Bully Me: Class of 2020

by Shantel Tessier

  “Don’t you dare lay a finger on her,” Luke warns. “I’m not afraid to call the cops, and you know it.” The thing is, she won’t have her phone on her; none of us do. In order to get past the gate at the end of the road, you have to give your phone to the gatekeeper. No phone, no entrance. They’re all stuffed into plastic bags, labelled with names, and then put into a net and hauled into a tree.

  Told you the Devils’ Day Party was weird.

  “Goddamn snitch,” Raz snarls, but it’s Barron who grabs Luke by her small wrist to keep her from bolting for help. The two demon-faced girls even have the audacity to grab April by the arms and march her forward, like she’s somehow a part of this, too.

  “Leave them alone, and do whatever you want to me,” I say, feeling lightheaded and dizzy as I try to avoid Luke’s penetrating stare. You lied to me, is what she’s saying, but I didn’t, right? I didn’t seek the Knight Crew out. No, it was the other way around. All they had to do was leave me alone and none of this had to happen.

  Sonja grabs for my arm, and I tear myself from her grip, the band on my black tourmaline bracelet snapping. Black beads fly everywhere as I clutch my arm to my chest, eyes narrowed, breath coming in violent pants. Some small part of me is excited by her red-rimmed, leaky eyes. Bet that pepper spray hurt, I think, but I’m not a violent person. I don’t like to have to fight all the time. I don’t like feeling scared all the damn time.

  “Eye for an eye,” Raz growls out, his own eyes even more red and swollen than Sonja’s. He’s finally caved and taken his contacts out, his blue eyes feverish with anger behind his glasses. “Too bad it can’t be literally this time.” He’s holding the pepper spray that I dropped in one hand, but when he goes to spray it, nothing comes out and he chucks the pink container. “Where’s the key, Karma?”

  “I don’t have the key,” I lie, beginning to shake as I scan the Knight Crew’s unforgiving expressions. I drew blood tonight, and I imagine I’m not getting out of here without them doing the same. I just don’t want Luke and April to pay for my choices.

  “Let’s find out,” Barron says, grabbing me around the waist and trapping my hands against my sides with his strong arm. With his other hand, he searches my pockets, fingers sliding into the back right one to find the key. He lingers a bit too long there as I struggle, gritting my teeth as Luke’s eyes widen with fear. Barron cups my ass and presses his lips to the skin just behind my ear. “Clever, pretending to kiss me, so you could get ahold of this.” His breath smells like watermelon from those stupid suckers he’s always eating, and when he finally lets go of me and pulls away, I’m left with a smear of charcoal across my midsection.

  “It didn’t have to be this way, Karma,” Calix says, his mask sitting on the top of his head. Black streaks run down his face on either side, making him look even more ghastly in the firelight. “But I can’t protect you now.”

  “Protect me?” I choke out with a laugh. He smirks at me, and my temper flares. “What’s your problem with me anyway? Is it because I’m poor? Because my moms are gay?” I shouldn’t fan the flames, but I can’t help myself. Now that I’m standing here, looking into Calix’s dark eyes, I think I know why I hit his car. I snapped. I broke. There he was, at the gas station with his awful, awful friends, lounging next to a car that costs more than some people make in a decade. And yet … he looked miserable to me.

  That’s what really pissed me off.

  How can someone who has everything look so damn miserable? Calix is handsome, smart, rich, connected, normal. He fits into society like a puzzle piece while people like me and Luke and April, we’re singled out and cast aside like extras, like pieces to a puzzle that nobody wants to finish.

  That’s why I hit his car.

  And look where it got me.

  “We were going to lock you in the treehouse, the one where you gave it up for Lix,” Raz sneers, circling me like a predator homing in on his prey. “But I think I like your idea better.”

  “Put the others in with her, for company,” Sonja suggests, looking straight at Luke as she says it. Luke’s shoulders tighten, a familiar disappointment clouding her face. With all the subtle hints, the flirting, the gift this morning, Luke thought Sonja might actually like her. But it was all a bunch of bullshit. I wore that same look on my face when Raz and Barron stumbled on me and Calix, naked together in the treehouse. I remember watching his expression, marveling at the change in his face, even as my heart broke into pieces. It was like watching the moon eclipse the sun, cutting off all the light, plunging me into darkness.

