Page 4 of Necessary Cruelty

One

Helen of Troywas the original basic bitch.

If she popped up in the twenty-first century, the chick would definitely have a skim pumpkin spice latte clutched in her hand with a stylishly oversized sweater hanging off her shoulder paired with skinny jeans and calf-skin ankle boots. Helen is the girl who orders food based on how good it will look on Instagram, knowing she isn’t going to eat it anyway. She is grateful and blessed because the whole world is wrapped around her pinkie finger.

But Helen of Troy is long dead, which leaves me to deal with her spiritual successors, the fashionably scattered girls of Deception High School.

And the guys willing to go to war for them.

But it’s one guy in particular that represents a key figure in the story of my life that puts Greek tragedy to shame. I try to avoid him like my life depends on it, because I often question whether it actually does. Keeping in mind that it’s impossible to get away from anyone in a small, incestuous town like Deception, CA.

There isn’t anywhere to hide where he can’t find me.

My senior literature class is currently working its way through the Greek classics, and we get extra credit for dressing up like famous characters. So I’m drowning in a sea of Helens, assuming the aggressively blonde hair and tiaras made of gold leaf are any sign. Even the natural brunettes have gotten their hands on a wig or a box of dye for the occasion. Some fit the role better than others, but all of them try.

Except for me.

Because I am no Helen of Troy and never will be. If her face could launch a thousand ships, then mine isn’t worthy of the old fishing boats anchored in Deception Harbor. I’m not ugly, at least I don’t think I am, but Helen and I are a bit of a tonal mismatch.

Both on the outside and the inside.

The aspirational dress-up might be a measure of their optimism, the belief something better is waiting for them out there in the world. I can’t share in that particular delusion, even in the moments when I give into the urge to try. My future seems written in stone, a stone that has been tied around my neck and then tossed into the ocean as I sink deeper and deeper beneath the California waves.

Hope is the easiest way to get your feelings hurt when life kicks you in the ass.

The hallways of Deception High are a prison for us all, and the same rules apply. Keep your head down and your business to yourself, and you just might survive. I’m counting down until graduation like an inmate scratching on the walls of their cell to mark the days, and with about the same amount of anticipation. This place is a minefield, and every step brings me that much closer to an explosion.

The school is divided so cleanly you’d almost think someone designed it that way. There are two very distinct groups walking the halls, and it’s an established rule that a battlefield littered with bones lies between them. The rich kids, many of them descendants of our town’s illustrious founders, live out on the Bluffs in their big fancy houses. They drive late-model imports to school and wear clothes that weren’t fished out of a bargain bin. The rest of us live outside of the town proper in the Gulch, a dusty and unincorporated part of the valley that is full of broken storefronts and run-down offices for bail bondsmen.

Things might not have been so bad if I’d been born with a different last name, but that short combination of letters seems like the only thing that matter sometimes. Names are important when that is the only thing you have with any worth.

Mine is like tarnished gold. It used to shine, but any luster is hidden under years of neglect.

I walk through these halls like a ghost — no one acknowledges me, and I do my very best to return the favor. Sometimes, the loneliness is a weight on my chest, so heavy I can barely breathe. Other times, I try to think of it as a twisted sort of gift, because having no one to rely on means there isn’t anyone to let me down.

An unfamiliar voice interrupts my brief moment of self-pity.

“Antigone, right?”

I look up into a face that is only vaguely familiar. The guy is generically cute: brown hair and brown eyes with no distracting flaws, but nothing much to recommend him except a disarming smile. It isn’t normal to see an unfamiliar face around here.

Instead of responding, I just stare up at him with an expression that is deliberately blank. It’s been so long that I don’t think I could hold a civilized conversation if I tried. I don’t bother to try, because that would be against the rules.

But the new guy tries his best to make up for my obvious deficits. “From the play…you’re dressed up as Antigone, right? It’s not like I thought that was your name. I’m Jake Tully, by the way. I just moved here from Los Angeles. And I clearly didn’t get the memo about dressing up.”

I almost forgot for a minute that I’m wearing this stupid costume.

“You shouldn’t be talking to me,” I whisper to him, my voice just loud enough to carry the handful of inches separating us. Regret colors my tone, because he seems nice. I wouldn’t bother to warn him, otherwise.

There hasn’t been any nice in my life for a long time.

Talking to him is a risk I shouldn’t take, but I feel bad the way you do when a feeder fish is dropped into the shark tank at an aquarium. The guy hasn’t been here long enough to learn how things work. When he does, it’s going to be a hard lesson.

But the guy just laughs, which is more confirmation he doesn’t understand the pile of shit he just stepped in. I would pity him if that weren’t such a useless emotion.

“What are you talking about?”

I open my mouth to give him one last warning, but it’s already too late.

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