Devils' Day Party: A High School Bully Romance

by C. M. Stunich

  “Why did you tell Luke that we liked each other?” he asks, lips curving into a small frown. When he reaches up for the red leather mask still sitting on top of his head, I grab his wrist to stop him. If he puts that back on, I may never see him without it again.

  The metaphor makes my chest hurt as I try to figure out how to respond.

  “You … the way you were raised, I think …” I pause, mulling over my words. “You hurt the things you like. And I'm pretty sure you don't want to like me. You're angry about it.”

  “You're everything you want to be while I'm nothing like I want to be.” He pauses and exhales, shoving his hair back from his forehead violently enough that he ends up knocking his mask to the floor. “You know, some part of me wants you to get pregnant.” He flexes his jaw, turning to look back at me with a face as sharp and cunning as a fox's. “Because then I'll be allowed—no, encouraged—to be with you. Otherwise, my dad will never let me have a girl like you.”

  My heart jumps at the same time my body heats with anger.

  “A girl like me, huh?” I whisper as Raz catches my chin, keeping me from looking away. His fingers are a little too tight, his gaze just this side of too much.

  “He would hate you, Karma,” Raz grinds out, his breathing heavy. “I should hate you. And I want to. I want to hate you so bad.”

  “But?” I ask, my voice the barest slip of a whisper, like bat wings in the night. The moon catches on the curve of Raz's nose, making his red eyes glow like a devil's.

  “But I don't.” He exhales, his breath warm against my lips, tasting like chocolate. The ice cream container rolls off the edge of the bed and onto the floor, likely spattering the drapes with brown droplets.

  It doesn't matter.

  Nothing matters but for me and Raz.

  “I never have, not even when you ratted us out freshman year.” He leans forward, kissing me with harsh lips. His teeth almost hurt. “And then you went and picked Calix. How? How could you pick Calix?” Raz laughs, and the sound is far from pleasant. “All those years and all I wanted was you. Every girl I fucked had your face. Every movement I made, I did for you. But you let his cruelty go and punished me for mine. I'm mad, Karma. I'm righteously pissed.”

  “That's …” I start, because what Raz is saying is toxic. He's broken and angry and wrong, but he doesn't know it. All he knows is that I hurt him, and he can't figure out why. My mothers would tell me to run. I should. I should run as far and fast as I can, be glad that Raz is a high school enemy whose memory I can wipe clean after graduation.

  Instead, I feel something else entirely.

  “I've always liked you,” I whisper, straddling his lap. His hands find my ass, kneading the round curves with ireful fingers. “I wanted you to notice me, but in the right way. You never did. Calix came to me, he …”

  “Fuck Calix,” Raz snarls, curling his lip up and breathing heavily beneath me. When I tilt my hips back, I can feel his cock slide between my folds. We both groan as he snatches a handful of my hair to bring my face to his. “Screw motherfucking Calix. Karma, you shouldn't have brought me here if you wanted to see Calix.”

  “Why's that?” I whisper before Raz jerks my head back and bites my throat, his other hand caressing my ass.

  “Because you gave me a taste of what it'd be like if you were mine.”

  Raz encourages me to lift my hips, hitting my opening with his cock. When I sit back, he fills me and I groan, wrapping my arms around his neck. My thigh muscles help me slide myself up and down the length of his shaft, until he's shuddering and bucking his hips up, spilling himself in me yet again today.

  We press our sweaty foreheads together for a few seconds before I slide off, lying slumped and sated in the pillows next to him.

  “I've always wanted to dye my hair,” Raz says, his eyes half-lidded. He turns to look at me, frowning again. The smell of oranges and fresh sweat tickles my nostrils. It seems I just like … the smell of him? I shudder briefly, closing my eyes for a moment.

  When I feel his fingers in my hair, I open my eyes in time to see him pull my mask off and toss it aside.

  “What are you going to do with me tomorrow?” I ask, knowing I should take a more proactive role in all this, but understanding that it's likely I won't get to see what tomorrow will ever be like. At the very least, Pearl won't be dead, and I won't be going to jail for one of the most heinous things I've ever done.

