Devils' Day Party: A High School Bully Romance - C.M. Stunich Page 0,121

and open. I need to see that side of Raz again, even if it’s just for one, last day. “For whatever reason, she wants to spend Devils' Day with me.” He smirks at Calix, and I swear, I can feel the other boy's eyes boring into my back. “Drive us back to the school, will ya? My dad's having something dropped off for me today.”

“I at least have a right to ask why you thought to hit my car, if all you wanted to do was run in here and throw yourself into Raz's arms?” Calix’s voice is thick with shadows, like a swirl of fog in an empty graveyard. I have completely and utterly pissed him off today, worse than usual even.

Raz releases me when I lean back, dropping my feet to the floor and putting his hands possessively on my hips. I stare up into his red eyes, but his expression is an enigma; I can't quite figure out what he's thinking.

“J'ai embouti ta voiture pour te faire une crasse, Calix, rien de plus,” I whisper, turning to look at Calix over my shoulder, even though the words kill me. “Everything will be different tomorrow.” He promised, but he couldn't possibly know the odds he faced in order to keep that promise. I hit your car as a prank, Calix, nothing more.

“Let's take them back to the school,” Barron says, voice as dark as the night sky in his secret cave of butterflies. He pulls his red devil's mask from his pocket and slips it over his face, dual-colored eyes still watching me from beneath it. “You can afford to get your car fixed.”

He turns and walks down the aisle, tossing a wad of cash onto the counter before heading outside. I notice as he leaves, that he takes the sketchbook out from under his arm and shoves it in the garbage can.

My heart stutters, and I feel the tears at the edges of my eyes again.

“What are you doing, Karma?” Raz asks me as Calix leaves the store in a fury, the bells on the door jangling as he throws it against the wall on his way out. Karma, he called me, not Trailer Park. “What the fuck do you want?”

“I want you, Raz,” I say, reaching up to wipe the tears from my eyes with the end of my blazer sleeve. After a moment, Raz takes his own blazer sleeve and wipes the blood from my forehead.

“Why would you hit Calix's car?” he asks, that cruel, cruel face of his carved into lines of confusion. He's adorable like that, all muddled up. I almost smile. Almost. But then, I should’ve spent the weekend sleeping in Calix's arms, waking up for a cheesy ghost tour, watching seconds and minutes and hours tick by. Instead, I spent three days crying alone in my room.

“I was driving by, and I just couldn't take it anymore,” I tell him, a partial truth that I know he won't able to see through. I hit Calix's car because I was angry; I was punishing him. Because I care too much, because now that I'm stuck here, I care even more than I ever did before. “We're evenly matched, Raz. Tit for tat. You know how to verbally spar with me like nobody else.”

“You hit Calix's car because you wanted to talk to me?” he clarifies, his voice edging on cruel hysteria, like he wants to maintain the status quo, put me down, destroy me … but that he's holding back.

“How else could I get your attention?” I ask, lifting my face up to his. “I work so hard at being invisible for you, so that you'll leave me alone. Something like that, it's hard to undo.”

Raz is silent for several long moments, as customers come in and out of the doors to the convenience store.

“I've thought a lot of things about you over the years,” Raz starts, his voice hesitant as he eyes me with narrowed red eyes. “But invisible? You've never been invisible to me. I couldn't forget you if I tried.”

It's hard to fight back the sudden rush of emotion, the memory of my mother's words telling me, if you stay up long enough to see the sunrise, paint it. Of that text from Luke, telling me that Pearl was dead. Again. Of Calix's story, told over coffee in the Mud Street Café.

“Maybe, just for today, you hold my hand?” I repeat, and Raz's eyes narrow, but he nods, just