by S. J. Sylvis
Walking into school each day was a harsh dose of reality that I was forced to swallow with pride. On days like today, where I truly just did not have the energy to put up my malicious smile and flawless shield, I wanted to yell at the top of my lungs how sorry I was. How sorry I was that I treated people like they were nothing. How sorry I was that every friendship I ever had was forced and one-sided. How sorry I was that I pushed everyone away because I was too scared to let anyone in.
But I wouldn’t say sorry. Not today, at least.
My teeth ground along one another as I stared at my computer chair pinned underneath my bedroom door. My heart thumped a little faster as I went over to my window, peering out the glass, trying to see if my mom’s plaything was gone yet, but the only car I saw was the same silver Maserati parked along the side of the road as the night before.
I sighed, rolling my eyes.
Why was he still here? They were usually gone by now.
I bounced my attention back to the chair and then back to the green grass below my window. It’d been done before. I’d climbed out of my window in a poor attempt to avoid a slimy run-in with a man twice my age several times in the past. But that was with more energy. That was with more than five seconds of sleep.
I brought my thumb up to my mouth and nibbled as I decided my next course of action. I’d never seen this car before, so I wasn’t sure what type of man my mom had decided to bring home. It was daylight, so it wasn’t like I was going to find myself in the same situation as last time. This man probably wasn’t going to pin me against our fridge and assault me with his mouth, or run his hands over my curves, making me panic. But…
A cold sweat started to trickle along my temples.
Nope. Not doing this again.
After moving the chair from underneath my door for when I got home after school, I dashed and grabbed my keys off my desk, along with my backpack, and threw my phone inside with the hopeful thought that Sky would finally text me back with a location to meet. I walked the few feet over to my window and opened it with barely any effort. I popped the screen out and pulled it inside before it fell to the ground below. I breathed in the fresh air for a moment to calm the erratic thoughts going through my head. There. Just breathe.
I pulled my hair to the side as I reminded myself that I’d flown through the air enough times in cheerleading that jumping a few yards below me from the gutter wasn’t going to kill me. After all, I’d done it before, and I’d likely do it again.
As soon as my leg was hitched over the side, I pulled my slender body to the right and inched my other leg out. My arms were shaking, and my legs felt like actual lead hanging from the bottom part of my body, but nonetheless, I was able to grab onto the drainpipe beside me and hold on for dear life.
I breathed in and out through my nose a few times before I started to shimmy down, my plaid skirt hiking up so far that it was likely touching my bra. My heart halted as I heard a voice skim through my ears and land right inside the deepest part of my chest.
Eric.
The only boy I’d ever truly cared about. And unfortunately, I’d ruined us before I even knew what we were.
My mind scrambled to put up a good front. My heart rushed to put up that thick and heavy shield for protection. Every last nerve ending in my body screamed to act accordingly so he couldn’t see how much I regretted becoming the person I was today. How much I regretted making him hate me.
Because let’s be honest here, if there was one person on this earth that I didn’t want hating me, it was him.
Eric’s voice was just as dark and moody as he was. “Need some help, Maddie?”
I hated when he called me that. And he freaking knew it.
“Like you’d ever actually help me,” I grunted out, preparing myself to jump down from the drainpipe before I landed in the rose bush below. I caught a brief glimpse of his dark hair as I glanced at the thorny bush underneath my dangling feet. The dark strands were pushed to the side in that lazy, I’m-sexy-as-fuck way that made girls sweat.
“You’re right. I wouldn’t help you even if it was the last thing left to do on this earth.” His feet shuffled along the grass as he walked closer to the side of my house. The task to focus on the rust-colored brick in front of my face instead of meeting his eye was a lot harder than I’d ever admit out loud. He dragged his words out as he finally made his way over to me. “But I think I’ll casually stand here and watch you fall. That sounds like a great way to start my day. So, please, carry on.”