  “April’s pregnant,” Luke says, like the crowd gathered around us doesn’t already know. “It’s cold and wet in there. Your prank will be a hell of a lot less funny if something happens to her.”

  “She’ll be just fine,” Sonja says as the demon-faced girls drag April toward the cave. She doesn’t fight them, which is probably for the best, but panic settles in my chest as I turn back to Calix. There’s something just behind his eyes that makes me want to plead, like maybe I could crack through to the other side where he hides all that misery I saw on his face this morning when he thought nobody was looking. “We’ll let you out in the morning, won’t we, Raz?”

  “What Sonja means is, we’ll let you out when we wake up tomorrow.” He flashes a sharp grin, reaching up and sweeping his hands through his dirty blonde hair. “Considering the amount I plan to drink tonight, it might be more like late afternoon.”

  “Not April!” Luke screams, struggling against the boys holding her as they pull her toward the cave entrance. “This is a huge, fucking mistake! This is false imprisonment. Do you think I won’t report this?”

  “Nobody cares what you have to say,” one of the boys says, shoving Luke forward into the cave. She trips and falls, cutting her hand on a stalagmite with a hiss. I can see the ruby red blood blooming as she falls to her knees. “Your parents don’t even give a shit if you live or die.”

  Some of the other boys move forward to grab me, but I keep my eyes on Calix, Raz, and Barron. One of them is smirking at me, one is grinning, and the other looks impassive, almost bored. The monster boys push me into the cave next to April, slam the gate, and lock it tight.

  The last thing I hear before the Knight Crew moves away is Raz’s laughter, echoing through the trees.

  Chapter Five

  IT’S COLD AND dark and wet in the Devils’ Den, the pleasant trickle of the spring and the constant sound of water droplets falling from the roof echoing strangely in the narrow space. The music from the Devils’ Day Party is loud enough that we have to shout to have a conversation of any kind, but I suppose that doesn’t matter because it’s pretty obvious that Luke doesn’t want to talk to me at all.

  One of the demon-faced girls kicked over all the lanterns after they dragged April into the cave, so the only light we have is from the massive bonfire. I’m a little concerned at how big it’s getting, fed with logs and old furniture and gasoline. The heat makes the rusted bars warm against my fingers as I hang off of them, my heart beating so fast that I feel dizzy.

  “You just had to poke the bear, didn’t you?” Luke asks finally, lifting her face up from her knees, her goblin mask discarded and stuffed into a back pocket. “After you promised me …”

  “I said I wouldn’t go looking for trouble,” I say, but as soon as the words are spoken aloud, my excuse sounds as weak and pathetic as I feel. “Trouble found me.”

  “Come on, Karma,” Luke says, turning to look at me, her brown eyes dark with fury—and not just fury for the Knight Crew, but for me. “You started it this morning when you hit Calix’s car. As amusing as I’m sure that was—and as deserved—you knew what would happen, how things would end.”

  I turn away from her, focused on the crowd of masked students, sweaty and drunk and high, the skunk-y scent of weed mixing with the stink of the campfire. I’m not sure what I wanted for tonight, but this wasn’t it.

  “So I’m to blame for their bullying?” I ask qui
etly, even though I know that’s not what Luke’s trying to say.

  “Please don’t fight,” April says, using the stone wall to help herself to her feet, glasses reflecting the orange glow from the fire. “Look, it’s not all that bad, right? This cave is fascinating.” She points a single finger up toward the ceiling. “These stalactites are thousands of years old. I’m honestly surprised people are even allowed in here.”

  “The Knight Crew stole the key,” I say, thinking of Barron’s hands on my hips, a pink flush creeping its way into my cheeks. “And I stole the key from Barron.”

  “How, exactly, did you go about doing that anyway?” Luke asks, also pushing herself to her feet. The three of us have been stripped of our dignity and left to rot in here. All I can hope is that when I don’t come home tonight, that my moms will call the police, and someone will find us here long before Raz sleeps off his drunk. “Really, I’d love to know.”

