Bully Me: Class of 2020

by Shantel Tessier

  My heart thunders in my chest as Calix leans forward, under the guise of brushing some stray strands of purple hair back from my face.

  “You know what tonight is?” he whispers, his breath hot against the side of my neck as the woman moves away. But her gaze doesn’t leave me, almost as if she knows what’s really going on beneath the surface of this seemingly pleasant interaction.

  Of course I know what tonight is. The whole town knows what tonight is. But I can’t seem to find the words to respond.

  Calix presses his lips to the side of my throat, but I’m neither flattered nor excited by the attention. Instead, I’m terrified. Because today is officially known as Devils’ Day in our shitty little town outside Eureka Springs, Arkansas.

  And tonight … tonight is the Devils’ Day Party.

  “I know what tonight is,” I say finally as Calix runs his tongue over my pulse, and I shove him back as hard as I can. He laughs, but at least that move puts some distance between us. His dark eyes flick over to the front of the convenience store as the little bells on the door ring and Raz and Barron step out. The cavalry has arrived, I think, feeling my palms get sweaty. Any one of these assholes is hard enough to deal with, but all three of them? And on Devils’ Day?

  Supposedly, the holiday is named after some ancient Native American tradition. The local tribes would set up bonfires all around the edges of the woods and perform ritualistic songs and dances to draw the demons and devils from the earth. Everyone in the tribe would wear masks, to confuse the spirits as to who was human and who was one of them. And they’d play tricks on each other—cruel tricks—to prove they were just as cunning.

  Today, we celebrate in much the same way. Except the bonfires burn next to state-of-the-art sound systems, and alcohol makes its rounds along with weed and psychedelics. Masks are still worn, tricks are still played, and I swear that the devils still rise from the earth to torment humanity.

  My devils come in the form of Calix, Barron, and Raz. Every year. Like clockwork.

  “What the fuck happened here?” Raz asks, a plastic grocery bag clutched in one hand as he circles the cars, surveying the damage and then looking up at me with a sharp smile. “Little trailer trash bitch thought she’d get the first Devils’ Day trick on us, huh?”

  Is that what I did? I wonder, my head ringing, my mouth tainted with the taste of copper. I think I bit my tongue when my head hit the steering wheel. I’ve never liked Calix and his friends, and it’s true: I’ve played my fair share of tricks on them during Devils’ Day in the past, but … Would I really hit Calix’s car like this, in front of all these people?

  “I’ll pay for the damage,” I say, managing to keep my voice firm as I lift gray eyes up to Calix’s crow-black stare. He meets my gaze, a smirk crawling across his face as Barron watches us from one side, silent but no less scary than the other two.

  “With what money, Trailer Park?” Calix asks, moving back over to the gas pump and pulling the hose from his car. “The change your dyke mothers pay you for working part-time at that dump they call a business?”

  “Don’t talk about my parents like that,” I say coldly, feeling my temper get the better of me. I have to keep it in check though. I have to. They like it far too much when I get riled up. “At least my mothers didn’t ship me off to another state like a dirty little secret. That’s more than any of you can say about your own parents.”

  “Say that shit again,” Raz spits, coming around to stand in front of me and tossing his grocery bag into the backseat of the car. He slams his palms on either side of me, pinning me in against the side of the Aston Martin. Ever since I can remember, Raz has worn red contact lenses over his pale blue eyes. I think, mostly, it’s to piss off that conservative senator daddy of his. But for whatever reason, the effect is monstrous. Monstrous, and yet, he smells far too good. Probably to lure in prey, like a carnivorous plant or something.

  “Back off of her,” Barron says in that low, deep voice of his, like gravestones and cold, dead things. But he isn’t defending me because he likes me. He’s defending me because he wants to wait for the dark and quiet to play his tricks. I might like him and his big hands, stained with charcoal because he draws too much, if he didn’t work so damn hard to make my life miserable. “People are watching.”

  Raz pushes off the car, his long, lean athlete’s body a testament to his position on the track team. From what I hear, dear old dad was disappointed that he couldn’t hack it in football. Even as the star sprinter on the team, he’s a fucking disappointment.

