Devils' Day Party: A High School Bully Romance

by C. M. Stunich

  “Near the cabins,” Barron suggests as Calix steps forward, dark eyes shining with righteous anger.

  “Something you said this morning pissed him off. If I were you, I wouldn't go over there,” Calix purrs. “And don't think I've forgotten what you did to my fucking car.”

  I ignore him, taking off in the direction of the cabins, past the mouth of Devils’ Den, past the train car, and into the woods. Candles flicker randomly in the darkness, naked bodies shining as revelers fuck or drink or laugh, the sounds echoing like the cries of the devilish spirits that live in the land.

  When I stumble out of the trees and into the clearing, still clutching my lacy skirts and panting like crazy, I see Sonja, Raz, Luke, April, and a handful of other Knight Crew members clustered on the far side. Between the trunks of two huge trees, there's a red and white bullseye set up.

  As I watch, Raz moves into the center of the clearing and lifts a handgun, firing off a single shot. The sound echoes through the woods, making my ears ring.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” I demand, coming up behind him as he lowers the gun, and everyone turns to look at me.

  “Hey Karma,” Luke says, looking a bit nervous in her sequin dress shirt and goblin mask as she jogs over to us. April is sitting on a stump on the left side of the clearing, still wearing her Crescent Prep uniform and the same pixie mask that Luke gave her on that very first day. She’s talking to a girl whose name I don’t know, laughing and nursing sips off a water bottle. “Where have you been all day? I've been texting you.”

  Sonja saunters over to join us, smirking at me behind her red leather mask and wrapping an arm around Luke's waist as my bestie pales and her eyes widen in fear.

  I don't have time for her and Sonja's secrets though, not today.

  Raz turns to look at me, wearing a different mask than usual. This time, his mask looks like death—a skeleton face with a black shroud molded above the forehead.

  “Hey Karma,” he says, dropping the magazine to the forest floor and loading another one. He hands the gun out to me. “Do you want a turn?”

  “What is wrong with you?” I ask, wishing I could tell him about the day we spent at the cottage, how he ate chocolate ice cream with me and cuddled me naked. But we can't talk about that, now can we? “Put the gun down, Raz, and let's talk.”

  “Talk?” he scoffs, dropping the gun to his side and stepping close to me. His voice gets dark and quiet, almost menacing. “About what? About your baby with Calix? I haven't told him yet, but maybe I should?” Raz lifts his head up and gestures with his chin in the direction of Calix and Barron as they step out of the trees.

  Holy shit, is this it? I wonder as I glance down at the black handgun clutched in Raz's tense fingers. Is his jealousy going to end the night in bloodshed?

  Pearl appears just a moment later, coming over to stand beside me.

  “Don't you dare bully her about her pregnancy,” she hisses, and I realize just how out of control this has gotten. I started the day with good intentions, but my lie is becoming twisted. I don't like it. I don't like it at all.

  “Yeah, and what are you going to do about it?” Raz retorts, stepping closer. The thing is, regardless of the mistakes I've made, today is for Pearl. Just Pearl. She's owed that, at least, a single day.

  I push Raz back, desperate to keep him from saying something to her that he might one day regret.

  “Please don't drag her into this. You're mad at me, and I know why.” Calix and Barron are coming closer, and I really don't want to have this conversation with them around, so I rush on. “You love me and you're jealous. Well, guess what? I love you, too.”

  “What the … what?” Raz asks, rearing back, his fingers loosening on the gun. “The hell is wrong with you?”

  “I'm in love with you,” I choke out, my heart aching so fiercely that I'm afraid I might have a heart attack and wake up at the gas station before I get a chance to finish this day. Pearl must live, that's my only goal right now. “So please don't do this.”

  Raz just stands there, dumbfounded, as one of the other Knight Crew lackeys steps close and grabs the gun. It takes me a second to realize that it’s Erina fucking Cheney.

  “If you're just going to stand there and chat, I'll take a turn,” she says, and bile rises in my throat. That girl, with a weapon in her hand … this can’t be good.

