by Elle East
I look up into Daire’s hard green eyes which are laser focused on me. All my books land on the ground with a thump and the papers flutter down after them.
“What the hell?” I start but Daire just walks away. He leaves a large boot print on my textbook.
I’m so pissed. He knocked everything out of my hands on purpose.
I bend down to pick up my scattered belongings. Everyone in the hall is snickering at me. I’m so mad that I want to do something rash, but I know I can’t. To retaliate would be suicide. I just gather all my stuff then race away in the opposite direction to get out of that hallway.
It’s hard to get a break when you live with one of your bullies.
“Tough day at school?” Brax asks with a smirk as I walk into the house.
He and Theo are sitting on the couch smoking weed and watching music videos on the large TV with a crack in the screen. I open my mouth to tell him off, think better of it and close it again. I stomp up to my room and slam the door instead.
An hour later I can hear Olivia’s home—because I can hear the muffled sounds of her laughing at whatever stupid thing Theo and Brax are saying. I go downstairs, not because I want to but because I don’t want Olivia to be alone with them.
“Hello, Highness!” Brax says as I walk into the ratty living room.
Olivia’s sitting in one of the chairs next to them.
“Want to get food?” I ask her.
“Nah, I’m good. I ate with my friends. We went to a convenience store on the way home.”
Disappointed, I head into the kitchen. The pizza I bought yesterday is gone. Typical. I head over to the cupboards to look through them again, even though I know from my previous searches that they are bare. However, my tenacity pays off this time and I actually find a half-empty box of granola bars.
I grab it and take it with me. As I’m about to leave, the foster mom’s sleazy boyfriend comes into the room and I internally groan. I try to slip out quickly, but he moves much faster than I would have thought possible for him and blocks my way.
“How was your day at school?” he asks with a lecherous grin. I’m sure that in his drunk, scrambled brain he probably thinks he’s being suave.
“Fine,” I say flatly and try to go around him.
He won’t move. In exasperation I turn around and walk straight out the backdoor.
“Why you got to be such a tease?” he calls after me as I slam the door shut.
The backyard is pitch black, but I know from looking at it in the day that it’s full of long grass, weeds, and a large rotting tree. There’s junk strewn about and I know I have to be careful where I’m walking.
Before I can take a step, I see a bright glowing cherry in the dark and I freeze.
“Hello?” I call out tentatively.
This is a really bad neighborhood so seeing someone hiding in a dark backyard could literally be a killer. I see the glowing point flame brightly again and then fall to the ground as the person drops the cigarette and stomps it out. Everything is black once more.
I don’t move. I’m too scared that at any second this person is going to race out of the dark and grab me. I don’t know if I’d make it back inside in time because I’m already a couple feet away from the backdoor. The rotting back porch is sinking beneath my feet.
The sounds of footsteps moving through the grass reaches my ears and shocks me into movement. I race back to the door and throw it open, but the person behind me is quicker and they slam the door shut before I can run inside.
I spin around and look up into Daire’s devilish face. There’s a bit of light coming through the window next to the door and I can clearly see all his striking features. My relief when I realize it’s him instead of some strange man coming to kill me is only temporary when I remember that Daire is dangerous and could do anything to me.
I’m pinned to the door by his large body. His arm is above my head from when he slammed the door shut, boxing me in.
I somehow find my voice and ask him what he wants.
He doesn’t answer, just gives me a hard, unreadable glare. He looks like he’s trying to see straight into me. Like he’s trying to look down into my soul and learn all my secrets, all my weaknesses, so that he can use them against me.
Finally, he talks, and it chills me to the bone.
“I want you to suffer,” he says in a soft voice that is at odds with his words.
“Why?” I ask weakly.
“Because I hate you.”
He gives me a long, assessing look before releasing me at last. I’m too shocked to do much as he pushes past me and heads into the house. I’m left alone in the darkness on the back porch, wondering what the hell I did to make him hate me and realizing that I’m in way more trouble than I thought.
5
I can’t breathe. I think I’m about to die.
My legs are thrashing in the freezing cold water. I’m desperately grabbing at the hand on my head but his fingers are like steel and I can’t move them. All I can see is murky green and patches of light where the sun has managed to penetrate the stagnant water of the pond behind Marter High.
I’ve been fighting with all my might and in a last ditch effort to escape the hand that’s holding me under, I kick my feet against the cement wall that makes up one side of the pond, but it’s no use. Daire is way stronger than I am and I’m at a disadvantage in the water. He’s going to drown me and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.
The ugly greens are turning into blacks as I lose consciousness. I can’t fight anymore and I start to go limp. The pond is deep and I can’t feel the bottom. I wonder if I’ll sink down to the dark depths before I float up to the surface. I wonder how long it’ll take for someone to call the police and get my body. I wonder what’ll happen with my sister.
Just on the brink of passing out, when all the green has been replaced by black, strong, rough hands slip under my arms and I feel my limp body being roughly dragged out of the water. They dump me on the hard cement walkway next to the pond. I start coughing out mouthfuls of water while trying to gasp for breaths of delicious air.
