Page 21 of The Circus

Cash slams his locker closed, acoustic guitar in its case slung over his shoulder. With the morning rush through the halls, a few wily freshmen bump into us. He shakes his head. “Nah. That was a stupid suggestion. We’re too mature for prom.”

I halt in the middle of the hall, more people running into me and hissing “Freak,” as they pass by. Once Cash realizes I’m no longer next to him, he turns and gives me a quizzical look.

“What?”

“You fucker.”

His smirk is broad. “Who’d you ask?”

I simply press my lips together, and his grin falters, his shoulders drooping and the strap of the case slipping down his bicep.

“Eden? C’mon, Teddy, we talked about this!” he whines.

Resuming my strides, I catch up to him, and we pick up our pace to our first period classes.

“I was under the impression you were serious about wanting to get dates for prom.” I growl. I’m not taking it back now, not after I was able to…well, sort of force her into it. Our bus ride was bliss yesterday after school, me pestering her and her ignoring me. Then we practiced together under the watchful eye of Vic, and she even let me walk her to the bus that would take her home.

Threatened to stab me in the jugular if I boarded it, though, so I had to wait for the next one and follow, unbeknownst to her. I’d sat up all night, until dawn crested Rainier, painting it in watercolor hues of pink and purple. I’d kept her safe through that darkness, pondering every possibility of why she would ask me to sleep with her.

She isn’t one for nostalgia, and she doesn’t strike me as the type to check things off a metaphorical bucket list, so her bland reason for wanting to lose her virginity to me because it’s some rite of passage isn’t the truth. The obvious direction I need to search is the circus. It makes me physically sick to my stomach for a few different reasons, but that sickness is always quickly replaced by fury.

I’ll still fuck her regardless, because now that she’s offered herself up to me on a silver platter, the voices demand that virginal sacrifice, or I’ll claw my own fucking eyes out and devolve into madness. I’ll tame myself for her benefit, but hiding who I really am from her won’t last long. She’ll know every facet of me, just as I’ll know all the darkness in her. My soul feels alive at the prospect.

“Yeah, you said we needed to go, so I asked her, and she said yes,” I grunt. We pause at a branch in the hallways, Cash needing to go to the music wing, and me to the science building. He’s mad, but he’ll get over it.

“Fine, whatever.”

The warning bell rings through the halls, and a few stragglers begin to run. Cash turns on his heel and marches away. With a sigh, I turn to leave as well, prepared to reminisce more on our conversations last night. The breath stills in my lungs as I do, my eyes clashing with muddy hazel ones, a sickening spark in her gaze.

Miss Goss, the guidance counselor.

“Teddy,” she says, beaming, her teeth and mouth theatrically large, her body slender but curvy in all the right places. With her thick mane of light brown hair and the way she dresses—professional, but tight—she’s every boy here’s wet dream.

Except for mine.

“Hey,” I say, dodging around her before the late bell rings. Her claws dig into my arm as I attempt to pass, and I pause, sucking in a deep breath through my nose to calm the voices in my head that beg for her death.

She blinks up at me, then nods her head back toward the front office.

“We have a meeting scheduled. I already emailed Mr. Anderson.”

My teeth grit, and my stomach writhes, Eden’s eyes flashing in my mind. The way she’d looked up at me in the library yesterday, so timid but determined, so trusting, so innocent—it made my bonesacheto hear that note of desperation in her voice. Of everyone here, she entrusted her innocence tome.

I wish that could be something we shared together, the exchanging of our virginity.

I blink again, and Miss Goss’ eyes come back into view. I have to fight the urge to vomit. This fucking cunt is the reason I can’t share that with Eden.

The bubbly counselor turns and clacks her heels back down the hall, and I have no choice but to follow.

Sophomore year, Brant’s old buddy Jeremy filled my locker with cod, and when I’d opened it, the slimy fish had ruined the new shoes my mom had bought me. Still young, still finding it hard to control the voices, I’d beat him in the hallway within an inch of his life. Fearing I’d end up in prison, I’d been awaiting the wrath of Dick.

But Miss Goss had gotten to me first.

At sixteen years old, I’d lost my innocence in her office on a chair hundreds of other students occupy daily. And for the rest of my time here at Prep, I’ve had meetings with her once a week, her finger always on the metaphorical trigger.I’ll tell everyone you raped me, I’ll file a police report about your aggravated assault on Jeremy, I’ll bury you, you’re eighteen now, what does it matter?

That last one was said to my face two short weeks ago. It fucking matters, and it matters even more now that I want no one in this life but Eden. As I follow Miss Goss into the office, I can’t help but to shake the feeling I’m about to betray the girl I’m falling hard for. Rage so overwhelming that it blinds me seeps into my veins, and the voices begin to seethe.

Kill her. Strangle her until her eyes pop out. Slit her throat with the scissors on her desk. Make her watch you take the life from her in that mirror on the back of her door.

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