  “I’ll find a way to pay for it,” I repeat again, desperate to avoid having the cops called on me. Based on the way my car is positioned against his, I can’t seem to come up with any way that I might’ve done this accidentally. Although, knowing Calix is loaded, what does it really matter? He’ll pay to have the car fixed—or more than likely just buy a new one—and I’ll have gained nothing except for a burden the boys can hold over my head.

  “Maybe I’ll let you pay for it tonight with your mouth?” Calix opens the driver’s side door of the car as Raz shoves me aside, leaving me to stumble and fall to my knees on the pavement. His laughter rings out as I turn and throw a handful of rocks as hard as I can at the back of the car, the wheels kicking up dust that I cough on as I rise to my feet.

  As the boys—pretty much everyone calls them and their friends the Knight Crew—speed off, they drag my car along with them for several feet, metal screeching against metal, exponentially fucking my vehicle up.

  Typical.

  I’ve never liked Devils’ Day, and I’ve especially never liked the party that follows it.

  But I always go.

  Always.

  Because if I don’t, they’ll find me anyway, and I’d rather be in a crowd, wearing a mask, than at home alone like I was that one night.

  This too, shall pass, I repeat, as I climb in my car and, on the third try, manage to get the engine to turn over.

  At least today, the guys have something real to be mad about.

  _______________

  There are only two schools in our county. One is over an hour away via a bus that starts picking up kids in our area at around six in the morning. My mothers—yes, they’re lesbians and I have two—didn’t want that for me. Instead, Mama Jane, who grew up wealthy, liquidated what was left of her trust fund and prepaid four years at Crescent Preparatory Academy.

  It’s a nice school, much nicer than Devil Springs High, the public school that struggles to get a fraction of the funding that the Crescent enjoys. But it’s also in the middle of butt-fuck nowhere—and that’s no accident. It used to be called Crescent Reform School for Boys. Back in the 1800s, any wealthy family east of the Rockies with a troubled son could send their kid there, either to get rid of them or to … fix them. Today, the school functions in much the same way, though not officially. No, now Crescent Prep is where wealthy families send any kids—boys and girls—that they want to disappear. We have pregnant senator’s daughters, disgraced heiresses running from leaked sex tapes, and teen boys too wicked with privilege and hate to fit into high society.

  And for three years now, I’ve gone to school with all of them. Outclassed, outmatched, outspent.

  The only friend I had at Crescent Prep before our newest addition—a girl named April—enrolled last year, was my bestie, Luke.

  Luke, who describes herself as a pansexual, genderfluid otaku, has highfalutin fucking asshole parents who can’t handle their kid’s identity. They basically tossed her into the backwoods of Arkansas, so she wouldn’t embarrass them in front of their fancy friends.

  “You did what?!” Luke—born Lucille, which is hilarious if you know her—chortles as I narrow my eyes and tap my red and black nails against the side of the rock I’m perched on. “I can see the headline now: three hundred thousand-dollar Aston Martin crushed by shitty yellow VW bug with eyelashes. What a glorious start to Devils’ Day!”

  “You’re not helping,” I murmur, tur
ning to the third member in our little group of outcasts. April Iseman, the heavily pregnant sophomore that enrolled at Crescent just four months prior, stares back at me, pushing her glasses up her nose and huffing a sigh. Her mom is a state senator for Louisiana with big ambitions, and a pregnant fifteen-now-sixteen-year-old does not fit into her carefully laid plans. “Can you back me up here? There’s nothing good about this. Today is Devils’ Day, for fuck’s sake. Calix and his minions don’t make life easy for me on a normal day. You think today, of all days, was the right time to stage a coup?”

  “Well, why did you do it then?” April asks, tilting her head to one side, long, brown hair cascading over one shoulder. She sits primly on another rock, dressed in our school uniform—royal purple skirt and white dress shirt, her tie loose around her neck, Mary Janes polished to a shine. Despite her official status as outcast, April is leagues apart from the rest of the students who attend Crescent Prep—even me. She’s punctual, studious, respectful … which is why she had little choice but to team up with me and Luke.

