After a while, the distant glow of the cabin lights fades away, plunging us into inky blackness. Threads of silver moonlight tease the earth in silver stripes, here and there, but their presence only detracts from my night vision, making it even harder to see.
Barron pulls a tiny LED flashlight from his pocket and flicks it on, guiding us down the steep edge of a ravine. He pauses about halfway down, turning and holding a hand out for me. Licking my lower lip, I take it, realizing that it's probably already been fifteen minutes and that Luke might be looking for me.
“Sonja knows where I'm taking you,” Barron replies, his words strange and heavy in the endless darkness. The woods are far from silent, the creek at the bottom of the ravine burbling softly, the sound of frogs and crickets almost deafening. “She can tell Luke.”
“If you knew this was going to take a while, you should've warned me,” I say, placing my hand in his. His fingers are surprisingly warm, his grip tight as he pulls me a tad roughly down the hill, causing me to stumble and fall into his arms. Barron sets me down at the bottom of the ravine and releases me, still sucking on that stupid rock candy sucker. “Why are you always eating?” I ask, because now isn't the time for subtlety or shyness. I only have so much time each day to learn what I can about the people that influence every aspect of my life. Barron is one of those people, whether I like it or not.
“Because it's better than other things I could be doing,” he replies easily, wading through the creek and not caring that it gets the ankles of his pants wet. I'm dressed in my Crescent Prep uniform still, and my skirt is far too short to touch the water, so I follow after him, shivering a bit. It's always a bit nippy during the Devils' Day Party, but it never seems to matter because of the bonfire and the booze.
It's a bit too cold for my liking out here.
But I'm intrigued.
“Like what other things?” I ask as his flashlight beam sweeps the trunks of slash and longleaf pines, interspersed with oaks and maples, an occasional cherry or hawthorn tree dotting the dark landscape. Last year, our biology class took a whole month to study the local landscape. Apparently, I've retained a lot more of that information than I thought.
“Like alcohol,” he says, and I pause, long enough that Barron has to stop and turn, lighting my body up with his flashlight. “I'm an alcoholic, Karma. Or I was. I've just switched one poison out for another.” He sucks on his candy for emphasis, turning his tongue purple as he flicks the flashlight up to point at his chin. “Sugar might kill me eventually, but I don't hurt people when I overdose on it. So for now, this works. Come on.”
Barron drops the flashlight down and turns, leading the way deeper into the woods.
I follow him. What's the worst that could happen? I die and wake up at the gas station again? But as awful as the Knight Crew is, I don't think they're capable of murder. Or rape. Following a boy that bullies me into the woods is not the best idea ever, but I'm feeling bold tonight, almost invincible, thanks to my universal resets.
Hopefully I don't wake up at the Gas and Go, regretting this moment.
Fireflies appear after a while, blinking in strange synchronization, and lighting up the darkness. The presence of their little lights makes me smile.
“Did you know there's a species of fireflies where the females blink their lights to draw in potential suitors, and then eat them?” Barron says absently, turning to look at me over his shoulder. “They remind me of you.”
“Oh, do they?” I ask dryly, feeling irritation prickle my skin. “You're right: I lured Calix in last year, forced him to confess his love to me. How could I have forgotten?”
“I wasn't just talking about Calix.”
Barron pauses at the edge of a limestone formation, shining the light at the narrow V-shaped crevice that leads between the two soaring rock towers. A bit of red-brown glimmers at the edge of the rocks, like someone cut their hand trying to get in or something. If it's not a bloodstain, it sure as hell looks like one.
My mind strays to the cut I noticed on Barron's left hand this morning, and the tiny red droplets on the wings of the butterfly in the necklace. The blood drains from my own face, and I feel suddenly lightheaded and dizzy.
“Be careful climbing through here; the rocks are sharp on the sides.” He starts climbing, in bare feet no less, and then slips into the crevice. The flashlight illuminates the opening from the inside as he waits for me to follow. My heart is pounding, but I can't resist the lure of the unknown, this day so different from all of the others.
