Cursed (The Curse Trilogy Book 1)

by Nicole Marsh

  This past week school has been extra hellacious, as students packed in their last pranks while they still could. Even leaving every class first and bolting to my car at the end of the day didn’t keep me completely unscathed from my bullies.

  It doesn’t matter though, now that’s all just a part of my past. Today is the end of an era. No more “Queer Mir” or “Mira UNLoveABLE” being painted onto my locker. No more rotten meat stuffed into my backpack. Today ends it all.

  I walk into the kitchen with extra pep in my step. Nothing is going to get me down, today is going to be great day. I’m humming, traipsing straight to the fridge to grab the orange juice. My head whips into a double take and my feet stop of their own volition when I spot a broad shouldered, dark-haired form sitting on the bench in our kitchen.

  I close my eyes. No. Freaking. Way. That better not be Vlad in my kitchen, waiting to go to my graduation. There’s no way he’s ruining today, my day to get closure on the misery that was high school. Misery that he started.

  I slowly reopen my eyelids and blink twice, before checking around the corner. Yep, that’s Vlad. He’s sitting in my kitchen, scrolling through his phone like he doesn’t have a care in the world. As if he can feel me staring at him, his nostrils flare, and he calls out, “I’ll take some juice too, Little Mir.”

  Vlad is a year and a half older than me, but two grades ahead because I have a summer birthday. Ever since he moved to the other side of town, he always makes comments about how young and small I am. I may be short and I may be eighteen months younger than Vlad, but neither of those things make me inferior to him, despite how much as he tries to insinuate they do.

  Ignoring Vlad’s request for juice, I take out one glass and pour orange juice for myself with the fridge still open behind me. I move to bring the glass to my mouth for a drink when a warm form presses against the back of my body. A small shiver goes through me just before Vlad’s meaty hand snatches my juice from me.

  “Hey!” I cry out, wiggling around trying to angle my body to face him, but being between Vlad and the granite countertop is like being trapped between two boulders. By the time I’m turned around, Vlad has consumed almost my entire glass of juice.

  He leans forward, his hot, orangey breath hitting my cheeks and nose. “Thanks for the juice.” Vlad sets the empty glass on the counter and my whole body heats like a live wire the second I realize the intimate position that we’re standing in. The counter is pressing into the middle of my spine and Vlad’s warm body is plastered against my front as he towers over me. My cheeks heat as Vlad bends down closer and skims his nose across my forehead, a small strangled noise escapes my lips at the touch. Part fear and part… something else.

  Abruptly, Vlad steps back and returns to his spot in the kitchen nook, whipping his phone out of his pocket. A few seconds later, whistling announces my dad before he turns the corner into the kitchen. He pats my head as he walks by to the fridge. “Hey kiddo, ready for your big day?”

  A response is on the tip of my tongue when Vlad hops up from the bench. “Hey Mr. Love.”

  “Vlad!” My dad sounds ten times more thrilled to see him in our kitchen than he was to see me. For whatever reason, adults never seem to see Vlad as the big fat… er fit, bully that he is. Everyone loves Vlad. When our families go somewhere together, he walks around bro hugging every guy in sight, while girls fawn all over him. It’s disgusting.

  Tuning out my dad and Vlad chatting, I put the used glass in the dishwasher and pull out another for my orange juice. There’s no way I want to share a glass with Vlad, he probably has massive amounts of germs floating around in his saliva, from all the girls that he’s always with.

  To my frustration, the conversation I ‘m studiously ignoring while drinking my juice ends in my dad agreeing to let Vlad drive me to my graduation. I try protesting, insisting I’d rather drive myself, but I’m met by a wall of resistance from the two of them. My mom strolls into the kitchen, taking the side of team Vlad.

  Outside, I’m forced to get into his stupid sports car, by my giddy parents and an indifferent seeming Vlad. He revs the engine as I sit down and as soon as I’m buckled in, he zips off down the road, leaving my parents behind in the driveway.

