Manic: A Dark High School Bully Romance

by Savannah Rose

  When the fire burned out completely and the trash can was cool enough to touch, I took it around back to the tiny yard and hosed it out. I didn’t look over my shoulder, I didn’t peek around corners, I didn’t let anxiety get past the wall of fury in my head. When I was finished, I went back inside, locked every door and window, and went to sleep.

  I know I should have told my parents. If there was ever a time for it, that was the time. But I’d convinced myself that telling them would only escalate matters beyond my ability to control or manage, and I hadn’t re-examined that idea. Besides, at that point running to my dad felt like admitting defeat, and I had only just found my inner fighter. The urge to handle it myself was strong, and I was in no position to argue against myself.

  When Mom woke me up for dinner, worry was etched all over her face.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked her.

  “You tell me, Arlena,” she said, lightly rolling her r’s. Her accent only came through when she was really upset. It was a giveaway she would never admit to having, but here it was, front and center. “What’s going on with you?”

  I shrugged. “Just stupid school stuff. Kids at school don’t exactly like me.”

  “ Why? What happened?” She asked worriedly

  Tears welled up in her eyes and she glanced away. “There was a cat on our porch when I came home. It was—not alive. It wore a collar. Someone wrote ‘Arlena’ on the collar in permanent marker.”

  My stomach clenched violently. “Oh, god.”

  She took my hands in hers and looked into my eyes, her gaze hard even through her tears. “You have to talk to me, Arlena. I’m your mother. If there’s something going on, if there’s something or someone you’re afraid of, you have to let me know. Let me protect you.”

  I wanted to. God, how I wanted to. The thought of handing all of my problems over to her and letting her figure out how to deal with them filled me with a relief so strong I could taste it. But I couldn’t do that, not now. She would tell my dad. He would rage and pick that school apart, player by major player, until all three of us ended up dead. I needed a direction to point him in before I could tell either of them anything.

  But at the same time, I couldn’t tell her that nothing was wrong. She wasn’t stupid. She’d assume I’d been threatened or blackmailed into keeping my mouth shut. Her first suspect would be Blayze, and she’d be after him with all the condensed, hot fury of a mother badger.

  “Okay,” I said quietly. “It’s stupid. It’s really, really stupid. Some kid who graduated from Burnaby went to jail for dealing drugs. Dad was the prosecutor. Someone put two and two together, now I’m on blast. Nobody wants anything to do with me. I guess someone’s taking it extra personally.” That wasn’t too much, I told myself. She could have worked all of that out for herself, honestly. It was pretty obvious.

  She squeezed her eyes shut and crushed my hands in a powerful, emotionally charged grip, then rolled her eyes at the ceiling and let a tear fall out of each eye. “I was afraid of this,” she said tightly. “I told your father this would happen, but he doesn’t listen. He doesn’t know how life works in places like this, he thinks his rules are the only rules. He’s a good man, Arlena, but he’s bull-headed.”

  She sighed and pursed her lips thoughtfully. “So,” she said, all of the emotion washed out of her voice by her pragmatic nature. “What do you want to do about this? I don’t want to clean up any more animals, and I don’t want you losing any more weight. You have to graduate. If I put my foot down, I can take you somewhere else—maybe somewhere close to where we used to live. Somewhere where the environment is similar. I know a few places you and I can get our lives back, and your father can keep doing his important work. What do you think?”

  I wanted to jump at the chance, but something held me back. As I considered leaving this place and going back to the pristine palaces and rolling green lawns I grew up on, all I could feel was Blayze’s arms around me. Telling myself that it was a fantasy, that he had a girlfriend who wasn’t me, didn’t do me any good. Even if I couldn’t be with him, for some reason the thought of not being near him hurt. Which made no sense, of course. Before the bloody letter, he’d told me that I’d ruined his life, but he hadn’t told me how. I couldn’t leave with a clear conscience unless I’d done everything I could to undo whatever damage I’d done. This war my father was fighting, though, was I prepared to stand and watch him win, knowing that the one person in this place who stuck his neck out for me could very well end up losing? But was running away, turning a blind eye, really the best thing to do? I wasn’t sure.

