“I'm running out of options, Raz,” I tell him, knowing he's going to misinterpret my words. “For how to do this, so why not just be honest from moment one? I love you.”
“Set her down, Raz,” Calix snaps as Barron cracks the lollipop in his mouth with his teeth.
“What are you doing, Karma?” Raz looks at me like he's never quite faced a problem of this magnitude. “We get it: you want to fuck with us today.”
“I want you to look at me the way you always do, like you hate me. But I want you to do it holding my hand. Can you do that?”
Raz looks at me like he has no idea what to think, and I close my eyes, pressing my face into his shoulder. That day at the hotel with Calix was like a dream, one that I was so desperate not to wake up from that I fought sleep for almost thirty hours. But trying to force my tired body through hours of exhaustion is not a way to escape this time loop.
I have to figure out how to balance all the things that I want to happen. And then I need to keep doing that until it sticks somehow. That's the only way.
“Put her down,” Calix repeats, his words a clear command. The only thing his statement seems to do is cause Raz's fingers to tighten on my ass. At this point, I half-expect the boys to throw me in the back of the Aston Martin and take me out to the cabin again. All I have to do is piss off at least two of the three guys to trigger that timeline, right? “Let's take her with us.”
I guess I've never tried it when one of them is actively on my side though.
“Nah, I think Karma's made it pretty clear what she wants today,” Raz says, looking back at me, his face torn between his mask of hatred and that deep, inner want that I saw from him at the cabin. “Some part of me wants you to get pregnant. Because then I'll be allowed—no, encouraged—to be with you.” It cost him something to admit that to me, to be that raw and honest and open. I need to see that side of Raz again, even if it’s just for one, last day. “For whatever reason, she wants to spend Devils' Day with me.” He smirks at Calix, and I swear, I can feel the other boy's eyes boring into my back. “Drive us back to the school, will ya? My dad's having something dropped off for me today.”
“I at least have a right to ask why you thought to hit my car, if all you wanted to do was run in here and throw yourself into Raz's arms?” Calix’s voice is thick with shadows, like a swirl of fog in an empty graveyard. I have completely and utterly pissed him off today, worse than usual even.
Raz releases me when I lean back, dropping my feet to the floor and putting his hands possessively on my hips. I stare up into his red eyes, but his expression is an enigma; I can't quite figure out what he's thinking.
“J'ai embouti ta voiture pour te faire une crasse, Calix, rien de plus,” I whisper, turning to look at Calix over my shoulder, even though the words kill me. “Everything will be different tomorrow.” He promised, but he couldn't possibly know the odds he faced in order to keep that promise. I hit your car as a prank, Calix, nothing more.
“Let's take them back to the school,” Barron says, voice as dark as the night sky in his secret cave of butterflies. He pulls his red devil's mask from his pocket and slips it over his face, dual-colored eyes still watching me from beneath it. “You can afford to get your car fixed.”
He turns and walks down the aisle, tossing a wad of cash onto the counter before heading outside. I notice as he leaves, that he takes the sketchbook out from under his arm and shoves it in the garbage can.
My heart stutters, and I feel the tears at the edges of my eyes again.
“What are you doing, Karma?” Raz asks me as Calix leaves the store in a fury, the bells on the door jangling as he throws it against the wall on his way out. Karma, he called me, not Trailer Park. “What the fuck do you want?”
“I want you, Raz,” I say, reaching up to wipe the tears from my eyes with the end of my blazer sleeve. After a moment, Raz takes his own blazer sleeve and wipes the blood from my forehead.
“Why would you hit Calix's car?” he asks, that cruel, cruel face of his carved into lines of confusion. He's adorable like that, all muddled up. I almost smile. Almost. But then, I should’ve spent the weekend sleeping in Calix's arms, waking up for a cheesy ghost tour, watching seconds and minutes and hours tick by. Instead, I spent three days crying alone in my room.
“I was driving by, and I just couldn't take it anymore,” I tell him, a partial truth that I know he won't able to see through. I hit Calix's car because I was angry; I was punishing him. Because I care too much, because now that I'm stuck here, I care even more than I ever did before. “We're evenly matched, Raz. Tit for tat. You know how to verbally spar with me like nobody else.”