Before I pushed off the side and jumped to the right, missing the rose bush all together, I gathered the courage to meet his stare. Everything about me repelled him. His lip was lifted but not with that sexy, mischievous, bad-boy grin he gave to other girls. No, this was a snarl. A hateful gleam was evident in his steely glare as he waited for me to fall. His navy school blazer was pulled firmly over his shoulders, his arms lazily hanging by his sides with one foot kicked up behind him, resting on the bones of my house.
I wished, for a single moment, I could have gone back in time and made different decisions. Would we have ended up like this? Would I have ended up like this?
Probably not, no.
But now it was too late. There was too much bad associated with me. I wouldn’t even know where to start if I ever decided to make amends.
My feet landed with a thud onto the soft ground, only a few feet away from him. No more than a second later, he pushed off the side of my house and started to walk away with his hands deep in his pockets. His locked jaw twitched at his temple as he shook his head.
“I guess you’ll have to find another way to brighten your day, Eric.” My voice came out strong, but on the inside, I was shaky and a little disappointed that he was walking away so soon.
He didn’t even stop walking when he spoke, and I followed after him like a desperate fangirl. “I’m sure there will be another exciting English Prep episode at some point today, where you’ll be the lead actress who has something terrible happen to her. I call it a feel-good show. It’s my favorite one, actually.” He finally paused and turned around to give me a smile that had my footsteps halting and my stomach dropping. It wasn’t a genuine smile, of course not, but his perfectly plump lips split in two, and there was a tiny flicker of light inside of me. I straightened my shoulders, preparing for something hurtful to come out of his mouth. “What was it last week?” His head tilted, that dark hair falling into his eyes. “Fish in your locker?”
Ah, yes. How could I forget the fish in my locker? The smell was putrid, and I had to act like it didn’t bother me at all. Otherwise, that’d put a crack in my I-don’t-give-a-fuck-that-everyone-hates-me facade.
I pushed away the inklings of hurt that were trickling in and angled my chin up so I looked poised and unbothered. “Was it you?”
“Hmm?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.
A car drove down our quiet street, probably a neighbor on their way to work. Once I took my eyes off the black SUV, I met his cocky grin. “Was it you, Eric? Did you put the fish in my locker?” I crossed my arms, waiting patiently for his answer. “Is this all part of that lovely threat you gave me a few months ago?” I threw his words back at him. “It’s on now, Princess.”
Almost every single day, something happened to me. Fish in locker? Check. Slashed tire in the parking lot? Check. Chair breaking in the cafeteria, sending me to my ass within a second? Check. The list went on and on. And again, I had no one to blame but myself. I had more enemies than Hitler.
Eric stood, twirling his keys in his hand over and over again as he stared at me. Shifting on my feet was absolutely not going to happen, but I wanted to squirm in every single way. When his dark eyes dipped down my body and back up again, my throat sealed shut.
I hated that he hated me.
I hated that I cared that he hated me.
Finally, he broke the silence. “I guess you’ll never know. Maybe it was me. Maybe it wasn’t.” He shrugged nonchalantly, biting his lip in a
way that made my heart light on fire.
Nothing like being mysterious.
Just then, I heard the latch of my front door opening, and I panicked out of instinct. My fingers clutched onto the straps of my backpack as my hair whipped around my face with the light breeze. I rushed past Eric, ignoring how good he smelled, and quickly climbed into my car without looking back. I was out of the driveway before he even made it to his Range Rover. I didn’t give the man climbing down my porch stairs once single glance—too afraid he’d see me and get a nasty idea in his head that I was just like my mother.
I couldn’t take another freaking nightmare roaming the halls at night and “accidentally” opening the wrong bedroom door. Being at English Prep was hell, but so was being at home.
