by Bella King
I was in a hurry today, not trying to waste a single second. There were so many customers that I was having trouble keeping up with all the orders. Of course, that’s when people want your attention the most, when you’re busy as all hell.
“Alice, over here,” A girl from Crimson High waved at me. I didn’t know her.
“Not again,” I muttered under my breath, dropping a bag of greasy food onto someone’s table and rushing over to her.
“I heard you were flirting with Travis yesterday,” the girl said.
“Excuse me? Who are you?” I asked, confused as to how she knew anything about me.
“My name is Grace. I’m friends with Amy. She told me you were hitting on Travis. You need to watch it. He’s mine.”
I rolled my eyes. “You can have him. I don’t want to have anything to do with that creep.”
Grace pouted. “She said he was flirting with you. Why will he flirt with you and not me?”
“Are you like, his fangirl or something?” I asked, trying to figure out what role she played in Travis’s life.
She shrugged. “He’ll be mine someday. I just know it.”
I laughed. “Good luck with that,” I said, rushing off back to the diner to get more bags of food to deliver.
Why the hell would someone have a crush on Travis? Didn’t she know how much of a bully he was? I guess people can be strange. I mean, even serial killers have huge flocks of women following them. I wouldn’t be surprised if she just liked him because he had possibly killed someone.
I entered the diner again and grabbed another few bags of food to deliver. I didn’t have time to thing about Travis today. Work was busier than ever at the start of the school year, and I barely had time for a break. Thankfully, as I brought out the bags of food, I got called by the manager for a lunch break.
I grabbed one of the extra bags of greasy food that hadn’t been claimed and took it outside around the back where nobody ever went. That’s where I would always take my breaks. It was nice to have some peace and quiet during such a loud and bustling workday. If I sat out in the front, people would be coming up to me asking about their orders and I would never get time to eat my lunch.
As I stepped out of the back door of the diner, I was surprised to see none other than Travis sitting smugly on a bench. He looked like he had been waiting for me.
“How are you doing, Alice?” He asked, patting the space beside him on the bench. “Come, sit with me.”
I walked up to him briskly, not wanting to seem afraid. I didn’t know what he wanted but I wasn’t going to let him interrupt my lunch break. Work was work, and I wasn’t going to let the drama from school seep into my professional life.
“What do you want, Travis?” I asked as I plopped down beside him and pulled a hamburger out of my bag.
“Where you talking about me to someone?” Travis asked seriously.
“I don’t gossip,” I responded, biting into my hamburger.
Travis grabbed the burger and threw it into the dirt. “I said,” his voice growing louder, “Were you talking about me? Spreading rumors?”
I was shocked that he tossed my food into the dirt. “Jesus Travis, I wasn’t talking about you. Why the fuck did you do that?”
Travis rolled his eyes. “Shut the fuck up, Alice. I knew you were talking to your little friend about how I killed Kimberly.”
I felt my stomach drop. How did know all of this? Then I remembered Grace, and it all made sense. She was a snitch for Travis, I bet. I needed to let Amy know that she shouldn’t be talking to her anymore. It was bad news for me that Travis knew I had been talking about him.
“It wasn’t like I accused you of anything, Travis. To be honest, I don’t really care about Kimberly. She went missing long before I even came to Crimson High.”
Travis’s face contorted in rage. It looked like he was about to explode. His black eyes were large enough to consume me, and I could swear he was trembling. “Don’t you dare say anything about Kimberly. Don’t you fucking dare,” he ordered.
“I said I didn’t care, Travis,” I said, shrinking in my seat beside him.
Travis grabbed me by my shirt, yanking me off the bench and throwing me into the dirt beside my hamburger. I hit the ground hard, the breath knocked out of me. I looked up to see Travis towering over me as I wheezed and struggled to breathe properly.
“You should care about Kimberly, lest you end up like her,” he said in a low voice. Then, he walked away, leaving me on the ground, clutching my stomach.
What the fuck had that been about? Travis had exploded in anger when I mentioned Kimberly, and had gotten even more enraged when I said I didn’t care about her. He was insane, and I was definitely not on his good side anymore, if I ever had been. I didn’t care what Amy said about him liking me, I knew what I was to him – a target for bullying.
Chapter 4
On Monday, Amy and I were back at school. Between classes, I confronted her about the whole Travis situation to make sure she didn’t leak any more information to him unknowingly.
“Isn’t he handsome, though?” Amy asked me as I showed her the cut on my arm from where I had landed against a small rock when Travis threw me off the bench.
“Amy, I’m beginning to think you’re insane,” I said, not believing that she was actually saying that after Travis had hurt me.
Amy looked down at her feet. “I just wanted to lighten things up. That was pretty mean of him to do.”
“Well, it’s all because someone mentioned that I knew about Kimberly to him. You need to stop talking to that Grace bitch. She’s a mega snitch,” I snapped.
Amy frowned. “Oh, yeah, I did notice she seemed a bit eager to hear about you. She kept asking all these questions about where you worked and stuff.”
“What?” I gasped. “She’s totally Travis’s ears at the school. Dammit Amy, don’t tell her anything.”
