by B. B. Easton
Was he on them when he almost choked Tony to death?
Was he on them when he beat Lance’s face in?
Was he on them when he almost broke my fingers and shoved me down the fire escape stairs?
Was he on them when he killed a man and then blamed it on me for making him “weak”?
The dismissal bell hadn’t rung yet, but I packed up my shit and walked out anyway. No more hiding. No more avoiding. No more fear. All I had pumping through my veins was blinding, deafening fuck you as I stomped down D hall to Knight’s fourth period classroom.
When the dismissal bell rang, I was standing outside Knight’s classroom, my chest tight, my skin crawling. I dropped my purse and backpack to the floor next to me to free me up in case I needed to flee or fight.
No, not in case. When.
As soon as Knight crossed the threshold his zombie eyes locked onto mine and pure, unbridled malice shot out of them like poison daggers. He was so much bigger than I’d remembered. It had been weeks since I’d seen him up close, and the change in his appearance was glaring. His neck was just a series of cascading bulges leading to his shoulders, and the sleeves of his T-shirt had actually ripped to accommodate his swollen biceps. Johnny Football Team was right—Knight was on some serious fucking steroids.
The sight of him still knocked the wind out of me. I had expected to feel angry. I hadn’t expected for my heart to implode in my chest all over again. My brain knew that I should hate him. That he was a piece of shit hypocrite who just wanted to torture me and make me bleed. But my hands didn’t get the memo. They longed to touch his fuzzy head. My legs itched to wrap around his waist again. And my heart begged to be pressed against his just one more time.
Before I could catch my breath and attack, Knight beat me to it. Within seconds, he was towering over me screaming, “Did you fuck him? Did you? Did you suck his pretty little cock, Punk?”
Oh, hell no.
That was it. Knight’s noxious rage cloud enveloped me, mixed with my own, and created something even more potent and destructive in me than I ever knew was possible. I was absolutely mad. Possessed.
I shoved Knight’s chest as hard as I could, moving him a full foot away from me, and screamed back, “ME?! What about you and Angel?!”
“What about me and Angel?!”
A crowd of students began to form, a safe distance away, while the teachers all ducked back into their classrooms and shut their doors.
“Um, I’m pretty sure you’re fucking her, that’s what. Trevor only started giving me rides so that I wouldn’t have to stand in the rain. You, on the other hand, are probably giving Angel a ride every night!” I jammed my finger in his rock-hard chest and tried to sound confident, but my hands were shaking so violently I probably looked like I was having a petit mal seizure.
Knight laughed, loudly, maniacally, then said in a sarcastic tone I’d never heard him use before, “Yeah, Punk. I’m fucking Angel. In fact, I usually fuck her doggie-style so that I can wrap all that long blonde hair around my fist and give it to her hard.”
Angry tears blurred my vision as my hands clenched into fists by my side. I thought I knew agony. I had no idea. Knight’s words impaled me. Gutted me. I could almost hear the sound of my heart seeping through my wounds and landing on the speckled tile floor with a wet smack. Everyone’s eyes were on the flopping, gasping organ at my feet, but no one came to my aid. They just stood and waited for the death blow.
Along with my heart, my will to survive must have leaked out too. I was sick of being tortured. Sick of being afraid. And sick of biting my fucking tongue. If Knight was going to slay me where I stood, I’d at least get a few jabs in first.
“Oh really?” I spat. “I’m surprised you can even get it up with the amount of steroids pumping through your system.”
Boom. Secret’s out, motherfucker.
The shock on Knight’s face fueled me. I’d wounded him, and I wanted to twist the knife before he got a chance to recover.
“Look at you, Knight—taking drugs that make you mean, sleeping with trash, hurting the only person who cares about you—your mom would be so proud.”
Suddenly a hand was around my throat, my back was against the lockers, and my toes were barely touching the floor. I struggled to breathe, to get my eyes to focus on the monster in front of me, to make my arms beat against him. I struggled to process his words.
“Say it again! Say that shit again!” he screamed in my face.
