Page 147 of Devils' Day Party
“I never touched her,” Calix snaps, running his fingers through his ebony hair in a rare moment of frustration. He turns his raven-dark eyes on me, searching my face as I stand there with incense smoke curling around me. “Boys are more often monsters, yes, but you attend Crescent Prep with us. You know as well as I do that girls can be cruel.”
“You've never done anything to her?” I ask skeptically, raising an eyebrow and then moving back to my seat. My feet bump into Calix's as I settle in and our eyes meet. “No bullying? No tricks? No teasing?”
“She hangs out with us, doesn't she? I've tried to handle her as best I can.” His voice is smooth, capable of devilish machinations I could only dream of. He'd make an excellent politician. No, no, he'd make an excellent prince. “We were friends when we were kids, but it's not her that I want.”
“No?” I ask as Calix finishes his tea and sets his cup on his saucer with a clink.
“No.”
Just that one word.
My heart is thundering as he closes his eyes in thought for a moment.
“Who told you that gay shit about me and Calix?” Raz asks, clearly still stuck on the previous subject.
“Pearl.” I reach for the teapot at the same time as Barron and our fingers tangle, eyes locking as electricity shoots up my arm. It turns to goose bumps as it sizzles through me and Barron makes a half-bow, offering up the teapot to me first. “She said that she's the reason you two attend Crescent Prep, that she told her parents you were a couple.”
“She did,” Calix replies easily, looking at me with a slight tilt to his head, like I've managed to surprise him. “And did she tell you about my brother?”
“That your parents stole the baby she had with him, yeah,” I add, wondering how I might be able to help with that situation at some point in the future. I mean, I know it's not my business, but Pearl deserves to be reunited with her baby, if that's what she wants.
Which is why I can't let her die.
Not tonight, or any other …
There might also be something else that I have to do, something that I don't want to think about, not right now. I'll try a few more things, and then … we'll see. Because my actions, they don't just affect me. There's a whole web of humanity attached to each and every one of us, if only we could see its thin, fragile strands. I can't let the world sink with me, living on repeat. I shove the ugly feeling down again, determined to ignore it.
“Weird that they sent them to the same school, huh? Considering they were so worried about the gay thing,” Barron adds, shoving a whole shortbread cookie in his mouth. “That's how little attention our parents pay, that they didn't even know they were shipping their delinquent faggots to the same school.”
“Call me a faggot again,” Raz snarls, shoving up from his seat and turning his red-eyed glare on his friend. “Do it, I dare you.”
“What's wrong with being a faggot?” I ask, hating the word, knowing it shouldn't be my emotional burden to teach Raz not to be a bigot. Sometimes, though, it's okay to give a little to help incite change. “You're so pretty, Raz, but when you talk like that, it's ugly as fuck. Please don't.”
“We made out,” Calix says with a shrug and a sigh. “Pearl ended up with a picture, somehow, and sent it to our parents.”
“You and Raz kissed?” I choke out, struggling to picture it. And not because I see anything wrong with them kissing—well okay, I'm a little jealous—but because Raz and Calix are like oil and water. “I would've paid to see that.”
“We were making out at a party for some girls,” Raz says with a smirk, trying to take control of the situation. Yet another defense mechanism of his. He doesn't like that I know one of his secrets, and he's shamed at the thought. If only he knew how little I'm judging him. If we ever get our tomorrow, I'll have to show him. “Chicks do it for guys all the time.”
“You don't have to justify anything to me,” I tell him, looking directly into his eyes. I'm desperate to ask if they might want to do it again sometime, but this isn't the time nor the place. Pretty sure I'm still in a bit of shock over what happened last night, but at least the pieces of the puzzle are starting to come together.
Erina Cheney is the one with the sex tape. She can be stopped. The boys can all be made to, at least, listen to me if nothing else. But what next? I know I have to go to the party. This day … it was always going to end at the party.