  I shook my head. “I can’t move schools again,” I said. “I’m already struggling to pass, and winter break is over. Moving now would just put me farther behind. I’m not too worried about it, honestly. I do still have some friends—a friend—who will back me up if I really need it. I can make it through.”

  My mother searched my face for a moment, then nodded sharply. “I’m not going to drag you out of here if you don’t want to leave,” she said. “But a cat on the doorstep... It’s where I should set the boundary. Anything else like this, baby, and I can’t promise you that I won’t make the call to get you out of here.”

  She pulled me to her and hugged me tight. Knowing my mother, she’d be stewing on this all week, crying in the shower, praying to all the Gods she could think up, packing suitcases and then unpacking them.

  “Thanks mom.”

  She kissed me on the forehead. “Now come down to dinner. Your dad is in a good mood this evening.”

  I nodded and briefly wondered whose ruined life had put a smile on his face this time.

  18

  Eddie spun a glass across the counter with perfect precision. It came to a gentle halt millimeters from my fingers.

  “Drink,” he said. “Then talk.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “I don’t need this, you know.”

  “Yeah,” he said, stretching nonchalantly. “And I don’t need weed to sleep, but I smoke it anyway. Now drink.”

  His lie made his point for him. I sipped the drink and made a face. “The hell is in this?”

  He grinned. “Whisky, vodka, gin, and green apple mixer. I call it The Dregs.”

  “It fits,” I said, scowling at the offensive liquid before pushing it aside. “Here’s the thing, Eddie. I need your help.”

  His eyes brightened. Other people’s desperation was an opportunity for Eddie, and I knew I would be paying for this favor for years to come. He propped himself on his elbows with his chin on his fists and grinned at me.

  “Lay it on me,” he said. “What do you need? Money? Work? Relationship advice? I got plenty of that.”

  “And none of it is worth anything,” I said and scratched my head, trying to figure out how to say to Eddie what I needed to say. “All right,” I started and paused. Scratched at my head again. “So here’s the thing. Arlena is in real danger. Someone’s using Fugwidem to keep the war going. Whoever it is, they’re trying to make Arlena kill herself. She won’t. It would never occur to her to do that. As soon as this person figures that out, they’re going to change the game. People are already pissed off and on edge. It wouldn’t take much to push someone to lead her into an accident.”

  He stroked his chin thoughtfully. “Seems like a really roundabout way to get revenge,” he said. “Why not just jump her?”

  I shook my head. “That’s what Sam said, too. Only thing I can think is that whoever this is wants to torment her for some reason. I think they’re getting off on it. Which is bullshit, because the only thing she did was hide who her parents were. She never snitched on anybody. People got caught because people got caught, that’s it.”

  He twisted his mouth incredulously, letting his stack of curly hair flop comically to one side. “You really believe that? Really? She shows up and all the sudden cops are changing their beat routes?”

  “She wasn’t the only one who showed up,” I reminded him. “Her dad has been consulting
with the cops since he got here. He probably saw the weak points and made suggestions. It is what he’s famous for.”

  Eddie grimaced. “Yeah—but it’s still pretty coincidental that your brother and Sam just happened to be two of the people this guy caught. Follow the connections, man. Them to you, you to her, her to her dad. It’s a straight shot, can’t get no straighter.”

  I sighed at him. “Do you trust me?”

  “Man, you know I do! You’re the closest thing I got to a brother.”

  “Well then trust me on this. I never told Arlena where my brother made his deals. Not even once. I didn’t really tell her much about anything, honestly. It was pretty obvious that she was a sheltered kind of person and I didn’t want to run her off with culture shock. I’ve been talking to her.”

  “Obviously,” he said, and it didn’t take a genius to see that he wasn’t happy about it. Fair enough. It’s not like I could blame him. Eddie was sitting on a heck of a lot more reason to get locked away than my brother was.

