by S. Massery
“I like the idea of it. Numbers and rigidity. There’s always a solution, you know?”
“An answer to every problem,” I muse. “That is appealing.”
“Okay.” He sets down his fork. “Rapid question time. No thinking, just answering.”
I shake my head. “No.”
“Why?”
“My answers aren’t free.” I know it’s an odd thing to say, but I can’t help but feel like people take a piece of me with every answer I give. It’s always been like that. I glance down at the sandwich on my plate, suddenly not hungry. “Why are you so curious?”
He lifts one shoulder. “To be perfectly blunt, you’re intriguing. It isn’t just your hair, either, which I know was a crass way to start a conversation. And you have a reputation.”
Oh god.
I swallow. “A reputation.”
“Everyone watches you like you might explode,” he says. “I guess that’s what I mean.”
I should be shocked that he’s saying these things to me. That he probably sought me out before class just to ask me these questions, to get to the heart of the intrigue. I’m not shocked, though I am insulted.
I stand. “Right, well, I wouldn’t want to detonate on you.”
Idiot. I know I’m overreacting, but I can’t reel it in. I snatch my bag and rush away. I shove past people, forgoing the elevator for the stairs. By the time I get to the second floor, I’m out of breath. I drop onto the top step and put my head in my hands.
A story below me, Mitchel is probably wondering what the fuck just happened. I wish I knew, but… does everyone think I’m a bomb about to go off?
They’re referring to the time I snapped… approximately three weeks after my video went viral. There were reporters on campus in disguise as students, and one had already got me to open up before I realized their line of questioning was fishy. That was the height of rebellion around campus. When I realized who they were…
I had to meet with the dean of students, but Liam’s warning was clear. I kept my mouth shut, lying about not remembering.
They can’t make you tell them what you don’t know.
I jolt.
Someone told me that. The memory of them whispering it in my ear is crystal clear, but I don’t know who said it. Or why.
I shiver and haul myself up. I can go be a time bomb in class, not wasting time in a stairwell. Exiting onto the second floor, I take a quick look around and skirt the lounge. There’s a group of girls doing homework in some of the cushioned chairs, bags and notebooks sprawled out everywhere. In another cluster, guys are laughing and joking.
Liam is with them.
I can’t help but slow down and watch them for a moment. He sits closest to the window, slouched back. He’s quiet—and somber, it looks like. None of the guys give him shit, though. And when his gaze swings to mine, it only takes a moment for the rest of them to spot me, too.
I duck my head and keep moving, intent on getting to the stairs that’ll take me to the third floor. This building was originally two separate buildings, and they connected it by adding an addition on the first floor—the dining hall and gym. The side with the elevator goes to professors’ offices and the financial aid department.
“Hey, Skylar,” one of the guys calls. “Come here.”
I walk faster.
“Where you running, Buckley?” another yells. “Scared to talk to us?”
Time bomb.
Why didn’t I just turn Liam in that day in the dean’s office? Confess to going to an illegal fighting club?
Deep down, I know the real reason wasn’t fear or Liam’s intimidation. It was a misguided…
It was just misguided.
“Hey,” Liam says, his hand landing on my shoulder.
I whirl around, eyes wide.
“What’s wrong with you?” I whisper. “You can’t just grab me in public.”
He raises an eyebrow. “I can’t just grab you in public,” he repeats. “Okay.”
“That’s assault,” I continue. My voice is getting louder. “Which is something you’re—”
“Don’t finish that sentence.” His voice is gentle, but the threat…
There’s a current underneath his words. Mom always used to marvel at the connection I had to Liam. How we could read each other’s body language almost like we were reading our minds. “A connection forged in fire,” Mom would say under her breath.
We weren’t friends.
Just neighbors.
He was my confidante for a short while, but Jake and I had the better friendship. He was my age. Nice, even. When they moved next door the year before high school, I thought my world was ending. Not one cute boy, but two. One brooding, one friendly.
One with a savior complex, and the other…
I press my lips together and shake my head.
“I can familiarize you with assault, Buckley.” His gaze travels up and down my body. “Did you think about me after I left?”
No, I want to lie. But I did. I laid in bed and couldn’t stop thinking about every last detail. The way he held my wrists, my throat. The sting of his teeth in my ear. His fingers… I had to finish the job myself just to get some relief.
Maybe he senses where my thoughts drift, because the smirk returns.
He chucks me under the chin lightly, then returns to his friends.
What the hell?
I’m more confused than anything—but I have a feeling dissecting his behavior will get me nowhere. This is a boy who fights for money. He built a reputation for being cruel in the circle. Everyone at Howl who went up against Liam was trying to prove something to themselves.
I wonder if I’m trying to prove something to myself by going up against him.
He was infamous before my video blew him into the spotlight. He carried that same energy in high school, the sort of easy swagger that made everyone fall in line. His friends had it, too. They were kings. Why would college change that?
I spot one of the girls in Whitney’s friend group. She’s in my next class, an environmental economics class that has so far proven to be interesting, if not a bit off-the-cuff.