  Sneaking my phone out of my small bag that holds my cap and gown, I shoot Sylvia an urgent text message with one word: SOS.

  It comforts me when she messages back immediately: What happened?

  My thumbs fly across the screen as I type my response. Parents made me ride with Vlad, prepare for worst case scenario. Bring me backup dress please.

  I’m nervous driving me is a rouse, providing an opportunity for Vlad to ruin the dress I’m wearing. Maybe by throwing some sort of liquid on me. Flashes of the movie Carrie suddenly surge forward in my brain. Then I start to get paranoid he might dump something on me in his car. Instead of waiting for Sylvia’s reply, I shove my phone back into the plastic bag and seal it shut, hoping it will stay safe in there.

  “Do you mind if we stop for coffee?” Vlad shocks me by asking in a polite tone.

  “Uh, I think we should head straight there…” I trail off as he swerves his car into a parking lot for a drive-up coffee stand. Of course Vlad would ignore my answer and just do what he wants to anyways.

  Coffee and coffee stands are really popular in the Northwest. Our town is small and we have three coffee stands in town plus an actual coffee shop on each side of the Main Road, downtown. The stand is basically a small shack that usually houses one or two people that make coffee for people after they drive up and order at the window.

  There’s one car ahead of us, but they must have a complicated order because it takes a while. We wait in silence, my impatience to get out of Vlad’s car mounting with each second that passes. I begin to lightly tap my fingers on my knee, wondering what type of torture Vlad has planned for me next. Leaning forward out the window, I eye the sign for the stand we’re at. The billboard features the silhouette of a busty girl half bent with a steaming cup of coffee placed on her outstretched hand.

  When we finally reach the window, the barista squeals Vlad’s name, jumping up in down giddily. My entire face burns and I look away blushing furiously after catching only a small glimpse of the girl making coffee. I didn’t comprehend the meaning behind the billboard until seeing the barista. Vlad brought me to the lingerie coffee stand on the other side of the Main Road!

  The glimpse I caught of the barista showed her huge boobs were shoved into one of those bras with no cups, her modesty protected by a set of tiny pasties and a g-string. Obviously I’ve seen partially dressed girls on TV, at the pool, and in the locker room, but I’ve never seen someone look so comfortable serving coffee mostly naked.

  Vlad chats with the barista for a minute, they clearly know each other. My mind wanders, wondering if he’s just a regular at the coffee stand until I hear her whining voice ask why Vlad never called her again after the other night. Gag.

  I personally can’t understand what anyone see’s in him. Sure he’s good looking, I guess. Tall and broad with dark hair and classic features, I could maybe see the physical attraction. But there’s more to life than looks and Vlad’s personality sucks! Have some standards, girl.

  Vlad eventually turns to me and asks me what I want to drink. Politely declining anything for the stand, I continue to stare out the window. The sound of two drinks plopping into the cup holders in quick succession startles me. I glance at Vlad’s expressionless face, then the two coffee cups before moving my eyes back to the scenery blurring past the window.

  He tries to engage me in conversation a few times during the twenty minute car ride, but I ignore him, taking in the scenery like I haven’t lived in this town my entire life. I don’t touch the coffee Vlad tells me is mine. He knew the barista, who knows what he had her do to the drink. It’s probably filled with ex-lax or siracha or something else equally nefarious intended to ruin my day. He may have my parents and most of the town fooled, but there’s no way that I’m
going to forget that Vlad opened the floodgates for my tormentors. It’ll be a cold day in hell before I accept anything edible from him.

  It feels like five hours have passed, when we finally arrive at my high school where the graduation ceremony is commencing. I leap out of Vlad’s car just as his arm nears my body, a light pat touches my back. Yelling a quick “thank you” I don’t wait to see what his intentions are. Instead I snatch my cap and gown and rush towards the entrance for the pre-ceremony meeting area.

  I’m forced to dip and weave my way through the crowd to avoid students and parents greeting each other. As I make my way through, I unzip my bag with my cap and gown to grab my phone. I have thirty-five missed messages from Sylvia.