  “I don't know,” Raz replies honestly, the sheets pulled over his crotch. He lifts one knee up, his other leg straight out in front of him. His expression is as fierce as ever, his eyes breaking with a wild storm. It'll never be easy for me and Raz, but we can take steps forward. We can change the way we look at each other.

  But what if … I can only change the way one of them looks at me? Calix or Raz.

  Or Barron.

  I can't forget that he sent me a necklace …

  “I don't know, but I'd be lying if I said I'll be able to keep my hands to myself.” He cants a look my direction, sharp mouth curving into a rare smile. “If you don't break my nose again, that is.” I smile back, scooting tentatively closer until he hooks an arm around my shoulders.

  The way I feel being pressed against Raz's body is honestly terrifying. He's every awful, ugly, broken thing I never wanted. He's as sharp as a devil, just as tricky. There are evil parts inside him that should make me hate him. And they do. But he also makes it so that I like the jagged bits of him.

  This boy is going to bleed you dry, Karma Sartain.

  “If I'd walked up to you this morning, thrown my arms around your neck, and told you I loved you … would you have hugged me back or thrown me to the ground?” Raz hesitates for a moment, but then he wraps his arm tighter around me and pulls me closer.

  “I'm not sure,” he replies hesitantly, but there's enough doubt in his voice that I decide to give it a try. Because my own special version of tomorrow will be here before you know it. “I'm also not sure we've ever had a conversation that's lasted this long.”

  “Non jamais,” I reply, and he grunts in annoyance, his exhale ruffling my tangled hair. “We haven't.”

  “Then let's talk. What's it like to live a hideous little trailer with dykes for moms?”

  “It's …” I pause for a moment to consider, ignoring his homophobia for a brief moment—exposure and education can cure that. “Fucking wonderful, actually.”

  “How?” he asks, but the question doesn’t sound as awful as it could. So we talk. We talk until the sun peeks above the horizon and the clock on the nightstand reads 4:22 in the morning.

  That's the last thing I remember.

  And then … there's blood all over my steering wheel.

  Nothing lasts forever.

  That is the nature of beautiful things.

  “Are you fucking insane?!”

  Calix pulls me out of the car and pushes me up against it. I let him do it, my mouth etched into a deep frown, my head feeling like a balloon, ready to float away into the rainy sky.

  “Not today, Calix,” I murmur, reaching up to push his arms away from me. He doesn't budge, but his ebony eyes do narrow as I lift my suddenly heavy face up. From weightless to impossibly heavy in an instant.

  “Not today?” he barks back at me with a sharp, dark laugh. “Are you fucking kidding me, Karma? You crashed into my car.”

  A moan escapes me as I collapse forward. This time, for whatever reason, Calix catches me. He throws me up into his arms, holding me against his chest with a frown.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  My heart picks up speed as the woman in the yellow shirt with the daisy nails approaches, leaning in hesitantly toward the pair of us.

  “Are you okay?” she asks as I sigh and turn to look at her, remembering the script from day one.

  “I'm okay.”

  “Should I call the police?” she inquires, right on schedule.

  “That won’t be necessary,” Calix replies, again sticking to th
e usual script. But what if we flipped the script on its head? I wonder. What if I throw a wrench so strange in their routine, they have no choice but to react? My eyes slide toward his dark ones, as depthless and unreadable as an abandoned well, its stone sides crumbling, moss emerging from between the cracks. “We're classmates; I won't be pressing charges.”

  Calix leans down toward me, much the same as he did on the first day.

  I kiss that poisonous mouth of his before he can spew venom, throwing an arm around his neck and knowing that at least partially, the reason I'm doing this is because of Raz. Because I'm too raw to face him just now and see him reject me. Last night, it felt like I'd really and truly found the one thing I'd been looking for in my life.

  Calix rears back, looking down at me like I've shattered his entire existence.

  “Calix, I feel like you're hiding something from me. Like, you're lying to yourself. Do you like me? Did you mean what you said last year at the party?”

