on his shoulders and lift up to my toes to kiss his cheek. His grits his teeth, but he doesn't stop me.
Erina, on the other hand, grabs my hair as soon as she gets a hold of it.
“Stop telling him lies!” she shouts as I spin around, tearing my hair from her grip. “Don't you dare,” she hisses, eyes wild with fear. It's very clear now that she not only has the video, but that she doesn't want Calix to know that she does.
I mean, if he did, it would ruin her chances of ever getting with him. She must know that.
“Telling me lies about what?” Calix snaps, turning his ireful attention on Erina. “Stop acting insane, Erina. I'm tired of it. First, you stalk my brothers' emails and now this?”
My brothers' emails … My lips part in surprise as I recall the conversation I heard from outside the train car. Calix and Raz were talking about a girl they hated in a much different way than they do me, about her harassing Calix's family. I kinda thought that might be Pearl, after what Calix told me. But no. No, it was clearly Erina.
“Calix, listen to me,” Erina says, taking a step back from me as I hold my hand to my hair, my breath coming in violent pants. She must sense that I'm about to haul off and beat her ass. “Karma has a video of the two of you, from last year's Devils' Day party.:
“What?!” I shriek, loud enough that several students pause and glance our way.
“Hey Karma, hurry the hell up.” It's Raz, stepping into the hall near the front entrance and calling out to me. But he has no idea what's going on right now.
“You have a video?” Calix asks me, narrowing his eyes.
“She was going to post it tonight, to try and get you to, I don't know, acknowledge her or something,” Erina continues as I feel all the blood in my body rush to my head. I can barely hear past the sloshing sound of it, my pulse thundering like crazy.
“That doesn't sound very like the Karma Sartain we know,” Barron suggests, but I don't get to see his or Calix's reaction because my fist is lifting up and moving seemingly of its own accord.
Before I know it, my knuckles are hitting Erina Cheney in the nose, spattering blood across the stone floors beneath our feet. She stumbles back as I stand there panting. I shouldn't have done that; violence begets violence. What the fuck is wrong with me?
If the universe is trying to make me into a better person, I'm fairly certain that I just failed.
“You cunt!” Erina screams, throwing herself at me and knocking me back into the lockers. She tears my mask off, snapping the elastic and yanking on my hair. But if the universe needed me to not fight back in order to get to tomorrow, well … I'll go another day on repeat if it means beating this bitch's ass.
I shove her back with all my strength and she stumbles. This time, it's my turn to push her into the wall, holding her there as she struggles. My adrenaline must really be going though because it's as if she weighs nothing to me right now. Nothing at all.
“How dare you film my first time.” I slam her into the wall again and she grunts. “How dare you make my mothers cry.”
“What?” Erina manages to choke out, but I don't care if she knows what I'm talking about or not. I slam her into the wall a third time.
“But on top of all that, you have the audacity to lie to Calix about it? Get him to blame me? Don't you have any shame at all?”
Erina pushes me and then swings for my face, but I duck, throwing my body into hers and knocking her down to the cement. Her head hits the floor harder than it probably should, but I throw a punch anyway that cracks her in the cheek. Blood pours from her nostrils as she tries groggily to raise her head up from the stone floor.
I might've hit her again, had Raz not appeared and grabbed me around the waist, hauling me up and back.
“No more, Karma,” he says, dragging me down the hallway as a horde of students in macabre and fantastical masks line the hall, watching us hungrily for any drop of blood they can lick from the floor with their gossiping maws. They could