Page 119 of Devils' Day Party
Before I know it, my knuckles are hitting Erina Cheney in the nose, spattering blood across the stone floors beneath our feet. She stumbles back as I stand there panting. I shouldn't have done that; violence begets violence. What the fuck is wrong with me?
If the universe is trying to make me into a better person, I'm fairly certain that I just failed.
“You cunt!” Erina screams, throwing herself at me and knocking me back into the lockers. She tears my mask off, snapping the elastic and yanking on my hair. But if the universe needed me to not fight back in order to get to tomorrow, well … I'll go another day on repeat if it means beating this bitch's ass.
I shove her back with all my strength and she stumbles. This time, it's my turn to push her into the wall, holding her there as she struggles. My adrenaline must really be going though because it's as if she weighs nothing to me right now. Nothing at all.
“How dare you film my first time.” I slam her into the wall again and she grunts. “How dare you make my mothers cry.”
“What?” Erina manages to choke out, but I don't care if she knows what I'm talking about or not. I slam her into the wall a third time.
“But on top of all that, you have the audacity to lie to Calix about it? Get him to blame me? Don't you have any shame at all?”
Erina pushes me and then swings for my face, but I duck, throwing my body into hers and knocking her down to the cement. Her head hits the floor harder than it probably should, but I throw a punch anyway that cracks her in the cheek. Blood pours from her nostrils as she tries groggily to raise her head up from the stone floor.
I might've hit her again, had Raz not appeared and grabbed me around the waist, hauling me up and back.
“No more, Karma,” he says, dragging me down the hallway as a horde of students in macabre and fantastical masks line the hall, watching us hungrily for any drop of blood they can lick from the floor with their gossiping maws. They could very well be the Unseelie court, the dark, ugly fae court that revels in cruelty and misshapen things.
I spit at them as Erina's girlfriends rush forward to help her to her feet.
When I look back at Barron, I see him smiling at me, offering up a little wave as Raz drags me toward the door. Calix, on the other hand, is staring at me like he's seen a ghost.
“She has the video, Calix. Don't let her post it!” I shout, my voice echoing off the stone walls of the school.
Raz shoves me out the door and then grabs my arm, yanking me down to where Luke's waiting inside the Cadillac, April and Sonja already seated inside of it.
“Hurry up before the teachers flock the fuck over here,” Raz growls, encouraging me into the back seat.
I end up sitting squished between him and Sonja which is literally one of the weirdest places I've yet been on this journey.
“What the hell happened back there?” Luke calls out as we take off down the long, dirt and gravel drive toward the highway. “Karma, you're shaking like crazy, and there's blood all over your shirt …”
“Don’t worry; it’s not mine,” I say, which just makes Luke choke and sputter in disbelief. It’d be funny if I weren’t so pissed off. Erina Cheney, a girl whose name I didn’t even know, is the one responsible for the sex tape. That means that night, when I was bare and vulnerable in Calix’s arms, she was watching.
Fuck, that’s creepy as hell.
“Just a girl fight is all,” Raz says with a smirk. I glance his way and find him with his elbow propped on the side of the car, chin parked in his fist. His gaze never leaves mine. “Didn't know you had it in you.”
“Yeah, well,” I start, swiping my hands on my skirts to clear away some of the blood. “She has a sex tape of me and Calix. Not only is she planning on posting it tonight, but she tried to blame me for it. She hold him that I was the one with the video.”
“Are you shitting me?!” Luke shouts as Sonja cackles and Raz's mouth turns down in a sharp frown.
“What are you going to do about it?” April asks, glancing over her seat at me, brown braids flying in the wind as the convertible makes a sharp left turn, sending us flying down the highway.
“I think I just did do something about it,” I reply, and Sonja laughs again, head thrown back, bloodred hair billowing like the petals of a blooming flower.
I sit up and lean forward, grabbing Luke's phone from between the seats so I can change the music. I choose an obscure song that I bet not a single person in this car has heard of—“Wasting Away” by The Confession—and I turn it up as loud as it'll go, sitting back down and resting my head against the seat.
