Devils' Day Party: A High School Bully Romance - C.M. Stunich Page 0,21

I know that’s not what Luke’s trying to say.

“Please don’t fight,” April says, using the stone wall to help herself to her feet, glasses reflecting the orange glow from the fire. “Look, it’s not all that bad, right? This cave is fascinating.” She points a single finger up toward the ceiling. “These stalactites are thousands of years old. I’m honestly surprised people are even allowed in here.”

“The Knight Crew stole the key,” I say, thinking of Barron’s hands on my hips, a pink flush creeping its way into my cheeks. “And I stole the key from Barron.”

“How, exactly, did you go about doing that anyway?” Luke asks, also pushing herself to her feet. The three of us have been stripped of our dignity and left to rot in here. All I can hope is that when I don’t come home tonight, that my moms will call the police, and someone will find us here long before Raz sleeps off his drunk. “Really, I’d love to know.”

“Luke,” April warns, leaning against the cave wall and looking warily between the two of us. “What’s done is done. Karma can’t go back in time and change things, so what does it matter? I’m sure she feels bad enough as it is.”

“Bad?” I ask, looking over at April with her brown hair plaited and slung over one shoulder, her green eyes dark in the shadows of the cave. It’s strange, looking at her in that uniform with her dress shirt untucked, taut around her swollen belly. I think that was her parents’ plan all along, to shame her by forcing her to stay in her school uniform every day. “I don’t feel bad. I didn’t put us in here and lock the door; they did. I figured you of all people wouldn’t be one to victim blame,” I say, looking directly at Luke.

She frowns heavily, her brown eyes dancing with carefully repressed anger.

“You know why I’m mad, and it’s not because the Knight Crew is a bag of diseased dicks. It’s because you started things today. You hit Calix’s car; you stole that key; you promised me you wouldn’t fuck with them.” Luke scoffs and shakes her head in disgust, reaching her fingers up to tousle her blue hair. “And the goddess only knows what you did with Barron to get that key.”

“What the fuck are you implying?” I ask, turning away from the bars and the masked revelry beyond so that I can look her straight in the face. My own is burning with shame, but I just hope it’s too dark in that cave for her to see it. “That I screwed Calix last year as some sort of Devils’ Day Party prank? That I wanted to be naïve enough and desperate enough to believe he really did like me?”

“You brought up Calix,” Luke snaps back, moving away from me to stand at the opposite end of the cave entrance. “I was talking about Barron. Did you steal that key spur of the moment? Or was it something you planned? Either way, you’d already made your promise to me, so it was wrong, no matter how it happened.”

“As if you wouldn’t have shoved your tongue down Sonja’s throat at the first opportunity.” I gesture at the glittering green beetle brooch clinging to the front of her shirt. “You wore the jewelry she sent, didn’t you? Maybe I wasn’t the only one planning on seeking out the Knight Crew against my better judgment? They were already planning on locking me in the treehouse, Luke. The fight was already on.”

“If they locked you in, we would’ve let you out, and they would’ve been too drunk to notice. Stealing their key, pepper spraying them, and then trying to lock them up in the Devils’ Den is a whole different animal. You messed up, Karma. Just admit it.”

“At least I tried to do something about it,” I snap back, my hands shaking, bits of purple hair sticking to the sides of my sweaty face. “At least for once, I attempted to fight back. Unlike you. Since freshman year, you’ve been letting the Knight Crew push you around, and you just take it. The worst you’ve ever done is report them which just makes you a snitch.”

“A snitch?” Luke laughs, harsh and low, shaking her head like she can’t believe I just said that. “What is wrong with you, Karma? Because you’re not acting like the person I thought I knew. The cool, quiet artist who didn’t