“Taryn,” I call.
She pauses at the door and grins.
“Hey, Skylar.” Her attention goes over my shoulder. “Were they giving you trouble?”
“Nah. Liam just wanted to, um, ask about something from our math class.”
We head upstairs together.
“The campus is buzzing,” Taryn says. “There are rumors that RJ and Colt are trying to get Howl going again. I shouldn’t tell you, because… well.”
I force a laugh. “Right. I learned my lesson.”
Did I?
“They probably wouldn’t let me within a hundred yards of the place,” I joke.
She grins. “Yeah. It’s a bit too violent for my taste, but it was fun to see Liam that one time.”
“He hates me,” I inform her. “I’m pretty sure if I was dying in an alley and he was my only hope, he’d just leave me there.”
“Those fighters…” She shivers. “I don’t know. I wouldn’t want to be on their bad side.”
Tell me about it.
We get to the classroom. She usually sits in the front, but today she follows me to my usual back corner.
“You’re so smart,” she whispers. “You have an A in this class, don’t you? Why do you always sit in the back?”
I shrug. “People give me a wide berth. Haven’t you noticed?”
I tap my cheek, and she glances around. Sure enough, the students filing in automatically seem to give us a little extra room. Like just sitting beside me will drag their name through the mud.
But now, I think it might be more than that.
They want to see the fireworks from a safe distance.
“Well, I don’t give a fuck what they think.” She unloads her bag. Taryn Rixby is all of five-feet-nothing, weighs maybe a hundred pounds soaking wet, but right now she seems ready to take on the whole c
lassroom. She shoves her dark-framed glasses up her nose and offers me a smile. Reassurance.
I can only nod.
She’ll see that we don’t really fit together. I don’t fit anywhere anymore. The hair, the piercing, and my clothes see to that on a regular basis. It’s my best weapon to keep people away from me.
Because maybe the rumors are right, and I’m going to detonate one day. At the rate we’re going, it could be this year. This month.
I’ve been pushed to the breaking point, and if I follow the trail back… it ends at Liam.
At Howl.
“You okay?” Taryn whispers.
I jolt, then glance at her. “Sorry. Just… a lot on my mind.”
Class begins, and I focus back on the professor. Just one more class to go, and I can get back to my apartment. To peace and quiet and a judgement-free zone.
6
Liam
Skylar’s class ends at four.
She’s one of the last out the door, probably because she always sits in the far corner of the room, but this afternoon, she’s not alone. Taryn Rixby is with her, busy holding her phone in her mouth as she ties her dark hair up.
Disgusting habit, honestly. Our phones collect every germ possible. Pockets, surfaces, our hands.
Instead of splitting away like I would’ve anticipated, the two go across the quad toward the library.
“What are you doing?” I ask. Except, I’m so far behind her, she doesn’t know I’m here. Watching.
Maybe stalking.
I follow her into the library and take a seat across the large, open space. Again, she doesn’t seem to notice me. Her and Taryn spread their books out across a table.
With a sigh—maybe a groan—I pull out the math homework and get started on it. It’s hard to concentrate in here, but I do my best to ignore the whispers. They look at me and they see the guy from the video, who beat up a guy double my weight. Baker had a few inches on me, too. It’s been two fucking years, and people are still dredging it up.
My phone chirps, and someone hisses.
Yes, literally fucking hisses.
It’s easy to locate the hisser. The girl has too-big glasses and a headband with cat ears. I glare until she packs up her bags and moves away.
The text is from my little brother.
Jake: Check the news.
Me: I’m in the library. Can’t you just fucking tell me?
Jake: Dick.
Jake: [LINK]
I roll my eyes and click on it. It goes to a live broadcast, so I slide an earbud in. I keep half my attention on Skylar and Taryn, but they’re too deeply engrossed in their homework.
I hate the news anchors. They royally fucked up my life by grabbing that video and blasting it everywhere. It might not have spread as it did without their help, and the tabloids. Everyone wanted to know the fighters, the school, the location, the crowd. The fucking logistics.
No one gave a shit about the lives they were ruining.
This anchor is someone I haven’t seen before. She’s standing by one of the Ashburn College signs outside our fence, a stone’s throw away from a gate that’s still locked. She motions to it as she speaks.
“The school has been taking safety precautions with their students, and it was said by many to be an extreme move. The body of Amber Huck was found near the Boston Commons early this morning. Right now, investigators are confirming that her murder is related to an assault charge Ms. Huck had filed on her boyfriend late last year. Her parents…”
I close out of the video and shake my head. For a minute, I had thought…
I collect my bags and rise from the table, not giving Skylar and her friend another look. My obsession with her will undoubtedly spring up again, but she’s not going anywhere.
Maybe now they’ll take the damn chains off those gates.
7
Sky
I type in the code on the new alarm system and head outside. It’s been a week of things slowly slipping back to normal. It was like Amber Huck’s disappearance triggered mass panic, and her death eased everyone’s fears.
Funny how death has a way of doing that, but something so simple as one girl falling off the face of the earth can cause an avalanche of action.