  “What the … fuck?” he whispers, almost in disbelief. I definitely do not expect him to essentially drop me on the hood of his car. “Get off of me, Karma.” He shoves back from me with a violent, cutting sneer on his face.

  “What the hell?” Raz asks as I hear the sound of a plastic grocery bag hitting the concrete. I turn to find Barron staring at Raz with an intensity that makes me uncomfortable, like he sees something in his friend's shocked face that he's never understood until just now. Barron then cants his head back to look at me, the white hood of his sweatshirt pushed up over his rainbow hair, dual eyes shining with fascination. He sucks on his red lollipop, staining his mouth with what looks like blood. “Did you just kiss each other?”

  The hidden layer beneath Raz's words makes me feel like I might just throw up. He sounds like I've just sucker-punched him. His red gaze jumps from Calix to me, the anger in his eyes amping up to dangerous levels—and fast. From zero to a hundred in a millisecond.

  “Oh, fuck this,” he snarls, coming across the parking lot like a predator. I scrabble off the hood and back away from him, suddenly afraid of what he might do.

  Calix steps aside, perfectly coiffed in his Crescent Prep uniform, his dark hair shiny and swept to the side, ebon eyes darkening. He leans in as Raz gets close to me.

  “You two deserve each other,” he whispers, smiling wickedly as Raz pauses above me, opening the drink in his hand and dousing me with it. “Grab her, Raz.”

  My lips part to scream as Raz scoops me up off the ground and throws me over his shoulder, opening the back door of the Aston Martin and pushing me in before he joins me on the seat.

  “You're kidnapping me, really?!” I shriek, torn between crying and laughing hysterically. “What fresh hell is this? And all because you're jealous of each other?”

  “Jealous?” Raz barks in an angry laugh. The way he looks at me now, it feels impossible that yesterday actually happened. It seems like just moments ago he was holding me in his arms, speaking to me in soft whispers under the cover of a starry night. This isn’t fair. It isn’t fair, and it fucking sucks. “You've got to be kidding me. We've had a plan for you all week, Trailer Park.”

  Calix and Barron get in the front seats, starting the engine and peeling us out of the parking lot, dragging Little Bee along the pavement behind us. I glance out the rear window and then turn back to the luxe interior inside the car.

  I did not expect to ever end up inside Calix's stupid Aston Martin whatever-the-hell-it-is.

  “Coffee?” Barron asks, sliding his lollipop from his mouth with a sharp popping sound. “Caramel or mocha, those are your choices.”

  “What's happening right now?” I ask as I look between the three of them. When Barron actually offers me up a pair of coffees to choose from, my eye twitches and nausea rises in my stomach. This moment is truly surreal. I take the caramel one from his left hand with a frown, noticing that angry red gash that caught my attention on day one. He didn’t have it before Devils’ Day, and I can’t help but wondering where it came from.

  “We're taking you somewhere special today,” Calix replies blandly, like a vampire in desperate need of blood. Senses dulled, but very, very dangerous underneath. The edge of his mouth curves sharply to the side. “Clearly, you have your own Devils' Day tricks planned.”

  The pulse in his throat jumps sharply as I turn to look at Raz. His nostrils are flared, his eyes so violent and edged that when he turns them to me, I swear that I'm bleeding all over.

  “You thought I kissed you because I had a plan?” I ask, trying to keep my anger from getting the better of me. “Like your plan last year? You're an idiot, Calix Knight, and I'm not afraid of you.”

  “Maybe you should be?” he replies, turning us onto the road that heads up toward the site of the Devils' Day Party. I pop the top on the iced coffee drink and sip it as we come to a stop, taking it with me when we climb out. There's no point in resisting; Barron and Raz are likely to just drag me along after them.

  “Are we sure we want to do this?” Barron asks, but Calix ignores him as he marches off through the woods, the only one of these three boys that absorbs darkness like an impossible void.

  “Do what?” I ask as Raz shoulders me out of the way to move past.

  “We're doing it,” he says as I consider if I should turn and run. But this is something that hasn't happened on any other day. And if they've had it planned for a week, that means it's something that could've happened at any time. But only on this day have I managed to get this series of events to play out. “We worked really hard on this one.”

