My eyes widen as the woman nods and gives my shoulder a quick squeeze before moving away. It takes me a second to realize that she’s the same woman from yesterday, wearing the same clothes. I stare after her, dumbfounded, until Calix bends down and reaches out to smooth some stray strands of hair from my face.
“You know what tonight is?” he whispers, and I go completely still, a strange coldness sweeping over me that I can’t explain. What tonight is? Tonight is nothing. Yesterday was the Devils’ Day Party. Today is just … Saturday. So why am I wearing my school uniform? And why is Calix asking me that?
He leans in even closer, pressing his lips to the side of my throat. Reaching both hands up, I shove him away as violently as I can and rise to my feet. He hits the ground on his ass, but I get no satisfaction out of it. Instead, panic is creeping over me as I glance back into the car and see my phone lying on the passenger seat.
The phone I left at the party last night, that the Knight Crew claimed they destroyed.
So how did it get there?
“Goddamn it, Karma,” Calix snarls, rising to his feet like a shadow, a tall, dark handsome shadow that I can barely see through the white stars in my vision. The little bells on the front door of the convenience store ring and out step Raz and Barron, the former carrying a plastic grocery bag in one hand as he circles the cars and surveys the damage—exactly the same way he did yesterday.
“What the fuck happened here? Little trailer trash bitch thought she’d get the first Devils’ Day trick on us, huh?” I stare at Raz, but I don’t even have it in me to be angry. Instead, I’m just confused. Frustrated. Panicking. I’ve finally lost my goddamn mind, I think as I look between the three of them with a strange taste in my mouth, like old pennies. The taste of copper, of blood.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” I say as Barron pauses on my right and Calix sneers at me like he could give two shits whether I’m hurt or not.
“Sick? Nice try, Trailer Park.” Calix steps forward again, getting in my face, towering over me like this is any normal day, like a video of us fucking wasn’t posted online during the party last night, like I didn’t drive off the edge of the road in the dark and … end up here. “Who’s going to pay for the damage to my car? Not you. The change your dyke mothers pay you for working part-time at that dump they call a business isn’t going to cut it.”
That’s what he said yesterday, I think as I start to sway on my feet, and Barron frowns, pulling the lollipop from his mouth and pointing at me with it.
“She doesn’t look very good,” he says, and Raz laughs, loud and cruel and obnoxious.
“You think?” he asks, tossing his grocery bag into the backseat of the car. “Like she ever does. Trailer Park looks like a goth reject most days and some tree-hugging femi-nazi the rest of the time.” He stalks toward me, like he’s thinking of grabbing me, but Barron reaches out to grab his arm.
“Back off of her,” he says carefully. “People are watching.”
“Maybe I’ll let you pay for it tonight, with your mouth?” Calix suggests as he opens the driver’s side door of his car, and I feel the world tilt around me like I’m on a carnival ride. Before he has a chance to climb in, I see the world rush up toward the sky—or maybe it’s me that’s falling—and then pain, sharp and blinding, straight through my skull like a knife.
Chapter Seven
THERE’S BLOOD ALL over my steering wheel.
Shit, no. No, no, no. I sit up, my body quivering uncontrollably as I look out the window and find what’s now a very familiar scene. There’s my little yellow VW bug, the front end planted in the side of Calix’s car. Blood drips down my face and onto the front of my uniform. This time, I don’t reach up to touch it. This time, I grab my phone from the passenger seat and stare at the date and time.
Friday. Devils’ Day.
Bile rises up in my throat just before the driver’s side door is wrenched open, and I’m dragged from the vehicle by Calix. Again. Shoved up against the side of Little Bee. Again.
“Are you fucking insane?!” he growls, but maybe I am, because I just went through this. I went through it yesterday and then … five minutes ago? Then I fell onto this cement right here and woke up in my car. Yet I remember none of it.
“Very possibly,” I whisper, and there must be something strange in my expression because Calix pulls back, narrowing his eyes like he thinks I’m trying to pull some elaborate Devils’ Day prank on him. Or hell, maybe he’s the one pulling a prank on me? That makes sense, doesn’t it? For the Knight Crew to set me up like this, over and over again, just to fuck with my head?