Chapter Two
Eric
Hearing your own mother cry should be forbidden. It shouldn’t exist. It was a conundrum. What was I supposed to do? Comfort her? Pretend I didn’t hear her? She was in private, so the latter was probably the right choice, but something ignited inside me as I stood there listening. Every time I saw her sad eyes, I felt the burning. Like a fire that had just been put out, but the embers were still glowing. And every time I saw him—my father who I no longer addressed by name—I felt the flame catching. Like a fire roaring with anger.
“Mom?” I half whispered through her closed door. “I’m heading to school.” Her sniffle was deafening as I rested my forehead along the wood.
“Okay, sweetie. I won’t be home much this weekend. I picked up a few shifts at the hospital.” The fake cheer in her voice did not go unnoticed, but I wasn’t about to call her out on it. I understood her need to appear strong in front of me, but I wasn’t nearly as dense as she thought. Apparently, the same went for my father. How he didn’t think I’d eventually catch on to his behavior was beyond me.
“Alright, Mom. I’ll see you Sunday, then. I love you.”
She cleared her throat. “Love you, honey.”
I sighed as I turned around and headed downstairs to my car, noticing all the housework that needed to be done. Dishes were piling up, and laundry was overflowing from the laundry room. The blanket on the couch was messy, likely because my mom had slept there the night before. She didn’t think I’d noticed that she continued to sleep on the couch instead of her bed, but I did. I assumed it was because she didn’t want to be anywhere that my father had been, even if he hadn’t slept in their bed since she caught him fucking someone else, but it probably bothered her all the same. Just like it bothered me when I’d watch his name flash on my phone.
We’d talked a handful of times since I saw him railing Madeline’s mom from behind, and each time, it ended the same: him threatening to cut me off and me hanging up on him.
Only, his last threat was no longer a threat. He had cut me off. He was still trying to make amends with my mom, but she cut him off in her own way. She went back to work, and she refused to take a single dime from him.
You could say our family dynamics were slightly complicated (read as: completely fucked up).
Before closing the front door, I made a promise to myself that I’d clean up the house before going out tonight.
Just as I was pulling my phone out to tell Jesse—last year’s football captain who went to UCLA, aka the guy I now partied with since both of my best friends were knee deep in their girlfriends’ vaginas—that I’d be at the party later than usual, a flash of platinum hair caught my eye.
Don’t do it. Don’t look over there.
I glanced over at the side of the whore house—I’m sorry, I mean Madeline’s house, and saw her dangling from her window in her English Prep uniform. Her short, plaid skirt was pushed up way past her hips, and my tongue unknowingly darted out of my mouth to lick my lip. If it were anyone else, I’d indulge in the sight of smooth ass cheeks split down the middle with a lacy piece of pink fabric, but it was Madeline, and that was a no-fucking-way zone.
Regardless, I made my way over there to see what the hell she was doing hanging from her window.
Madeline. The girl who kept getting herself into sketchy situations that I seemed to always be present for. As of late, Madeline was my favorite pastime.
For months I’d sat and watched her, trying to decide how I wanted to proceed with my threat. I’d always had a soft side for Madeline, giving her a slight pass on her behavior and changed personality from the girl I used to know to what she became. I’d make excuses up in my head even when, deep down, I knew I should have hated her all along. We were close once—really close—but then she changed. She started ignoring me, distancing herself, pretending I didn’t exist all together—and I did the same to her. Even when she dated Christian—my best friend—I pretended she wasn’t a part of our group.
And somewhere along the way, my denial of living in a world where Madeline existed caught up to me, and it bit me right in the ass.
Every single memory of her flooded me the day I found my dad fucking her mom. Her words had sucker punched me. “Your dad has been fucking my mom for years.”
Hate. I hated her in that moment. I hated her because I let my guard down, and it was the wrong move. Hurt flashed in between the bones of my rib cage when I’d realized she knew all along that my father was a cheating bastard, and she didn’t tell me. A whole fuck-ton of hurt could have been avoided if Madeline had thought of someone other than herself for once.
