Devils' Day Party: A High School Bully Romance

by C. M. Stunich

  Luke takes me outside, gaping at the ruin that used to be Little Bee, and then leads me to her own car. The very same one that flipped on the road just an hour ago …

  “No,” I whisper, stepping back and shaking my head. The sight of the bleeding buck flailing around on ruined legs, his eyes wild, antlers casting strange shadows in the glow of the headlights … I'm not doing it. I'm not getting in that fucking convertible. “I'm sorry, but I can't get in that car.”

  “Okay,” Luke says, holding up her hands in a placating gesture and watching me with a nervous expression. “We don't have to get in the car. Do you want to take a walk? We could go the bus station and ride to the bubble tea shop.”

  Swallowing the lump in my throat, I nod.

  I'm going to tell her. I'm going to tell her everything. And if she doesn't believe me, if she thinks I'm crazy, so what? It'll all start over again tomorrow.

  We head toward the woods together, taking the same shortcut I used on the real Devils' Day, the one that started all of this shit. The one that I royally fucked up. I swipe my hands down my face. That first night, I died. Essentially, I killed myself by acting like an impetuous asshole.

  “I want to tell you something,” I start as we pick our way through the woods and Luke tries to surreptitiously study my muddied clothing. A thousand questions dance in her worried gaze, but I'm not sure I'm about to answer any of them. More than likely, I'm about to introduce about a million more. “But you can't judge me. Even if you think I'm crazy, even if you think I'm lying.”

  “I would never think that,” Luke assures me, but she has no idea what she's in for. It's been happening to me, over and over again, and I still don't quite believe it myself. “What's wrong, Karma? Is it the Knight Crew? Because Raz, Barron, and Calix all looked weird as hell when they came in this morning Sonja seemed fine though …”

  “They looked weird?” I ask, glancing over at her. She shrugs her thin shoulders and then reaches up to loosen her silver tie with the purple plaid pattern. “How so?”

  “Just … distracted? Raz was clearly pissed. Barron was distant. Calix was … Well, I'm not really sure. More asshole-ish than usual? If that's even possible. He kicked Pearl's book bag against the wall, and then whispered something to her that sent her running for the girls' bathroom.”

  I bite my lower lip, but refuse to let myself look too deeply into it. So what? The Knight Crew bullying people is just par for the course.

  “Something's happening to me, Luke,” I whisper, looking over at her as she jumps the creek. I follow after, stumbling and falling into the water, soaking my already wet and muddied shoes and socks. Luke grabs my arm, helping me up, her face drawn and tight, deadly serious. I look up, meeting her gaze and knowing that this isn't going to end well for me. She'll take care of me, she always has, but she'll think I'm crazy and I won't be able to blame her. Hell, maybe I really am? I could be in a coma for all I know, lying in a hospital bed and drifting further and further away from reality.

  “You can tell me anything, Karma. I'm here for you.” My eyes water and I slump down on a nearby log, swiping my hands down my face.

  “This is fucking nuts,” I murmur as she kneels in front of me, putting a hand on my knee and looking up at me, completely ready to trust in whatever I have to say. She talked to the moms without telling you; she lied. I swallow hard, but I can't bring myself to be angry with her, not anymore. Not after last night. I look up, steeling myself for any possible rejection. “Luke, I'm living the same day over and over again.”

  She pauses for a moment and then nods, turning up the barest of smiles for me.

  “I feel like that sometimes, too. Every day is just a repeat of the last, you know? School, the Knight Crew, the dorms …”

  I'm already shaking my head. She's not getting it. She's trying to be understanding, but …

  “No, no, not like that,” I say, exhaling sharply and shaking my head. I thread my fingers in my purple hair and try to figure out how to explain this. “Luke, I keep waking up at the moment of the crash.” Her brows come together, and she opens her mouth once, closes it. She looks at me for clarification, and I stand up, pacing in a small circle in the dried leaves. A breeze picks up, swirling them around my calves, and I swear, there's something different about it. It's like the world knows it's Devils' Day, like there really are spirits living in the woods. “Anytime I … fall asleep or pass out, I wake up with my head hitting the steering wheel.”

