by L V Chase
He crouches down beside the chair. When he reaches for the bottom of my shirt, I cross my arms over my abdomen, blocking him. I look over at Mr. Welch, who is sitting at his desk. He doesn’t seem inclined to interrupt.
“Mr. Welch, couldn’t this be done in the bathroom or something?” I ask.
“The time to walk back and forth to the bathroom would cut into my experiment time,” Grayson says. “It would compromise the results. She only needs to lift her shirt to the upper half of her abdomen.”
“It’s not any worse than wearing a crop top,” Aurora interjects from her desk. “And it will take a minute to do. Cinnamon is just being dramatic.”
Mr. Welch surveys us. He’s hated me since he walked into class to find me half-naked after Aurora spilled coffee on my pants. He considers me to be an attention whore. Asking for his help is like asking Aurora for emotional support.
“Miss Reeves, let’s not start these experiments with your histrionics,” he says. “Let Mr. Voss complete his assignment. You can have your meltdown after class.”
I glower at Grayson. He reaches to pull at my shirt again. I yank up my shirt myself. He folds up the hem. It’s still low enough that my breasts aren’t flashing everyone, but desks creak as some of the boys lean forward, seeing the underside curve of my chest.
Grayson turns his head towards them. I can’t see his expression, but the boys settle back into their chairs, avoiding looking at either of us.
“Hold this up,” he orders.
I grasp onto the extra cloth of my shirt, keeping it up. I observe him to avoid looking at everyone else while I’m exposed. He sets a small gray box that’s connected to the electrodes on the desk. He peels the adhesive paper off one of the electrodes. He presses the first one under the side of my breast.
If he sees my chest rising and falling faster, he doesn’t say anything.
He presses the next one a little farther to the right. His thumb brushes against my breast. I focus on the EKG device, trying to ignore the heat waves surging in my body.
With every electrode, his hand seems to linger longer and longer. His knuckles stroke down my rib cage. He rubs the electrode clockwise, then counterclockwise. He peels one off and places it a half-centimeter lower. He creates a curved line of them from under one breast to the center of my chest. A sixth one is pressed against the curve of my other breast.
When his hand drops down, it brushes against my stomach before rising back up to pull my shirt down.
Didn’t have enough time to go to the bathroom, my ass. I can only pray he assumes the red in my cheeks is from embarrassment.
“This machine is monitoring Cinnamon’s heart rate and sending information to my laptop,” he says to the class.
He doesn’t look at me as he sits down at the other desk. I can’t see him, but I hear the clicking of his computer as he pulls the right program up.
“Are you ready, Cinnamon?” he asks.
“Yep,” I manage to get out.
“Is your name Cinnamon Reeves?”
“You know it is,” I say.
“I’m setting a baseline,” he says. “I need to see what your normal levels are.”
“Yes,” I say. “My name is Cinnamon Reeves.”
“You’re eighteen years old?”
“Yes.”
“You’re a senior at Roman Academy?”
“Yes.”
The questions unfold, asking me the most basic questions about my life. I don’t lie. The class is restless now that my breasts are completely covered again, though Torque, Axe, or whatever his name is seems to be adamantly focused on my chest. I glance down, but I can’t see my nipples.
“Was your first sexual encounter enjoyable?” Grayson asks.
I blink several times.
“Cinnamon?” he asks more firmly.
“Uh, no,” I say. I lock my thumbs together. “It was a quick thing.”
“Your heart rate just skyrocketed,” he says. “High enough for me to say you’re lying.”
I unlock my thumbs. “Well, if you asked me about being half-naked in class, I’d also have a fast heart rate. It’s an uncomfortable question.”
“I’ve accounted for discomfort,” he says. “The machine doesn’t lie. You do.”
I press my lips together. “I don’t know what to tell you. It was short. I didn’t feel any pleasure from it.”
“Let’s move on,” he says. “Have you had more than ten sexual partners?”
Heat creeps up my neck. “Uh, no. No, I haven’t.”