“You hit Calix's car because you wanted to talk to me?” he clarifies, his voice edging on cruel hysteria, like he wants to maintain the status quo, put me down, destroy me … but that he's holding back.
“How else could I get your attention?” I ask, lifting my face up to his. “I work so hard at being invisible for you, so that you'll leave me alone. Something like that, it's hard to undo.”
Raz is silent for several long moments, as customers come in and out of the doors to the convenience store.
“I've thought a lot of things about you over the years,” Raz starts, his voice hesitant as he eyes me with narrowed red eyes. “But invisible? You've never been invisible to me. I couldn't forget you if I tried.”
It's hard to fight back the sudden rush of emotion, the memory of my mother's words telling me, if you stay up long enough to see the sunrise, paint it. Of that text from Luke, telling me that Pearl was dead. Again. Of Calix's story, told over coffee in the Mud Street Café.
“Maybe, just for today, you hold my hand?” I repeat, and Raz's eyes narrow, but he nods, just once, almost reluctantly. His gaze follows me as I head for the doors to the cooler and pull out an iced coffee, taking it to the counter before I realize I don't have any money. “I've got it,” he says before I even get a chance to ask, chucking some cash on the counter before following me outside.
Glancing quickly over at the car, I see that Barron's in the front seat, hood pulled up, his big body bent over the screen of his phone. While he's not looking, I take his sketchbook from the trash and flip it open.
My face stares back at me from light and shadow, from beautiful organic lines, heavy with all the sentiment and emotion that's missing from the rest of his work. He puts up a façade with his art, the same way as he does with his emotions. Only in here is he real.
“Jesus,” Raz says, staring at the notebook over my shoulder. “Stalker, much?” I tuck the sketchbook under my arm and head for Little Bee, pausing when Raz grabs onto my arm. “Where are you going?” he asks, and I smile, nodding my chin in the direction of the passenger side door.
“Climb in, and I'll show you,” I tell him, getting in the driver's side and waiting with heavy tension for Raz to join me. After a moment, he does, folding his long body into Little Bee and curling his lip at the torn gray seats and the stickers plastering the dashboard. Most of them are the antithesis of everything he believes in. Well, that his dad believes in anyway.
“This car is a shitbox,” he observes, leaning back in his seat as I put us in reverse and remove my bumper from Calix's car, the very same car I sat in just a few days ago, where I stripped naked as he clutched the steering wheel in white knuckled hands.
“Thanks for noticing,” I murmur, but I smile anyway, taking us straight to Crescent Prep, over winding roads with golden fall foliage on either side. We don't talk much. Mostly Raz just stares at me, like he's expecting me to pull a serious Devils' Day prank on him. “Do you know where Pearl usually goes during lunch?” I ask, wondering if I can't nail two birds with one stone today.
Save Pearl. And spend time with Raz.
“Pearl?” he asks, blinking through his sudden confusion. “Are you fucking kidding me? Fuck Pearl. She's the one who got me sent to Crescent Prep in the first place.” Raz's scowl is legendary. Actually, at this point, it's pretty ob
vious that he never really hated me. The way he looks now? That's true ire burning in his bloodred gaze.
“How?” I turn to glance at him briefly before flicking my attention back to the road. I've had enough trouble with cars during this stupid time loop. Cars, and death. Two constants. Now, if I could just get through today without anyone dying, I'd consider it a win.
“Does it matter? She's a nightmare, barely human.” Raz puts his foot up against the dash, resting his head in his hand as he looks over at me, calculating as always, sharp as he always is. “What do you give a crap about Pearl anyway? Doesn't she hate you, too?”
“She calls me Trailer Park,” I say, purposely vague as we head up the gravel driveway toward Crescent Preparatory Academy. “If that means she hates me, then I guess you're right.”
We park in one of the front spaces, and I decide I'll use this as a test for Raz. Will he help the Knight Crew smash up Little Bee and then drag her to the woods? Or is everything going to be different today? It almost seems too easy.