Liam went back to normal, too, and that stings more than I want to admit. For a few days, I thought he might be coming back around—but it turns out Amber was a trigger for that, too. It’s not like there was any reason for him to be worried about me…
But the fact that he was made me feel good.
“Stupid,” I tell myself. Stupid to feel good that someone who hates me can also care.
I push open the door of my apartment building and freeze.
There’s snow on the ground.
We’re only a few weeks into October—it can’t snow. Ugh.
Across the street, Mitchel Norton walks with his head down. He hasn’t made much contact since I ran out of the dining hall. I guess he figured he didn’t want to be a casualty. Like most of the school, it’s easier to stay away.
I meander, kicking snow with my boots. My footwear was a lucky choice—I guess we’re getting to the season of checking out the window before getting dressed. Is that how normal adults do it?
My phone rings, and I fish it out of my pocket.
“Hey, Mom,” I answer.
“Hi, honey. How are you? On your way to class?”
I emailed her and Dad my class schedule at the start of the semester, but she’s the one who tracks it with religious fervor.
“Yep. It snowed here.”
“You used to love the snow,” she says. “Everything about winter, really. It always drove your father nuts. He’d be the one bundled up chasing after you every afternoon.”
I snort. “Really?”
For some reason, I can’t picture Dad doing that. I must’ve been young to not remember it, and that seems like a monumental memory. The sort of thing you’d hold on to.
Right?
She continues, ignoring my surprise, “I’d be waiting inside, trying to tempt you back with hot cocoa. It rarely worked.”
Huh.
“Well, I don’t think I like it now.” The cold seeps through my jacket. “But it’s still pretty.”
She pauses. “Honey, I was really calling to check in with you about that girl.”
That girl.
The dead one, she means.
“Amber Huck?”
“Yes.” Another pause. “So? How are you doing?”
I kick at the snow again. It’ll be gone by this afternoon, once the sun breaks through the clouds. “I’m fine. Liam acted weird for all of two seconds, but it isn’t like I knew her. The news said it was her ex-boyfriend. He had a history of assault.”
I’ve never been in an abusive relationship. I can’t say I’ve ever been in a serious relationship at all, normal or otherwise. There hasn’t been anyone worth taking that leap for. My senior year, Jake went to the school dances with me. He was the perfect date: he held the doors, then later held my hair when I puked after drinking too much. He never tried to kiss me.
Sure, I’ve been kissed, among other things. But—
“I just worry.” She’s picking at a scabbed-over wound.
I shake myself away from that line of thought. Sometimes I run toward the dangerous zones in my mind, the ones holding the sealed-up boxes. I made the mistake of trying to dig them up once, metaphorically speaking, and missed school for a week.
“Skylar.”
“I’m fine,” I say. “Everything has been normal.”
“If you need to see Dr. Penn again…”
I snort. “She’s in Rose Hill. That’s a bit of a far commute for a biweekly therapy appointment, don’t you think?”
Trauma messes with the brain, and my brain has carried the broken label for a while. I began seeing Dr. Penn, a clinical psychologist, when I was thirteen. At first, I saw her every other day. That lasted a year, and we gradually cut back. Right before I left for colle
ge, I was seeing her twice a month.
But as for the reason that landed me in her office in the first place?
I don’t know.
My mind created the boxes where the scary things reside, and I haven’t tried to open them. Not fully, anyway—remember when I said I missed a week of school? That was just from considering the boxes. I wouldn’t even try in her office, curled on the couch with one of her fuzzy pillows in my lap.
The definition of a safe space.
“The memories may come back,” Mom says, and she sounds a bit defensive about it. “We’ve been working so hard—”
“Yeah, it’s been a hardship for you,” I mutter.
“Watch your tone,” Mom snaps.
Guilt flutters through me. She’s right—she has done a lot for me. She even put up with my insufferable father for far more years than she deserved, just so I would be secure. But now he’s gone, and all of our relationships are healing.
“Sorry.” I stuff my free hand in my pocket.
Up ahead, Mitchel stops at an intersection and glances around. When he spots me, he waves.
I wave back.
“My friend is up ahead,” I tell her. “I’ll talk to you later?”
She sighs. “That’s fine. Just keep one eye turned inward, honey.”
What a weird thing to say.
“Sure. Love you.”
She says it back, and I hang up. Mitchel waits for me to catch up, grinning.
“Did you expect snow?” he asks. “I wish I had looked outside before leaving my apartment. It wasn’t worth climbing another three flights of stairs to get a better coat, though.”
I laugh. “I thought the same exact thing.”
“I haven’t seen you around,” he offers.
The crosswalk signal changes into a walking man. I step into the street, but Mitchel grabs my arm and yanks me back. A car flies past, turning right without stopping. It’s close enough that I could reach out and touch it.
Immediately, chills break out down my body.
“That could’ve been bad,” he says. “What would you do without me?”
“I’d probably have a lawsuit on my hands,” I say, staring after the car. It’s all but disappeared down the block. “Thank you.”