It feels amazing to be able to breathe again. My head is cloudy from nearly passing out but my adrenaline is keeping me conscious. I just escaped a close death, but I’m still in danger and I need to get out of here.
I spit out the last of the pond water in my lungs and look upwards towards my aggressors. All four of them are surrounding me. Alec, the fourth member of the Vicious Crew, is off to the side with his muscled arms crossed in front of him. Theo and Brax are closest to me and I figure that they were the ones who pulled me from the water. Daire is standing front and center, looking at me like I’m garbage.
I still can’t believe it. He almost just fucking drowned me. I knew I needed to watch out for them—even he warned me—but I never in a million years would have thought it could go this far. I never thought he would really hurt me.
This place has rules that I hadn’t understood until now. The rules here are that there are no rules.
At Marter High, there are gangs of violent guys who are covered in tattoos and looked like full-grown men. This is nothing like anything I have ever experienced before and my ignorance, my underestimating the danger, almost cost me my life—it actually still might. I’m still on the floor in front of them and still at their mercy. It’s not over yet.
I know I have to get away. I try to drag my weak body up to a standing position, but before I can, Brax and Theo are at my sides again, gripping me under my arms.
“Strip her,” Daire says coldly.
“What?!” I cry in a water-soaked voice.
I try to grab onto my clothes to stop them from being removed, but my fingers are useless and frozen from the cold. They make quick work of stripping me to my bra and panties. They even remove my shoes.
I’m left standing there almost naked and shivering in the cold air. The rest of the school is gathered on the gentle hill next to the pond, watching gleefully like
a pack of hyenas. They look like they can’t wait to see what happens next. Like they are out for blood.
I try to cover myself by crossing one arm over my chest and putting my other hand in front of my panties, but it’s pointless. Daire is looming before me like a larger-than-life villain. All chiseled jaw, tall hair, and heartless eyes.
He just tried to drown me. I still can’t believe it.
When Theo grabbed my backpack and ran away with it, I shouldn’t have chased him. When he ran outside and behind the school, I should have turned around and gone back inside. When I caught him at the top of the hill that led down to the small gross pond, I shouldn’t have tried to furiously push his giant, unmovable body.
When he threw my bag down the hill, I shouldn’t have chased after it—especially when I saw all the students gathered there. I should have seen Daire and turned around. But I didn’t. Before I knew what was happening, Daire had pushed me in the pond and held me under.
Daire motions with his chin towards the crowd.
“Aren’t so high and mighty now without your fancy clothes are you, Highness?” He sneers when he says the nickname and it’s the first time that I notice one of his canine teeth is capped in silver. “Get out of here,” he finishes darkly.
I look around helplessly, but there’s no sympathy on anyone’s face. My clothes are lying in a wet pile on the cement and I go to reach for them but Theo takes a step to block me. I look up into his eyes, but they are as unreadable as Daire’s.
I take a tentative step backwards, starting to go around the pond, but the other members of the gang move to block me. They clearly want me to go up the hill through the crowd.
I need to get out of here, it’s not safe, so I start walking up. My bare feet scrape over small sticks and stones and I’m quickly bleeding. The water was freezing and now that I’m practically naked my wet body is shivering violently in the cold air.
The first strike hits me in the lower back. I turn around in shock. I grab my back and my hand comes back covered in sticky liquid. What is that?
The next egg hits me in the front of my thigh. After the first couple, the floodgates open and all the students start pelting me with raw eggs. They hurt when they hit and then burst on impact. I start running to get out of there as quickly as possible.
I run up the hill through the hail of eggs. When I reach the top, there're fewer students and I see that the schoolyard is almost empty. I run past the entire building and straight out to the road in front—and I don’t stop.
I keep running straight to my foster home. People on the street turn to look at me in shock, but I don’t care. I imagine a girl running in her underwear and covered head-to-toe in goo is quite a surprising sight.
By the time I make it home, the bottoms of my feet are completely covered in raw bleeding skin from running on the asphalt. I’m shivering so violently I can barely unlock and open the door.
Thank god the foster mom’s sleazy boyfriend isn’t around to see me, he’d probably think I was trying to seduce him or something. That fucking pervert.
I race up the stairs and into the washroom. I turn on the taps to almost scalding and jump in. As the hot water defrosts my shivering body, I continue shaking, but for a different reason.
Daire and the other three guys had planned all of that. They tricked me into going out to that pond. They told the other students about it so that they would all be waiting for me too. They planned to almost drown me and then make me walk naked through the crowd as the other students threw eggs at me.
Tears start to roll down my cheeks and mingle with the hot water. I thought I was going to die.
I stay there until the water runs cold.
6
When Olivia gets home, I drag her upstairs and ask her what she heard about the incident. She hadn’t been in the crowd—I knew I would have noticed her. She says that she heard I fell in the pond and that Daire tried to help me get out. She heard that I had then stripped my wet clothes off and run up the hill in tears.
