by Bella King
It wasn’t safe for a woman like me to be out on the side of the road this late at night. Anything could happen to me. Either Auston was being reckless or malicious, but either way, a huge red line had been crossed. Normal people don’t do this. Austin was a dangerous man.
My phone buzzed in my pocket again, ringing for the third time today as my aunt tried to get my attention.
Jesus, she doesn’t give up.
I decided to pick it up after two rings because I had nothing better to do. It was going to be a long and cold walk back, and even my aunt’s condescending voice was better than the mysterious sounds coming from the woods on either side of me.
“Hello?” I asked as I held the phone up to my ear.
“Jane, finally. I thought you were going to ignore me all day,” my aunt said.
“Sorry, I was just busy getting settled in.” That was only half true.
“So, you got there alive. That’s good to hear. Meanwhile, I’ve had to have your uncle come here to help out with the chores while you take your little vacation.”
East Bridge wasn’t feeling much like a vacation to me now, but I still found comfort in my aunt’s words. At least I was still alive, and someone cared that I was, even if it was for her own selfish reasons.
“How’s Uncle Martin?” I asked, pretending to care. In reality, I just wanted to keep her talking so that I didn’t have to face the dark silence again.
“He’s not very happy about you running away from home instead of working at the factory. I doubt he’s going to want to give you a job when you get back.”
“I won’t need a job at the factory. I’ll have a degree,” I replied, not understanding how she didn’t get that.
“Will you? I would have thought they’d have scared you off by now. Rich people are a different breed.”
I hated to admit that she was right, but I wasn’t going to show weakness. Classes hadn’t even started yet, and Austin was just one person. He didn’t define every rich person at East Bridge University. There would be plenty more people for me to meet if I made it back alive.
I sighed. “I’m settling in fine. The people are nice here.” It was hard for me to lie so bluntly, and I would have never been able to do it in person, but it seemed to be convincing enough for my aunt over the phone.
“That’s surprising, but I’m happy for you,” she replied. “I still wish you would come back home.”
“I will during winter break,” I replied.
“If I let you,” she added.
I pulled the phone away from my ear and looked at it funny. If she let me? What kind of response was that? I was having trouble not getting angry again over the phone with her. I didn’t think that I could stand talking for her for the next hour.
I put the phone back up to my ear. “We’ll see how it goes.”
“Just don’t do anything stupid,” she warned.
I laughed. It was a little late for that. “Of course not,” I replied. “I’ll be safe.”
“Good. I have to tend to dinner now. It’s busy here without you,” she said, trying once again to make me feel guilty.
It didn’t work on me, but I did feel a tinge of regret creeping in at the mention of a hot meal. My aunt made pretty good supper most of the time, and I would be missing that in favor of whatever the school was serving in the cafeteria.
“I’ll talk to you later,” I said.
“Goodbye, Jane.”
The line clicked, and the call was over. I tucked my phone back into the small pocket of my jeans and crossed my arms tightly to stay warm, using my hands to shield the backs of my arms from the stiff breeze that was flowing through the forest on either side of me.
Looking ahead of me, the road never seemed to end. It was like a dream where the landscape stretched on for an eternity. When you think about it, that’s sort of what the earth is anyway. Everything will lead you in circles back to the same spot unless you shoot yourself into space. I didn’t plan on going there, but maybe that’s why people got high.
My feet crunched against the stones littering the side of the asphalt, broken from a thousand cars passing over it. I was far out of town, miles away from the perfectly paved black roads near the university campus. This road reminded me of the one where I used to live, but that was where the problems lay. No woman wanted to be out on those roads at night.
I shivered. Maybe it was from the cold, or maybe it was from the thoughts of what could be waiting for me behind the looming black trees. People were bad, but bears would tear you to shreds and bring your mutilated corpse back to their din for a midnight snack. I knew enough about them to stay away from the woods at night.
Okay, idiot, but bears don’t wander out onto the road. Don’t go into the woods, and you’ll be fine.
I hugged myself tighter as I continued my trek. I knew that by the time I got back to campus, I was going to be in a terrible state. If I didn’t die from the cold, I was going to kill Austin. I swore that to myself, but it didn’t make the cold any more comfortable, nor the dark any less frightening.
Suddenly, a shadow stretched out in front of me as my back was illuminated. I turned to see two yellow headlights gliding down the road toward me, light two eyes of a serpent. I waved my hand to grab their attention, staying far enough into the road so that they would have to stop.
As the car came closer, it slowed, until finally, it pulled around beside me, and a window came down.
Chapter 9
“You look lost,” a woman with a cigarette hanging from her plump lips said as she leaned out the window of a pink Cadillac.
“Sort of. I could really use a ride back to campus,” I said, rubbing the backs of my arms in an attempt to stay warm.
“That’s where I’m going. Hop in,” she said, taking a slow drag of his cigarette.
I circled around the car timidly, but she looked like she wasn’t a threat like Austin had been. She seemed a lot friendlier than any of the other people I had encountered at East Bridge thus far.