But maybe that's because when Calix and Barron pull up in the busted Aston Martin and climb out, I can see fury burning in both their gazes. Their masks are fixed firmly in place, and I can see what I should've already figured out: I've bought Raz's approval by trading for yet more animosity from Barron and Calix both.
Seeing that, after the incredible experiences I just had with both of them … that kills me.
“Don't think I'm going to forget what you've done to my car,” Calix sneers, giving Raz a withering look as he passes. His face is filled with shadows, his eyes burning with a dark fire beneath the black leather mask. Thinking of things from his perspective, standing outside the gas station lonely and wanting and broken, I can only imagine the pain he must be feeling.
Words sit on the tip of my tongue, desperate to escape, to bridge the gap between us. Remember when we had breakfast at the Mud Street Café? Then we went to the hotel, and you skimmed my bare arms with your fingertips. You even mentioned a ghost you saw as a child, and you owe me that story! We fucked on those crisp, white sheets, and you looked down at me like you would never leave.
Instead, I say nothing.
Unless my intuition is completely broken, then I know today is not the final day. I'm not sure how or why I know that, but there will be another repeat of Devils' Day waiting for me on the other side. My only trepidation comes from knowing that somewhere, deep down, Calix will remember this hurt and pain.
“It's just a car, bro,” Raz says, grinning that sharp grin of his, red eyes bright with mischief. “As far as pranks go, you've got to admit: Karma has some balls.”
“Ovaries,” I correct automatically, my eyes sliding over to Barron's dual-colored ones. “I'd be the Rose to your Jack,” he'd said. I'm dying to know what he might draw today, what images of a timeline he can't quite remember. Or if, perhaps, confessing my love to Raz has changed everything and he might not draw me at all.
My head fucking hurts; the ripple effects of my actions on everyone around me are clear as day now.
“Yeah, sure, big ass fucking ovaries,” Raz says, looking down at me as I study Barron. He's stripping off his white hoodie and slipping into his purple Crescent Prep blazer, with the moon, knife, and rod symbol on the breast. When he sees me looking, he returns my stare. If he doesn't have his sketchbook, he most definitely can't draw me, now can he? I look back toward Raz, knowing that I'm playing a dangerous game of balance here. He throws an arm over my shoulders as Calix's nostrils flare and his dark eyes flick up to Raz's red ones.
“Ovaries or not, I'm pissed. Maybe you should stay home tonight, Karma? Skip the Devils' Day Party.” Calix turns and heads for the front steps as I feel a hot, itchy anger coming over me. This fucking sucks! I think, wishing I could just slap my hands over my face and scream until my throat gives out.
“If Karma wants to go to the party, we'll go to the party,” Raz growls dangerously, and Calix pauses on the top step, looking back at Raz like there's something he needs to say. Only … he doesn't. He just scowls and continues on inside. Where Sonja is, I have no clue. Usually, if the boys don't take me to the cabin, they pick Sonja up on the way to school.
The familiar sound of Luke's car on the gravel drive draws my attention, and my brows go up as I see Raz's redheaded bestie sitting in my bestie's car, April in the backseat behind them. Luke spots me right away, her brown eyes going wide as she pulls into the space on the other side of Little Bee.
“This should be entertaining,” Barron says mildly, and I cringe inwardly, knowing he's about to come down on me with all of that darkness and shadow he keeps locked away inside. “I won't hurt you again, Karma.” Does he even know what a goddamn liar he is? “Sonja is fucking Luke; Raz is fucking Karma. And none of us ever knew.”
Raz just throws his head back in a braying laugh, cupping his hands together over his mouth before dropping them to his sides.
“Oh, we haven't done it yet,” Raz says, giving Barron a look that's overflowing with cocksure energy. “But I'll send you the memo once we do. Bitterness doesn't look so good on you, bro. Why don't you fuck all the way off?”
Barron pauses and then dips back into the car to grab something, but I'm too distracted by Luke and Sonja to see what it is.
“Karma …” Luke starts, getting out of the car with her palms raised toward me in what's either a form of surrender or protection, I'm not sure. “We need to talk. Now.”