  Scrolling through her texts I see that they start easy going like “hope he’s not too much of an ass,” but they end at “I’M GOING TO CALL THE COPS IF YOU DON’T TEXT ME BACK INSTANTLY.” I start to text her back my eyes focused on my phone instead of the walkway in front of me. It’s a rookie mistake and someone takes advantage of my distraction to shove me from behind. I fall hard on the cement ground, raising my hands just in time to protect myself from a broken nose. A loud “oomph” is pushed from my body upon impact.

  Laughter floats down from all sides, letting me know the push wasn’t an accident. Rising from the ground, I brush myself off, but I didn’t make it through unscathed. My phone screen has a large crack across the center and one of my palms is bleeding.

  Without raising my head fully, I try to determine the best exit strategy. My ears perk up when I hear Sylvia yelling at the crowd to move out of her way and within seconds she’s standing next to me. She leads me to the bathroom near the student waiting area to clean up.

  Sylvia seems to have a sixth sense that alerts her when I’m in trouble. She always shows up when I need her most, she has our entire friendship. At first my tormentors tried to pick on her too, but they quickly gave up and moved onto easier prey. I think they thought her carefree attitude was just a front, but Sylvia is who she is and she doesn’t care what other people think about her.

  She’s a half foot taller than me, like almost everyone else, with hair that changes color every few months. Right now its bright blue, in a French braid ending just past her shoulders. She’s wearing a black dress, heavy black eyeliner, and heeled doc martens. On some people her look would be dark, but on her it makes her look trendy and artistic, rather than gothic.

  Some days I wish that I was more like Sylvia. I think that if I hadn’t carried about being bullied from the beginning then maybe it would’ve stopped almost as soon as it began. Instead I cared about what people thought, asking why they were doing it. I tried to play nice and would accept the blame for things that weren’t my fault. It wasn’t until I met Sylvia that I started to stand up for myself, but I think by then it was too late.

  In the bathroom I wash off my hands and inspect myself in the mirror. I’m wearing a bright blue dress the same color as Sylvia’s hair. It made it through the fall relatively unscathed, besides my palm and the crack on my screen.

  I let my mom style my hair in loose curls today, and add some makeup for photos afterwards. My eye makeup is a little smudged, so I let Sylvia help me fix it. One last cursory glance in the mirror, then I turn to leave the bathroom, but Sylvia stops me with a hand on my shoulder. “What’s this on your back, Mira?”

  Craning my neck around, I try to see over my shoulder wondering if there is a stain on my dress from falling to the ground. Sylvia grabs at something on my back, the fabric of my dress tugs against me for a second then suddenly she’s handing a photo with a piece of tape across the top over my shoulder. I snatch it from her hand to see what it is. My shoulders slump forward once the image has been absorbed by my retinas.

  It’s a photo of me standing in the doorway to the locker room with my towel clutched around my body. My hair is scraggly and wet, dripping down my body and puddling on the floor. The picture is from two weeks ago when my clothes went missing, again, while I was showering after gym class. I remember this incident because I saw the girls and started to chase them partway out of the locker room, but was scared to wander too far in a towel so they got away.

  “Hmmm.” Sounds from next to me. “Why don’t we just hang out in here until it’s time to walk in? We can just glob onto the back of the group. Who cares if we sit near the back anyways?”

  I nod my head still fixated on the image. “Vlad must’ve put this on me! He patted my back as I was leaving the car.” Outrage replaces the defeated feeling that was flooding my brain. Someday I’m going to find a way to make Vlad pay, to make him feel the same way I’ve felt since I was twelve years old.

  “What an asshat.” Sylvia commiserates. She’s already leaning against one of the bathroom stalls. She pulls a cigarette out of one of her pockets and lights it with a neon green zippo before sending puffs of smoke into the air. Like almost everyone else, Sylvia turned eighteen during the school year and almost immediately after she started smoking.

  “Agreed.” I don’t smoke, but I join Sylvia leaning against the stall. She snatches the picture from my hand and crumples it into a ball, throwing it into the garbage bin nearby.