Amy apologized. “I didn’t know.”
I sighed. “It’s fine. I’m just not going to talk about Kimberly anymore and hopefully Travis will leave me alone.”
“Did you ask him if he killed her or not?” Amy, said, perking up.
My eyes did a 360 in my skull. “Give me a break. The only thing I said about Kimberly is that I didn’t care about what happened to her and Travis got super angry. It was like he wanted me to care about her or something.”
“Maybe he killed her because he was in love with her,” Amy chimed.
“Why the hell would he do that?” I said, nearly laughing.
“People do crazy things when they fall in love. Just look at Grace. She’s snitching to Travis because she’s completely obsessed with him,” Amy explained.
“I don’t think he would kill Kimberly just because he liked her. That makes no sense,” I replied.
“Ah-ha, but what if she didn’t like him back?” Amy suggested.
I nodded my head, then realized what she was saying. “Ugh, Amy, enough. I don’t want to listen to any more of your wild theories about Kimberly and Travis. Can you not talk to anyone about this please?” I said, looking at Amy urgently.
“Fine, I’m not going to tell anyone. Just let me know if Travis talks to you again.”
“Sure, but I hope he doesn’t,” I replied. I looked at my phone to check the time and realized that class was in thirty seconds. “Fuck, got to go,” I said as I rushed off in the opposite direction as Amy.
“Bye,” Amy said cheerfully as I quickly walked away.
I went to class, but it was largely uneventful. Someone threw a spitball at the teacher and got detention, but that was it. I wasn’t the type of student to do stuff like that, so I had never been to detention before. I imagined it was pretty boring, but Crimson High was very strict about detention. They were always looking for an excuse to make you spend hours after school locked up like a prisoner.
Other than the spitball, this class was particularly boring as I already knew most of the material. I nearly fell asleep before the lun
ch bell rang. I followed the other students out into the hallway and was almost to the lunchroom when I was confronted by Travis again.
“Hey, Alice,” Travis called out to me, jogging up beside me as I walked toward the lunchroom.
I ignored him, quickening my pace.
“Alice, I want to talk to you,” he said, sounding sincere.
I stopped and turned to him sharply. “What do you want?”
Travis looked concerned. “I wanted to check that you were alright after what happened on Saturday. I didn’t really mean to push you that hard.”
“You shouldn’t have pushed me in the first place,” I countered.
“Actually, you deserved that one for what you said about Kimberly. I just wanted to make sure you didn’t hurt yourself. You looked like you got the breath knocked out of you.”
“I didn’t deserve to be pushed. Stop being an asshole,” I said angrily. This guy had some nerve acting like it was my fault that he attacked me. I wouldn’t be surprised if he thought he was the victim when he bullied other girls at the school.
“You were talking shit about Kimberly,” he replied. “I do a lot worse to people who talk shit about Kimberly.”
“I really wasn’t,” I said, growing confused.
“I didn’t kill her, by the way. That’s some stupid rumor that spread because I got into an argument with her before she went missing,” Travis explained.
The fact that he was now trying to make me believe that he was innocent in Kimberly’s disappearance after having told me that him pushing me was my fault made me even more suspicious of him. “I guess we’ll never know,” I said sharply.
Travis frowned. “You don’t believe me?”
I shrugged, irritated at Travis’s annoying behavior. “I don’t have any reason to. You’re a bully and you need to leave me alone.”
This triggered Travis again. I was quickly discovering what a short fuse he had. He grabbed my books out of my hands and threw them onto the floor. They slid across the hall, coming to rest at the feet of Principal Reed. Travis’s face immediately changed from anger to surprise when he saw the principal.
“And just what are you two doing here during lunch period?” Principal Reed asked, stepping over my books and clasping his hands behind his back. He peered through his thick lenses at us seriously. He was like bird, with a hooked nose and beady little eyes.
“Travis is harassing me,” I said, pointing a finger at him.
Travis threw his hands up. “No sir. Alice threw my books down the hall.”
“What the hell? Those are my books and Travis threw them,” I injected.
Principal Reed shook a long finger at me. “Watch your language young lady. You may be an adult, but you’re still a student at Crimson High. For this little stunt, you’re both getting detention. Enjoy.” He twirled around and stepped back over my books, walking down the hall without remark.
I turned back to Travis angrily. “You bastard, now look what you’ve done.”
Travis grinned and shrugged. “I guess we can talk about this more during detention. See you there, loser.” He chuckled, walking away from me and entering the lunchroom.
I scooped my books off the floor and shook my head. There was no getting out of this one. Crimson High had an unusually strict detention policy. If you were told to go to detention, you had to stay for four hours after school there, without exception. If you didn’t show up, you would be expelled.
Nobody tested their luck with detention, not even Travis, my new bully. Even he couldn’t avoid it with his good standing among the teachers and staff. It looked like I was already in trouble at school, and it was only my second week at Crimson High. I guess I would just tell my parents that I was hanging out with Amy after school or something.
Chapter 5
Detention wasn’t how I envisioned spending my Monday evening, but there I was, and I had to deal with Travis for the next four hours.