  The Knight Crew takes me past the train and deeper into the woods, toward the treehouse cabins where I lost my virginity last year. Fuck. They'd said they planned on locking me in the cabin where Calix and I slept together. Guess that’s happening even earlier today.

  We indeed head to that very same cabin, and I climb the ladder willingly. Honestly, I'm sort of excited to be locked in. I can rest all day by myself then fall asleep at night to start the day over again.

  After what happened with Raz, I could use a break.

  A lump forms in my throat, but I push it back.

  Raz likes me; I know that now. No matter how many resets I’m forced to participate in, I’ll never forget that.

  Barron unlocks the door with a large golden key he pulls from inside his hoodie pocket then pushes it open, revealing Luke and Sonja, naked and in bed together.

  My eyes widen, and I clamp my hand down on the cool glass bottle of the coffee to keep myself from having an overreaction. That’s exactly what the Knight Crew wants me to do, and I refuse to humor them.

  “Karma,” Luke chokes out, gathering the blankets up to her chest while Sonja turns forward and crosses her legs, breasts up and out. She smirks at me, and I'm flooded with memories of me and Raz, of how Sonja and Luke are like an echo of us together.

  “Tell Karma you're a part of the Knight Crew now,” Sonja says, turning back to look at Luke. My bestie’s eyes are downcast and dark with embarrassment, but she has no idea how fucking mad I am. No goddamn clue.

  This isn't the first day she's done this, is it?

  I've just never seen it before.

  That means every day before this, she was lying to me. And not just about the phone call with my moms. She not only refused to share a secret with me that she knew I could understand, but she actively lied about it.

  “Well, I happen to still be a virgin.”

  Her words from the first day ring in my ears as I look at her with some expression of abject horror on my face. Luke's eyes widen in response as she looks from Sonja and back to me. Her blue anime hair is stuck to her sweaty forward as she clutches the blankets close.

  “Tell her she's a useless whore,” Sonja says, and déjà vu floods over me. “Tell her that she isn't worth the air in her lungs.” Luke makes a sound of protest, but she doesn't stop Sonja's ugly words. The very same words Calix gave me that day I tried to join the Knight Crew, the ones I told to Pearl. The ones that
made her kill herself. I struggle to think how I'd feel right now if I hadn't witnessed this all before, if this was my very first Devils' Day. “Tell her that the whole world would be happier if she were dead.”

  “I can't say any of that,” Luke whispers, shaking as she stares at Sonja and then turns back to me. Now she looks as if we've both betrayed her. “I would never speak to anybody like that, especially not somebody I love.”

  “Well then,” Sonja says, standing up as Raz leans his shoulder against the wall and grins, watching me with the dark eyes of a hungry predator. Such a change from yesterday, when we shared a tub of chocolate ice cream and cuddled. Fuck my life. “Guess I'll just have to take this with me.” Sonja grabs her phone from what looks like a charging station on a shelf, and proceeds to flash the screen at us, showing a still from an explicit video.

  I don’t see much, just Luke’s bare breasts, but it’s enough for me to understand what’s going on here.

  Sonja's been recording them.

  My stomach knots up as I turn to look at Calix, my breath coming in heavy pants. I mean, for the Knight Crew to have arranged this meeting, that means they planned it. So they must’ve planned what happened with me and Calix, too, right? They really did engineer the whole thing. Raz seemed to think so yesterday. My head spins as a momentary bout of dizziness overtakes me.

  All this time, every single day for three hundred and sixty-five fucking days, this asshole has been telling the truth? He was pranking me, that was it.

  That's all it ever was.

  Deep down, I wondered if he were harboring secret feelings for me. If he changed his tune because his friends had shown up and caught us.

  But that wasn't the case.

  That wasn't the case at all.

  My knees feel weak, and I end up putting a hand on the wall to steady myself.

  Calix … I'd always thought that Calix liked me. But all along, it was Raz? My mind is blown.

  “Are you going to post this at the same time you post the other one?” I snap, turning sharp eyes on Sonja. The look of confusion in her face is almost believable.