Devils' Day Party: A High School Bully Romance - C.M. Stunich Page 0,3

member in our little group of outcasts. April Iseman, the heavily pregnant sophomore that enrolled at Crescent just four months prior, stares back at me, pushing her glasses up her nose and huffing a sigh. Her mom is a state senator for Louisiana with big ambitions, and a pregnant fifteen-now-sixteen-year-old does not fit into her carefully laid plans. “Can you back me up here? There’s nothing good about this. Today is Devils’ Day, for fuck’s sake. Calix and his minions don’t make life easy for me on a normal day. You think today, of all days, was the right time to stage a coup?”

“Well, why did you do it then?” April asks, tilting her head to one side, long, brown hair cascading over her shoulder. She sits primly on another rock, dressed in our school uniform—royal purple skirt and white dress shirt, her tie loose around her neck, Mary Janes polished to a shine. Despite her official status as an outcast, April is leagues apart from the rest of the students who attend Crescent Prep—even me. She’s punctual, studious, respectful … which is why she had little choice but to team up with me and Luke.

“I … don’t remember,” I say, reaching up to rub at my sore head, my hand coming away with a bit of dried blood. The excuse sounds lame, even to my own ears, but it’s true. Something about the way I hit my head must’ve knocked my brain around a bit. No matter how hard I try, how hard I concentrate, I can remember driving down the street toward the gas station and then nothing else until the pain of impact. “But I know I’m not stupid enough to start shit on Devils’ Day.” With a long sigh, I glance up toward the towering sides of Crescent Preparatory Academy.

This area is rife with German influence, brought over by early pioneers, and our school reflects it. The damn thing looks like the fucking Matterhorn entrance at Disneyland, with wood shutters painted with tiny flowers, white stucco walls, and decorative half-timbering.

I’ve never hated a single locale more.

Glancing back at Luke, I find my painted lips pulled down into a severe frown. She’s still laughing at me, stuffing a powdered donut between her lips and grinning.

“Regardless of why you did it, or whether it’s a good idea, it’s still funny. I can just imagine Calix’s stupid face all squinched up with rage. How dare the poorest girl in school stand up to him and his ultrarich friends?” Luke rolls her brown eyes and stands up, stretching her arms above her head. Despite her preference for pants—shorts, actually, even in winter—the school forces Luke to wear the girl’s uniform, complete with pleated wool skirt. “Well, are you going to sit here and sulk all day? Or are you going to stride in those doors like you own the place? I mean, you started the day off with a bang. Don’t disappoint me, Karma.”

Luke pulls out a grotesque, goblin-esque mask with a hooked nose from inside her book bag, sliding it over her face, and then grinning at me. The effect is eerie as hell, especially with the fall leaves whispering in the cool breeze all around us.

“God, this town is weird,” April murmurs, resting one hand on her swollen belly and looking between me and Luke as I pull my own mask from my bag, studying the glittering black tree antlers that protrude from the top. “And this whole Devils’ Day thing is even weirder. Do you just get used to it after a while or something?”

“You never quite get used to it,” I say, slipping the mask over my face. “You just try to survive.”

I’m just one devil among many, situated in the back row of my first period French class. There isn’t a student on campus that isn’t wearing a mask—not a single member of faculty either. No, we take our Devils’ Day celebrations seriously here.

“How do you say you’re going to burn in hell, bitch, in French?” Raz asks, leaning forward and planting an elbow on his desk. He cups his handsome face in the palm of his hand as the fourth member of Calix’s rotten little crew—a girl named Sonja—sneers at me from beneath her red leather mask. They’re all wearing matching masks—Calix, Raz, Barron, and Sonja. The only difference is that Calix’s mask is black while the others all wear bloodred, complete with horns wrapped in dark ribbons, their wicked mouths the only part