  “Karma,” Luke starts, but I just have to keep going or I'll lose my nerve.

  “Listen to me,” I plead, turning to face her. I feel suddenly hot, so I strip my blazer off and toss it over my arm. “I thought maybe I was hallucinating or that I was dreaming, but Luke, it's happened five times already. Five. And on one of the days, you died.”

  “I died?” she asks, rising to her feet and slipping her hands into the pockets of her own blazer. “Is that why you called me in a panic this morning?”

  “Luke, you … we crashed your car. We crashed and you were dead, and then I … somebody hit me.” I swallow again and look her straight in the face. “We both died, and then I woke up.”

  “I'm not really sure what to say,” she replies honestly. “I mean, I believe that you believe that …”

  “Oh, fuck off,” I snap back, exhaling sharply. “I know it sounds fucking crazy, but I can prove it to you.”

  Luke considers this for a moment, her otaku nature taking over.

  “You can prove we're in a time loop?” she clarifies, and my lips part.

  “A time loop?”

  Luke grins, clearly pleased with the direction of the conversation. This is her wheelhouse, after all, fantasy and sci-fi shit.

  “A time loop is a storytelling device wherein the main character experiences the same day over and over again.” Her eyes shimmer as she explains this to me. “The character masters their surroundings, their environment, and even the people in it, thereby learning life lessons they can use to break the loop. It's pretty brilliant, actually.”

  “Learning life lessons?” I choke out. “What lesson am I supposed to get out of this? Wouldn't the universe be better served by teaching a lesson to someone like fucking Raz?”

  “Maybe we all go through a time loop at some point and then just don't remember after it's done?” Luke suggests, but the thought makes my head hurt, so I don't bother examining it. “Look, I'm not saying I can't be convinced, but it'll take some work. You know I'm open to limitless possibilities.” I roll my eyes, but Luke's willingness to accept that the world isn't quite so narrow as it seems is the only reason I might actually have a chance at getting her help here. “Tell me something that'll happen later today. Anything.”

  Fuck.

  I choke back a lump and close my eyes.

  “Somebody—I don't know who—is going to post a sex tape of me and Calix online, from last year's Devils' Day Party.”

  “What?!” Luke shrieks, storming over to grab my shoulders. “Who? The Knight Crew?” I shake my head because I don't think it was them, much as I want to believe that. The way Calix looked at me that first night, I'm damn near positive he'd rather cut off his own finger than show the world that tape.

  “I don't know, but … that'll happen sometime this evening. And before that, my moms will call you and ask about it.” Luke's brows come together as I take a breath and forge on. “On the first day, the Knight Crew smashed Little Bee's windows, popped her tires, dragged her into the woods, and used her like some sort of fucked-up throne for the party. They may very well do that again today.”

  “Damn,” Luke says, her eyes wide as she studies me. “If this is all true, you've been living a pretty shitty day on repeat, huh?”

  Tears prick the corners of my eyes, but I force them back. There has to be something else I can tell her to seal the deal.

  The Devils' Day Committee.

  That's it.

  “You bought me a black tourmaline bracelet for today,” I tell her
, my heart thundering as the leaves rustle in the trees above our heads. “And I bought you one. We both bought one for April, so she'll get two.”

  “Whoa.” Luke blinks back at me in surprise, but there's enough hesitancy in her gaze that I know I haven't won just yet.

  “April will send us both red velvet cupcakes, and Sonja will send you an emerald ash borer encased in resin as a brooch.” At this point, Luke has gone completely speechless. Probably because she doesn't believe there's a chance in hell that Sonja would ever send her a Devils' Day gift. But still. “I'll get a butterfly necklace—a Diana fritillary in orange and black—from a secret admirer. The girl with the raven hair and ice-blue eyes that always clings to the Knight Crew's coattails will give it to me.”

  “Jesus, Karma,” she breathes as I exhale and swipe both hands over my face.

  “If all that comes true, is it enough?” I ask, because most of what I told her, I could feasibly know about some other way. But right now, it’s all I’ve got.