Against my better judgement, I follow him, heart racing as I warily pick my way up the ragged edges of the limestone. It forms in sheets, one layer on top of the other. There's a smooth, table-like surface at the top that I balance on before avoiding the bloodstained rocks and grabbing a natural handhold in the stone.
I drop down to the soft dirt on the other side with a grunt, maidenhair ferns tickling my ankles. If I'd thought it was dark in the woods, this little valley between the two rock formations takes that darkness to a whole new level. The edges of each rock curve inward, meeting in a ragged kiss over our heads, blocking the pinpricks of stars.
“What are we doing here?” I ask as Barron turns to look at me, digging a box from his pocket. He passes it over to me, and my eyes widen as I recognize the red jewelry box as the one that I received from the Devils' Day Committee. Inside, I know what I'm going to find: an orange and black, male Diana fritillary butterfly.
“I was going to have this sent to your class, but plans changed.” He hands the box over, our fingertips touching with a zing that reminds me, oddly enough, of Raz. My cheeks flush as I pop the top and find the now-familiar necklace, the butterfly's still wings encased in resin, droplets of what I can only guess is Barron's blood staining the specimen. I lift my head up, mouth in a small ‘O’ of surprise. I don't have to fake my surprise: I'd suspected Barron was the one to send me the necklace, but I never thought he'd go out of his way to give it to me.
“You know this is an endangered species, right? And the state butterfly of Arkansas?” I don't mean to sound like an asshole, but I still can't decide if his gifting me the necklace is meant as a gift or a prank.
“I know. I didn't kill it; I found it dead.” He nods his chin to the dark crevice surrounding us. “Here.” Barron turns the flashlight down to the fern-dotted forest floor, still damp from this morning's rain. “Look,” he commands, and I follow his attention down to our bare feet … and the dozens of blue-black and orange-black butterflies dead on the ground. Female and male Diana fritillaries, I think, remembering that their specifies has strong sexual dimorphism, that is, when males and females appear quite different in a species.
“Where did they all come from?” I breathe as Barron redirects the beam of the flashlight to the rock ceiling above our heads. The necklace nearly falls from my hands as I gasp, my eyes wide as I look up to see hundreds—more like thousands—of butterflies above our heads, their wings fanning slowly as they rest on the limestone rock.
“I assume one got in here to lay its eggs, and when the larvae hatched, they got trapped.” He shrugs his broad shoulders, causing the light to bob slightly with the motion. “Or maybe I'm totally full of shit, but I keep coming back here, and they haven't left.”
“How did you find this place?” I ask, rubbing my thumb over the smooth surface of the necklace. I feel much better about it, knowing that the butterfly was found dead.
“I come out here to draw,” Barron answers, and I wonder if, like with Raz, this is the single longest conversation we've ever had. “Stumbled on it. When I saw them, I thought of you.”
“When you saw hundreds of dead butterflies, you thought of me? That's not at all creepy.”
Barron laughs, dark and low, as deep as the shadows surrounding us. We've been going to the same school for three years now, and all I really know about him is that he makes impersonal art, has a little sister who attends Burberry Prep Academy in California, and that his parents have
disturbingly questionable political ties with Russia. His mother works in Washington, D.C. with Raz's dad. Frankly, both their families’ politics suck.
But that's all I know, facts.
I can't quite figure his motivation here.
His lush mouth twists to one side in a smile. Unlike Calix, it's not too rare to catch a smile on Barron's lips. Sometimes, his eyes even reflect his mirth. But directed at me like that? I'm not sure that I've ever felt something so deeply in my bones.
“You did a freshman project on them,” he says, his voice echoing slightly off the curved rock walls. “I remembered it, so when I saw them, I thought I'd send you one for Devils' Day.”
“Why would you send me anything for Devils' Day at all?” I wonder as Barron steps forward and hands me the flashlight. I take it, slightly confused at his motivations, until I realize he's planning on putting the necklace on for me. As soon as he takes it from the box, I turn around, putting my back to his front.