  “You're telling me this now that you're pregnant with Calix's fucking kid?” Raz asks, just as Erina lifts the gun to point it at the target. The thing is, when she goes to take her shot, something about what Raz has just said makes her startle. She fires the gun nearly forty feet to the left of the target, and I watch in sick horror as the bullet hits April right in the chest.

  Red blooms on the white of her dress shirt as her eyes go wide and she crumples forward, almost in slow motion. Her brunette braids trail behind her as she falls into Luke's arms. My best friend catches April before she can hit the ground, but I can already tell this is going to end poorly for everyone involved.

  “She's been shot!” Luke screams as Sonja helps her lay April on the forest floor. “We need a fucking phone; get the gatekeeper!” Luke turns back to April, sobbing and shaking as I stand there, thunderstruck.

  Clearly, the universe hates me.

  Why else would it do this to me? All I was trying to do was help. I just wanted to fucking help.

  Barron takes off at a full sprint, clearly heading back to grab the phones. Raz stumbles a bit before seeming to shake himself out of a stupor.

  “Give me the fucking gun, Erina,” he says, moving toward her slowly. Erina just stands there, ignoring him and clutching the gun in two hands as she stares at April's still form with wide eyes.

  Pearl takes off, dropping down to the ground in her new emerald gown and leaning down to put her ear near April's lips, already flecked with pink spittle.

  Calix isn't looking at Erina. Instead, he's staring at me, like he knows this moment is going to destroy me, like he’d do anything to change that.

  He must’ve heard Raz shouting about me being pregnant, but obviously, he won’t believe that, considering we haven't had sex in a year. The expression on his face says that maybe he's already forgotten about that part of the conversation though. I sure as fuck have, all of my attention focused on April.

  “Karma,” he says, his voice almost … tender? Calix takes a step toward me, reaching out for my hand.

  “Don't touch her,” Erina says, and my attention snaps over to Erina and Raz. He has both hands raised in surrender and a deep frown etched into his handsome face. As I watch, Erina swings the gun from him and over to me and Calix.

  Fuck.

  Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  Sometimes I forget that I go to a school full of delinquents and psychopaths. Sometimes, but not often. I mean, they don't let me forget often enough.

  “Erina, give me the gun,” Calix says, frowning as he holds out a hand, his imperious attitude making me extremely nervous. This isn't going to go well if he cops the dark faerie prince of the forest bullshit. “You made a mistake; don't turn it into a crime.”

  For a split-second, Erina's pale blue eyes lower and I feel like she's this close to giving Calix the gun. She lifts her gaze just in time to see him flick his own toward me, that same sort of fragile tenderness in his eyes. My friend has just been shot, and Calix's hard shell is falling aside like it was never there.

  April is dead.

  The thought doesn't even penetrate my foggy brain. Besides, today isn't the day, is it? It can't be. I won't let it be.

  “Why do you love her?” Erina asks, sounding sick to her stomach. “What is it about her that makes her better than me?”

  “Are you kidding?” Calix asks, his face tightening with anger. “You just killed a pregnant girl with an illegal handgun, and you're asking me about Karma?”

  “Answer me!” Erina screams, gesturing with the gun in Calix's direction. He closes his eyes briefly, only bothering to open them when Erina p
resses the barrel of the gun against his forehead. I desperately want to say something, do something, but clearly, I'm at least partially responsible for Erina's anger. I'm afraid if I draw her attention, she won't hesitate to shoot Calix and me both. For his part, Calix doesn’t seem particularly concerned, more pissed off than anything else.

  Raz makes a move, like he's planning on tackling her to the ground, when Erina swings the weapon around and fires a round into his leg, dropping him to the leaf-covered earth with a howl. I drop down beside him, putting my hands over the wound, trying to stop the flow of hot crimson.

  “Tell me,” Erina says, turning the gun back on Calix. “You may as well, it's already too late.”

  “Karma is freedom,” Calix says with a small sigh. “She's empathy. She's everything I'm not.”

  He said it again, I think, but I can't exactly find it in me to be happy, not with April likely dead, and Raz bleeding all over me. His teeth are gritted as he sits up, panting as he looks at me with something akin to fear in his gaze. He isn't ready to die. I reach over and rip his awful skeleton mask away, tossing it aside.

