by L V Chase
“Shut the fuck up,” he cuts me off.
I take a step back.
His jaw is clenched and his teeth are bared. “You don’t owe me anything. Stop trying to make something happen between us. You’ll never be good enough for me because you get into dumb situations like the one in the gym. You’re naive. You’re weak. I don’t have the goddamn time in my life to be some fragile woman’s savior. Go be a damsel in distress for someone else, because I’m not interested.”
It takes me a second to realize I’m clenching my hands together so hard that my fingertips are turning red. I relax them and look Klay straight in the eye.
“I’m not a damsel in distress,” I say. “And you didn’t need to save me. I could have dealt with that on my own.”
He laughs. “Yeah. Sure. It looked like you had complete control over that situation.”
“It’s not my fault that you have a savior complex,” I argue. “I didn’t ask you to do anything for me. So, if you should be angry with anybody, it’s yourself. I just wanted to show my gratitude for helping, but I see now that you’re going to martyr yourself no matter what I say. So, go be a martyr for someone else, because I’m not interested either.”
I turn around, heading down the east hallway. Warm tears threaten to come down, but I swallow them back. I don’t believe him for a second. He knows there’s something between us. But I also know that denial is a powerful mental trick that the brain uses to save itself from distress.
My fantasy of him flickers back in my mind. I push it away.
13
Sadie
My brain is swollen with Klay’s words replaying in my head over and over, so I go to sleep to turn off the noise. When I sleep, the fantasy of the two of us together on Devil’s Leap returns. The orgasm wakes me up again. I stare up at my ceiling. The noise returns, biting harder than before the immersive fantasy.
Shut the fuck up.
You will never be good enough for me.
You’re naive. You’re weak.
I don’t have the goddamn time in my life to be some fragile woman’s savior.
He’s a nightmare. He’s the worst type of person—one with so many demons in his head that he unleashes them on everyone else. Or maybe he’s just never been disciplined by his parents, so he thinks lashing out at other people is an appropriate response.
But that doesn’t seem right in my mind. His aggression is genuine and threatening, but when he shoved me against the locker after I spattered him with dead pig fluid, it felt like when he shoved me in the fantasy. And that wasn’t hatred or sociopathy. That was something much more intense.
I need to stop. I’ve been trying to make him out to be a better person than he is. I can’t even remember that when he denied Miranda was his girlfriend, he seemed to be censoring some other girl’s name. He could be taken. My mind keeps trying to deceive me with this fantasy, these imaginary connections, and these fabricated emotions.
My grandmother may have gone to the psychiatric ward, but I’m not going insane for someone who doesn’t even want me.
I turn on my side, looking over at the LED lights of my clock.
1:09 AM. It’s been nearly a week since I lost my memory, and I still don’t know what kind of person I am.
2:54 AM. It’s been nearly a week and all I know is that nothing is right. Everything feels tilted on its axis.
7:25 AM. I’m late.
I scramble out of bed and pull on my jeans. I pull off my nightshirt and throw on the sweater Ethan gave me. I brush my teeth, swig some mouthwash, and fix the one strand of my hair that is determined to stick straight up. Somebody is knocking on the door. If it’s a religious person who thinks I have the time in my morning to hear them talk about my impending death, I might have to slam the door in their face. And then open it back up to run out because I have no idea if Ethan or Emmy is going to show up, and I need to get on the bus. I spit out the mouthwash as the person knocks again.
The person continues knocking as I nearly trip running down the stairs. I whip open the door, wiping off a remnant of toothpaste from my mouth.
Ethan stands at the doorway, holding another gift bag. “Hey, Sadie. The sweater looks good on you.”
I force a smile and pretend to model the sweater for him.
“Yeah, it’s perfect,” I say. “Thank you. I wasn’t sure if you were coming today.”
His forehead furrows. “I always come on Friday.”
“Right, yeah. I know. I just…everything has felt crazy lately, so I didn’t know if your schedule had changed.”