“That’s a lie.”
I spin around, feeling the adhesive on my skin pull with my movements. “It’s not a lie. I know how many partners I’ve had.”
He stares back at me. “For this research to work, you can’t look at me. The sight of me might affect your results. Look forward.”
I turn around again.
“I’ve had two partners,” I say, likely too loudly. “I absolutely haven’t had more than ten.”
Silence. I clench my hands together. He must have thought I’d slept around before I had sex with him. After all, trailer trash only knows how to spread our legs for every man who comes along.
“Do your kinks include autoerotic asphyxiation?” he finally asks.
“No.”
“That’s a lie.”
“I swear to God, Grayson,” I say, turning around. “Fucking accuse me of lying again.”
He stares back at me. His expression is callous. “Turn back around. You don’t need to become hysterical over what the machine is telling me.”
I turn around. Several of my classmates are smirking while the others are whispering amongst each other. Damian appears concerned. Aurora appears ecstatic.
“Have you ever engaged in a threesome?” he asks.
“No.”
“Lie.”
I stand up, ripping the electrodes off my chest. He stands up slowly as I walk over to his desk. As I stare at him, his eyes are cold. They show no shame, no guilt, nothing but the fluorescent lights.
The end-of-class bell rings. Everyone scrambles out of their chairs. Mr. Welch’s chair squeaks as he walks over to us.
“Interesting experiment, Mr. Voss,” he says with a cough, holding his suit jacket close over his crotch. “Your write-up is due in two weeks.”
“Thank you, Mr. Welch,” he says.
Mr. Welch walks away.
“Why did you do that?” I demand. “Because of my mother? You call me a coward because you think I used my mother to get to you, but you took your revenge out on me instead of her, so what does that make you? I’ll tell you: a piece of shit.”
Without looking away from me, he picks up his laptop. He turns it around.
It doesn’t show an EKG.
Fireworks explode near the words ‘You Won!’ over a game of solitaire.
He was never measuring my heart rate. It was unnecessary to put the electrodes on. He knew I wasn’t lying the whole time.
The son of a bitch.
Damian grabs onto my arm as I lurch at Grayson. He shoves my bra into my hands and pulls me behind him. Crossing into Grayson’s personal space, Damian seethes with anger. Grayson regards him with the same amount of interest as he’d show a cocky ten-year-old.
“Did that make you feel like a big man, Grayson?” Damian sneers. “Did you compensate for all of those times that your daddy didn’t love you enough?”
“No,” Grayson says. “But compensating for that has led me to rooms that you could never dream of entering.”
Damian gapes for a second before taking a deep breath. “You’re a worthless asshole. Let’s go, Cin.”
He grabs my arm, hustling us out of the room. I cling onto my bra, knowing I’d have to walk through two hallways before I could reach a bathroom.
“Don’t worry about all of that,” Damian says. “The whole school will just see it as a joke that both of you were in on.”
“In my experience, this whole school knows I’m the joke,
” I say. “They’ve never mistakenly thought that I was in on it.”
“I’ll talk to some people. I’ll make sure that Grayson is seen as the sociopathic asshole that he really is.”
I shouldn’t feel the need to defend Grayson, but it creeps up in the back of my throat. I’ve felt flickers of him that showed empathy and kindness. I just don’t know where they go.
“Thank you, Damian,” I say.
He smiles at me. “You don’t need to thank me. You deserve so much better than this.”
He hands me my backpack. I’d almost forgotten it.
“You’re right,” I say. “I do deserve better. Thank you.”
In my periphery, I see Grayson stepping out of the classroom. I pull Damian into a hug. When I step back, I see Grayson’s jaw is clenched. He turns around, walking down the hallway.
Satisfaction grips inside me. I can’t be certain it’s over his anger or the fact that it means he cares about me on some level still. It shouldn’t matter, but it does.
