“Sonja …” Luke starts, her voice soft and almost tender. It kills me to hear her sound like that, like I did last year when I fell into Calix's arms like a fool. “What's going on?”
“Happy Devils' Day, bitch,” Sonja says, yanking her blazer and skirt on and gathering up the rest of her clothes from the floor. As she does, I swear I see something melancholic flash in her green eyes, but it’s gone in an instant and I’m left wondering if I imagined it. “Thanks for the cherry, baby.”
Sonja storms out the cabin door and Raz follows, sneering at me as he goes.
I can’t even begin to decipher the way that sneer makes me feel, how empty and sad and lonely. So I don’t bother, pushing the emotion down, burying it in the shadows of a broken heart.
“Lock them both in here,” Calix says as he slips past, moving out the door and avoiding my stare. He has a triumphant smirk on his face, but he doesn't look at me. Not even once.
“Why?” Luke whispers, looking down at the blankets as Barron steps up to me and grabs my chin. He stares into my face for a moment before giving a small half-smile and pulling the golden key from his pocket again. He places it in my palm before pushing my face away.
“Maybe don't come to school today?” Barron suggests, stepping past me and closing the cabin door behind him. He disappears, leaving the sweet scent of cherry candy and laundry soap in his wake.
I turn back to Luke and find her sitting with silent tears rolling down her cheeks.
Whereas I'd abandoned her and April to be with the Knight Crew, she didn’t make the same mistake. Luke stuck to her guns, to her heart, and she is a vastly better human being than me—even if she lied about Sonja. I will not forget that.
“Are you okay?” I whisper, feeling guilty, wondering if she'd be happier if she had just said it, if Sonja would've let her go with them then. It's a possibility. At this point, I'm starting to wonder if each and every member of the Knight Crew is a sociopath.
“I'm … are we really locked in here?” Luke asks, looking at the two tiny windows, boarded over on the outside to try and discourage break-ins. Discourage, being the key word. “Because I could really use a moment to myself right now.”
“Barron gave me the key,” I start, looking down and opening my palm. The gold key catches the light, turning dust motes into faeries. It feels for the briefest of instances that we're in another world entirely.
“Yeah, and you don't think there's not a lock on the outside?” Luke asks, flushing from head to toe. I should be furious with her, and I am. But I'm also aching for her at the same time, remembering how it felt last year when Calix screwed me over. I turn and try the knob, feeling like a complete and total idiot. Again, I thought maybe in his weird way, Barron might be okay with me, too. Obviously not. “Great.”
Typical fucking Barron—give me the key, act like he’s doing me a favor, but in reality, he’s fucking me over just as much as his asshole friends.
“Do you have your phone?” I ask, turning as I realize I left mine in my car, the car that's still sitting at the gas station. Wow. Today sucks. I'm never kissing Calix again. Unfortunately, I can't unsee what we walked into, Luke and Sonja's mouths clashing in heat, their hands between each other's legs.
I feel dizzy again. The last thing I want is the image of my bestie banging a bully in my mind. Then again, in most of these timelines, Luke has to see me with one. Maybe I understand how my moms feel just a little bit better.
“It was right here,” Luke chokes out, searching frantically around the nightstand that was closest to where Calix was standing. Great. “Fuck!” she screams, leaning forward and putting her forehead on her knees. “This is the goddamn worst. The worst. I didn't want you to find out this way.”
“Yeah?” I ask, cocking a skeptical brow and putting my fist on my popped hip. “How did you want me to find out?”
“I was going to tell you …” she starts, trailing off as she realizes what a cop-out statement that is. “We've been sleeping together for a while now.”
“How long?” I gather her clothes from the floor and toss the pile into her lap, trying to control my rage. It's not fair of me. It's hypocritical as fuck, but I can't help myself.
“Since last year's Devils' Day,” Luke whispers, keeping her eyes downcast.
Now that, that is a blow.
