“Can you guys knock it off?” he calls out. “I have a friend over.”
Now that the door’s open, I hear his stepfather call back, “Like I give a fuck about your little fucking friends.”
“Stop it,” his mother snaps. “Stop being such an asshole.”
“Fucking make me, woman.”
That sick, gnawing, dreadful feeling I always get when my mom is mad at me settles in my gut. I start gathering my things quickly, figuring I should leave if his parents are fighting.
Hunter slams his door shut and stalks back over here, his green eyes stormy and his posture tense. “I’d like to kill him,” he mutters.
Standing and shoving my things into my backpack, I steal a glimpse at him over my shoulder. “I think you need to talk to someone about this, Hunter.”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” he mutters. “It just sucks.”
The bedroom door swings open and a tall, burly man stands there, a menacing look on his face. “What’d I tell you about slamming doors, you little shit?”
My heart drops clear out of my body. I’ve never heard a parent talk to their child this way, with actual hatred.
Hunter turns and glowers at his stepdad. “Get out of my room.”
“Your room?” his stepdad demands, lifting dark, bushy eyebrows. “You own this house now? You paying the bills?”
“I could say the same to you,” Hunter mutters, still glaring. “My mom pays the bills, not you. Now, get out of my room.”
That infuriates the man, and he steps across the threshold. “You little fucking smartass. You think you’re real funny, don’t you?”
Finally, Hunter’s mom scurries down the hall and appears in the doorway. “Just stop it, Dennis. Just stop. Hunter has a friend over, leave them alone.”
My cheeks burn when they look over at me. I’ve tried to make myself as small as possible to avoid notice, and I’m hugging my backpack in front of me like a protective shield.
“Stop it,” his mother says again, her eyes pleading as she looks up at her awful husband.
“Someone needs to teach this boy some fucking manners,” he says, pointing in Hunter’s direction.
Venus nods in a placating manner and approaches her husband, giving him sort of a sideways hug and trying to pull him back out of the room. “Come on. We’ll talk to him later. Come on, leave them alone.”
Hunter’s stepfather remains where he is for a minute, staring Hunter down, then he finally backs out of the room. Hunter’s mom ducks her head back in, saying, “I’m so sorry about that,” to me.
I get the feeling she’s used to apologizing for her husband. I get the feeling this sort of thing isn’t a rare occurrence.
As desperately as I want to leave, I feel cemented to the spot. I can leave and escape this mess, but Hunter can’t, and that’s all I can think about. I don’t know what to do. I want to tell Hunter he can leave, that he can come back to my house if he doesn’t feel safe here. We might have a “no boys allowed” rule, but this goes way beyond that.
Hunter isn’t safe, and that’s not okay.
Awkwardness hangs heavy in the air around us, but when I finally gather enough courage to look over at Hunter, he must feel it, because his gaze swings to mine.
“You can come to my house, if you want to,” I offer. “Me and my mom aren’t doing anything tonight. We can finish our homework there. My mom will make us some dinner, and then we might watch a movie. It would give your mom some privacy to deal with all this.”
For a moment, he looks tempted, but then his gaze drifts back to the door and I can practically feel the weight of responsibility holding him hostage here. “I can’t,” he finally says. “I have to stay and make sure he doesn’t hurt her.”
I know it’s his choice, but I want to force him to come with me. “I’m afraid you’re not safe here, Hunter. I… I don’t want to leave you.”
“I’ll be fine,” he assures me, that same hard-edged defensiveness I saw on the bridge starting to rise up all around him. “I can handle myself.”
“He’s a grown man, Hunter, he could really hurt you. Clearly, he has anger issues or something, and your mom didn’t protect you, she just distracted him.”
His gaze whips back to me angrily, protectively. “She’s handling it, okay? Just back off.”
I shrink back, nodding my head and glancing at his desk to make sure I didn’t forget anything. All that’s left of mine is my copy of Hunger Games, but I leave that for him to read. “All right. Fine,” I say, since I can’t make him leave with me. “I have to go home.”