  “Let's just see how it goes, okay?” she says, but she looks skeptical. That's a good thing. Skeptical means she's considering the possibilities. If she were resolute, I'd have cause to worry. “Should we go back to class then? I bet we could make it in time for the committee?”

  I'd rather have bubble tea, but …

  “Let's go,” I say, because I need her to believe. I need her help.

  I don't know if I can survive this alone.

  Luke leans over, breathing hard into a paper bag and trying to control the sudden wave of nausea she felt at seeing Little Bee with her windows smashed, her tires slashed. Calix stormed past us with his jaw clenched, like he was furious. Barron was as neutral as always, and Raz was positively radiant with malicious joy.

  If the universe wanted to break someone, why not him? Why me? I'm just … average. There's nothing special about me, no reason for this.

  “Everything was just like you said it would be,” Luke whispers, staring down at the black tourmaline bracelet on her arm. “Did you bribe someone in the committee to tell you what I'd bought? What I was getting?”

  I give her a dark look that she returns with a shake of her head, looking over at Little Bee with a desperate sort of skepticism. Luke wants to believe this is real, that I'm telling the truth, but she isn't sure if she can. If she should.

  “Of course not,” I spit, hating the Knight Crew more than I ever have before. They saw me at my lowest this morning, and they didn't give a shit. It didn't inhibit their cruelty in the least, now did it?

  “This is insane,” she whispers as April comes down the front steps, one arm banded across her belly, a straw stuck between her lips. She sips on her water as she comes over to us, groaning and rubbing at her lower back.

  “Where did you two disappear to this morning?” she asks, and then nods her chin in the direction of my ruined car. “I'm guessing this the Knight Crew's work?”

  “It is,” I reply, looking to Luke to help. “I'm having a really hard day today.” I gesture at my ruined uniform and shrug my shoulders. Luckily it was Devils' Day today or I'd have been written up for it. “I just needed to talk.” April nods in understanding. She's an integral part of our group now, but she knows that Luke and I sometimes need our moments. “Oh, and by the way, Calix wants me to meet him at the Devils’ Den after school.”

  “You're shitting me,” Luke snorts as she gives April a sideways glance; it takes me a minute to remember that in this timeline, April doesn’t know about me and Calix. I mean, the whole world will once that video drops, but for right now, my secret is safe. “He must think you're stupid. Either that or he must believe you have amnesia. Why on earth would he even consider asking you that again?”

  “I'm going to go,” I say, feeling my stomach clench in knots. Today's going to reset anyway, so why not? Why not go and confront Calix the way I always should've? He owes me an explanation, at the very least. “I have nothing to lose.” I look Luke right in the eyes, but she's already shaking her head and backing away.

  “No. Just … no. I don't support any of this. Even considering what you told me this morning”—she gives me a meaningful look—“this isn't going to end well. Say Calix up and forgets what he's done, you never will.”

  “Just wish me luck and give me a ride, okay?” I ask, and Luke sighs. She'll do it, whether she thinks it's a good idea or not. Luke lets me make my own mistakes, but she's always there when I fuck-up and need a friend.

  “Fine. Just … be careful with him. He's pretty to look at, but I'm sure that underneath all of that, he's nothing but hate and privilege.”

  But he's not, I think, even as I hate myself for it. Or at least, I don't want him to be.

  Calix is sitting on the steps of the old train car when I arrive, trudging through the leaves and the dappled sunlight in my ruined uniform. He lifts his head to look at me, a lazy prince with a hard edge. It's all a facade though, that insouciant slump. His muscles are tense, his eyes like flint, his lips turned down in a sharp frown.

  I stop about six feet in front of him, strands of stringy purple hair hanging over my face. I'd considered going home to take a shower and change, but what's the point? I'll wake up in a crisp uniform soon enough, the only imperfection the bright splotch of blood on my dress shirt.

  “What do you want, Calix?” I ask as he surveys me from head to toe, a strange emotion on his face that I can't quite place. He takes his time studying me before he bothers to respond, playing with that thorny crown I saw him wearing the last few nights. Or rather … the same night over and over again. I exhale sharply.