I exhale sharply, closing my eyes and wishing I had my mask with me. Instead, it's back at the gas station, in my abandoned car. If this were day one of this nightmare, I'd be terrified about Little Bee, about her getting towed away, about how it might look that my mangled car was left in the parking lot. Interesting how a little perspective can change everything.
I care little to nothing about my car right now.
“You've been sleeping together for a whole year?” I repeat, sitting down heavily on the edge of the bed. No way I'm moving any further onto it. If I happened to sit in a wet spot … well, I'd just rather not test the fates. “How? Why?” I glance back at Luke, my mind whirling with all the new things I've learned in the last … week? How many days has it been since this started? I should probably be keeping track.
A quick count in my head tells me it’s been six. Six, long, strange days on repeat. Seven, if you count the first day.
“How?” Luke echoes, yanking her shirt over her head and not bothering with a bra. Like me, she probably realizes that we'll likely be stuck in here all day. As far as pranks go, it isn't a big deal. Maybe it would have been, on day one, but a lot's changed since then. Raz was spitting mad today, wasn't he? After yesterday, after all those revelations, my heart feels shattered and raw.
Behind all of that anger and rage, Raz is just … waiting for me.
In the span of just a few hours, he can be mine.
But I can never keep him.
Not with my world the way it is, a continuous cycle of a day that should have only happened once.
“How is …” Luke starts and then shakes her head, as if to clear it. “Sonja found me while you were with Calix last year. But … then after, I went looking for you, and then you called me, and well, I couldn't exactly tell you with your heart broken to pieces.”
My mouth tightens and I look toward the boarded-up window, wishing I could see out and into the thick canopy of the trees. “Karma.” Calix's fingers light on my shoulder as I stare out into the darkness, at the strings of yellow Edison bulbs clinging to the tree limbs. “Come back to bed.”
“I kept looking for the perfect moment to tell you, but Sonja wanted to keep our relationship a secret.” I hear the blankets rustle behind me and keep my gaze straight ahead, so Luke can slip back into her skirt and panties.
“And you didn't see any problem with that? Fucking a member of the Knight Crew and keeping it a dirty, little secret? She's been using you, Luke.”
“No,” Luke says firmly as I turn back to look her, her blue hair mussed up, her lips slightly swollen from Sonja's kisses. My nose wrinkles, but how can I be so judgmental when—according to my own timeline—I slept with Sonja's male clone just yesterday. My chest clenches with pain as I remember curling up against Raz's side, of murmuring sleepily until the wee hours of the morning. “She's just … damaged. They all are, you know? The Knight Crew.”
“That excuses the way they treat people then?” I ask, feeling a guilty pit in my stomach when I think of Pearl and the things I said to her. She killed herself because of you, Karma. At some point, I'm going to have to find her. If she's that close to the edge, then I can't just keep living day after day without doing something.
What was it that Luke said? That I needed to master my environment? Master my own timeline …
“It doesn't excuse anything.” Luke is standing up now, at the edge of the bed. As I turn to glance at her, she redirects her gaze to the floor, shame apparent in her expression. “People are imperfect; they make mistakes. Some people just make more than others. I'm sorry that I lied to you, Karma, or that the Knight Crew thought bringing you here was awfu
l enough to count as a Devils' Day prank.”
On a different day, in a different timeline, I'd be furious with Luke. I'd yell. I'd scream. I'd say things that I regretted.
Instead, I squeeze my skirt in my fist and close my eyes, searching to control my temper, to bring my emotions in check.
“Are you bleeding?” Luke blurts suddenly, stumbling in her haste to get around the bed and kneel in front of me. She reaches out, as if to brush my hair back from the dried blood on my forehead, but stops at the last second. “Did they hurt you?” Her voice hardens to a steel-edged blade, and I know that if the Knight Crew really had escalated to physical violence, Luke would lose her shit.