He doesn’t say anything right away, just lets me walk toward his door to leave. Before I make it out to the hall, though, he calls, “Riley.”
I stop and look back at him. “Yeah?”
“Remember, you promised you wouldn’t say anything.”
There’s a sort of desperate vulnerability in his gaze that I would bet isn’t there often. He’s afraid I’ll betray his confidence, but I’m afraid I’ve betrayed him more by making that promise in the first place. Swallowing down a lump of dread in my throat, I nod my head in acknowledgment. Then, without another word, I escape Hunter’s vicious mansion and practically run back to my small, safe home.
Chapter Three
DAYS PASS LIKE they always do, but now I’m worried about Hunter and I have no way of knowing whether or not things are changing for him. He insists his mother is handling the situation and kicking his stepdad out, but that’s not how it looked to me.
All I want is for him to run up to me the next day at school and assure me his mom has kicked his stepdad out and that vile, awful man won’t be around anymore. I want the problem to go away so I don’t have to keep thinking about that stupid, thoughtless promise I made not to tell Hunter’s secret.
A secret like this shouldn’t be kept. When someone is getting hurt, when someone is in danger…
Someone needs to intervene, and I’m worried Hunter’s mom isn’t going to.
He still has faith in her though, so maybe I’m wrong. I hope I’m wrong. I hope next time I see him, that weight will be off his shoulders and I won’t have to feel terrible about keeping my mouth shut about his dysfunctional home life.
Over the next few days, though, Hunter doesn’t say a single word to me. I try to catch his eye a couple times in class or in the cafeteria, but it’s like I don’t exist again.
I don’t know if I like that he has that power. I don’t know if I like that he dictates whether or not I exist on a whim, that he can show me attention and fill me up with butterflies and nervous energy, or he can ignore me right out of existence. What’s worse is I don’t know why he does it. Is it because he knows I know his secrets? Is it because he’s afraid of what I know about him? Or is it just because he’s a jerk?
I spend entirely too much time thinking about it, and clearly he spends no time at all thinking about me.
Thursday at lunch, I’m sitting where I always sit, in the cafeteria on the emptier side of one of the long tables with my best friend, Sara. Since we became friends in first grade, the only time we don’t sit together is when one of us is out sick. Sara misses more school than I do, so normally I’m the one who ends up alone, but today both of us stare wistfully at the cool table.
Sara, because she has a massive crush on one of the basketball players, Wally Kazinsky. Me, because, well, that’s where Hunter sits. I’m not saying I have a crush on Hunter, but I’m definitely preoccupied by him.
“You know how you can just tell that some guys will be really handsome older men?” Sara asks suddenly.
I glance over at her in question.
Nodding decisively, she says, “You can just tell Wally will be so handsome when he gets older. I mean, he’s so handsome now, but he always will be. You can just tell.”
I adore Sara, but I don’t understand why she likes Wally so much. He hardly knows she exists, and not in the way Hunter sort of pretends I don’t exist—I doubt Wally even knows
her name. I’ve also heard about her obsession with him for so long, I struggle to show continued interest in her repeated Wally talking points. “Yeah, probably,” I offer, glancing down and picking at the offerings on my plate. Some cold fries and a truly mediocre chicken patty sandwich.
Giving up on trying to muster any enthusiasm for my meal, I push the tray away and pull my can of fruit punch in front of me. It’s not food, but I need something in my stomach to hold me over until I get home from school.
“We should be studying for our science quiz instead of wasting our time looking at boys who don’t know we exist,” I tell Sara.
Her gaze drifts back to me, but at that, she looks bored. “Why? It’s going to be so easy.”
For her, maybe. Sara is a science whiz, but I am far from it. “Then you should give me all the answers,” I joke.
“And Wally totally knows I exist,” she tells me, her dark eyebrows rising. “The other day at recess, he looked at me.”
I heard that story the other day, and the day after that, and again on the phone over the weekend.
“Like, really looked,” she says knowingly.