“Are you okay?” It’s the old woman again, the one in the yellow shirt with the purple hat. I’d remember her anywhere. Her eyes are as sharp as tacks, and her nails are painted with tiny daisies. They must’ve paid her to get in on this, to keep up the charade.
I turn an awful look on Calix, enjoying the slight tightening of his face when he sees the venom in my expression.
“I’m just fucking fine,” I snap, feeling my anger get the better of me. It’s been doing that a lot lately, hasn’t it? Taking over everything and blinding me with white-hot rage. I reach up and find that the cut on my head is open again. Since it was scabbed over last night, that means the Knight Crew must be reopening it every time I pass out.
Karma, you drove off the edge of a cliff. The Knight Crew didn’t engineer that.
And yet, I can’t come up with another logical explanation for what’s happening, so I roll with it. Besides, it feels good to hate Calix, to look at him and want to kill him, to look at him and blame him for everything that’s going wrong in my life.
“How are you doing it?” I hiss as the woman takes another tentative step forward, clearly unconvinced by my proclamation.
“Should I call the police?” she queries as the rain pours down from the sky, and I try really hard not to wonder how the Knight Crew could possibly engineer the same weather patterns over and over again. I just need to go home and lie down. That’s it. It’s Saturday, so there’s no school. I can take a moment to collect myself.
“That won’t be necessary,” Calix says, smiling in a way that sends chills down my spine. He’s good at it, I’ll admit, following the same script over and over. “We’re classmates; I won’t be pressing charges.” When he leans forward to swipe some hair from my face, I hit his hand back, and his jaw clenches with anger. “You know what tonight is?” he snaps, much less practiced than he was the last two times we played this game.
“Fuck off, Calix, I know what you’re up to,” I snap, so freaked-out by the whole situation that I forget how bad the Knight Crew can really make my life when they put their minds to it. “And I’m not sticking around to play this game.”
“Play this game?” he repeats, his own anger rising in a violent wave. I can see it in his eyes, teetering on the brink of destruction, like a tsunami about to crash into shore. “What game? You crashed your car into mine. So what could I possibly be up to?”
“I’m not buying this Groundhog Day shit.” I shake my head, thinking about that old Bill Murray movie, the one where he wakes up over and over again on the same day. Life doesn’t give second chances, and it most definitely doesn’t give third or fourth or fifth ones. Sorry, but the prank is over before it’s even really started.
“Groundhog Day?” Calix echoes, looking at me like I’ve truly and utterly lost my mind. “You must’ve hit your head pretty hard, Trailer Park. Maybe I should call an ambulance and let you explain how this all happened?” He gestures at our smashed cars as the bells on the front door of the convenience store ring and Raz and Barron appear, right on schedule.
“What the fuck happened here?” Raz asks, still carrying that plastic grocery bag as he circles us. Like Calix, he plays his part very well. I’m almost convinced. Almost. But time loops do not exist. People do not get caught up in an endless cycle of days. I mean, imagine that? Imagine having to live Devils’ Day—and the Devils’ Day Party�
��over and over and over again. “Little trailer trash bitch thought she’d get the first Devils’ Day trick on us, huh?”
I turn and head around the front Calix’s car, climbing back in the driver’s seat of Little Bee before Raz catches up to me, grabbing the door to keep it from closing. Doesn’t stop me from trying the engine and, on the third try, getting it to turn over.
“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” Raz asks, leaning in with a menacing sneer on his face. Barron steps forward, smelling like watermelons, and touches a hand to his friend’s shoulder.
“Back off of her; people are watching.”
Raz scowls at Barron and throws his arm off, but at least he lets go of the door and steps back. Behind the two of them, Calix just stands there, watching me with dark eyes.
“Maybe I’ll let you pay for the damage tonight with your mouth?” he says, before turning away and removing the gas hose from his car. I ignore him and hit the pedal, reversing out of the parking lot and heading straight toward home.