“I wouldn’t change my schedule without telling you.” He raises the bag up, offering it to me. I take it. “I forgot to give you one of the pieces of clothing. You’ll need something for the homecoming dance.”
“Oh, wow.” I open the bag wider.
Even when I can only see the black lace cut-outs and the red silk of the rest of the dress, I know I’d need to take out a loan to ever afford it. A long box is also pushed up against the side of the bag. I set the bag down and pull out the dress. It’s stunning, falling about mid-thigh with the lace spiraling around, getting wider around the waist and the skirt of the dress.
“It’s so beautiful, Ethan,” I say. “Thank you so, so much.”
We must have dated at some point. Nobody spends this much money on somebody they don’t love.
“The shoes are in the box,” he says. “I know knee-highs aren’t your favorite thing in the world, but the stylist said it would go well with the dress.”
I pull out the box, popping off the top. A pair of black leather boots composed of thin straps that intersect over and over, creating a series of X’s, fit snugly in the box. They must have cost nearly as much as the dress.
“Wow,” I repeat. “I can’t…I feel like I should be doing something for you, but all I could afford to get you is a slice of pizza or something. A medium pizza if I search for some quarters.”
He laughs. “Ah, Sadie, you know you never owe me. I do have a small request though.”
“Anything,” I promise.
“Go to the dance with me.”
Hesitation grips me for a second. I’m not sure why. It’s a small request, he’s been more generous to me than anyone has ever been toward me, and it doesn’t include the promise of sex.
“I’d love to,” I manage to say.
He bursts into a smile, flashing those perfect teeth. He points towards his white Maserati.
“Well, sweet Sadie, let’s get on my white horse, and I’ll take you to school. It won’t be that bad of a day while I anticipate our upcoming night together.”
I get into the passenger side of his car. As he starts to drive out, he manages to get in front of the bus, which feels like a sign that the world is finally giving me a break. If it keeps going this way, I might survive without memories of the last two years. I’ll still feel like I’m missing a large portion of myself, but with how my life has been going with Klay and Roman, maybe it’s better that I’m missing that part of me.
As we drive over a hill, the fantasy with Klay invades my thoughts again.
“Where’s Devil’s Leap?” I ask.
“Devil’s Leap?” Ethan asks. “It’s on the east side of town. You’d have to go down Macaroon Street and go off on a dirt road to get to it. Why?”
I shrug. “I heard it’s pretty.”
“It’s just a cliff,” he says. “Where a lot of dumb people drive off of it. That’s why it’s called Devil’s Leap. It might be more appropriate to call it Dummy’s Leap.”
He slows down as we approach another bus. A motorcycle moves around the bus. The cars waiting on the other side of the road honk at the motorcyclist.
“Can I ask you about Klay?” she asks. “You two seem to know each other.”
“What makes you think that?”
“After he…um, hit Roman, he was ready to leave class, but you talked to him and managed to convince him to return,” I say. “I figured you two had to know
each other pretty well if you could convince him to do anything.”
He chuckles, but it sounds forced. “It sounds like you have the right idea about Klay. What else do you need to know?”
“He seems…sometimes he seems like a nice guy and sometimes he’s cruel,” I say. “I just don’t understand him.”
“Do you like him?” he asks. There’s an edge to his voice. It almost sounds like jealousy, but it feels a little more sinister.
“No, nothing like that,” I say. “It just makes it difficult for us to do our science project together. He keeps changing his mind, and I can’t predict his behavior. I never know how to bring up our project when I don’t know how he’ll react.”
“I see,” he says. His tone makes me think of a smooth lake with a monster waiting just below the surface. “Do you have examples of this happening?”
I glance out the window. His sudden interest makes me feel like I’ve stepped over a line. The bus moves forward, but it takes him a few seconds to start driving again.
“It’s nothing specific,” I say. “Just sometimes I’ll ask him about the project, and he’s nice about it. Other times, I ask him about the project, and he’s not nice about it.”