  “You love her?” Erina asks, sniffling, and I glance back just in time to see Calix nod.

  “I love her.”

  Those are the last words he says.

  Erina drops the barrel to Calix’s chest and shoots him, right through the fucking heart.

  The sound of that gunshot makes my head ring as I choke on my own breath, watching as the boy I've loved for years falls to his side in the leaves and does not get up.

  “No, no, no, no, no!” Raz shouts, scrambling to get to his friend, even as he bleeds and bleeds and bleeds. I look up to see Erina pointing the gun at me. Her face is pale and pretty beneath the leaf-covered mask she wears, her expression as cold as ice.

  “Goodbye, Karma,” she says.

  That's the last thing I remember, the horrible, horrible sound of her voice.

  There's blood all over my steering wheel.

  I sit up, shaking all over, wanting to puke. I'm so disoriented that when Calix opens my door and tears me out of the car, I barely see him. My eyes are glazed over, and I start to wonder if I'm coming apart at the seams.

  “Are you fucking insane?!” he snarls, but then I collapse forward into his arms, fisting my hands in his Crescent Prep blazer and letting out a small sob. I'm strong, at least, I try to be strong, but holy shit.

  Holy shit.

  Holy shit.

  I lift teary eyes up to Calix's face and find him staring down at me with an expression that isn't entirely unlike the one he had just moments ago. There's an edge to it, like he's balancing on a precipice, but there's a tenderness, too. I realize then that I've seen this expression before, more than once, but that I've just never recognized it.

  With a gun to his fucking head, Calix Knight admitted he loves me.

  There is no more of an endgame romance than that.

  “Let me go today,” I whisper, my voice verging on hysterical. April with bloody spittle on her lips, Luke screaming, Barron running, Raz bleeding, Calix dying. Seems the only person I managed to save yesterday was Pearl, but at what price? “Something bad happened. Just … let me go home, okay? And I'll explain everything to you tomorrow.”

  “Karma, what are you talking about?” Calix asks, his fingers tightening on my shoulders instead of releasing. Why he panicked and broke my heart last year, I may never know, but it's clear from where I'm standing now that he loves me. Calix Knight is in fucking love with me.

  He's looking at me like maybe the car crash was an accident.

  “Please,” I whisper as the woman in the bright yellow shirt, with the little daisies on her nails and the purple hat, approaches us.

  “Are you okay?” she asks, and I have to bite back a scream. It isn't fair that when I tried to help, I just managed to make things so much worse. Pearl didn't kill herself last night, but I saw two people I care about die. I saw Raz shot. I saw Luke's heart breaking as she held April's dying body.

  “Leave me alone,” I snap, knowing it isn't fair to the old lady, and putting my forehead down against Calix's chest. He's holding me in the hotel room at the Crescent, I tell myself, eyes squeezed shut. My mind is entirely blown when his left hand comes down to rest on the back of my head.

  “She's fine,” he tells the woman, his voice much less caustic than normal. “I'll take care of her.”

  “Should I call the police?” she inquires, taking another step forward. I suppose I should be grateful to her for picking up on the subtle signals between me and Calix. But today, I just can't. Minutes ago, one of my classmates killed two others, and I'm struggling to wrap my mind around why. I've never needed that mental health day more than I do right now.

  “That won't be necessary,” Calix says, and I nearly collapse. Hearing the script today is pretty much the last thing that I want. My actions, no matter how small they seem, are capable of blowing this script to high hell, of ruining lives. “We're friends; she just had an accident.”

  My head snaps up to his, but he isn't looking at me. Those ebony eyes are on the front on the convenience store, watching for Raz and Barron.

  The woman retreats, but her eyes don't leave us.

  “Why did you leave me last year?” I ask, tears still rolling down my cheeks as I picture the blood blooming on Calix's bare chest. He looks back down at me, his lush, full mouth twisted into a frown. “Why did you lie?”