This too, shall pass, I remind myself.
And at least for now, in this moment, I find some comfort in that.
_______________
During the drive, I play Lost by the band Stitched Up Heart and let my mind drift to distant things. I don’t think about the Knight Crew’s prank or Calix’s face, or anything else. I just focus on getting home. Once I’m there, I feel better, turning the engine off and leaning back into my seat with a sigh. The rain’s just slowed down, the same way it did yesterday. Don’t think like that.
I climb out, taking my phone with me. I don’t look at the date on it again. If the Knight Crew had access to my phone to sneak it back into my car, they very easily could’ve fucked with that, too.
“Karma?” Mama Cathy asks when I walk in and find her in the living room, bent over a small canvas, a pile of bubble wrap on the floor beside her. The moms are always ordering art. Sometimes it’s to keep, sometimes it’s to sell. “What are you doing home?”
“Um, it’s Saturday?” I say with a breezy laugh, pretending like her look of confusion isn’t a terrifying thing to behold.
“Are you bleeding?” she asks, standing up from the couch at the same time that Mama Jane comes in, her face pinched.
“Did you get in an accident, Karma?” she asks as I turn to look at her and she spots the blood on my forehead. “Oh my god, are you alright?” Jane comes forward, cupping my face in her hands as I struggle to swallow past a sudden tightness in my throat.
“I told you yesterday that something happened to Little Bee,” I say, and Jane’s eyes narrow with worry. She flicks a glance in Cathy’s direction.
“Call the doctor,” Jane says, but I brush her off, stepping back and crossing my arms over my chest. Google today’s date, Karma, my mind urges, but I won’t. I refuse.
“I don’t need a doctor; it’s just a little bump,” I argue. “Can I just chill in my room please?”
The moms exchange a long, worried look.
“Do you have any other injuries?” Jane asks, but I’m already shaking my head.
“Look, I’m fine. It’s nothing. I can even leave my door open if that’ll make you happy.” I tap my foot and raise my brows, trying to give off the impression that I’m fine. I’m not, but it doesn’t matter. I’ll smoke some weed on the back porch, take a nap, and everything will be … well, not okay. Things will never be okay again, now that the video is making its rounds on the internet, but they could be better. Things will be better.
“If you leave the door open …” Jane hedges, but I highly doubt she’s going to leave me alone for long. More than likely, she’ll call the doctor—there’s only one in Devil Springs—and see if she’s making house calls today.
I head down the hall, breathing a sigh of relief once I’m back in my room.
My parents, despite being 420-friendly, will freak if they find out I smoke weed—they think I should wait until my brain is done developing—so I make sure to always smoke out the window to help hide the smell. I grab one of the joints I have tucked in my desk drawer and open my bedroom window, hopping up to sit on the sill as I light up.
Of course, from here I can see the mural on the inside wall of the carport.
The mural … that isn’t there at all.
My hands shake as I hold the lighter to the end of the joint, remembering the can of red spray paint and Katie’s silent tears. They painted over it, I tell myself, because that’s the only logical explanation. But then my eyes flick over to the perfect square of canvas on my easel, the one that’s still fully intact, despite my fit with the X-Acto knife.
Logic.
I have to hold onto logic.
A group of teens—one of them wearing a Devil Springs High sweatshirt—passes by, wearing masks and laughing.
“We’re already late; I say we ditch today, hit the party early,” one of them says to the others. I can’t hear their responses because they’re walking too fast, but that does nothing to melt the ice forming in my belly. My eyes stray back to my bed, to my phone lying innocuously on the comforter.
If there’s nothing wrong, why can’t you just pick it up and look at it? I ask myself, taking a drag on the joint and then perching it carefully on the edge of my glass ashtray. Carefully, as if it’s a venomous snake about to strike, I approach the silent rectangle of my phone.
“This is stupid,” I murmur after a moment, snatching it up and pulling up Google.
What is today’s date? I type, my stomach clenching before I hit enter.