  “Luke,” April warns, leaning against the cave wall and looking warily between the two of us. “What’s done is done. Karma can’t go back in time and change things, so what does it matter? I’m sure she feels bad enough as it is.”

  “Bad?” I ask, looking over at April with her brown hair plaited and slung over one shoulder, her green eyes dark in the shadows of the cave. It’s strange, looking at her in that uniform with her dress shirt untucked, taut around her swollen belly. I think that was her parents’ plan all along, to shame her by forcing her to stay in her school uniform every day. “I don’t feel bad. I didn’t put us in here and lock the door; they did. I figured you of all people wouldn’t be one to victim blame,” I say, looking directly at Luke.

  She frowns heavily, her brown eyes dancing with carefully repressed anger.

  “You know why I’m mad, and it’s not because the Knight Crew is a bag of diseased dicks. It’s because you started things today. You hit Calix’s car; you stole that key; you promised me you wouldn’t fuck with them.” Luke scoffs and shakes her head in disgust, reaching her fingers up to tousle her blue hair. “And the goddess only knows what you did with Barron to get that key.”

  “What the fuck are you implying?” I ask, turning away from the bars and the masked revelry beyond so that I can look her straight in the face. My own is burning with shame, but I just hope it’s too dark in that cave for her to see it. “That I screwed Calix last year as some sort of Devils’ Day Party prank? That I wanted to be naïve enough and desperate enough to believe he really did like me?”

  “You brought up Calix,” Luke snaps back, moving away from me to stand at the opposite end of the cave entrance. “I was talking about Barron. Did you steal that key spur of the moment? Or was it something you planned? Either way, you’d already made your promise to me, so it was wrong, no matter how it happened.”

  “As if you wouldn’t have shoved your tongue down Sonja’s throat at the first opportunity.” I gesture at the glittering green beetle brooch clinging to the front of her shirt. “You wore the jewelry she sent, didn’t you? Maybe I wasn’t the only one planning on seeking out the Knight Crew against my better judgment? They were already planning on locking me in the treehouse, Luke. The fight was already on.”

  “If they locked you in, we would’ve let you out, and they would’ve been too drunk to notice. Stealing their key, pepper spraying them, and then trying to lock them up in the Devils’ Den is a whole different animal. You messed up, Karma. Just admit it.”

  “At least I tried to do something about it,” I snap back, my hands shaking, bits of purple hair sticking to the sides of my sweaty face. “At least for once, I attempted to fight back. Unlike you. Since freshman year, you’ve been letting the Knight Crew push you around, and you just take it. The worst you’ve ever done is report them which just makes you a snitch.”

  “A snitch?” Luke laughs, harsh and low, shaking her head like she can’t believe I just said that. “What is wrong with you, Karma? Because you’re not acting like the person I thought I knew. The cool, quiet artist who didn’t give a shit what anybody else thought. Even the thing with Calix … I mean, I was surprised, but I understood. Lately though? I feel like you hate the Knight Crew and worship them at the same time.”

  “I don’t give a shit about the Knight Crew,” I say, but it feels like a lie, tumbling off the end of my tongue like a boulder, heavy and dangerous and unstable. “I’m not the one who cries myself to sleep every night because she’s so desperate to fit in.”

  Luke’s eye widen, and I know I’ve gone too far, throwing one of her secrets back into her face. It’s like earlier, when I shouted at my mom, when I stabbed my canvas. I don’t mean to do it; I don’t want to do it. Hell, as soon as I say it, I wish I could take it back.

  “Come on guys,” April says softly, but it’s too late. Luke turns away from me, one shoulder propped against the wall of the cave. A few moments later, a girl in a pearlescent white mask appears, holding up a key. It’s not the same one that Barron had—this one’s much less rusted—but it fits into the lock just the same, and the gate swings open.

  “This is only because I hate them so much, not because I like you,” Pearl Boehringer says, her blond hair orange in the strange half-light. She takes the key with her and walks away, her mask glittering with eight gemstones set to look like a spider’s eyes. The effect is eerie, especially when paired with the derisive sneer on her face.

  Told you: everyone at Crescent Prep is an asshole. Including me, apparently.

