoulders tighten, a familiar disappointment clouding her face. With all the subtle hints, the flirting, the gift this morning, Luke thought Sonja might actually like her. But it was all a bunch of bullshit. I wore that same look on my face when Raz and Barron stumbled on me and Calix, naked together in the treehouse. I remember watching his expression, marveling at the change in his face, even as my heart broke into pieces. It was like watching the moon eclipse the sun, cutting off all the light, plunging me into darkness.
“April’s pregnant,” Luke says, like the crowd gathered around us doesn’t already know. “It’s cold and wet in there. Your prank will be a hell of a lot less funny if something happens to her.”
“She’ll be just fine,” Sonja says as the demon-faced girls drag April toward the cave. She doesn’t fight them, which is probably for the best, but panic settles in my chest as I turn back to Calix. There’s something just behind his eyes that makes me want to plead, like maybe I could crack through to the other side where he hides all that misery I saw on his face this morning when he thought nobody was looking. “We’ll let you out in the morning, won’t we, Raz?”
“What Sonja means is, we’ll let you out when we wake up tomorrow.” He flashes a sharp grin, reaching up and sweeping his hands through his dirty blonde hair. “Considering the amount I plan to drink tonight, it might be more like late afternoon.”
“Not April!” Luke screams, struggling against the boys holding her as they pull her toward the cave entrance. “This is a huge, fucking mistake! This is false imprisonment. Do you think I won’t report this?”
“Nobody cares what you have to say,” a girl with raven-hair and ice-blue eyes says, shoving Luke forward into the cave. She trips and falls, cutting her hand on a stalagmite with a hiss. I can see the ruby red blood blooming as she falls to her knees. “Your parents don’t even give a shit if you live or die.”
Some of the other boys move forward to grab me, but I keep my eyes on Calix, Raz, and Barron. One of them is smirking at me, one is grinning, and the other looks impassive, almost bored. The monster boys push me into the cave next to April, slam the gate, and lock it tight.
The last thing I hear before the Knight Crew moves away is Raz’s laughter, echoing through the trees.
It’s cold and dark and wet in the Devils’ Den, the pleasant trickle of the spring and the constant sound of water droplets falling from the roof echoing strangely in the narrow space. The music from the Devils’ Day Party is loud enough that we have to shout to have a conversation of any kind, but I suppose that doesn’t matter because it’s pretty obvious that Luke doesn’t want to talk to me at all.
One of the demon-faced girls kicked over all the lanterns after they dragged April into the cave, so the only light we have is from the massive bonfire. I’m a little concerned at how big it’s getting, fed with logs and old furniture and gasoline. The heat makes the rusted bars warm against my fingers as I hang off of them, my heart beating so fast that I feel dizzy.
“You just had to poke the bear, didn’t you?” Luke asks finally, lifting her face up from her knees, her goblin mask discarded and stuffed into a back pocket. “After you promis
ed me …”
“I said I wouldn’t go looking for trouble,” I say, but as soon as the words are spoken aloud, my excuse sounds as weak and pathetic as I feel. “Trouble found me.”
“Come on, Karma,” Luke says, turning to look at me, her brown eyes dark with fury—and not just fury for the Knight Crew, but for me. “You started it this morning when you hit Calix’s car. As amusing as I’m sure that was—and as deserved—you knew what would happen, how things would end.”
I turn away from her, focused on the crowd of masked students, sweaty and drunk and high, the skunk-y scent of weed mixing with the stink of the campfire. I’m not sure what I wanted for tonight, but this wasn’t it.
“So I’m to blame for their bullying?” I ask quietly, even though I know that’s not what Luke’s trying to say.
“Please don’t fight,” April says, using the stone wall to help herself to her feet, glasses reflecting the orange glow from the fire. “Look, it’s not all that bad, right? This cave is fascinating.” She points a single finger up toward the ceiling. “These stalactites are thousands of years old. I’m honestly surprised people are even allowed in here.”
“The Knight Crew stole the key,” I say, thinking of Barron’s hands on my hips, a pink flush creeping its way into my cheeks. “And I stole the key from Barron.”
“How, exactly, did you go about doing that anyway?” Luke asks, also pushing herself to her feet. The three of us have been stripped of our dignity and left to rot in here. All I can hope is that when I don’t come home tonight, that my moms will call the police, and someone will find us here long before Raz sleeps off his drunk. “Really, I’d love to know.”
“Luke,” April warns, leaning against the cave wall and looking warily between the two of us. “What’s done is done. Karma can’t go back in time and change things, so what does it matter? I’m sure she feels bad enough as it is.”
Devils' Day Party: A High School Bully Romance Page 5