When I thought about Raz's behavior yesterday, everything fell into place. I could recall dozens of scenarios in a given week when he might look at me, talk to me, tease me. But Barron is so reserved, so closed-off. I am most definitely not the sole focus in his day.
“Your friend, Luke, she has big lady balls.”
“Also known as ovaries,” I say, and Barron laughs, the sound ruffling my hair against the back of my neck. My body goes completely stiff, my heart thundering as he hooks the ends of the necklace together, fingers dancing over my shoulders and down my arms. I look back at him, but without the flashlight, he's nothing but a shadow in the dark, the glitter on his mask catching the smallest hint of moonlight, peeking through in a single crack in the rock. “What does any of this have to do with Luke?”
“I've been looking for an excuse to talk to you,” he says as I turn around and Barron steps back, pausing and looking down, causing me to swing the light in the same direction. We're stepping all over the dead butterflies, the orange, blue, and black pigments in their wings staining the skin of our dirty feet.
With a small gasp, I kneel down to check some of the others, assuring myself that they are, in fact, dead, and not just paralyzed from the cold. Not a single one of them moves at all, their abdomens curled forward, wings worn away and disintegrating into the dirt.
Still, it doesn’t feel right, to crush their fragile bodies like this.
“Why would you need an excuse to talk to me?” I ask, rising to my feet.
“If someone like Luke trusts and loves you as much as she does, well, that's enough for me.”
“Enough for what?” I grind out, remembering yesterday, when Raz and Sonja told me that Barron had—quote—impossible standards.
He steps forward, grabbing my face with two hands, his thumbs curving beneath my chin, lifting my face up to meet his. Barron leans down and captures my lips, taking them hostage with a strong hot tongue and the teasing edges of teeth. He tastes like the devils I'm supposed to be avoiding on this most unholy of all nights. Even Halloween is nothing when paired up with Devils’ Day; All Hallows’ Eve is the bastard child of this wicked night.
Barron keeps me still, even when I might pull away, and before I realize it, my palms are lying flat against his chest. When I try to move closer, he resists, keeping me in place with his hands cupping my head.
The flashlight is stuck between my palm and his chest, pointing up at his face and limning it in strange light.
“I debated whether to give you a male or female,” he says, flicking his eyes down, as if he can see the dead butterflies lining the forest floor. His dual-colored gaze turns back to me, terrifying in its intensity. I'm still not fooled, but damn, the boy knows how to kiss. “After a while, I knew it had to be a male.”
“Why?” I ask as Barron steps back, gently extracting the flashlight from my grip.
“Because,” he says, his mouth a wry twist of lips, darkly playful, almost … interesting. “I knew you'd never appreciate an analogy where the female is kept trapped in a resin cage.” He moves to the opening in the rock, and then expertly hauls himself out, glancing over his shoulder. For a moment, I expect him to extend a hand out to help me. But I should've known: this is Barron Farrar we're talking about. “I'll see you later, Karma.”
He hops down and then takes off, flashlight beam streaking across the trees as I shout his name.
“Barron Farrar, get your ass back here!” I scream, voice echoing off the walls of the cave. With a curse and a sudden shiver of terror, I do my best to fumble my way out of the opening, remembering just in time not to touch the jagged bit where Barron must've cut his hand before. He didn't say as much, but I'm getting good at putting puzzle pieces together.
I hop down onto the soft earth, noticing a lantern in the distance.
Once I come up on that one, burning soft and low, there's another, then another. Eventually, I find myself back at the bonfire with everyone else, but I don't see Barron again that night.
Instead, I return back to the cabin, and let myself drift off into a strangely peaceful sleep.
The next several days, I experiment with different ways to start the morning. One thing that I can pinpoint for sure: if I piss off two of the three boys, we go to the woods to see Luke. Otherwise, it never occurs.
And that, that is the part that intrigues me.
That means on day one, when I hit Calix's car, and he and Raz were acting like monumental dicks … they weren't really that mad at all.