  “I … don’t remember,” I say, reaching up to rub at my sore head, my hand coming away with a bit of dried blood. The excuse sounds lame, even to my own ears, but it’s true. Something about the way I hit my head must’ve knocked my brain around a bit. No matter how hard I try, how hard I concentrate, I can remember driving down the street toward the gas station and then nothing else until the pain of impact. “But I know I’m not stupid enough to start shit on Devils’ Day.” With a long sigh, I glance up toward the towering sides of Crescent Preparatory Academy.

  This area is rife with German influence, brought over by early pioneers, and our school reflects it. The damn thing looks like the fucking Matterhorn entrance at Disneyland, with wood shutters painted with tiny flowers, white stucco walls, and decorative half-timbering.

  I’ve never hated a single locale more.

  Glancing back at Luke, I find my painted lips pulled down into a severe frown. She’s still laughing at me, stuffing a powdered donut between her lips and grinning.

  “Regardless of why you did it, or whether it’s a good idea, it’s still funny. I can just imagine Calix’s stupid face all squinched up with rage. How dare the poorest girl in school stand up to him and his ultra-rich friends?” Luke rolls her brown eyes and stands up, stretching her arms above her head. Despite her preference for pants—shorts, actually, even in winter—the school forces Luke to wear the girl’s uniform, complete with pleated wool skirt. “Well, are you going to sit here and sulk all day? Or are you going to stride in those doors like you own the place? I mean, you started the day off with a bang. Don’t disappoint me, Karma.”

  Luke pulls out a grotesque, goblin-esque mask with a hooked nose from inside her backpack, sliding it over her face, and then grinning at me. The effect is eerie as hell, especially with the fall leaves whispering in the cool breeze all around us.

  “God, this town is weird,” April murmurs, resting one hand on her swollen belly and looking between me and Luke as I pull my own mask from my bag, studying the glittering black tree branches that protrude from the top. “And this whole Devils’ Day thing is even weirder. Do you just get used to it after a while or something?”

  “You never quite get used to it,” I say, slipping the mask over my face. “You just try to survive.”

  Chapter Two

  I’M JUST ONE devil among many, situated in the back row of my first period French class. There isn’t a student on campus that isn’t wearing a mask—not a single member of faculty either. No, we take our Devils’ Day celebrations seriously here.

  “How do you say you’re going to burn in hell, bitch, in French?” Raz asks, leaning forward and planting an elbow on his desk. He cups his handsome face in the palm of his hand as the fourth member of Calix’s rotten little crew—a girl named Sonja—sneers at me from beneath her red leather mask. They’re all wearing matching masks—Calix, Raz, Barron, and Sonja. The only difference is that Calix’s mask is black while the others all wear bloodred, complete with horns wrapped in dark ribbons, their wicked mouths the only part of their faces still visible.

  “Tu vas brûler en enfer, salope,” I answer, before our poor French teacher—Madame Dupré—can react. It’s hard to read her facial expression behind the far-too-pretty white mask she’s wearing. If the whole purpose of Devils’ Day is to confuse the dark spirits, Mrs. Dupré has clearly missed the point. “You might also say va te faire foutre Raz, sale queutard contaminé.”

  “Mademoiselle Sartain! Monsieur Loveren!” Mrs. Dupré chokes out, but as horrified as she is, that’s nothing compared to the dark gleam in Raz’s red eyes as he narrows them at me. He might not know what I’ve just said, but Sonja does. Get fucked, Raz, you diseased slag. As I watch, she leans over and whispers in his ear. For years, we’ve been trading insults, bone-deep thrusts of verbal swords that sever bits of the soul. But in the last year, Raz has really amped up his game; I’m almost afraid of him now.

  The way his mouth twists to one side makes my stomach roil with nausea. His eyes shine like rubies behind the mask, as red as the blood on my steering wheel.

  “Oh, you’re going to regret that later,” he purrs as Mrs. Dupré writes us both up and resumes the lesson, her thin lips pinched just a little tighter beneath her fluffy white mask.