  We spend a few minutes in silence, then Sylvia has me laughing with a story of her youngest brother running around the house with his new “superhero mask”, which was actually a pair of her mom’s panties. The embarrassing image is forgotten and shortly after we join the end of the trail of students heading into the auditorium for graduation.

  Our town is small and has two high schools, so my graduating class is only about seventy people. In an orderly line, we file down the center aisle between the theater style chairs, heading towards the stage at the front of the room. The left side of the stage is covered in risers and the right side has a small podium for speeches. It’s also where we’ll receive our diplomas before walking off the stage and into our new lives as high school graduates.

  Snickering begins at the front of the line as students enter the auditorium. Like a wave, the laughter trickles down the line until it reaches my ears. At first, I don’t realize what’s happening. I shrug my shoulders and continue trudging to the stage, ready to embark on the next phase of my life.

  It isn’t until people start dragging their feet, pointing left and right at the rows that I stop to inspect what they’ve been laughing at. All around the auditorium the chairs have pictures taped to the back. The images are visible from the aisle, but I step inside one of the row and grab a photo, just to be sure.

  Anxiety and embarrassment flood through my veins. The photo is of me, driving car with my mouth open wide, gaping like I’m fish out of water. I’m sure I’m in the middle of belting out a lyric to a song, but you can’t tell that from the image. I just look ridiculous.

  Dragging my eyes from the photo, I scan down the rest of the chairs in the row, each one holds another image, each one equally embarrassing and all of me. One after another, I grab at photos within my reach, pulling them off the seats as I go.

  It’s as if someone stalked me to try to catch every time I did something that could be held against me. Mid-itch a tiiiny bit inside my nose, clay smattering my body after leaving my class at the community center, the day my pants split last year, the time I sat in red paint and everyone said it was blood. Photo after photo of my life. Every embarrassing moment from the last four years is plastered along the chairs for parents and families to see when they walk in.

  Normally I try not to let my classmates see that they get to me, but this is too much. My family will see these, the whole town will laugh at my humiliation. I’ve been hoping for a fresh start, but it’s as if my bullies want me to know, today isn’t the end. There’s no special meaning of graduation to my tormentors, we’ll still see each other in town. They want me to know, they’re always watching, always waiting for the next opportunity to target me.

  I rush out of the auditorium with tears streaming down my face and a wad of pictures in my hands. Part o
f me wishes this day was over, or this stupid ceremony didn’t exist, but I know my classmates would’ve found another way to convey their message. A commotion starts behind me, but I don’t look back.

  Bursting through the doors to the courtyard with my gown billowing behind me, I run straight into a warm wall of solid muscle. An oomph bursts free for the second time today and I screw my eyes shut, but instead of connecting with the cement, a pair of strong arms catch me around the waist. I open one eyelid slowly to see the person that kept me from falling backwards.

  Vlad’s smirking face comes into focus and I let out a deep exhale. Of course it’s him, here to gloat over the success of what I’m sure was his plan. Stepping back from his hold, I level him with the angriest glare I can muster. My eyes are red and puffy and my tears carry makeup down my face in rivulets, but that doesn’t keep me from trying to tell Vlad I know that he was responsible. “You’re plan worked, congrats.” Hoping my words sounded flippant, I walk around Vlad to speak to my parents. I soften my tone and lower my voice. “I’m not feeling too well. Can you take me home?”

  My parents exchange a look before turning back to me. My dad wraps an arm around my shoulders, giving me a tight squeeze. “Are you sure Mira? You only get one high school graduation! I don’t want you to miss your chance.”

  I nod my head slowly, “Yeah Dad, I’m sure.”

  He uses the arm wrapped around my shoulders to steer me out to the parking lot. “Ookay,” He draws out. “This is your day. We can spend it however you’d like, sweetie.”

  My parents don’t make a fuss about leaving, or press me to find out what happened. It’s one of the things that I love the most about them. They give me room to make my own decisions and offer their support when necessary.