My mind flashed back to the first time I ever saw Knight, screaming those same words to a scared little skater boy in the church parking lot.
I tried to bring myself back to the present, to fight, to claw, to kick, but my arms were too heavy. My legs were like lead. My eyelids wouldn’t open anymore, and then, for a brief moment, it all went away. Stars danced around me as I floated, suspended in blissful nothingness.
From somewhere far away I heard the sound of a door slam, and it pulled me from the quiet twinkly place. I realized, slowly, that I was lying on the cold tile floor. With my eyes still closed I tried to reconnect with my body.
What hurts? Everything.
I opened my eyes to find dozens of shoes gathered around, all pointing in my direction.
A pair of gentle hands wrapped around my arms and sat me upright. My head felt like it was about to explode. Or already had. My throat hurt when I swallowed. And breathed. My tailbone was sore when I sat on it. And my elbow protested being touched. August’s face swam into focus before me. He was crouched on the floor, touching my neck, softly probing. There was a deep crease in his brow, and his mouth was set in a hard line. August was angry. I’d never seen him angry before.
“August?” I choked out, my voice not sounding like my own.
August pressed his forehead to mine and took a deep breath.
Then he kissed me, right between the eyes.
“No!” I screamed, shoving him backwards.
Oh, August! No, no, no! Knight will kill you!
I immediately came to my senses and scanned the faces of the kids in the hallway to see if there were any defectors in the crowd who might tell Knight what had just happened. The crowd dissipated quickly, pretending like they weren’t fucking salivating over the whole goddamned spectacle, and I looked at my dearest friend with tears in my eyes.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered. “I’m so, so sorry.”
August reached for my hand, cooing, “Hey, don’t apolo—”
But I snatched my hand away and scooted backwards across the floor. “Stay away from me! Stay away from me, August. I’m serious.” I held my hands up and looked around again, paranoid that Knight was going to emerge from the shadows any second.
August looked about as heartbroken as I felt. “BB. You don’t mean—”
“Go away. Please! Just go!”
The look of confusion and hurt on his face was like a self-inflicted stab to the gut. I didn’t know what made me want to cry more—knowing that August was in pain, or knowing that I had to stay in pain. I wanted nothing more than to let August comfort me and put me back together, but for his own safety I had to reject his affection. Knight had even taken that away from me.
I hid the bruises on my neck with my jacket when my mom picked me up, but I couldn’t hide the rivers of mascara streaming down my cheeks. I told her Knight and I had gotten into a fight. That he had screamed at me in the hallway while everyone watched. I told her that his new girlfriend and her friends had been tormenting me at school. I cried and shook and hyperventilated and cradled my aching elbow the entire way home.
My mom just rubbed my thigh and shushed me like a baby and told me I could stay home for the rest of the week. Told me to stay away from “that asshole.” When we walked inside she took me upstairs, gave me a Xanax, wiped the makeup off my face with a hot washcloth, and tucked me into bed. She kissed me on the same spot that August had kissed, and within minutes I was blessedly tranquilized.
I woke up hours later to the soun
d of my cell phone ringing. It was Trevor. He’d just heard what had happened. He wanted to know if I was okay. He was sorry he didn’t come look for me when I didn’t meet him outside. He said he’d called a few times, but I never answered, so he left. He felt like shit about it. He asked if there was anything he could do. But we both knew there wasn’t.
No one could help me.
Trevor told me his mom was letting him have a graduation party on Friday. I’d been such a self-absorbed asshole I didn’t even realize he was graduating. He asked me if I wanted to come.
“Are you kidding?” I asked, incredulous. “After what happened today? Aren’t you afraid to be seen with me?”
“Well, I was thinking that maybe we could just keep it friendly at the party, but then, after everybody leaves, if you want, maybe you could spend the night?”
I knew if I showed up at that party there was a good chance that I’d be delivering hell right to Trevor’s front door, but my need to feel Trevor’s hands on me again—to escape into the sweet oblivion he was offering—was stronger than my need for self-preservation. I’d rather die trying to feel better than live in misery.
“Okay,” I said.