  “Maybe I should ask you that same question?” he says, his voice as dark and depthless as the water inside the Devils’ Den.

  “Meaning what?” I snap back, because I'm quickly running out of patience. Why is this the day I have to live on repeat? Why not the day we fucked each other? At least in that, there was a mistake I could correct, a monumental choice to change my fate. What do I have here? A sex tape I can't stop from seeing the light of day. A car accident I can't undo. Three bullies who I wake up facing day after day.

  Calix's face darkens, and it's like watching a lunar eclipse, that silver light darkening and then flaring with the hot white anger of the sun. He stands up, pushing the crown into his dark hair. His fingers brush the berries and come away stained with red that looks like blood.

  “Meaning what?” he repeats with a scowl, walking across the forest floor like he truly is the king of the dark devils that live within its shadows. He owns them. He commands the dark. It's his to break and abuse, to lift up with strong arms and caress with soft fingers. “You hit my car today. You did that. Why?”

  He moves so close to me that I can smell him, this expensive cologne mixed with the earthiness of the crown on his head. There's a prick of sweetness from the berries, too. I can almost taste it.

  Calix stares down at me with those hard, dark eyes of his, like I've royally pissed him off. I mean, in a way other than destroying his three-hundred-thousand-dollar car.

  “What do you mean why, Calix? I can't fucking stand you. You and your friends treat me like shit.”

  His mouth curves up in a cruel smile.

  “You mean the Knight Crew? I'm flattered that you think I have any control over what Barron, Raz, and Sonja do.”

  “Don't you though?” I ask, thinking of this morning when he sent Barron to the car like a scolded child. “Then again, if you did, maybe you wouldn't have freaked out and lied to them about what happened between us.”

  Calix's face shutters like there's a storm on the horizon, his ebon eyes narrowing to slits. He snatches my wrist in his hand, too hard, bruising. Does it make me sick in the head that I like that? That I want to hit him back? That I want to brawl and make him bleed and fuck him in the leaves beneath our feet?

  “What makes you think I lied?” he says, tilting his head to one side, studying me like I'm some foreign entity, a creature from another race whose customs are alien in natur
e.

  “Because when I saw the video, I saw your face,” I snap back, yanking my wrist away. Calix refuses to let go, and I end up stumbling even closer to him as he draws my hand to his chest. The eclipse in his face is gone now, leaving a velvety blackness that forces me to remember that we're alone in the woods together. Anything could happen. Anything.

  “What video?” he asks, his voice a beautiful hiss, like the wind through thorns, stirring the dark things that live in the forest.

  “Someone has a video of us at last year's Devils' Day Party. They're threatening to post it online tonight.” It's not a total lie. Not that it matters if I lie to Calix. Either he lied to his friends last year or he lied to me. I hate how much I want to it be the former.

  “Who?” he demands, releasing me suddenly. I clutch my wrist to my chest like I've been burned, and my mind strays to Raz and the strange way he looked at me this morning. “Who?” Calix snaps, his voice like venom when I don't answer right away.

  “I have no idea. Honestly, the reason I came here was to see if it was you,” I growl back. There's nothing to fear today, is there? Because today is just one in a string of repeats. Maybe if I fuck up badly enough, the universe will let me move on, like some big cosmic joke.

  “Like I'd want anyone to see that shit,” he snarls, raking fingers through his hair and cursing under his breath. “Show me the messages.”

  “My phone got smashed in the road this morning, courtesy of Raz,” I grind out between clenched teeth.

  “What a goddamn nightmare,” Calix murmurs, looking back at me like he isn't sure if he wants to kill me or fuck me. “Was it a text? An email? Social media?”

  “A text,” I lie. “Unknown number.”

  He curses again and adjusts his lilting crown, further smearing his fingers with the bright red juice of the berries.

  “I'll take care of it,” he says, his voice a poisonous kiss that makes my blood hurt. How can he do that? Hurt me with such simple words. Take care of it? Like what we did is so unspeakable, so awful. “But before I go, I want to know the truth. Stop fucking lying to me. You didn't just decide to hit my car for no reason. What is it you want? Attention? Is that it?”