The funny thing was, detention was little more than a worksheet with basic math problems on it. As I steadily worked through the problems, Travis flew through his, finishing it completely in under 10 minutes. Was he a secret genius or something?
Travis got up out of his seat and flung the fat stack of papers onto the abandoned desk at the front of the room, grinning at me. “It’s the same packet every time.”
I guessed that Travis had been to detention quite a few times, enough to have memorized the answers to the worksheet provided. I wouldn’t get much of a break from him if he was already finished. He and I were the only people in detention on a Monday, and the supervisor had locked us in without our phones. It was pretty much prison.
“You’re struggling with basic math?” Travis mocked, craning his neck to look at my work.
I groaned. “Please, just let me finish this, Travis.”
He chuckled. “I guess I’ll give you a break until you finish. But after that, we’re going to finish our conversation.”
I slammed down my pencil and looked up at Travis, who was leaning over me with keen interest. “I don’t have anything to talk to you about.”
“You said I killed Kimberly. I didn’t,” he stated.
“Why do you keep bringing that up?” I asked earnestly. “If you don’t want people to think that then stop acting like you’re trying to cover something up.”
Travis shook his head. “I already tried that, but people keep saying things. They keep telling me that it was my fault that Kimberly disappeared. I didn’t do anything to her.”
“I don’t know the full story,” I replied.
“And I’m not going to tell you either, dummy. It’s personal,” Travis said, crossing his arms.
Travis was 18 like me, but still acted like a child. He wasn’t going to tell me his side of the story, but he wanted me to believe that he wasn’t a murderer. Things were getting more and more suspicious every time I talked to Travis. He was filled with all kinds of secrets and bullshit, and what was worse than that, he was dumping all of this on me. I had become his weird obsession. Why?
I scribbled some nonsense onto my paper and got up, tossing it onto the front desk with my name written on so sloppily that I doubted the teacher would be able to read it. It was unlikely they checked the packets for proper work anyway. The detention supervisor had literally abandoned us in the detention room. I don’t think checking that we actually did our work was high on their list of priorities.
“Well, we have four hours to kill. Why don’t we talk about something that doesn’t have to do with murder?” I suggested.
Travis’s face softened. “You look nice today.”
I was surprised. He had a way of throwing out odd compliments when they weren’t warranted. It caught me off balance. “Um, thanks, I guess.”
Travis stepped toward me. “Well, you usually look like shit, so I thought it was interesting that you actually put in some effort today,” He said with a smirk.
One, two, punch. That was the game he was playing. I crossed my arms and looked him up and down. “And I suppose I look so shitty all the time that you can’t help but want to be around me. It makes sense, since you look like you just crawled out a dumpster.”
None of what we were saying to each other was true. We were actually both very smartly dressed and attractive people, wearing our typical school uniforms. We got some say in how we wore it, and what colors we chose, but for the most part it was hard to look bad at Crimson High. Travis was especially dashing, like it or not, and he didn’t seem to like me telling him otherwise.
“I’m fresh as fuck, Alice. Here, can you smell my cologne, or are your nostrils burnt out from your own stench?” Travis leaned toward me, coming closer than he had ever been.
I turned my nose up at him, but his masculine scent flooded into my nose, overtaking my senses. It was dark, like a freshly chopped oak tree at midnight, and it gave me goosebumps on my arms straight away. I hated that he smelled so good.
A wicked smile spread across Travis’s f
ace. “You like it, don’t you?” He teased, running a pale finger down my bare arm. “It’s pretty expensive stuff.”
I pushed him away. “Fuck off.”
Travis chuckled. “You’re going to have to deal with me for three and half more hours, Alice. Why don’t we play a game? Two truths and a lie.”
“You go first,” I said, frowning furiously and hating myself for getting aroused by Travis’s touch.
“Alright. Let’s see. First, I’m 80 years old,” he began.
I rolled my eyes. Why was he making this so easy?
“My name is Travis. Oh, and your car tires are being flattened as we speak,” he finished, crossing his arms and leaning back in his chair smugly.
I was confused. “Travis isn’t your real name?”
“No, idiot, your car tires are being flattened,” he said loudly.
“Travis, I don’t have a car,” I said, letting out a laugh and shaking my head at him.
He frowned. “Yes, you do. Don’t try to trick me.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know whose car you’re having destroyed, but it isn’t mine.”
Travis banged a fist on the desk. “Dammit, Grace told me the one in the parking lot is yours.”
“The blue one?” I asked, beginning to realize the mistake Travis had made.
He nodded, a smile spreading across his face. “Yeah, it’s yours. Grace told me it was.”
I laughed. “Travis, you’re about to be in a hell of a lot of trouble.”
“Why?”
“That’s Principal Reed’s car.”
Chapter 6
Travis charged up to my desk, gripping the edge with his powerful hands. “You’re lying. Stop lying!”
“You the one who fucking did it. I literally did nothing to you and now you’re trying to fuck with my stuff. I don’t have a car, Travis. It’s definitely Principal Reed’s. I saw him driving it earlier.”