14
Grayson
The sun's low enough to send a glare of harsh light into my eyes as I round the mountain bend at eighty. I'm driving a new stretch, so I should go slower until I get a feel for this set of switchbacks. I can't bring myself to slow down. I'm egging myself on, even though I don't know this road, even though I can barely see.
A flash of silver rounds the bend in front of me. Another car approaches from the opposite way. They lay on their horn as they pass, but the streak of metal's gone too fast for me to notice or care. All my attention is on staying alive in this self-made dance with death. It's the only way to get myself to stop thinking about her.
Or him. Damian, that fucker. Or Cin's mother, Kat. Shit, there's too many of them.
When I go around the next bend to the left, I lose my traction. The car swerves dangerously close to the rail on the left. If another car had been there, I'd have sideswiped it. I brake, then downshift, slowing down.
This is stupid. The point of driving down the switchbacks is to make myself think of nothing but surviving for a few minutes, but I can't even do that. If I keep this up, I'm going to kill myself. Stupid. Stupid.
It was bad enough when it was just Cin in my head, but now I'm imagining her with Damian and, fuck, the world turns red and white. If he was in front of me right now, I'd gun the accelerator and cut him in half across the front of my hood.
I'd be pissed off enough from just his trying to control and blackmail me. If that was all, maybe I'd be able to keep my cool and figure out how to take him down. But he's going after Cin, and I can't stand the thought of him touching her in any way.
Brady pissed me off, too, but that was different. There's no way that Cin would have wanted anything to do with Brady herself. Brady was a monster. Damian, though? Fuck. I know how stupid girls can get. But would Cin be stupid enough to go back to Damian? What's worse, is she working with Damian? Has she turned on me?
I grip the steering wheel hard, my knuckles turning white.
No. There's no way she'd do that. She's sensible. Stubborn, too. Even if she's mad at me, I can't truly believe that she'd have anything to do with the phone and stolen texts, now that I’ve calmed down about it. And I know Cin. Even if I'm mad at her, I have to trust her in the end.
Cin's not like her mother. The more I think about it, the more I’m sure that there's no way she helped with my stolen phone or the leaked texts.
Forget Damian. Forget Kat. Forget everyone. They don't matter in the end. No, I have to admit that what's really bothering me is that Cin doesn't trust me, the way I do her. That she still thinks I might have killed Diana. That I'm not just an asshole, but a monster, too. Like Brady, or worse.
I turn off onto the main road back to school. As I'm driving, I check my phone. It had been buzzing constantly over the last hour, but I'd ignored all the calls. I scroll through the calls and texts.
Dad. Dad. More Dad. Two other names pop up. Hayden Crocker. Aurora.
I click on Hayden's name to call him back. Fuck the rest of them. Hayden's a strange one, but he hasn't caused shit for me. At least not yet.
The phone rings twice before someone answers it. "Hi, it's me. I mean, it's Hayden."
"It's Grayson," I say. "You called earlier?"
Hayden proceeds to go into a five-minute monologue about his insecurities, hopes, and god knows what else. I'm surprised that he's so talkative, as he's usually acting all shy in person. I tune him out after the first twenty seconds. Something about dancing in the talent show.
"It'll be fine," I finally say after Hayden pauses for longer than two seconds. "You got this. We got this."
"You...you think so?" Hayden asks.
"Absolutely. I'll make sure you're ready for the show. We're meeting up at the studio in a few minutes, right?"
"Actually, I'm here already."
I check the time. I said we'd meet at four-thirty, but it's only five minutes past four. Fucking hell.
"Alright," I say. "I'll be there in a few minutes."
I drive back to the school's campus, using Hayden as an excuse to go twice the speed limit. I don't run into any cops, and there's no other trouble. For the first time in a few weeks, it's like the world's lining up for me like it should. I don't believe in luck or voodoo, but maybe this is a sign that things are changing.
I park and head towards the arts center housing the dance studio. Hayden's sitting on the granite steps in front of the wide glass doors. He's in a blue polo, loose pants, white sneakers, all sensible clothes for dancing. He stands as soon as he seems me. His face lights up with a giant smile.