“Okay? You’ll come?”
I laughed at the enthusiasm in Trevor’s voice, then immediately winced in pain. “Okay,” I said, tenderly rubbing my neck. “I’ll come.”
I didn’t leave the house for three days. My mom called the school and told them I was sick, and I told my work the same story. It wasn’t a lie. I was sick—sick and fucking tired. I mostly stayed in my room—smoking, writing poetry, and either destroying or hiding every shred of evidence I could find that Ronald McKnight had ever existed.
My dad made me lunch every day, which I barely touched, but it forced me to at least come downstairs. My dad didn’t really know what to say about the whole boy situation, so he basically filled the silence by telling me about all the awful things that were happening in other parts of the world. In a twisted way, it cheered me up. I mean, things really could have been a lot worse. I could have lost my entire family to genocide.
That Friday I spent most of the day primping for Trevor’s party. I wanted to look like a girl for a change, to remind him what his boy parts were for. I shaved my whole body, buzzed my hair shorter, trimmed my bangs, and bleached my strawberry hair blond. While I waited for the bleach to develop I must have weighed myself at least three times.
Ninety-five pounds. Not bad.
Once my hair was done, I applied concealer to the greenish bruises on my neck and at least fourteen coats of black liquid eyeliner and mascara to my well-rested eyes. I considered wearing the only skirt I owned—the plaid wraparound that fastened with safety pins—but I just...couldn’t. The last time I’d worn that thing I ended up losing my virginity to a zombie-eyed boy in a torrent of pain and blood and honey. I didn’t want those memories haunting me tonight. I wanted to make new ones. So I grabbed my skintight fuzzy tiger-striped stretch pants instead—they made my ass look good—and pulled a lacy black camisole over my bright red Wonderbra. I finished the look off with some bright red lipstick and matching nail polish. I never wore lipstick, so to me that was about as girlie as it got.
I’d told my mom that I was still going to spend the night at Juliet’s house, like I did every Friday (wink, wink), and said that Juliet and Tony were going to come pick me up after school. But it wasn’t Tony’s Corvette waiting for me in the driveway at three o’clock. It was Trevor’s little black Civic.
As soon as I saw him pull into our long, wooded driveway I ran downstairs and poked my head into the living room to give my dad an obligatory wave goodbye. He was playing guitar with his headphones on, but paused long enough to wave me over for a hug. I squeezed him quickly, then flew out the front door and into Trevor’s idling Honda.
“Go, go, go!” I said as I slammed the door shut behind me. I didn’t think my dad would get up and check to see whose car I was getting into, but I didn’t want to press my luck either.
Trevor did as I said, backing down my skinny driveway at top speed before flipping the little coupe around and taking off down the street. I watched the front windows of my house for any signs of movement until the woods swallowed them up. Then I relaxed into my seat.
Turning to face Trevor I finally said, “Hey.”
“Hey,” he said back, casting me a quick glance and a smile. “You doing okay?”
“Yeah,” I said, not wanting to talk about it. “I missed you.”
Trevor stopped at a red light and turned toward me. “I missed you, too.” Tucking one of my longer side pieces of hair behind my ear he said, “I like your hair. It’s lighter.”
“Thanks,” I blushed.
“I like your lipstick too. It’s gonna look good smeared all over my face in a minute.”
“Oh shit,” I blushed. “I didn’t even think about that. I knew there was a reason why I never wear this stuff.”
Trevor smirked at me as the light turned green. “Maybe it’ll make me look like Robert Smith.”
“Ooh, maybe I should stock up then.”
When we got to Trevor’s house we spent the first hour just rolling around and making out on his bed. He discovered my nipple piercings (I’d put the winged barbells back in. The hearts just depressed me.), and acted like it was the sexiest thing he’d ever seen.
Three days away from my problems and three full nights of sleep (thanks to the Xanax my mom was probably crushing into my Diet Cokes) had me feeling better, but Trevor Walcott telling me my nipple piercings were sexy had me ready to fucking party.