When yesterday’s date—Devils’ Day—pops up, I start to feel woozy again, like I did at the gas station earlier.
“What the fuck?” I whisper, hands shaking as I try typing in my name, then Calix’s, along with Crescent Prep, just like I did last night.
There are no videos. No sex tapes. Not even a mention of a sex tape. Frantically, I start checking the social media accounts of the Knight Crew. Some of them—like Calix’s—are private, but in typical Raz fashion, he posts every aspect of his life for the world to see.
And yet … he doesn’t mention the video. Neither does Sonja.
I throw my phone down on the bed and step back, like it really has bitten me, infected me, poisoned me.
It’s the weed, I try to tell myself this time, even though I know two drags on a joint does not a high person make. Sliding into the seat at my desk, I open my laptop and perform the same searches, the same social media sweeps, just to see if maybe the Knight Crew really did fuck with my phone.
The results are the same.
“Mom …” I call out, not caring which of them responds to me. Of course, they’re both hovering nearby, so they appear within seconds. I turn to look at them, trying not to give into the fear I’m feeling inside. “I think I need to go to the hospital.”
_______________
This too, shall pass, I murmur, over and over again as I sit in the backseat of my mothers’ Taurus. Yeah, the same Taurus I drove off the edge of Highway 62. After telling my moms the full story, they bypassed our local doctor and drove me straight to the ER.
Everything seems fine, they said. I don’t have a concussion, they said.
“Just because the CT scan doesn’t show anything doesn’t mean you don’t have a brain injury of some kind,” Mama Jane says, frowning hard. Sometimes I forget that she used to be a family medicine doctor. I wasn’t born until after she’d left her career. It’s one of the reasons her family doesn’t speak to her anymore. But just one of the reasons. Mama Cathy, and in turn, me and my sisters, are some of the other reasons. “I want you to go to sleep as soon as we get home.”
“If you really think I have a concussion, isn’t it best if I stay up?” I ask, but even though it’s only early afternoon, I’m fucking exhausted. All I want to do is sleep. Because, according to my parents, to the whole world, today is September 25th, Devils’ Day. Although … it can’t be because it was Devils’ Day yesterday, right?
Goddamn it, I jus
t want to go to bed. When I wake up, I’ll figure this all out.
“That’s a myth,” Jane says as Cathy looks over her shoulder, brows pinched with worry. “As long as you’re awake and you can hold a conversation, sleep is actually best for concussive patients.” We pull into the driveway beside the mural that, apparently, never existed in the first place?
That must’ve been one hell of a dream last night.
I don’t think very hard about this morning, about how I passed out and hit the pavement and then … woke up and started all over again.
Instead, I head inside and change into some pj’s. My moms bring me soup and warm milk, like I’m five years old again, and leave the door cracked with promises to check in on me every hour or so. As soon as they’re gone, I finish my joint, let the munchies help me clean up every last bite of food, and then curl up in bed.
There is no video, I tell myself with a relieved sigh. As weirded out as I am about the intensity of last night’s dream, I feel better. I never fought with Luke or pepper sprayed the Knight Crew or ruined my little sisters’ mural.
I’m still smiling when I finally drift off to sleep.
I am most definitely not smiling when I wake up again.
Chapter Eight
THERE’S BLOOD ALL over my steering wheel.
I wake up with a start, my heart pounding, a scream lodged in my throat. No! No, this is a fucking nightmare!
This time, I don’t wait for Calix to tear my car door open. I open it so fast and so hard that I hit him with it. He grunts and grabs onto it, but I’m already climbing out. I’m already running. I make it as far as the grassy patch on the edge of the parking lot before I collapse and throw up.
“Are you fucking insane?!” Calix growls, breathing hard as he catches up to me.
“Stop saying that!” I scream, turning to look at him while my head swims with fear and I choke on a sense of dread and foreboding. This isn’t happening to me, it’s not. This isn’t real. I figure I must’ve taken some psychedelics at the Devils’ Day Party and now I’m tripping hard. How else could I be reliving the same day over and over again?
Bully Me: Class of 2020 Page 58
