Calix has the most out of all of them, smirking at me with an expression that reminds me of spiders and dead things. Raz watches me, too, but Barron refuses to even acknowledge that I exist. If we’re in the hallway together, he’ll walk right into me, knock me out of the way and then move on like it never happened. Sonja chucks her cupcake at me, bloody frosting hitting me right in the chest and staining my uniform.
Our teacher, too occupied with a haul of Devils’ Day gifts on her own desk, doesn’t notice.
With a snarl, I take my seat in the back and decide that maybe, just maybe, I did hit Calix’s car on purpose this morning.
For years, I’ve endured whatever they could throw at me, fighting back just enough so they wouldn’t see me as a victim, but not so hard that they’d see me as an adversary.
I’m just not sure I can take it anymore.
“Don’t do something you might regret,” Luke whispers as I glare at the backs of their heads.
“I won’t,” I reply easily, but I’m pretty sure I’m lying.
No, I’m certain of it.
The town of Devil Springs where I was born and raised is, on most days, a fairly religious, conservative place.
But not on Devils’ Day.
On Devils’ Day, things get weird.
At lunch, I sit with Luke and April in the outdoor courtyard at the back of the school. Weather permitting, there’s a large window that opens up from the kitchen, allowing students to line up for food outside. Beyond the tall, black chain-link at the back of the campus, the Diamond Point forest sweeps up and away, blanketing the hills in red and orange leaves. Deciduous trees dominate the woods here, with occasional loblolly or shortleaf pines dotting the landscape with green.
On the opposite side of the courtyard, one of the girls sits painting pentagrams on the foreheads and hands of her friends while the others unzip duffel bags and show off diaphanous dresses in red or black silk, sack-like white gowns that look like they’re meant for a witch on her way to the stake, and crowns made of thorny branches or antlers.
“I wish it were Devils’ Day every day,” Luke says with a sigh, face planted in the palm of one hand. Her goblin mask is pushed up above her pixie-like face, dark eyes focused on the girls dancing in the center of the courtyard, the colorful ribbons in their hands knotted and tied with dried flowers. “This is the sort of world I want to live in, where people like Cami Alhambra wear gauzy fairy wings to school, and Barron Farrar sits and sketches like he’s an artist instead of an asshole.”
I glance over and find Barron—tall, broad-shouldered Barron with his short, rainbow Mohawk—sitting on the bench of one of the picnic tables, a sketchbook on his lap, charcoal smeared across the side of one hand. His dual-colored eyes (he has heterochromia, meaning one is brown while the other is blue) are focused on the page, but when he senses me looking, his gaze lifts up and catches on mine. The leather mask on his face turns his cold expression into something dangerous, like an icicle ready to fall and impale me. I turn away, but not before noticing the angry red gash on his left hand. Interesting.
“I don’t know about that,” I say, tugging my own mask back into place. “The break from boring is nice, but I could do without all the weirdness. Last year, I found Cami and her friends naked and dancing in the woods like witches.”
“Exactly!” Luke says, slapping her hands on her thighs and standing up. She spins to face us, reaching up to ruffle her short, blue hair. Crescent Prep used to have strict rules about unnatural hair color, eye color, tattoos, and piercings, but I think after a while they realized they had more important things to deal with and dialed back the dress code a bit. Part of me wonders if Raz wasn’t responsible for a big portion of that. He spit in the vice principal’s face freshman year when she asked him to remove his red contacts.
Corralling troublesome kids in the middle of the woods is hard enough. Harder still when most of them have the net worth of a small country. They might be in exile, but they get what they want anyway. Most of the things the Knight Crew puts their energy into are awful yet on this one thing, I applaud their efforts. My own purple hair dances in a quiet breeze.
“Exactly, what?” I ask, raising a brow as she steps directly between me and Barron, cutting off his intense stare. I shiver as I look up at her.
“I want to live in a world where I’m free to be as weird as I want without judgment, where other people care more about living their own lives than they do about how I live mine.” She glances over her shoulder at Sonja and Calix, their faces close as they whisper about something that I just know is going to end badly for me. I don’t just get to hit the Knight Crew’s leader’s car this morning and walk away unscathed. “Tonight, I’m making a move on Sonja.”
“Stupid idea,” I murmur as April sips a fruit smoothie, her pale green eyes nearly hidden behind the thick, black frames of her glasses as she listens intently to our conversation. The pair of black tourmaline bracelets rests against the pale skin of her left arm.
“Really? Because I let you make the worst decision known to man last year, and I didn’t say anything about it.”
“What decision?” April asks, sitting up and groaning as she cups her belly with one arm. She’s, like, maybe five foot two and pregnant as fuck. It’s a bit terrifying to look at sometimes, her dress shirt untucked, purple blazer unbuttoned to accommodate her belly. “I feel like I’m missing part of a story here.”
Luke turns to her with a puzzled expression, and then flashes a grin. I give her a warning look in response, but I can tell she’s undeterred. Maybe I’m just not that scary? If I were, maybe I wouldn’t be subject to so many awful Devils’ Day pranks. Like, for example, the one I just know is about to come out of Luke’s mouth.
“Last year, Calix Knight”—thankfully she lowers her voice some—“confessed his supposed love for Karma.”
“What?!” April squeaks, sitting up and leaning forward, her mousy brown hair plaited into pigtails and slung over her shoulders. Her mouth hangs open, the straw from her smoothie stuck to her bottom lip. I roll my eyes and stand up, but Luke isn’t done.
“Oh, it gets better. Not only did he confess his feelings, he told Karma he’d been in love with her for years, that he thought about her every night, touched himself to the very idea of her …”
“Luke, come on,” I say, crossing my arms over my chest, my pleated wool skirt dancing against the pale white of my upper thighs. “I think she gets the picture already.”
“After that, Calix took her up to one of the treehouses—the fancy ones meant for tourists—and fucked her virginity sweetly away.” Luke casts a disapproving glance in my direction as I frown, my cheeks flushed with heat. I try very hard not to glance in Calix’s direction, but it happens anyway. He’s staring right at me, his devil’s mask an ebon black to match his eyes. I look back at Luke, willing her to shut the hell up with every fiber of my being. “And I mean all of her virginity. I’m not sure there’s a position or variation on the sex act they didn’t cover.”
“The sex act?” I choke out, shaking my head, and adjusting my own mask, glitter smearing across my fingers. My mother—not Jane, but Cathy this time—made it for me. She’s a professional artist. They both are, actually, and they own a shop in Eureka Springs that manages to support our family. Of course, we do live in a trailer park, but I’m not ashamed of it. The trailers there are all nice, well-maintained, surrounded by flowers and winding paths made of local limestone.