So, for months, I’d been contemplating what to do. I’d been waiting, pacified by watching the Queen Bee of English Prep turn into the school leper. It definitely bought me some time. It was nearly every single day that someone bullied her in the same way she bullied them.
I wasn’t going to lie; Madeline deserved everything she got, which is why it annoyed me that there was a small, and I mean really fucking small, part of me that felt bad. Maybe it was because I knew the old Madeline—the nice girl with two french braids and metal braces on her teeth. I didn’t know. Regardless, I pushed away that pesky feeling and indulged in the feelings of raging anger and hate.
After all, it wasn’t hard to hate a girl like Madeline. The pretty ones were always the meanest.
“Need some help, Maddie?” I loved using her old nickname. I knew it bothered her beyond belief. I basked in watching her shrink into herself every time I used it.
She barely glanced down from holding onto the rain gutter. “Like you’d ever actually help me.”
I grinned, staring at her ass once again. “You’re right. I wouldn’t help you even if it was the last thing left to do on this earth.” I began walking closer to her, taking my traitorous eyes off her dangling body, and pushed myself up against the side of her house. “But I think I will casually stand here and watch you fall. That sounds like a great way to start off my day. So, please, carry on.”
For a moment, Madeline’s head dipped. Her light eyes met mine, her face shadowed with a passing cloud, but I still witnessed the disappointment. It was a short-lived moment, but I took pride in knowing my words got to her.
Madeline quickly jumped off to the side and landed on the grass below, pulling her skirt down her long legs as she straightened her body. I wiggled my jaw back and forth, shaking my head. I placed my hands in the pockets of my khakis and began walking away, eager to put some distance between us.
Her voice sounded from behind, but I kept pushing one foot in front of the other. “I guess you’ll have to find another way to brighten your day, Eric.”
I called over my shoulder as I reached the driveway between our houses. “I’m sure there will be another exciting English Prep episode at some point today, where you’ll be the lead actress who has something terrible happen to her. I call it a feel-good show. It’s my favorite one, actually.”
A dirty smile found itself on my face as I turned around to eye her. I wanted to see the hurt flash across her features. I wanted to have the upper hand in this situation, especially because my dick was still caught up on her bare ass. My head hitched to the side, my hair climbing i
nto my eyes. “What was it last week? Fish in your locker?”
I had no idea who’d done it. The entire fucking hallway smelled like rotten vagina as Madeline opened her locker that morning. I did give her props, though. There wasn’t even a slight muscle twitch on her face. She was a damn good actress. Always had been.
“Was it you?”
“Hmm?” I asked, acting as if I had no idea what she was talking about. Madeline’s eyes flitted away, watching a car pass by behind me.
I gave her my best grin when she asked again, “Was it you, Eric? Did you put the fish in my locker?” Her arms moved across her chest, hiding her perky tits. “Is this all part of that lovely threat you gave me a few months ago?” Her voice lowered as she repeated my words. “It’s on now, Princess.”
My fingers clutched onto my keys in my pocket as memories from that day came swooping back in. It was months ago, but it somehow felt like seconds. Playing it off, I took my keys out of my pocket and began twirling them around and around, staring at her, waiting for the rising anger to simmer. I ran my gaze down her golden hair, past her heart-shaped lips, and all the way down to her knee-high stockings and back. I swallowed, fighting like hell to stay level-headed. Everything spiraled out of control after that day. Was it her fault? No. But could she have helped in some way? At least have given me a slight warning that my family was about to blow up? Yes. Yes, she fucking could have.
My words almost sounded like a bark. “I guess you’ll never know. Maybe it was me. Maybe it wasn’t.” I shrugged, trying to appear unfazed.
Madeline’s mouth opened slightly as she continued to stare at me, but the sound of her front door opening had her quickly rushing away. She moved around me gingerly, putting enough space between us to fit a freight train, and almost dove headfirst into her car. She was out of her driveway and down the street before I even opened my Rover’s door.