Page 17 of The Circus

As if I’d want to share it with more people before? At least I’d have a choice in my partner, though…

At least I’d have a choice in who shares that moment with me.

Standing quickly, all of my blood rushes to my feet, and I wobble unsteadily, needing to flee home to our quaint trailer so I can shower away the last twenty four hours.

And muster my courage to do something more terrifying than anything I’ve ever dreamed of doing before.

I’m going to ask Teddy Poe to fuck me. Because if I’m being forced to give up my virginity, it’s going to be on my own terms, and something tells me he, of all people, will say yes.

ELEVEN

TEDDY

It’s pissing rain today,and all I’ve managed to do since I first spotted Eden at 7:58 sharp is stare at her and try to recreate Saturday night. Just…with my own little fantastical, imaginative flair is all. I was a gentleman through and through, forcing the voices into submission and prolonging my own torture. Someday, I’ll see her breasts. Hopefully someday soon, because if we have to perform again on Saturday, I don’t think I’ll be able to hide how I feel about her.

She’s turned me into a prepubescent boy without even trying.

It’s currently our shared class after gym, AP Literature. Mrs. Simons is droning on aboutDracula, and most of the students are fast asleep, the atmosphere calm, the lighting dusky from the storm rolling through. Elbow grinding into the top of my desk, cheek resting angrily against my fist, I stare rather pointedly at Eden, who is staring out the window to her left.

I’d warred with myself on Saturday night, paced up and down the street, tempted to hop on a bus and go knock on her door, but on the chance she would react poorly, I decided to stay put. Better to ensnare someone like her, slowly and calmly, so she doesn’t have time to realize that’s what I’m doing.

Lost in my musings of how exactly I’d like to trap her, I almost miss the flick of her eyes in my direction. Thinking it was nothing more than a trick the voices are playing on me, I tune back in, sitting straighter, raking my hair from my eyes and tugging on the ends. After a few more moments, my patience is rewarded, and those violets clash with my gaze. Her eyes widen briefly, a flare of surprise at being caught, and her cheeks bleed.

Outside, the rain and wind picks up, pelting the window hard enough to drown out our teacher’s voice. And inside, deep in my soul, a different storm rages, one that brings with it a hurricane of unfamiliar emotions and leaves a path of wreckage and destruction in its wake.

Composing my features, I wink at her the next time she glances my way, which has her brows pulling low over her eyes and into a glare. It had been impossible not to see Eden on Saturday, as discreet as I’d tried to be. When you’re concentrating onnotmurdering someone for once, it’s a little difficult. Her body had been pale and pliant, soft in all the right places, her ribs heaving with every measured breath to ensure she kept still. But the way her pupils had flared to life every time my knife sank into the wood mere millimeters from her precious skin is something I cannot scrub from my mind no matter how hard I try.

It’s like the voices all pitched in and created the perfect human for me, plucked her from my skull, and set her before me, a gift for feeding their bloodlust so thoroughly and viciously.

The bell blares through the classroom, more than a few students jolting awake, Brant one of them. Forced to sit in the front row because he’s failing, he raises his head and blinks away the sleep, drool on his cheek.

Eden flees, and I gather my books, hot on her trail. The slamming of lockers and yammering voices of students is easy to drown out with how focused I am on her, and when she pauses ather locker and spins the dial, I lean against the neighboring one, composing my features as best I can. Slow and steady has been my mantra for a week. A week for me is an eternity when I want something.

She slams her locker closed, having traded her tattered copy of Bram Stoker’s most famed work for her sketchbook. We’re drawing in art currently, and I’ve seen her skill. Brilliant, as would be expected. She jumps when she sees me, closing her eyes and clenching her fist before skirting around me, heading for the basement where all the art rooms reside. I follow, fighting my smile, enjoying the way her ass moves beneath her pleated skirt.

I’ve always loathed these uniforms, but now the thought of her pretending to be a naughty school girl while I spank her ass with a ruler makes me hotter than I care to admit.

“Why were you staring at me, Eden?”

She scoffs, but refuses to look at me.

“Excuse me? You’re the one who can’t keep his eyes to himself,” she growls, shoving her way past a throng of people who give her no notice. No one notices her, and I used to be one of them. I hate myself for it, but vow to make it up to her now. She has my undying attention whether she wants it or not. I’ve wriggled myself beneath her skin like a parasite, and I’m not going anywhere.

“I was trying to assess the storm, don’t flatter yourself.”

She pauses at the top of the stairs, hand on the worn wooden railing, and glances up at me. Her hair is wavy today, framing her face like black curtains in a funeral home, her eyes a deeper shade of violet thanks to the stormy weather. As though she’s come alive with the rain. I can’t help the way my smile grows as our eyes flick between one another’s, the world passing us by noiselessly because we are in our own, and I never want this feeling to go away.

This feeling like I’m home for the first time in my life, my soul safe and warm as long as it’s next to hers.

Jutting her pointed chin up, she says, “Then next time, pick a different window.”

I snort, descending with her into the chilly darkness.

“Wanna ride the bus together tonight?”

“What? Fuck…no, Teddy,” she says, exasperated as we round the corner. The noise from above dies down as everyone settles into their prospective classrooms, the bell about to ring. The only shitty thing about art class is that our batty old teacher, Miss Whitman, doesn’t allow us to talk. By the end of the school day, she’s usually so hungover she can barely function, and being holed up down here, no one aside from myself knows her little secret.

“Why not? We’re going to the same place,” I argue, and we pause outside the door. Chewing her lip, she blinks up at me again, her brow slowly beginning to crinkle, as though she has something she wants to say but isn’t. I quirk my brow, leaning over her, an intimidation tactic that has her pupils dilating.

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