“Are you a student or something?” she asked as I settled into a pale leather seat beside her.
I nodded, adjusting the warm air streaming from a vent in the front of the car to point at my torso. “I just got here, but some asshole dropped me off in the middle of nowhere.”
“Austin,” the woman said, finally taking the cigarette out of her mouth. She seemed far too attractive to be smoking.
“Yeah,” I said, frowning. “How did you know?”
“I passed his car coming down this road. He’s been pumping and dumping freshmen since he got to East Bridge. I should know. I was one of them,” she said, speaking with a relaxed drawl.
“He just dumped me off here because I guess he didn’t like me. He didn’t have sex with me,” I said.
“Well, he won’t make you, but he can be a charmer once he knocks off the attitude. It takes him a lot of weed to get to that point, though, so don’t expect to see his nice side unless he’s high off his ass,” she said, pressing the gas gently and resuming her travel.
“I would never have sex with him,” I said, shaking my head.
“Sure, you won’t, just like every other girl who he’s fucked,” she said. “My name is Brittany Harris, by the way.”
“Jane,” I replied. “Jane Devlin.”
“Oh shit, you’re a Devlin?” Brittany exclaimed, her blue eyes widening.
“Um, yes,” I said quietly, unsure why that mattered.
“There’s a whole building named after your family. It was a memorial type thing after your parents died,” she said.
“Wait, are you kidding?”
“No, ma’am. It’s Devlin Hall if you want to go check it out. Your parents were like some super deans-list overachievers. Sorry about their demise. I never knew they had a daughter. You are their daughter, right?”
“I think so,” I said.
She laughed. “You think?”
“I mean, my parents died when I was younger.”
&
nbsp; “In a car wreck,” Brittany said, as though she knew the entire story.
“That’s right. Wow, how do you know all this?” I asked, shaking my head in disbelief.
“I know everything,” she replied, taking another puff of her cigarette. A small fleck of ash dropped onto her pink coat, and she brushed it off with her manicured fingernails. Brittany was gorgeous. Truthfully, I had never seen so many good-looking people in one place. East Bridge made me feel ugly.
“So, you know about Austin. Why is he such a dick?” I asked.
“You know what? That, I don’t know. I didn’t really fuck with him long enough to find out. I let him hit it raw one time out here in the woods, and he left me there. Fucking weirdo,” she explained, brushing her blonde hair from her shoulder. She rolled down the window and flicked the end of her cigarette into the night air, then rolled the window back up.
“He was rude to me from the beginning,” I said. “I think it’s because I’m poor.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it, Jane. He’s a dick to everyone. It’s not just you,” Brittany said.
That made me feel a little better. I was afraid now that everyone was going to know that I wasn’t part of the rich community and that they would all hate me before school even started. Brittany didn’t seem to be that way, though, so that made one person who could be my friend, not that I needed them. I just didn’t want people to hate me. That would only make my Aunt Martha and Uncle Steve seem correct about college, which they weren’t.
“I’m really glad you came along,” I said, having forgotten tot hank her for picking me up.
“I’m glad I found you too, but I’d be lying if I said you weren’t the first girl I picked up off the side of the road once Austin was finished blowing his load into her.”
“Gross,” I muttered.
“It is, but that’s Austin for you. He’s got more money than sense, but that goes for most people here.”
“Well, I don’t seem to have either of those things,” I replied with a weak grin.
Brittany laughed, showing her perfect white teeth. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. Money isn’t everything.”
Maybe not, but at times it felt like it was. Without money, I wasn’t going to fit into the odd dress code at school, and I would be kicked out. Without money, I was going to end up stranded more often than I cared for. Without money, I was a sitting duck in a pool of rich men like Austin.
I shrugged. “It’d be nice to be able to afford clothes for school.”
“Hold up. Don't you have money for that? I thought your parents were loaded.”
“They’re dead,” I replied bluntly.
“Yeah, I know that,” she said, shaking her head. “But they left you money, right?”
“I think my aunt took it all,” I said, struggling to remember what had become of their money after they died. It seemed odd that it had all vanished, but my aunt wasn’t living lavishly.
“That would be a bitch move. Why didn’t she give you some?” Brittany asked.
“I don’t know if she got it. I honestly don’t know anything about the money. I never thought about it,” I said, wondering if I should ask my aunt. Perhaps asking her directly after running away and abandoning her to do everything around the house by herself wasn’t be the best idea. Who else would know about it, though?
“You should find out, especially if you can’t even afford to buy clothes. That’s pretty bad,” Brittany said, pulling another cigarette from a pack sitting on the center console. “You want one?”
I held up a hand. “I don’t smoke.”
“Neither did I until I started college. Now I smoke like a fucking chimney,” she said, almost cheerful as she popped the slender white stick into her mouth.
I really hoped it wasn’t that bad here. Brittany seemed like the type of person who would exaggerate things to make a story more interesting. I mean, was Austin really fucking every freshman that came along and dumping them on the side of the road? He hadn’t fucked me. Was I not attractive enough?
