Page 75 of The Circus

“You two can fuck later, sicko. You have work to do.”

“You’re lucky I love you.”

He winks.

“Let’s get these fuckers back, Tedster.”

A sinister grin paints my lips. They turned my locker into a fish market years ago. We’ll turn this entire fucking school into a lake, then.

I continue to smile as I work, because there is another senior prank I’ve been planning for years, one Eden will be able to help me with, now.

It’s almost time to teach my little ghost how to hunt.

FORTY-THREE

EDEN

I haveto see you graduate.

His words are a hushed, melodic, sorrowful song in my head.

My hands tremble, fingers pinching the thin sheet of college ruled lined paper between their sticky pads. This gown is awful, the sun choosing today of all days to shine and illuminate me—a freak only fit for the shadows. Tears of anxiety and loathing and sadness creep up my throat, a thousand emotions fighting to be the most potent.

Is this universe really so sinister that it would take my father before he could witness the one thing that had kept him going for so long? Are coincidences real, or is some higher power pulling random strings and cackling when things go awry at the last minute?

Gritting my teeth, I raise my eyes to the crowd of parents before me, anger pummeling the other feelings into dust, my tongue twisting and splitting like a snake’s. For so long, I’ve walked these hallways with the world on my shoulders, and no one cared. I reached out until I learned that it granted you nothing but stares and eye rolls. I did everything in mypower after that point to blend in and survive, but a target was irrevocably on my back.

I shouldn’t thirst for revenge, but I do. I want my mother locked away, want Malachi Moreau burned at the stake while I dance around his sizzling body, want Dick and Daniel to be carved to ribbons at Teddy’s hands. I want to drive a knife into Miss Goss’ heart for hurting the person I love. A normal girl doesn’t seek justice of this level, but the moment my father died, a thin band of resistance in my heart was sliced through.

And I think Teddy was the one wielding the knife all along.

I’ve always been dark in my core, seeking the dead over the living, envisioning all the horrible ways my bullies and abusers would meet their fates, darkness the source where I draw my power.

Our senior prank was mostly harmless, though Brant cried all of first period because of the fake ‘curse’ I’d placed in his locker, mumbling his Hail Mary’s in the halls. The girls were less frightened, their glances in my direction sharp enough to cut diamonds. The poor janitor had been the first upon the scene. Cash had even floated a kayak in his massive man-made lake.

Although that night has quickly become a core memory to me, I need to gnash my teeth one last time at those who made my years here hell, and so I take a deep breath and smooth out the paper, my nails a shiny, glinting black, my eyes lined like a cat’s—all Teddy’s doing, of course.

When I’d told him I would make a speech, he’d grinned like the devil himself and said he already knew how he was going to do my makeup.

“Hello,” I say, voice trembling. A few students behind me snicker, but I pay them no mind, pretending instead I’m in the asylum, or Teddy’s room—somewhere that brings me comfort and peace. “Most of you don’t know me. Staff included.”

I pause, trailing my eyes over the first two rows of seats filled with teachers. Some look away, other’s give tight lipped smiles, and a few chuckle. I smirk and continue, my heart beginning to pound, my head swimming, a type of rapture growing in my chest that will explode and bring me the most vengeful pleasure imaginable.

“My name is Eden Clemm, and I’m this year’s valedictorian. I moved here freshman year. I’ve won academic awards, scholarships, essay contests, and my art has been in exhibitions all over Seattle. But very few see that, and even fewer knew my father was terminally ill throughout this high school career of mine.

No. Instead, freshman year, I opened my locker to find used tampons that Ashley DeRoza and her friends had saved for me. No one saw my father battle pancreatic cancer, but they all saw Brittany Whithers steal my bra during gym class and cut it to shreds. When I asked permission to leave school early, Principal Anders didn’t even look up from his book. He told me I needed a parent’s permission.”

I clear my throat, chest buzzing as I eye the crowd again. Some parents are shocked, others still as stone, and a few are shaking their heads in disgust that I’ve turned their happy little day into a trip down my hellish memory lane. It makes me smile. If I have to relive these memories, then so will they.

“I’m supposed to leave everyone with some grandiose life message, maybe a few tearful quotes about adolescence and leaving it behind. But when I sat down to write my speech, to sum up what it means to me to be standing here just a week after my father’s death, all I could picture was how blatantly and unapologetically cruel the majority of you were while I was here. My intent isn’t to make you feel guilty,” I say, glancing up again, pressing the paper to the podium.

“It’s to warn you. Here, safe behind these walls, you’re all the kings and queens of your little kingdom. But outside of this kingdom you’ve built on belittling the freaks, theOthers,” I say, pausing, holding the eyes of faculty and guardians again, “...out there, you will realize quickly that you’re nothing more than pawns in a game you cannot control.”

It’s silent, save for coughs and the subtle buzzing of the microphone as a storm brews in my soul.

“Here, you know your monsters, however insidious they may be. But out there, they knowyou. Just something to remember the next time you feel an inkling to be cruel.”

My smile begins to broaden, even if it wavers with the innumerable tears clogging my throat. Eyes still searching the crowd for a face I know I will not find, some slip over and race down my cheeks. But Teddy is behind me on this very stage, and so is Cash, and if I have nothing else left in this world, I know I have them.

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