Page 71 of Devils' Day Party
“Are you bleeding?” Luke blurts suddenly, stumbling in her haste to get around the bed and kneel in front of me. She reaches out, as if to brush my hair back from the dried blood on my forehead, but stops at the last second. “Did they hurt you?” Her voice hardens to a steel-edged blade, and I know that if the Knight Crew really had escalated to physical violence, Luke would lose her shit.
“I crashed my car into Calix's,” I say, the line as familiar to me as any other in this cosmic comedy of errors that makes up my life. My lips twitch into a small smile as Luke's brown eyes widen and she struggles to choke back a sound a surprise. “I was driving by the Gas and Go, and I saw him out the window, filling up that stupid Aston Martin …” My words trail off as I remember the look on Calix's face, drawn and tired, loneliness etched into the shape of his mouth, barely repressed rage glinting in his dark eyes. “He looked so sad and lonely, Luke. He doesn't get to look sad and lonely. He's handsome, rich, he has friends, he rules the school …” My eyes sting as I suck in a sharp breath. And all this time, I was operating under some bullshit lie I told myself to survive. Calix really did play me last year, didn't he?
“Karma,” Luke says, starting to put her hand on my knee and withdrawing it. “Uh, I would touch you, but …”
A laugh escapes me as I recall the scene I just walked in on.
“Please don't, until you wash your hands.” We look at each other, and then we both just start laughing, and we don't stop until tears are bleeding down both our faces. It takes Luke a second to realize mine are real, and she curses, dumping her book bag on the floor and grabbing a small container of hand sanitizer. Luke's always joking that if a pandemic occurred, toilet paper and sanitizer would be the first items to go, that they'd be used as currency in place of money. She has a small hoarded stash back at her dorm room.
After she cleans her hands, she throws her arms around me and hugs me close.
“Sonja tried to act like she was playing me today, but do you really think even a monster like her would spend a whole year courting me in private for such a stupid joke?”
“I …” I start, unsure of where, exactly, she's going with this. “What does that have to do with Calix? He very clearly doesn't care about me. Do you know what I did this morning to make him so mad? I kissed him and asked him if he liked me. That's it. That's what brought me here.” I don't feel like re-explaining the time loop to Luke, so I don't.
She smiles at me, sitting back on her ass on the hardwood floor.
“Of course that pissed him off. He very clearly can't handle rejection or the disappointment of others. Kissing him like that … he'd have to think you were bullshitting him. That, or he was worried about what would happen when Raz and Barron saw you.”
Raz … My heart skips a beat and I feel suddenly choked up. The intimacy between us yesterday was like stained glass, perfect and beautiful, but so easy to break.
“They set you up the same way they set me up,” I say, hating how much I want Luke to be right. “Sonja recorded you two together; she tried to get you to say those fucked-up things to me.”
“She's as broken as the rest of them. They might be friends, but they're not like us. They think their vulnerabilities make them weak. Instead, what they don't realize, is showing another human your flaws and your imperfections, your dreams and desires, that's true strength.”
My eyes fill with tears again.
“I love you, Luke. I don't say it enough, but it's true. I don't know what I'd do without you.”
“Same girl, same,” she says, sitting up enough to wrap her arms around my waist. “I love you, too. Now, how the hell do we get out of here?”The answer to Luke's question is: we don't.
Even after she gets up the guts to break one of the windows, the plywood is impossible to get loose. It must be screwed in in multiple places.
“This fucking sucks,” she groans as the night sky gets dark, and we both hear the beginning notes of the metal band that the Knight Crew invited to play. “Hopefully April stays home tonight. I don't like the idea of her going to the Devils' Day Party without us.”
“As monstrous as our classmates are, they seem to draw the line at hurting a pregnant woman,” I say, leaving out the little detail about how we were all locked inside the mouth of the Devils’ Den once upon a time.