Sara is adorable, and I think he’s a fool not to look at her since she’s so head over heels for him, but he doesn’t. She’s a thin, petite girl with chin-length brown hair and stylish black-framed glasses. She’s a science geek though, and Wally is a shallow, popular jock, so honestly, unless she starts sashaying around in one of the short skirts the cheerleaders wear on Fridays, Wally will never notice her.
Then again, I would have said the same thing about Hunter Maxwell not so long ago, and just a couple days ago I was at his house, in his bedroom.
The thought makes me blush, then bums me out since he’s ignoring me now.
“You never know,” I tell her, shrugging. “Maybe he’s finally realizing his life would be way better with someone as awesome as you in it.”
Sara beams at me, then darts a look over her shoulder in his direction. Turning back to face me, she sighs happily. “He totally is. It’s fate.”
I flash her a smile and take a sip of my fruit punch.
Lunch eventually ends and we all make our way outside to recess. All recess really is, is a bunch of people standing around talking to their own friends. When we were kids we all played together, but now that we have our own social circles, that’s where we stay.
Me and Sara, though, we’re the entirety of our circle. It’s stupid and unfair, but Sara doesn’t have many other friends, and none but me that hang out with her outside of class. She never has, not since Valerie Johnson snubbed her in first grade.
That’s how we became friends, actually. Every year, Valerie Johnson (the most popular girl in our grade) hosts a sleepover at her house. Each year, it gets more and more exclusive, and there are rumors going around that this year, she’s going to have boys there. Hunter and Wally are at the top of the rumored guest list, which bums Sara out for a lot of reasons.
In first grade, for Valerie’s very first slumber party, her social circle wasn’t exclusive yet, so every girl in our class was invited—every girl except Sara. Apparently, because Sara has epilepsy, Valerie’s mom thought she might “have a fit” and ruin the party for everyone else. Valerie thought nothing of telling literally everyone in school that’s why Sara wasn’t invited, and because some people are just absolutely horrible, kids started making fun of her for it.
I only had to see Sara get teased and isolated once to get mad. I ripped up my invitation to Valerie’s party and went home and told my mom what had happened. She reached out to Sara’s mom, and on the night of Valerie’s first slumber party, me and Sara had our first sleepover at my house.
I’m sure we had more fun than they did, anyway.
Since Valerie’s popularity only grew and grew, and since Valerie is the type of girl who doubles down when she’s in the wrong instead of admitting she behaved badly and apologizing, Sara remained a social outcast. Me, I’m not really a social outcast, it’s just that being Sara’s friend sort of limits my ability to hang out with anyone else. It’s okay with me, though. I don’t want to be friends with anyone who would avoid Sara over something she can’t help.
Sara gasps, pulling me from my thoughts. “They’re looking at us,” she says, her voice an excited whisper. “They’re looking at us.”
I don’t know what she’s talking about, but a second later I see Hunter and Wally standing with their group of friends, and sure enough, a few of them are looking at us.
Why are they looking at us? Is Hunter talking about me? Before I can get lost down that rabbit hole, I break his gaze and turn around. I start walking, but I don’t know where I’m going.
“What are you doing?” Sara demands lowly, reluctantly following me. “Riley!”
“I don’t know,” I admit, feeling frustrated by my own reaction. It’s just that Hunter and I have never interacted in front of other people, and I don’t know what that would look like. I’m not nervous to see him when it’s just the two of us, but around his friends… he might be a whole different person, and I don’t want to see it.
I am approaching the doors back inside when Sara finally stops walking. “What the heck, Riley? Where are you going?”
“I need to pee,” I lie.
She seems annoyed with me. “I’m staying out here.”
I tell the recess monitor I need to use the restroom so she lets me go back into the school. I walk toward the restrooms slowly, since I did say that’s why I was inside. If anyone catches me roaming the halls, I’d like to actually be doing what I said I was doing. Saying, “I spazzed when a boy I might kind of like looked at me during recess” probably wouldn’t work.