  “I'm a coward,” he says, and it's the first real answer I've ever gotten out of him, on any of these days. I want to believe—no, I need to believe—that he remembers at least something out of the past month. I wasn't there all alone. Maybe I'm the only one who remembers it the way I do, but there are fragments of those days inside of everyone I know. Barron draws me; April mentioned the ‘sex act’; my mothers made ‘ants on a log’ as a snack. Calix said friends, not classmates. Friends. “I panicked,” he continues, and there's something strange in his voice. I wonder if he's still feeling the fear and pain from last night. “Once I'd turned on you, what was the point? You were never going to forgive me.”

  Calix releases me as Raz and Barron step out of the store, carrying their bags of snacks, as usual. I'm just waiting for Raz to call me Trailer Park and break my heart all over again. I turn back to Calix.

  “How would you know that if you never tried?” I ask, dropping my arms to my sides. He looks back at me, a sad, distant expression in his face. Despite his good looks, his group of asshole friends, his money … Calix Knight is decidedly unhappy. Only, he wasn't that night, when he was with me. He smiled then, for real. Not a smirk or a sneer, but a true smile. “I forgive you, Calix, and I still love you.”

  “What the fuck happened here?” Raz asks, but this time, he doesn't circle the cars. He just stands there with Barron at his side. He also doesn't say what he's said a half-dozen times before. “Little trailer trash bitch thought she’d get the first Devils’ Day trick on us, huh?” Those words never leave his mouth, not today. Maybe he, too, remembers being shot.

  “Calix and I love each other,” I say, taking a step back toward my car. Calix watches me with dark eyes, but he doesn't say anything, one way or the other. I glance back at Raz and Barron. The former is gritting his teeth, his jaw tight, hand clenched around the handle of the plastic grocery bag. Barron studies me with his usual intensity, sucking on the red lollipop in his hand, blue and brown eyes focused on my face. “Barron draws me; Raz is jealous. I love you both, too.” I slide into the car and slam the door, turning the key three times to start the damn thing, tears still running down my face.

  Raz slams his fist against the window.

  “What the actual fuck, Karma!” he shouts as I pause briefly to roll the window down, but just a crack. Today is not the day where I try to balance all three boys and their affections.

  “What do you know about Erina Cheney?” I ask, and Raz just gapes at me like I've lost the damn plot.

  “Erina Cheney?” he asks, glanc
ing over his shoulder at Calix and Barron.

  “Coincidence, she's also in love with Calix Knight,” Barron says in that cool, smooth voice of his. He's standing on Calix's right side now, brows furrowed. “Why? What did she do to you?”

  “She … has a video from last year's Devils' Day party—one of us in the treehouse—and she's planning on uploading it.”

  “What?” Calix snaps, taking a small step forward. “Is that why you crashed?” he asks, and it's quite clear he doesn't realize that I did it on purpose, not today. “Is she threatening you?”

  “I'm not letting you drive off after saying weird shit like you just did,” Raz growls, ignoring the rest of the conversation in favor of this one thing. He leans down, red eyes flashing. “What do you mean you love us both, too?”

  “I have to go,” I say, putting my foot on the gas. Raz curses and jumps out of the way as I reverse away from the Aston Martin and then put Little Bee in drive, heading straight for home.

  Once I get there, I make sure to clean the blood off and dry my tears, and then I make my excuses to my moms and lock myself in my room.

  A quick search on my phone gives me a whole list of books, movies, and video games with a time loop plot.

  Hey, can you find Pearl today and tell her that she can keep the dress; I want her to have it. Also, maybe just keep an eye on her tonight at the party? She's been really down and depressed lately. I've got a thing to deal with, but I'll see you tomorrow. I shoot the text off to Luke and then settle into bed. I turn on the TV that's mounted to the wall next to my closet doors and search for Groundhog Day, the first movie on my list.

  And then I hit play.

  Even though I know I can't carry items over to the next day, I start making a list of all the things that happen to the main character in the film as he lives the very nightmare that is now my life. One day, on repeat. Only, it looks like Bill Murray—who plays the lead in the film—is stuck in the snowy small town of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania for years. Years’ worth of days pass, and he even manages to master the piano.