  I stare Raz down because Luke is right: I already started this morning off on the wrong foot with Calix and his minions, so why not go all the way? Sonja smirks at me, her lips as red as her mask, before the bell rings and both she and Raz rise to their feet and disappear out the door together.

  The way he looks over his shoulder at me, I know I better be prepared.

  Their Devils’ Day tricks are legendary, and I’m prepared to be on the receiving end of all of them.

  _______________

  The walls of the school are plastered with posters advertising a lock-in for teens at one of the local churches—and trust me, there are many out here, in every possible faith. This one’s being held at Thorncrown Chapel, a tourist destination with windows on every side that proclaims it’s open to all people. Starting at seven tonight, they’ll lock the doors and have a chaperone-filled evening of sober fun inside the glass walls.

  Hah.

  Every student at Crescent Prep knows where the real party’s being held: in the middle of the fucking woods, at a spring known as Devils’ Den. There’s a cave there that leads deep into the earth, to a beautiful trickling stream that, inevitably, will be filled with drunk, naked teens before the end of the night. Last year, right before the climax of the party, Calix approached me at the edge of the spring and said he wanted to talk.

  Like an idiot, I believed him.

  That’s how I ended up losing my virginity, in one of the off-season treehouses nearby.

  Gritting my teeth, I walk past his little group and ignore their stares, eerie behind the leather of their masks. Today, I’m wearing two masks: the one on my face, and the one that is my face. I can never be my true self within these walls, not without risking everything. And it’s not just Calix and his friends who make my life miserable: it’s everyone. This entire school is filled with monsters—monsters with trust funds and credit cards and malice scribed into their wicked, black hearts.

  “Tu vas avoir des problèmes toi ce soir, Karma,” Calix whispers as I pass, his dark eyes flinty. I ignore him, but his words follow me down the hall like an arctic breeze: you’re in for a load of trouble tonight. Thankfully, I manage to get past the Knight Crew without showing my unease, but as soon as I round the corner, my shoulders slump, and I swipe a sweaty, trembling hand down my face.

  “You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Luke says, the goblin mask turning her pixie-like face underneath into something truly grotesque. Since freshman year, Luke’s gone out of her way to find the creepiest, ugliest mask in town.

  “Worse: the Knight Crew,” I say, licking my lips and glancing over my shoulder as they come around the corner in a group, dressed in the w
hite purple of the academy uniform, the Crescent Prep logo stitched in silver across the breast pocket. It’s a crescent moon, tilted slightly to the left, skewered with a crossed knife and rod, backed by stars. It’s been the same logo for over a hundred years, when the official motto of the school was spare the rod, spoil the child. Goddess only knows what the knife represented.

  Luke grabs my arm and drags me into the classroom, moving into the corner to sit by April while the Knight Crew takes their seats in the front row. Sonja glances over her shoulder, making eye contact with Luke. The two of them have been playing some bizarre cat and mouse game for years.

  “Don’t encourage her to look this way,” I grumble, crossing my arms over my chest and knowing that I can’t fault Luke for having a crush on Sonja when I’ve had a crush on each of the other members of the Knight Crew at some point over the last three years. This year, senior year, it has to be different. I’ve only got nine months left, and I’m out of this nightmare forever. I’ll move somewhere big, coastal, someplace where my purple hair and Luke’s Pansexual Goddess t-shirts and April with her baby don’t make people hate us.

  “Why not?” Luke asks, dark brown eyes studying Sonja’s bloodred hair and matching mask with interest. “You let Calix trick you into bed last year. Why can’t I let Sonja trick me into the same thing?” My mouth tightens as I turn a glare on Luke, the ugly words I want to say dying on my lips before I can spout them. She’s right: I did let Calix trick me into bed, even when I knew his words were a lie, his intentions rotten, his love a trick.

  “It’s your funeral,” I murmur, pausing as the door opens and the Devils’ Day committee comes in, bearing sweets and crystals and jewelry made from invasive insects. Shiny green beetles—called emerald ash borers—as well as brown gypsy moths and Asian long-horned beetles are encased in resin and hung with pretty silver, gold, and black chains. Others are pinned behind glass and framed like art, shiny exoskeletons gleaming in the overhead lights.