Devils' Day Party: A High School Bully Romance - C.M. Stunich Page 0,4

of their faces still visible.

“Tu vas brûler en enfer, salope,” I answer, before our poor French teacher—Madame Dupré—can react. It’s hard to read her facial expression behind the far-too-pretty white mask she’s wearing. If the whole purpose of Devils’ Day is to confuse the dark spirits, Mrs. Dupré has clearly missed the point. “You might also say va te faire foutre Raz, sale queutard contaminé.”

“Mademoiselle Sartain! Monsieur Loveren!” Mrs. Dupré chokes out, but as horrified as she is, that’s nothing compared to the dark gleam in Raz’s red eyes as he narrows them at me. He might not know what I’ve just said, but Sonja does. Get fucked, Raz, you diseased slag. As I watch, she leans over and whispers in his ear. For years, we’ve been trading insults, bone-deep thrusts of verbal swords that sever bits of the soul. But in the last year, Raz has really amped up his game; I’m almost afraid of him now.

The way his mouth twists to one side makes my stomach roil with nausea. His eyes shine like rubies behind the mask, as red as the blood on my steering wheel.

“Oh, you’re going to regret that later,” he purrs as Mrs. Dupré writes us both up and resumes the lesson, her thin lips pinched just a little tighter beneath her fluffy white mask.

I stare Raz down because Luke is right: I already started this morning off on the wrong foot with Calix and his minions, so why not go all the way? Sonja smirks at me, her lips as red as her mask, before the bell rings and both she and Raz rise to their feet and disappear out the door together.

The way he looks over his shoulder at me, I know I better be prepared.

Their Devils’ Day tricks are legendary, and I’m prepared to be on the receiving end of all of them.

The walls of the school are plastered with posters advertising a lock-in for teens at one of the local churches—and trust me, there are many out here, in every possible faith. This one’s being held at Thorncrown Chapel, a tourist destination with exterior glass walls that proclaims it’s open to all people. Starting at seven tonight, they’ll lock the doors and have a chaperone-filled evening of sober fun inside their glass house of worship.

Hah.

Every student at Crescent Prep knows where the real party’s being held: in the middle of the fucking woods, at a spring known as Devils’ Den. There’s a cave there that leads deep into the earth, to a beautiful trickling stream and bottomless pool that, inevitably, will be filled with drunk, naked teens before the end of the night. Last year, right before the climax of the party, Calix approached me at the edge of the spring and said he wanted to talk.

Like an idiot, I believed him.

That’s how I ended up losing my virginity, in one of the off-season treehouses nearby.

Gritting my teeth, I walk past his little group and ignore their stares, eerie behind the leather of their masks. Today, I’m wearing two masks: the one on my face, and the one that is my face. I can never be my true self within these walls, not without risking everything. And it’s not just Calix and his friends who make my life miserable: it’s everyone. This entire school is filled with monsters—monsters with trust funds and credit cards and malice scribed into their wicked, black hearts.

“Tu vas avoir des problèmes toi ce soir, Karma,” Calix whispers as I pass, his dark eyes flinty. I ignore him, but his words follow me down the hall like an arctic breeze: you’re in for a load of trouble tonight. Thankfully, I manage to get past the Knight Crew without showing my unease, but as soon as I round the corner, my shoulders slump, and I swipe a sweaty, trembling hand down my face.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Luke says, the goblin mask turning her pixie-like face underneath into something truly grotesque. Since freshman year, Luke’s gone out of her way to find the creepiest, ugliest mask in town.

“Worse: the Knight Crew,” I say, licking my lips and glancing over my shoulder as they come around the corner in a group, dressed in the white and purple of the academy uniform, the Crescent Prep logo stitched in silver across their breast pockets. It’s a crescent moon, tilted slightly to the left, skewered with a crossed knife and rod, backed by stars. It’s been the same logo for