that I had been shunned was that “our” places were now “their” places. I couldn’t go to my favorite restaurant off Bloomington Street or jog at the trails near City Park. I had thought that the bleachers were safe, but I guess not. It’s hard to know where was safe when these assholes decided they owned everything.
There was a time that I called Rogue my best friend. There was a time he didn’t look at me like I was dirt beneath his boots. I didn’t know what I did wrong. Seven months ago, they just suddenly claimed that they were done with me. They humiliated me in front of the entire school.
I’d pleaded for answers, stood outside his house with tears streaming down my face until security escorted me off the property. Not a single one of them told me what happened to ruin our friendship. The not knowing killed me.
“I own this whole town, Scarlett.”
“You keep saying that,” I mused with a dark laugh. “Yet, here I am. Free of the Heirs. Free of you.”
“We don’t make it a habit of owning trash, Scar. You aren’t the Heir’s queen anymore.”
I felt my body relax even further, taking me away from the pain of his words and protecting me with a hazy and all encompassing comfort. Rogue couldn’t hurt me if I was a pillow. Yeah, this weed was fucked up.
I laughed, my giggles feeling like a balloon carrying my pain up. I felt weightless. “Then you don’t own everything. Is this the part where you tell me I’m worthless? Or slam me against the lockers? Tell Stephanie to beat me up? I’m just wondering how to prepare for the next round of bullshit coming my way.”
I watched Rogue stare at me as I stretched my arms high up above my head. Closing my eyes, I danced my fingers along the chilly air and smiled when I heard his annoyed exhale. After a few beats of this, I opened my eyes again, greeting his dark stare. I wasn’t sure if it was the weed, or my wishful thinking, but I saw a hint of wistfulness about him.
“There he is,” I whispered with a smile. Right then, he looked like the boy I once loved. Out of all of them, I knew Rogue best. We met in kindergarten. I fell off the slide, and he helped me hobble over to the teacher for a band-aid.
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
There was movement from the side of the bleachers, and I watched his eyes slice in that direction. I started to pick at my nails to distract myself from the dull sadness in my chest. The moment was lost, and the glimpse of the boy I knew was gone again.
“Oh. He’s gone now,” I said as a giggle escaped my lips.
I heard someone call Rogue’s name, and I pulled another long inhale of the joint as his face slipped into that familiar fury I’d come to expect from him over the last few months.
Rogue mumbled something under his breath that sounded like, “Fucking stoner.” He looked frantic now, eyeing the bleachers with unease as he ran a hand through his dark hair.
He then walked over to one of the trash cans under the bleachers. “Get the fuck out of here. I have a girl meeting me in a few, and I don’t want an audience,” he said while crossing his arms over his chest.
It shouldn’t have hurt me, imagining him with another girl, but I’d always loved Rogue, hadn’t I? I couldn’t remember, now. I was too busy counting the seats of the bleachers above me. “No,” I replied with a shrug. “Fuck you. Go get off somewhere else.”
A distant male voice called his name. Rogue stood there for a moment, just staring angrily at me. I refused to let him ruin my high. I sunk lower and lower, until I was nothing but melted chocolate on concrete.
Then Rogue Kelly ruined everything.
He gripped the rim of a nearby trashcan and picked it up before walking closer to me. “Time to take out the trash,” he said with a sinister smile before flipping it over and dumping the contents of it right there on top of me.
Sludge and trash coated my skin. It smelled rotten, like it was leftover food from last week’s football game. I shrieked as cold, cruel sobriety washed over me in a dull wave of disgust.
I wiped at something resembling a curdled milkshake from my arm and cried