“I crashed my car into Calix's,” I say, the line as familiar to me as any other in this cosmic comedy of errors that makes up my life. My lips twitch into a small smile as Luke's brown eyes widen and she struggles to choke back a sound a surprise. “I was driving by the Gas and Go, and I saw him out the window, filling up that stupid Aston Martin …” My words trail off as I remember the look on Calix's face, drawn and tired, loneliness etched into the shape of his mouth, barely repressed rage glinting in his dark eyes. “He looked so sad and lonely, Luke. He doesn't get to look sad and lonely. He's handsome, rich, he has friends, he rules the school …” My eyes sting as I suck in a sharp breath. And all this time, I was operating under some bullshit lie I told myself to survive. Calix really did play me last year, didn't he?
“Karma,” Luke says, starting to put her hand on my knee and withdrawing it. “Uh, I would touch you, but …”
A laugh escapes me as I recall the scene I just walked in on.
“Please don't, until you wash your hands.” We look at each other, and then we both just start laughing, and we don't stop until tears are bleeding down both our faces. It takes Luke a second to realize mine are real, and she curses, dumping her book bag on the floor and grabbing a small container of hand sanitizer. Luke's always joking that if a pandemic occurred, toilet paper and sanitizer would be the first items to go, that they'd be used as currency in place of money. She has a small hoarded stash back at her dorm room.
After she cleans her hands, she throws her arms around me and hugs me close.
“Sonja tried to act like she was playing me today, but do you really think even a monster like her would spend a whole year courting me in private for such a stupid joke?”
“I …” I start, unsure of where, exactly, she's going with this. “What does that have to do with Calix? He very clearly doesn't care about me. Do you know what I did this morning to make him so mad? I kissed him and asked him if he liked me. That's it. That's what brought me here.” I don't feel like re-explaining the time loop to Luke, so I don't.
She smiles at me, sitting back on her ass on the hardwood floor.
“Of course that pissed him off. He very clearly can't handle rejection or the disappointment of others. Kissing him like that … he'd have to think you were bullshitting him. That, or he was worried about what would happen when Raz and Barron saw you.”
Raz … My heart skips a beat and I feel suddenly choked up. The intimacy between us yesterday was like stained glass, perfect and beautiful, but so easy to break.
“They set you up the same way they set me up,” I say, hating how much I want Luke to be right. “Sonja recorded you two together; she tried to get you to say those fucked-up things to me.”
“She's as broken as the rest of them. They might be friends, but they're not like us. They think their vulnerabilities make them weak. Instead, what they don't realize, is showing another human your flaws and your imperfections, your dreams and desires, that's true strength.”
My eyes fill with tears again.
“I love you, Luke. I don't say it enough, but it's true. I don't know what I'd do without you.”
“Same girl, same,” she says, sitting up enough to wrap her arms around my waist. “I love you, too. Now, how the hell do we get out of here?”
The answer to Luke's question is: we don't.
Even after she gets up the guts to break one of the windows, the plywood is impossible to get loose. It must be screwed in in multiple places.
“This fucking sucks,” she groans as the night sky gets dark, and we both hear the beginning notes of the metal band that the Knight Crew invited to play. “Hopefully April stays home tonight. I don't like the idea of her going to the Devils' Day Party without us.”
“As monstrous as our classmates are, they seem to draw the line at hurting a pregnant woman,” I say, leaving out the little detail about how we were all locked inside the mouth of the Devils’ Den once upon a time.
“I suppose,” Luke hazards, and we both pause at the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs. Heavy footsteps. “That's not April …” she says, standing up and grabbing a heavy book from one of the low shelves. They decorate the rounded walls of the tiny single room cabin with its airplane-sized attached bathroom, but there’s little on them to use as a weapon. I decide on a round glass bauble, figuring I could hit any would-be attacker in the temple with it. On the plus side, if I do die here tonight, I’ll just wake up at the gas station tomorrow. No big deal.
Only … it sort of is, isn’t it?
The padlock on the door hits the deck outside, the sound of metal on wood making the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. If this is the Knight Crew, dressed in masks and bullshit, come to drag us into the woods, then I'm going to fight back.
The door swings open, Barron leaning his shoulder against the jamb, a small key dangling from his right hand. He's wearing a different mask today, one I've never seen before.