"Grayson!" He nods eagerly.
I see it in his eyes. The admiration. It's not the mindless ass-kissing like the others. He looks up to me. He thinks I'm his friend. I hold back a grimace. He's not a bad kid. Just weird.
I nod back to him. "Hayden."
"Let's do this!" Hayden says, confident for once. He turns and reaches for the door's handle.
"Hold on, Hayden."
He looks back at me, his eyes wide like he's wondering whether something's wrong. He lowers his hand from the door.
"Everything's fine," I say. "Don't worry. I'm just wondering. You must have seen the news. The rumors and shit about me."
Hayden lowers his eyes and studies his sneakers. "I don't know. Maybe. I don't really pay attention to all that."
"It doesn't bother you?" I ask. "What they're saying I did?" I decide to say it explicitly. "That I killed someone?"
"No!" Hayden looks up at me with a determined expression. "We're bros. Bros before hoes, right?"
Shit. I have to fight not to laugh. I shake my head slightly. "Something like that. But look. It's not true. That's not the whole story."
Hayden tilts his head, confused, but then he nods. "I got it. I believe you."
It doesn't make me feel any better. While Hayden's not an ass-licking coward like the rest, he'd still believe anything I say. In that way, I suppose he's no different from the others. There's only one person I want to believe me, and she doesn't.
Hayden's still looking at me, waiting to see if I have anything else to say.
"Never mind." I reach for the door and gesture for him to go first. "Let's do this," I echo.
We make our way into the building. The dance studio has a set of wooden doors with steel handles. The sound's padded, and the small windows point to an empty corner, so I don't realize there's someone else in there until I step inside.
It's them. The scholarship girls, three others and Cin. They all stop, clearly in the middle of some kind of dance practice themselves. They're all dressed in clothes for dancing, the mirrored walls reflecting their figures from all angles. Cin's in a white crop top and black leggings. She marches over to me.
She reaches for me, and I raise an eyebrow, as I'm not sure whether to expect a hug or something else. Her stony glare should have given me a clue. She shoves me hard in the chest. When I don't budge, she leans forward into the shov
e, pushing with her legs while her hands press against my abs.
I look down at her trying to push me. "Okay. You’re really doing this, Cin?"
"Okay?" Cin replies. "That all you can say? You fucker!"
She stands up and starts trying to hit me in the face, first with her left hand, then with her right. I block her strikes with a single forearm, easily turning aside her blows. Cin just screams louder in anger and tries to kick me, too. Her bare feet ram into my shins. Of course, it doesn't hurt, not physically, but I'm frowning now. She's screaming louder and louder as she flails wildly at me with her arms again.
Hayden, of all people, steps in. He grabs Cin by one wrist.
"Stop that!" Hayden shouts. "Stop it!"
Cin wrenches her arm free from Hayden, then shoves him. Hayden lets out a small sound as he falls backwards onto his ass. He has a stunned expression on his face. I try not to wince.
"Let me guess, you're another one of his cocksucking fuck buddies?" Cin's face is red.
She pulls her leg back, ready to begin kicking Hayden while he's down. Hayden curls up into a ball on the wooden dance floor, his arms over his head, even though she hasn't started kicking yet. Christ.
I step between them. "Leave him alone.”
Cin glares at me. "You're standing up for him? And you couldn't do that for me, not once?"
The words sting, but I keep my face expressionless. I look over her shoulder and find the other blonde girls watching with eager, hawk-like expressions.
"Get her," one of them calls out to me. "Do it, Grayson."
They're clearly expecting me to punish Cin, to humiliate her again like I always do.
"Yes, do it!" Cin shrieks. "You asshole! You fucking asshole!"
She begins pounding on my chest with her fists. Her fists rebound, harmlessly, but she keeps hammering at me. I finally catch her by both wrists. She tries to pull them away, but this time, she's trapped in my grasp.
"Is this about psych class?" I ask. "You know why I had to do that."