The keg arrived just as I was considering taking Trevor’s pants off. He had the guy set it up on the front porch, and Trevor took the invoice to the master bedroom for his mom to sign.
Fucking weird.
People started trickling in around six, and almost everyone brought party favors. Pizza or booze or weed or pills. One guy walked in carrying a blonde blow-up doll under his arm.
It really is just like on TV, I thought.
Trevor didn’t know most of the people there, but he didn’t care. He just smoked whatever was passed to him, kept his red Solo cup full, and mingled. I’d never seen somebody so cool and confident in a crowd full of strangers before. I, on the other hand, was ready for everyone to get the fuck out so that we could finish what we’d started in his bedroom.
I wandered outside to smoke and get some air when I noticed August standing in the driveway by himself. I watched him as I refilled my cup at the keg. He looked terrible. He’d lost a ton of weight but hadn’t gotten any new clothes, so everything just hung off of him. He swayed on his feet—as if he were already sloppy drunk—and puffed on a cigarette that had at least an inch of ash hanging off the end. And even in the darkness I could see that he’d let his chestnut brown roots grow out longer than ever.
I hadn’t spoken to August since I’d flipped out and pushed him away from me at school earlier that week. I didn’t know what to say, but I figured it would come to me once I got over there.
I didn’t get over there though.
Just as I stepped off the porch Trevor came bursting through the front door and announced, “There she is!”
I turned around at the sound of his voice and was immediately scooped off my feet by a very happy Trevor Walcott.
“I missed you,” he mumbled into my neck before putting me back down.
I smiled up at him and said, “I missed you, too.” Then, pulling on the back of his neck so that he would lower his ear to my mouth, I drunk-whispered, “I can’t wait for you to kick all these fuckers out.”
Trevor immediately stood back up and yelled, “Everybody! Get the fuck out!”
The crowd outside laughed and cheered, then resumed their rowdy side conversations.
Trevor bent back down and whispered, “I think you’re gonna have to do it. Nobody fucking listens to me around here.”
I cracked up. Oh my God, it felt good. I hadn’t laughed in days—probably s
ince the last time I’d hung out with Trevor. As my giggling subsided, I noticed August walk past us and into the house. I made a mental note to go in and talk to him—just as soon as I smoked the cigarette I’d come outside for.
I stuck the Camel Light into my mouth, and then I heard it.
At first I thought it was just in my head, but as the rumble grew louder and those headlights rounded the corner onto Trevor’s street, I knew. Ronald McKnight—’roided up archfiend from hell—was coming for me, and all I could do was stand trapped inside my paralyzed body and silently scream at myself to run.
Trevor, oblivious to my impending doom, lit the cigarette hanging out of my slack-jawed mouth, then slapped at all of his pockets, muttering something about losing his pack. He went back inside the house to find it, leaving me all alone. As usual.
Maybe he won’t kill me in front of all these witnesses, I thought. Maybe he’ll just almost kill me. Maybe he’ll just almost kill me…
As Knight’s monster truck screeched into Trevor’s teenager-filled cul-de-sac, my heart slammed itself against my rib cage as if it were trying to escape.
Stay here and die if you want, it said, but I’m getting the fuck out!
But it wasn’t Knight who leaped from the roaring monstrosity before it had even come to a complete stop. It was Angel. And she was running straight for me, screaming obscenities and flailing her arms like a wild, flaming banshee.
As she approached, my mind oscillated between fear over my imminent death and confusion about why the hell Angel would want to jump me when she was the one fucking my boyfriend.
While my mind spun, trying to connect whatever dots I had obviously missed, my body braced for impact. Angel’s red eyes and bared teeth closed in on me, but just as she was about to attack, she disappeared. I looked down to find her body on the ground at my feet, then watched in disbelief as it rose before my eyes and began moving backward—shrieking, kicking, and thrashing in midair. It was as if someone had pressed the Rewind button on my worst nightmare.
I just stood there and stared in a stunned stupor. As I squinted into the darkness, the silhouette of a monster finally came into view. The creature was wearing a black hoodie and was shoving Angel’s writhing body back into the truck with the force of a thousand men.