  I took another sip of Eddie’s drink, cringing as the liquid hit my tongue and burned down the back of my throat. “Arlena’s been getting death threats at her own house. Someone was in her damn bedroom, Eddie. And someone’s all over Fugwidem making her a target, spreading lies about her.”

  “What lies?” he asked.

  “Lies like…she’s out to ruin lives and she has no conscience and everything anybody does in front of her goes straight to her daddy’s ear. That kind of thing. You know how that sounds. That’s a direct threat to at least half the population of Burnaby High. Someone’s going to have secrets they’re insecure enough about to do something crazy. Shit, someone already has.”

  “Oh?” He asked, raising his brow.

  I nodded. “One of the death threats was blood. Just blood. I assume it belongs to whoever’s sending the threats. Who does that? Who bleeds on notepaper just to prove a point?”

  “Okay, that’s pretty out there,” he admitted. “But it sounds more dramatic than crazy. Sounds to me like someone’s trying to run her out of town, not get her to kill herself.”

  I shook my head. “I wish that was all it was. I’d tell her to leave town. Hell, I’m still thinking about telling her to do that, just to get her out of the line of fire for a while. I don’t think she’ll go, though. It’s not like she could just pack her shit and walk away without having to explain it all to her parents. That’s not the way things work in her family. Plus, even if they weren’t a problem. Even if she didn’t have to explain herself to them, I don’t think she’d leave.”

  Eddie cocked his head to one side. “Why not?”

  “Because she’s stubborn,” I said. “And because she’s not used to losing or retreating. She’s a rich kid, Eddie. She’s used to the rules working in her favor. She’s used to authority figures who do shit. She’s used to everything eventually working itself out, easily and predictably. This is a whole new kind of environment for her. She doesn’t know how to react, which is why she hasn’t yet.”

  Eddie frowned. “That isn’t smart. You can’t just freeze when new shit happens, that’s how you get dead.”

  “Yeah, around here it is. Thinking fast is a learned skill. She never had to learn it. She still has people tucking her in at night, and no, I don’t mean it that way, you perv. She’s always had time to process and people to tell her what to do. She’s new to life and death situations. She’s not going to do what this guy expects her to do, no matter how hard he pushes at her.”

  “You think it’s a guy?” Eddie asked.

  I shrugged. “Man, I don’t know. I thought it was Sam at first, but it’s not.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I just do, all right? Can you quit backtracking through my conclusions for a second and get to the part where you help me?”

  “Okay, okay,” he said. “What do you want me to do? I’m nobody on Fugwidem, just like everybody else. You can go on there and argue with every violent post about her, but good luck getting any views. People are way more into vengeance than heroism, you know. It pays better.” He grinned nastily, then fixed his face as I glared at him.

  “Sorry. Forgot who I was talking to for a minute. Look, man, there’s nothing you can do unless you want to step into the crosshairs yourself. Whoever’s after her isn’t going to stop just because you want them to.”

  It was my turn to question him. “How do you know? Maybe if I said something…”

  He smirked. “If that were the case, then they would have stopped already. You aren’t as sneaky as you think you are. People are already whispering about your girl-juggling skills.”

  My jaw damn near hit the floor. “You must be fucking shitting me.”

  “Nope. That’s what happens when you make out with your ex in a public parking lot, homie. People talk.”

  “We weren’t making out,” I said too quickly. “She was upset and I gave her a hug. That was it.”

  Eddie whistled and laughed, patting me on the arm. “From what I heard, a hug like that woulda made a pimp cum in his pants.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him, but my heart was racing. “Who the hell is telling you this crap? Sam better not hear this bullshit.”

  Eddie stepped back and spread his hands wide. “Nah, man! Bros before hoes, you know the drill. I’d be the last person to be all up in Sam’s grill with gossip. Plus, it’s about time you learn that two chics are a heck of a lot more fun than one. The more the merrier. But, yeah, it was Skeezy. He doesn’t even talk to girls, you’re good.”