He glances in his rearview mirror, frowning, before giving me a quick smile.
“I’m sorry about that Sadie,” he says. “I’ll ask Klay about his erratic behavior, but…I don’t mean to be a bully or anything, but you shouldn’t trust Klay. I’m not exaggerating when I say he’s a sociopath. That might be why he can switch his personality so quickly.”
“That makes sense,” I say. His explanation does make the most sense, considering Klay’s behavior and how quick he is to resort to violence. A tiny, rigid part of me feels like there’s something else, but I need to stop trusting my gut. My gut is how I ended up the target of Klay’s anger.
I look over at Ethan. His shoulders are tense, but the rest of his body is relaxed. Ethan would be a much better choice for me to be attracted to. He’s dependable. He shows concern for my happiness. He’s bought me all of these clothes and the cell phone to fit in at school. He’s been willing to drive me to school. He’s attractive and kind. What more could I want?
Klay. Despite it all, I want Klay.
14
Klay
The parking lot in front of the school implicitly belongs to the seniors and some juniors. It’s been that way for years. I used to love this parking lot—a place where we didn’t need to interact with the underclassmen or any adults. Its appeal lessened after I met Sadie, who didn’t have a car, but now it’s worse. It’s a slab of asphalt filled with desperate people, willing to do anything to get attention or approval.
If it weren’t for Sadie, I’d be fully convinced again that the world was better off with the Society controlling it. If the Society only recruits the most intelligent, most ambitious, most successful people, how could that be any worse than the all idiots I see every day? I don’t like my father, but he’s not stupid.
I asked Sadie about that once. She asked me if I thought Stalin, Mao, and their lieutenants were intelligent. I admitted they likely were, and she reminded me that just because someone was intelligent, it didn’t mean their intentions were benevolent.
That’s the part of Sadie that I miss the most. Flickers of her appear when I talk to Sadie now, but I’d never felt more like I was talking to the intact version of her than when she called me on my shit after I accused her of being weak and naive. I’ve spent so much time worrying about her being dosed with the amnesia drugs twice, but yesterday, it felt like the complete version of her. It gave me some hope that when this is all over, I haven’t completely demolished her life.
I look down at my hands. My knuckles are torn up, and the flesh is a mix of purple and blue. I should regret going after Roman again, but there’s no other way that situation could have gone. He shouldn’t have taken her clothes, and he shouldn’t have grabbed the front of her towel while she was wrapped up in it. He’s lucky I didn’t put my hands around his neck and squeezed until something popped.
“Thanks, Klay,” Miranda says, scribbling one last note on her math homework.
I glance up from my hands.
“I’m glad you understand what’s going on in math,” she says. “Swing by the restaurant some time. I’ll slip you some of our craft beer.”
She walks away. I clench my fist as I see the back of Roman’s head across the parking lot. I doubt he’ll retaliate, but sometimes it’s difficult to predict the behavior of an idiot.
Ethan pulls up next to my Jeep. Sadie sits in the passenger side, animatedly talking to him.
Something’s changed between them. Tension swells in my shoulders.
“Thank you again, Ethan,” she says as she gets out of his car. “I’m sorry to run, but I didn’t finish my Spanish homework, and I’ll need to squeeze in what I can during homeroom.”
“Go ahead,” he says, a cocky smile cutting through his face. “We can talk about tomorrow later.”
She flashes him a quick smile. She shifts her gaze at me, but quickly dashes toward the school before I can study her expression.
Ethan walks over to me. He brushes his fingers over the hood of my Jeep, a fucking daring move for a man who’d prefer to keep his fingers.
“So…” he says to me. “I had an interesting conversation with our Sacrifice.”
“She has a name,” I say.
He shrugs. “I don’t care. What I do care about is what she told me. She’s under the impression that you’re not completely a nice guy, which baffles me because the rules for you are clear.”