Jane, that’s ridiculous. You don’t want him to fuck you anyway.
Right, but he did want me to blow him, so that counted for something.
I heard the sound of a lighter and smelled more cigarette smoke drifting around the cabin. I looked out of the front windshield and saw that we were almost back to school. I was relieved that I had made it back without being torn to pieces by a wild animal… or by Austin.
“You can borrow some of my stuff as long as you don’t let Austin jizz on it,” Brittany said, interrupting my thoughts.
“What?”
“I’ll give you some stuff to wear until you can buy your own, as long as you don’t get Austin’s fluids all over it.”
I laughed. “That’s disgusting. I’ll keep them clean,” I assured her.
“Yeah, I hope so. Let’s go to my room, and I’ll get them for you,” she replied, pulling into the student parking lot at East Bridge University.
“You’re probably like the nicest person I know,” I commented as she turned off the car.
“I can be a bitch sometimes, but I like to think I’m alright,” she said with a silly grin as she opened her door, smoke billowing out into the night air.
Chapter 10
Crickets sang to Brittany and me as we walked out into the cold night together, heading toward the dorm rooms. I was relieved with how well-lit the campus was at night. It made me feel considerably safer. I had never really gotten over my fear of the dark. As a woman, I felt like I never would. I didn’t have the same natural self-defense power as a man.
“There’s one fucking brick that they never fix,” Brittany pointed out as we walked down the red sidewalk.
I looked down to see a brick sticking out of the sidewalk high enough to trip someone, but low enough not to catch my eye straight away. “I would have totally tripped on that,” I said as we passed it.
“You will eventually. It gets everyone,” Brittany noted as we approached the first dorm building.
Her building was the same one that both Austin and I were in. I wondered if she knew that. She didn’t seem very phased as she scanned her keycard and walked into the heated building with a cigarette still lit in her hand.
“Aren’t you going to put that out?” I asked as she took a puff inside the building.
“The smoke alarms don’t work in the hallway. They disabled them after I set them off too many times,” she said with a smirk.
I could see why she had been involved with Austin in the past. They both had an edge of rebellion to their personas, as though they were above the school authority and establishment. Brittany was obviously a lot nicer, unless, of course, this was another trick. I couldn’t be too careful after what happened with Austin.
“I’m on the third floor,” Brittany said, pressed a long nail into the button for the golden elevator.
Thank god it wasn’t the second. We might run into Austin if it was.
The elevator door made a pleasant ding sound, and the doors rolled open silently. My eyes widened when Austin stepped out.
“Back so soon?” he asked, raising an eyebrow at me as I stood behind Brittany.
“Hey, punk, fuck off,” Brittany told him, flicking her cigarette at him.
He didn’t so much as flinch as it bounced off the lapel of his blue suit jacket. “I wasn’t talking to you,” he said, stepping to the side so that she could walk into the elevator.
Brittany ushered me in, and Austin watched me with a smug look on his sharp jaw as I hurried into the safety of the elevator. I stepped on the lit cigarette as I walked in, breathing a sigh of relief as the doors began to roll closed. Perhaps I had been too quick to relax.
A hand shot into the elevator as it shut, yanking me out with a tremendous amount of force and slamming me into the wall in the hallway. I heard Brittany shout as the door closed, completely separating us from each other.
In a daze, I looked up at Austin as he hovered over me, his hands s
till gripping my t-shirt with enough force to leave permanent wrinkles in the fabric.
“I thought I made it clear you weren’t welcome here,” he growled at me as he pushed me up against the wall.
My legs were barely grazing the carpeted floor as he held me in place. I winced as his knuckles dug into my collarbone. “I’m allowed to be here just like you,” I said, trying to sound more confident than I was.
“I don’t care who let you in, Jane. I want you out of here by tomorrow, or I’m going to make your life so painful that you’ll slit your own throat by the end of your first week,” he spat.
I had never seen someone look so angry at me before. Considering that I had done nothing to make him this way, I was as fascinated as I was fearful about how aggressive he had become toward me since we met. There was nothing that could justify this type of behavior.
I didn’t respond to him, but I glared into his shimmering gray eyes defiantly as he held me in place.
“Do you understand me?” he asked, pushing me harder against the wall.
I nodded, afraid that he would snap my collarbone if he applied any more pressure. Now wasn’t the opportune time to fight back. I was alone and without a weapon. Next time, I wouldn’t let him win like this.
Austin dropped me to the floor after studying my face for a moment. As my feet pressed against the lovely plush carpet, the elevator dinged again, indicating that Brittany had returned.
Austin took a step back, running a finger across his neck slowly as he retreated. I rushed into the elevator to escape him as soon as it opened, but I knew he wasn’t coming after me. He had said what he wanted to say, and that was all he needed. He had made his intentions known.
“What the fuck was that?” Brittany asked as I ducked behind her in the elevator.
“Nothing,” I said, lying through my teeth. I was too shaken to talk about what had just happened without breaking out in tears. I was an emotional person, but I was also scared to show it, especially to someone I had just met.