God, why did I do that? Hunter has been nice to me. He even bought me a new backpack. There’s no reason to automatically assume he would be a jerk in front of his friends.
Except that he’s always a jerk around his friends. That was my impression of him when I stumbled across him on the bridge that day, and it was my impression for a reason.
Do I really want to hold on to an illusion of him? If he can’t be nice to me in front of his friends, then I have no business hanging out with him to begin with.
Just as I’m embracing the idea that maybe it’s time to stop thinking about Hunter Maxwell, I feel someone sneak up behind me way too close, and then I hear his voice in my ear.
“Hey, Catnip.”
My heart drops right out of my chest, then explodes and unleashes a swarm of butterflies. Shivers race down my spine and for a few blessed seconds, everything feels floaty.
Hey, Catnip.
Oh, my God, he read the book. He read the book and he just quoted my very favorite book boyfriend. I could melt into a puddle around his sneakers right now, so it’s impossible to keep the grin off my face as I turn on my heel and look up at him.
“You read Hunger Games.”
Hunter smiles, and I feel the warmth spreading all over me like he’s my sun. “Sorta,” he says, shoving his hands into the pockets of his crisp new jeans. “I started it. I’m in chapter eight.”
“What do you mean, in chapter eight? Like, you’re starting chapter eight tonight, or you just finished?” My mind races as I try to remember what happened in that chapter so we can talk about it.
“I didn’t finish it yet. I started, but I got interrupted. I’ll finish it tonight.”
I frown. “Are you saying… you stopped midway through a chapter? Like, in the middle of reading a scene, you just… stopped?”
Hunter shrugs. “Eh, Peeta was talking, I was bored anyway.”
I was baffled a second ago, but him knocking my fictional arch nemesis brings a smile right back to my face. “You might be my favorite person right now.”
“Just right now?” he asks, shaking his head in mock disappointment. “I’ll have to try harder.”
“You can start by telling me how much you love Gale,” I inform him.
“Am I following you into the girls’ bathroom?” he
inquires, cocking an eyebrow as we approach the opening.
“Oh. No. I forgot I was walking this way. I don’t really need to go to the bathroom, I just needed an excuse to come inside.”
“I noticed,” he remarks, smirking over at me. “Did I scare you off?”
I didn’t think that comment all the way through. My cheeks flush, but I go with absolute denial. “Of course not.”
“Seemed like I did,” he replies.
“Weren’t we talking about the book?” I ask, trying to direct him back on track. “I need to know all your thoughts. Do you like Gale, or are you just knocking Peeta because you know I do?”
“Yeah, I like Gale,” he says. “Peeta’s all right, though. He seems nice enough, just boring. I can’t imagine him keeping up with Katniss—maybe sitting on the sidelines holding her bag, but.... Gale’s the kind of guy you can see keeping up, challenging her, making her better. I haven’t seen that from Peeta yet. Doesn’t seem like he’s that kind of guy.”
“Yes, exactly,” I agree fervently. “That’s the thing, I don’t hate Peeta as a character. He is nice, but Katniss isn’t in love with him, so she shouldn’t be with him. That’s not romantic. I mean, I know it’s not a romance, but… I just can’t handle it because she and Gale had a spark, and I just hate—well, I can’t say yet, it would be spoilerish. Hurry up and read the whole trilogy so we can talk about how bleak and terrible Mockingjay is.”
“Maybe Katniss isn’t looking for a great love, just a really okay-looking purse holder,” he jokes.
I roll my eyes. “All she’s looking for is a box of tissues by Mockingjay, to wipe up all her tears.”
“Tears of boredom?” he questions. “If she gets with Peeta, I’m guessing tears of boredom.”
I sigh heavily. “I can’t even talk about it. Not until you finish the series yourself. I don’t want to color your reading experience more than I already have. I don’t possess the self-control to talk about each individual book without making spoilery comments though, so I’m gonna need you to read faster.”
“I’ll get right on it,” he assures me. “Want me to hold your purse, too?”
Bully Me: Class of 2020 Page 34