“Talk about what?” Sonja asks, tossing her bloodred hair over her shoulder and smiling with pretty, venomous lips. “That you and I have been fucking for a year? Oops, or maybe I shouldn't have said that?”
“If you two are happy together, then that's all that matters to me,” I say, and I swear, Raz, Sonja, Luke, and Barron all turn to look at me like I've grown a second head. Calix is long-gone, spiriting himself away into the relatively small prison we call a school. In the craziness my life has become, I almost forgot that I go to school with a bunch of rich delinquents, outcasts that nobody else wants.
The only place for monsters like Sonja and Raz, Calix and Barron, is right here in the backwoods of Arkansas.
Raz looks down at me with a perplexed expression, narrowing his eyes like he still suspects I'm up to some sort of trick. Too bad none of them realize that life is much less complicated when you start practicing the mantra of live and let live.
I mean, I'm in desperate need of a new one. My old mantra—this too shall pass—doesn't exactly hold up anymore, now does it? It's nice to know that the universe can throw a wrench in things if she so chooses.
“Wait, what?” Luke asks, dropping her hands and blinking at me like I'm a crazy person. April climbs out of the backseat of the convertible, pushing her glasses up her nose and looking between Sonja, Luke, Raz, and me like we've all lost our damn minds. “You're not mad?”
“Starting the drinking early on Devils' Day, huh?” Sonja quips, but I'm not looking at her. I'm staring at my best friend, at the fear in her face. Fear of rejection from me, the one person in the world who she should be able to talk to.
“If Sonja makes you happy—and treats you well,” I add, exhaling sharply, “then I'm happy, too. I wish you didn't feel like you had to lie to me though, about anything.”
“Whoa, this shit is getting deep,” Raz purrs, quirking his lips up in a sharp smile that can only be a defense mechanism. Speaking of sharp … Barron removes a hunting knife from a leather sheath and makes his way over to a vehicle with a car cover on it. I remember seeing it there on the first day, but now that I put two and two together, I'm guessing it must be Raz's new Shelby Cobra.
Without hesitation, Barron lifts up the cover and tosses it aside, revealing the black convertible with the white stripes on the front. The red bow shimmers in the morning sunlight as Barron takes the knife and slits the tires, one by one.
“What the actual fuck?!” Raz shouts, moving across the parking lot as Sonja and April try to make sense of what's going on. Luke just stares
at me like I'm the second coming, her eyes filling with unshed tears. This is what my friend needed, somebody who would stand by her side without judgment. After being rejected by her parents and sent to Crescent Prep, of course that's what Luke needed. How did I miss that before? “Lay off the fucking car, man.”
“Guess it does matter when somebody you care about screws with your car, doesn't it?” Barron asks, slipping the knife back into the sheath. Raz looks like he's about to hit his friend, but then Barron steps close to him, and their height difference—plus the fact that Barron's carrying a knife—seems to set in. Raz clenches his jaw as Barron turns and heads for the front of the school.
I can't let this moment escape, diving back into my car and grabbing the sketchbook. Just inside the front cover, I scribble the words you’re the Rose to my Jack and then leap out, racing to catch up with Barron before he can head up the front steps.
“Here,” I say, breathless, not caring if Raz sees me. There's nothing I can do for Calix now, but I can at least make sure that Barron doesn't end up with a negative memory in his collective consciousness. He looks down at the sketchbook and then back up at me, nostrils flaring. “I left you a note inside.”
I leave him with the sketchbook, moving back over to Raz and his new car. He's positively fuming, eyes closed, hands on his hips. I'm not even sure he saw me give Barron the notebook.
“Hey.” I put my hand on his shoulder and his eyes open, red irises sliding over to look at me. “Is this the present your dad sent?”
“He doesn't even love me,” Raz says simply. “So, he sends me nice things because he feels guilty.” He turns his attention back to the car. “I was going to let you drive it, but well, fuck it, I guess.” My lips part as Sonja makes her way over to stand next to Raz, red hair blowing in the breeze.
“What was that all about?” she asks, flicking her green eyes my direction. “Ah, that's right. All my friends are in love with the weird girl. Barron must be pissed.”
Devils' Day Party: A High School Bully Romance Page 28