  I nodded sharply and accepted his answer. If Skeezy was the one spreading shit, Eddie was right. In the event that Skeezy went further than Eddie with the gossip, it would be confined to a run around in a circle of guys, but I doubted any of them would be bitch enough to go bringing all that shit up with their females. At least I hoped so. “Good,” I said. “Plus it’s not true. Not that it would piss Sam off any less. It’s a reputation thing for her.”

  “Everything’s a reputation thing,” Eddie said. His eyes widened and he snapped his fingers. “Which gives me an idea. You want to get Arlena out of the crosshairs, right? She needs a big gesture. Perceptions gotta change. Everybody sees her as a threat, we gotta change that. But I’ll tell you what, Blayze, she’s gonna have to be a bad, bad girl if she wasn’t even a slim chance at redeeming herself.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know what you’re thinking, but I already don’t like it. She doesn’t do that shit.”

  “She drinks,” Eddie said bluntly. “I’ve seen her do it. Think you could talk her into doing some blow?”

  Was he fucking kidding me? “Hell no.”

  He nodded thoughtfully, then shrugged. “Drinking’ll be good enough. I’m gonna throw a party this weekend. I’ll invite her myself, at school, in front of people. That should be enough for people to at least get a hint to lay off her. People will come because they know I got the good shit. And if I thought she wasn’t a threat then I’d never invite her in the first place. Hopefully they’ll lay off of her after nothing bad happens to anybody else.”

  “Okay,” I said slowly. “But what if something bad does happen? We don’t know who the cops are looking at right now.”

  “You don’t,” he said cockily. “I do. I won’t let anybody come who’s got a watchdog on their ass. Standard rules, everybody knows this. Nobody’ll get picked up. As for Arlena, you’re vouching for her, right?” I nodded. “Then she’ll have a good time, and everything will go back to normal afterwards.”

  I rubbed my chin. “I don’t like it,” I said. “People are primed to target her at every opportunity. A house party is one hell of an opportunity.” Plus, there was also the matter of Sam.

  “My home is neutral ground,” Eddie said flatly. “Common knowledge. No fights, no drama. No bullshit. Again, standard rules. And if that isn’t enough, I’ll keep an eye out for Arlena myself. If someone fucks with her, I’ll make sure they get fucked with. If you say she’s good people then
I’ll take your word for it. Because if people are fucking with her and you’re messing around with her, then eventually people will start fucking with you. You’re my best friend. This town respects your brother. But-”

  “She’s not a snitch,” I promised him.

  He raised one hand in an oath, a promise etched in his eyes. “Then she has my protection.”

  19

  My heart thudded so hard it made my dangling earrings rattle. I’d parked against the curb as far away from Eddie’s house as I could get away with, deep in a shadow beside a dumpster. The party had barely started; it still looked halfway civilized from here and though the music was loud, it wasn’t deafeningly loud. Not yet. I watched the faces of people who had gone out of their way to torment me as they passed by, giggling and smiling, ready to have the time of their fucking lives.

  “This is a terrible idea,” I said to myself.

  But I couldn’t really afford to pass this opportunity up. After Eddie had invited me—right in the lunchroom in front of everybody—people had started to back off. I’d actually been able to focus on the last couple classes of the day, and the relief had left me feeling giddy.

  I still hadn’t been sure about whether or not to go—it might have been a trap or a setup—but then Blayze texted me and told me that he and Eddie came up with the idea together and that he would be at the party. Between him and Eddie, he said, I would be safe. That had almost convinced me. Still didn’t mean it was a good idea, though. It wasn’t until I got home and there were no new letters on my porch that I decided to come. If something as simple as a party invitation could stop my stalker, I’d be an idiot not to accept.

  But now I was feeling like an idiot anyway as person after brutal person walked into Eddie’s house, all of them active participants in my daily punishment. I didn’t see a single neutral face among them—not that there were many of those left, anyway. Bullying me had become trendy. My phone chimed, making me jump.