He stares at me, his eyebrow slightly raised. He thinks he’s trapped me, but if he knew more, he wouldn’t be fishing for information. He has the bait in the water, but there’s no hook to snare me.
Still, he’s a little too ready to buy a hook for me to relax.
“You know me, Ethan,” I say, shoving my hands in my pockets. “It’s just tough for me to act like a nice guy.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” he says. “From what I’ve seen, you can act just fine. In fact, you might be better at acting than the rest of us.”
He won’t let go of this anytime soon. He knows something’s going on. His family and Roman’s were suspicious after we told them about Sadie accidentally hearing the truth about the Hunt.
As a kind of punishment, they made up this ridiculous rule. I’m not allowed to harm, threaten, or bully Sadie. I have to play it straight, like a gentleman. They say it’s because they don’t trust me not to cheat somehow, which isn’t far from the truth.
Roman thinks that the rule will give him an edge, because Sadie is a glutton for pain. Ethan thinks he can be a better gentleman than me. Which is probably true.
“I don’t know what to tell you, Ethan,” I say. “You’re better at being a nice guy than I am. I find that shit intolerable. If I have a problem with someone, I’m going to tell them. If I want something, I’ll take it. I tried being nice. It didn’t stick.”
He forces a smile. “I just want to know that when I win, I’m winning with competent competition. If you’re messing up the Hunt with erratic behavior, it makes it hard to say that I actually won. At this point, it’s more like Sadie fell into my lap—wonderful in theory, but in practice, it’s a cheap win.”
“What the fuck are you two talking about?” Roman grumbles as he walks up to us. “Ethan bragging about getting to second place or something?”
“Your face looks like a Picasso,” Ethan says to him.
He’s not wrong. Roman’s face is a masterpiece of blue and purple.
“You can thank that asshole,” Roman says, pointing to me with his thumb.
“Oh, I heard about it,” Ethan says. “You’re being outdone in your own scheme to act overly masculine.”
Roman throws up his hands. “It’s not fuckin’ working! I’m going full alpha, in the same way this shit stain did, and I’m not getting Sadie to even look twice at me.”
<
br /> “That’s tragic,” Ethan says. He pats Roman on the shoulder. “I hope your family enjoyed being rich, because once the Society sees that they bred a loser, they’re going to be transferring their resources to my family. The rich get richer, you know.”
Ethan locks his car and leaves the parking lot, heading toward the school. Roman shifts his weight. I pull my hands out of my pockets, ready for his fists.
“Let me tell you something,” Roman says to me. “The only reason I haven’t destroyed you is because I need to destroy him first.”
“I find that hard to believe,” I say. “I’ve never been second place in anything in my life.”
He snorts. “Right. Let’s pretend this is a first for you.”
“I’m surprised I didn’t get reprimanded for that,” I say, nodding towards his face.
“Oh, my parents aren’t home right now. They’re in Bali,” he says. “But I won’t tell them what happened, and neither will my boys. I forgive you for the sucker punch. But you better believe that next time, it’s going to be me that’s beating the shit out of you. Watch your goddamn back.”
He takes a threatening step toward me. I don’t move. He sneers and bumps against my shoulder before continuing on toward the school.
Knowing Roman, it’s not an empty threat, but it’s not a high priority for me. Ethan is the far more dangerous one.
15
Sadie
Ethan. I should be attracted to Ethan.
He’s the kind of man who wouldn’t refuse to work on a project with me. He’d never call me naive or weak. He’d never shove me against a locker. He’s the kind of man my parents would have wanted me to be with.
But seeing Klay in the parking lot, in homeroom, and in biology is a slow poison, inducing a fever, muscle contractions, and delusions. The delusions are all about that fantasy of us on Devil’s Leap, even when I know it’s a scenario that will never happen. I try to focus on his bruised and swollen knuckles to remind myself of his true personality, but staring at his hands only makes me imagine them on me in a different way. It’s an obsession that I can’t explain.
