Devils' Day Party: A High School Bully Romance - C.M. Stunich Page 0,85

an online grocery order for celery, peanut butter, and raisins, with a rush delivery to the dorms. My lips twitch into a smile as I look back at April. “Obviously you told them to go eat their own toenails, right?”

“Thad and I want to get married and have a family.” April shrugs her shoulders, rubbing her belly affectionately. “Maybe it doesn't make me a feminist, but that's what I want. To raise a bunch of kids with Thad in a cute pink house with a yard and a pet ferret. That's it.”

“Oddly specific,” I say with a soft smile and a laugh. “But that's what feminism is about: you make your own choices, whatever makes you happy. If it's a fucking ferret, it's a fucking ferret.”

“Oh, the ferret is the most important part. Maybe I could get a t-shirt that says Ferret-Loving Feminist Housewife? That'd work for me.”

“I will silkscreen you that shirt!” Luke says, finishing the order and then pointing at April in enthusiasm. “We'll all wear them when we go out for our weekly luncheons.”

“We're going to have weekly luncheons, huh?” I say, lifting a dark brow in response. My natural hair is a blue-black, very similar to Calix's, which makes it a huge pain in the ass to dye. I had to bleach it four times to get my hair the color it is now. “Where we will all live? I was thinking … New York.”

“New Orleans, duh,” Luke says, glancing my way with a smile. “You'll be the artist in residence, Karma; I'll either be a manga artist or studying engineering at the university, probably both. April and Thad will move down there after they both turn eighteen, and we'll help raise the baby—like a proper village.”

“Thad is deathly afraid of alligators, but I bet I could convince him with uh, the sexual act.”

“The sexual act?!” Luke howls, throwing her head back with a laugh. My heart pings strangely in my chest and my lips part in surprise. This is a completely different circumstance to day one, but yet, an eerily similar echo. “I thought I was the only person that called it that.”

“I don't know why I said that,” April laughs, clutching her belly as she chuckles. “I swear, I've never used that term before. That's the term my parents used when they caught me and Thad together. Fucking, that's what I should've said. Fucking.”

“You're such a goof,” Luke says, rolling her brown eyes and moving over to her closet. She takes out the sequin dress shirt I saw her wear the first day, with a strange bow tie made of sticks and dried flowers that I didn’t notice before. “Hey, question about the Devils' Day Party tonight … do we even want to go?”

“What do you mean?” I ask, thinking about Barron and his sketchbook. He most definitely had it with him on some of the nights I was there. What thing is it that I do that triggers him to bring the sketchbook or not, I can't figure, but my plan is to steal it. I feel like to understand him, I have to see what's inside.

“I mean, let's just stay here. We'll order in food. Karma and I can smoke weed, April you can OD on sugar, and we can … I don't know, what do girls do on sleepovers? Paint their nails?”

I roll my eyes at her. She's been to plenty of sleepovers with me.

“You know better than that: we either paint our nails or fuck shit up.” I grin and Luke grins back, probably recalling that time in ninth grade when we snuck out of the moms' house in the middle of the night, pedaled our bikes to the twenty-four hour convenience store, and stole some beers under the guise of buying powdered donuts.

“The donuts do not make us rebels of any sort or breed,” Luke says with total confidence. “So don't even bring that up. But if you're talking about the tiger thing …”

“Can you two stop with the bromance and explain both the donut and the tiger thing to me, please?”

“Luke and I once climbed into a tiger's cage at the wildcat refuge outside of Eureka Springs. The damn cat was even awake and watching us. Fortunately, it was one of the nice ones …”

April shoves up from her chair and turns to face both me and Luke simultaneously, throwing her arms out to either side.

“You can't tell me stuff like that and expect me to stay home