  “Do you want to apologize before I give you a ride home?” Luke says, grabbing April by the hand and pulling her out of the maw of the Devils’ Den. “Because you know I’m going to give you one either way.”

  A lump of pride gets caught in my throat, and I say nothing. I’m too frustrated by the way the party’s gone, too pissed off at the Knight Crew, and quite frankly, hating myself too deeply to say anything at all.

  With a scowl, Luke leads the way back to her car, this beautiful white vintage Cadillac. Her parents thought this was a punishment, buying her an old car like this. It’s worth maybe thirty thousand dollars at most, so to them, it’s basically garbage. But Luke’s the one that asked for it. For her, this is a dream car. It’s one of the things I’ve always liked about her, how she’s unapologetically Luke. I should say that, along with I’m sorry, but instead, I sit quietly in the backseat as she takes me home and drops me off just outside the entrance to Diamond Point.

  I’ve barely hopped out before Luke is speeding off into the night, leaving me alone in the quiet darkness.

  “Jesus.” I rub a hand over my face, suddenly so tired that I could collapse right here in the cold and sleep for a week. Something rustles in the bushes, and the hair on the back of my neck stands on end. Could be a cougar or a bear … or worse—a person. I force myself to walk slowly but confidently back toward the front door of our pale pink house. The mural the girls started earlier is hard to see in the weak porch light, but when it’s done, I’m sure it’ll be visible to every single car that drives down this road. The Horned God, in a state where most people are likely to think it’s the devil. Fantastic. That should help with my popularity.

  I let myself in and find both of my mothers waiting for me.

  Mama Jane stands up right away, her long red hair unbound, face twisted into a frown. Mama Cathy stays seated on the couch, her own mouth tight with worry.

  “What?” I ask, because it isn’t that late, is it? The Knight Crew took my phone from the gatekeeper (so we discovered on our way out of the party), so I look toward the clock on the wall instead.

  It’s after three in the morning.

  Shit.

  “Did you enjoy the party?” Jane asks carefully, looking at me like she has no idea who I am anymore. It’s the same way Luke looked at me earlier, like maybe there’s something seriously wrong with me that I didn’t notice until right this second. I pause in the doorway, one hand still on the knob, when I notice the ruined canvas sitting on the coffee table. Is that what this is about?r />
  “Not really,” I say, stepping inside and pulling the door closed behind me. Despite everything, I’m still wearing my mask. I’m not sure why. Maybe because I don’t feel comfortable without it right now? Like the emotional mask I’m used to wearing is starting to fracture in places … “Why?”

  “Honey, come sit down,” Cathy says, her dark eyes studying me with an even mixture of pity and parental frustration. I don’t like the way this is going. My gaze flicks back to Jane, clearly the more furious of the two.

  “I don’t feel like sitting down,” I say, wishing I’d climbed in my window instead of coming through the front door. All I want right now is to be alone. “I’d rather just shower and go to bed, why?”

  “Please sit down,” Cathy repeats, looking pleadingly in Jane’s direction. Her own dark hair is braided, much like April’s, and splattered with paint. Her hands, too. Some of my earliest memories involve paint-covered arms enveloping me in lilac-scented hugs. Right now, however, the sight of Cathy wringing those colorful hands is filling me with dread.

  “What is it?” I ask, my heart fluttering, my head spinning. I start to think of worst-case scenarios, like something happening to one of my little sisters, or finding out one of my parents was diagnosed with something awful …

  “Do you know a boy named Calix Knight?” Jane asks, clearly struggling to maintain her composure. The blood drains from my face, and I feel my hands curling into fists at my sides. Is this about the Aston Martin? It has to be, right? But how could he say anything, after what the Knight Crew did to Little Bee?

  “He goes to Crescent Prep,” I say with a shrug, trying to feign nonchalance when all I feel is dread. “Why?”

  The moms exchange a look before turning back to me. It’s the way Cathy reaches for her phone that first sets me off. Please no, I think, exhaling sharply. One of my worst fears after being found naked with Calix in the treehouse was that he—or one of his awful friends—would have a video of some kind. Like, if it was all a trick, then surely he’d want evidence of it to hold over my head? For an entire year now, I’ve had this gnawing feeling low in my belly, this sense of waiting for the other shoe to drop.