I’ve spent half of the last week locked in the cabin with Luke, so today, when I open my eyes and see that there's blood all over my steering wheel, I decide to try a different approach. As soon as I sit up, I lock the door, and take off before Calix can confront me—just like I did on the day that Raz and I …
Raz.
Is it weird that I miss him? My heart keeps telling me that we settled things, that there's an attraction between us that's too electric to ignore. Yet, he remembers none of that. As far as he's concerned, he hates me as much today as he has any other day.
With a sigh, I head back to the school, clean up, and then proceed to stay the fuck out of the Knight Crew's way, watching them when they arrive on campus, during breaks and lunch, but without them ever seeing me.
“Is the Knight Crew just extra scary today or are you up to something?” Luke asks me after school, when I slip into her car for a ride. April takes the front seat, and we pull out of the parking lot. Mentally, I'm calculating their movements, Barron's mostly.
If I start the morning upsetting Calix and Raz, but leaving Barron alone, he lets us out of the cabin, and we head to see the butterflies again. Every night, despite knowing it’s coming, I let him kiss me. My lips tingle, and I touch my fingertips to them, wondering about all the things I've learned.
Instead of asking about the candy he eats, or about his struggles with alcohol, I've led us down different paths.
What's your favorite color?
Orange.
Are you planning on going to college?
I'd rather not.
What do you like to draw in that notebook of yours?
Scenery, mostly. Sometimes girls.
That notebook … I want to see what's inside of it.
So today, I let Luke take me home, missing my moms and sisters so much that the emotions surprise me. It's been over a week since I've seen them, and I hadn't realized it until just now.
“Are you okay, honey?” Mama Jane asks, appearing from the kitchen and asking if we all want tea, just like she asked me on day one.
“I'm fine, and no thank you,” I tell her, taking April and Luke into my room to get my clothes. I'd sewn a dress just for today, but one of my little sisters—neither will cop to it—spilled spaghetti sauce on it, so I had to handwash it and hang it to dry.
When I woke up on the first day, it was missing from the clothesline.
So I do what I did before, and make a new outfit as quick as I can, leaving with my friends and heading to Luke's dorm.<
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“April, you're in Barron's art class, right?” I ask, and she nods as she waits for Luke to unlock the door, one hand cupped under her swollen belly.
“I am. He's pretty talented, actually. The teacher used his sketch of a loblolly pine as a lesson on light and shadows.”
“Come on in and don't mind the mess,” Luke says, holding the door open with her back and leaving the way open for April and me. With a groan, April sinks into one of the two cozy chairs in the center of the room. Dressed in blue velvet and tufted with silver buttons, they're one of Luke's projects. She found the pair of chairs on the side of the road, used some of the money her parents sent her for the fabric, and spent a whole week engrossed in their design and refurbishment.
There's a queen-sized bed to the left, with a nightstand on either side. On the opposite side of the room is a kitchenette with golden oak cabinets circa 1995, and a countertop in a particularly … interesting shade of granite, a pale beige with orange and black streaks through it. The room reminds me of a motel room, save for the few pieces of furniture that Luke has put her personal touch on. That, and the art on the walls. The rest of the stuff—issued by Crescent Prep—is shabby at worst, standard and unremarkable at best.
I'm the only student in the whole school who lives at home, further setting me apart as a target. I imagine a lot of the hate I receive has to do with jealousy. Raz himself admitted that was the case.
“If you call this messy, what did you think of my room?” I say with a cocked brow. I know that Luke regularly cleans April's apartment for her. It's pretty cute actually, the way she clucks around like a mother hen, albeit one with bright blue hair and an obsession with Japanese anime.
“Good point,” Luke says with a laugh, moving over to the small fridge and withdrawing several cold bottles of kombucha. I accept one gratefully. April, on the other hand, clamps a hand over her mouth.
“Please take that away from me; I feel like I might be sick.”
Luke backs away, holding her hands up and out in surrender, the bottle of kombucha clutched in one fist. She swirls in a spin of purple plaid skirts and shakes her head.
Devils' Day Party: A High School Bully Romance Page 19