A butterfly mask
A Diana fritillary butterfly mask, in orange and black. He has on the same strange white coat, exposing his chest and all of his tattoos, the long white tails curling on the ground behind him like the hindwings of a butterfly.
“Off you go,” he says to Luke before turning his multi-colored gaze on me. I very purposefully put the glass bauble down, just to let him know how close I was to hitting him with the damn thing. “Sonja's waiting at the bonfire.”
“I'm not leaving Karma here with you,” Luke scoffs, her sports bra—she definitely is not into frilly bras of any kind—hanging out of the pocket of her unbuttoned blazer. She pulls her goblin mask from her other pocket and slips it on. “Especially after the shit you pulled this morning. Shame on you.”
“Oh, yes, shame on us,” Barron deadpans, tucking the padlock key into the pocket of his black leather pants. He's barefoot, his rainbow Mohawk slicked back down the center of his head, the short dark hair on either side shaved with a matching design buzzed in. My lips tingle suddenly, remembering the deliciously wicked kiss we shared on the first night. “If you'd rather, I could lock you in until tomorrow morning? That's what Raz wants.”
“Why are you doing this?” I ask as I gather my shoes and socks, throwing my blazer over my arm as Luke lifts the book between her and Barron like a weapon, sidling past him and out the door. He glances back at me, his expression difficult to read on the best of days, let alone tucked underneath a mask.
What did I do today to get him to wear this mask? I wonder, pondering over my actions from this morning.
“Nature likes balance,” he replies, which is creepy as hell, especially in that low, dark voice of his. “Come with me.” He steps back and turns, moving down the stairs with heavy footfalls.
“He's so … off,” Luke whispers, rolling her eyes as we head down the steps after him. I'm not sure what's going to happen between her and Sonja, but I'm curious to find out. “Why is he always eating? Besides being a possible serial killer, the only thing I can pinpoint for his future is that he's going to develop type two diabetes before the age of twenty-five.”
“Oh my god, Luke,” I murmur, pausing at the bottom of the steps, the glow of the Edison bulbs bringing Barron's colorful hair to life. Whatever gel he's used to slick it back seems to have glitter in it, causing his hair as well as his chest to sparkle as
he moves.
“Get lost, Lucille,” he says, gesturing with his chin in the direction of the smoke from the bonfire. “Karma and I have business.”
“I'm not leaving her here with you,” Luke blurts out, frowning in disgust, the hideous green goblin mask lending an air of fantasy to her expression. “And I'm not going to run off and throw myself into Sonja's arms after the bullshit she pulled this morning. Karma and I are leaving.”
“What business do we have?” I ask Barron, unable to resist the bait of his words. If this were a normal night, I'd happily leave with Luke and spend the rest of the night getting high and snacking, watching shitty old movies. But that won't stop the cycle I'm stuck in. Luke said I needed to master my environment. Well, I know these woods, the school, the town, like the back of my hand. What else could that mean then, if not the people that populate it?
Barron says nothing, leaning his big body against the trunk of a tree and pulling a plastic-wrapped rock candy sucker from the front pocket of his strange coat. He removes the wrapper, tucks it away again, and carefully wraps his tongue around the end.
“Luke, I'll catch up,” I promise, glancing back at her with a brief nod. “If I'm not at the bonfire in fifteen minutes, come find me.”
She gives Barron a hesitant look, but finally sighs and gives me one more quick hug.
“I'm going to see if I can't get my phone back to call April.” Luke takes off into the trees as I turn back to Barron, the intensity of his stare making me shiver.
“Come with me,” he says, turning and heading into the darkness of the woods with no explanation. Strange laughter rings out around us, punctuated by small shrieks of joy, and the occasional thready, desperate moan.
I set my shoes, socks, and blazer on the bottom step leading up to the treehouse, and then match my footsteps to Barron's. He seems to have a knack for picking his way through the dark and avoiding thorny plants and the sharp edges of dry twigs. My feet are so small that they fit easily inside his prints.
Devils' Day Party: A High School Bully Romance Page 18