Devils' Day Party: A High School Bully Romance - C.M. Stunich Page 0,28

go completely still, a strange coldness sweeping over me that I can’t explain. What tonight is? Tonight is nothing. Yesterday was the Devils’ Day Party. Today is just … Saturday. So why am I wearing my school uniform? And why is Calix asking me that?

He leans in even closer, pressing his lips to the side of my throat. Reaching both hands up, I shove him away as violently as I can and rise to my feet. He hits the ground on his ass, but I get no satisfaction out of it. Instead, panic is creeping over me as I glance back into the car and see my phone lying on the passenger seat.

The phone I left at the party last night, that the Knight Crew claimed they destroyed.

So how did it get there?

“Goddamn it, Karma,” Calix snarls, rising to his feet like a shadow, a tall, dark handsome shadow that I can barely see through the white stars in my vision. The little bells on the front door of the convenience store ring and out step Raz and Barron, the former carrying a plastic grocery bag in one hand as he circles the cars and surveys the damage—exactly the same way he did yesterday.

“What the fuck happened here? Little trailer trash bitch thought she’d get the first Devils’ Day trick on us, huh?” I stare at Raz, but I don’t even have it in me to be angry. Instead, I’m just confused. Frustrated. Panicking. I’ve finally lost my goddamn mind, I think as I look between the three of them with a strange taste in my mouth, like old pennies. The taste of copper, of blood.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” I say as Barron pauses on my right and Calix sneers at me like he could give two shits whether I’m hurt or not.

“Sick? Nice try, Trailer Park.” Calix steps forward again, getting in my face, towering over me like this is any normal day, like a video of us fucking wasn’t posted online during the party last night, like I didn’t drive off the edge of the road in the dark and … end up here. “Who’s going to pay for the damage to my car? Not you. The change your dyke mothers pay you for working part-time at that dump they call a business isn’t going to cut it.”

That’s what he said yesterday, I think as I start to sway on my feet, and Barron frowns, pulling the lollipop from his mouth and pointing at me with it.

“She doesn’t look very good,” he says, and Raz laughs, loud and cruel and obnoxious.

“You think?” he asks, tossing his grocery bag into the backseat of the car. “Like she ever does. Trailer Park looks like a goth reject most days and some tree-hugging femi-nazi the rest of the time.” He stalks toward me, like he’s thinking of grabbing me, but Barron reaches out to grab his arm.

“Back off of her,” he says carefully. “People are watching.”

“Maybe I’ll let you pay for it tonight with your mouth?” Calix suggests as he opens the driver’s side door of his car, and I feel the world tilt around me like I’m on a carnival ride. Before he has a chance to climb in, I see the world rush up toward the sky—or maybe it’s me that’s falling—and then pain, sharp and blinding, straight through my skull like a knife.

There’s blood all over my steering wheel.

Shit, no. No, no, no. I sit up, my body quivering uncontrollably as I look out the window and find what’s now a very familiar scene. There’s my little yellow VW bug, the front end planted in the side of Calix’s car. Blood drips down my face and onto the front of my uniform. This time, I don’t reach up to touch it. This time, I grab my phone from the passenger seat and stare at the date and time.

Friday. Devils’ Day.

Bile rises up in my throat just before the driver’s side door is wrenched open, and I’m dragged from the vehicle by Calix. Again. Shoved up against the side of Little Bee. Again.

“Are you fucking insane?!” he growls, but maybe I am, because I just went through this. I went through it yesterday and then … five minutes ago? Then I fell onto this cement right here and woke up in my car. Yet I remember none of it.

“Very possibly,” I whisper, and there must be something strange in my expression because Calix pulls back, narrowing