My blood runs cold as I listen to her.
“Why did you do that?” she asks incredulously.
I was planning to go to the cops and report them, but as Olivia talks I realize just how much power the Vicious Crew have over the school. They’d gotten a quarter of the student body, the ones that had been at the pond, to lie for them about what happened. Even if I went to the authorities, I had no proof, and no one would testify against them—even if someone wanted to help me they’d be too scared for their own safety.
“Oh, and some girl gave me your backpack. I guess you forgot it when you ran off?” she adds and hands it to me. Through pure luck, everything is still inside it and undamaged.
I tell Olivia what actually happened, and she’s annoyingly skeptical.
“They’ve always been friendly to me,” she says.
“I know, but please believe me. I wouldn’t lie about this. Just promise me you’ll stay away from them. Promise!”
I grab her arms and I must look so desperate and crazy that she can’t help but reluctantly agree to avoid them. I’m relieved, but know that we are still in great danger.
I take the next day off school. I don’t care if I’m reported to the foster care system for ditching—and it turns out that I don’t need to worry, the school staff are too busy dealing with stabbings and drugs to bother calling my house.
After that, I do everything in my power to avoid Daire or any of his gang. I sneak around the school like a fugitive. I walk into my classrooms right as class starts, and dart out the second it ends. In between, I hide in the creepy basement. No one ever goes there because the students are so far gone they openly smoke in the halls—they don’t need a secret place to hide like normal kids at normal schools where the staff have at least a little bit of control.
At home I hide in my room with the door locked and barricaded, and luckily for me Olivia—for once—does what I ask and avoids Brax and any of the guys who come over. I wear the plainest clothes I have to avoid drawing attention to myself—and it seems to work. Before, all the girls were trying to fight me and all the guys would say vulgar things to me as I walked by, but now I became invisible. Everyone just ignored my existence, and it was a massive improvement.
I continue in this miserable existence for several days, just scurrying around like a frightened mouse. It’s so different from how I used to be. I used to be the girl who would stand up for herself, the girl who didn’t take any shit—but yet here I was, hiding in an abandoned janitor’s closet, eating a protein bar I bought from a convenience store.
I sigh and look at my phone. Class starts in a couple minutes so I pack up and head upstairs. I walk through the halls, my eyes darting around, taking stock of everything that’s happening so I won’t be caught off guard. I catch the tail-end of a conversation as two girls rush past.
“—Olivia is volunteering for the pact… ”
My ears perk up and I look at where they are headed. They are rushing to a side door that leads out to the courtyard.
It’s probably not my Olivia, I reason with myself. Olivia is a common name—even though I haven’t met any other Olivias at this school. I should probably just head to class—but I can’t stop my feet from leading me to the side door.
I look out through the dirty cracked glass and see a large crowd of students. There are a couple of guys in the center. I recognize them as Seth, the guy with the green hair who harassed me the first day of school, and the others are the crazy-looking guys he always hangs out with. At one point in the halls I overheard someone say that they are called the “East Marters”, one of the gangs of Marter High.
I watch for a few seconds but nothing much seems to be happening. I’m about to turn away when suddenly I see my sister walk out of the crowd to stand with the East Marters and my heart drops.
“What the fuck?” I mumble as I throw open the door and run over.
I’m too far away so I can’t hear what’s happening. In desperation
, I turn to the girl next to me and ask what’s going on. She looks and smirks when she recognizes who I am. She knows that’s my sister.
“She’s volunteering for the ‘Threesome Pact’ with the East Marters.”
“What the fuck is that?” It doesn’t sound good at all and my heart sinks even lower.
“Every semester they choose a new girl for the Pact. It means that she’ll have to do three things that they ask her to—and they can be any three things, and she can’t refuse or she’ll be a social outcast and tortured by everyone else for the rest of the year.”
“But what does she get out of it??”
“She’s now property of the East Marters so she’s protected and popular. It’s like a huge honor. Even after your semester is over you’re still popular. Being an ex-East Marters’ chick is still a big deal.”
“It’s sounds awful.” I look in horror at Olivia standing in the center of the crowd. She’s beaming, but I know her, I can tell that she’s scared.
“Yeah, well, you haven’t been here very long,” she says in a slightly offended tone. “Being under the East Marters’ protection is actually very valuable. They are one of the strongest gangs at this school—second only to the Vicious Crew. This town is dangerous, and it’s easy to get into trouble here. If you don’t have people protecting you, watching your back, you’re as good as dead.” I can hear a note of sadness in her voice. “And that girl, coming from the family that she does, she needs protection more than anyone—anyone except maybe you.”
“What kinds of things will she be asked to do?” I don’t know if I even want to know.
“It’s called the ‘Threesome Pact’ for a reason,” she says with a smirk.
That settles it. Without a word, I start pushing through the crowd. I can’t let her do this.
