Page 3 of Velvet Thorns
“No,” she snaps, her refusal immediate.
“No?”
“No, Phoenix. I don’t know what you think’s been happening, but I haven’t been sitting around missing you. I don’t even know who you are anymore.”
“You know me.”
“You think so?” she spits out. “Let’s test that.”
She looks right over my shoulder at Ava and Cassie, who are standing there with their judgment and plastic smiles. I made out with Ava at a party once just because she’s the head cheerleader. It was supposed to make sense, but the second her lips touched mine, I wanted to rip myself out of my own skin, and when she slipped her tongue into my mouth, my only instinct was to headbutt her into the nearest wall and wash the taste off with gasoline.
“You still wanna have lunch today, Phoenix?” Shannen says, loud and breezy, like she’s performing for the whole room. It doesn’t take long before eyes lift from sketchbooks and attention starts pulling toward us.
“Oh, that’s so cute,” Cassie sneers, her voice dripping with fake sweetness, and I feel my fists curl at my sides.
“Are you really having lunch with the trailer trash loser, Phoenix? Or do you wanna get blown?” Ava’s voice slices through the room, and laughter explodes around us. Every head swivels to watch the drama unfold, and for a split second, all I see is red.
I want to slam her face through the window, watch the glass split skin from bone, and smile down at her as she bleeds out. Iwant to carve her up like that pumpkin on the windowsill, just so she can feel what it’s like to be gutted for fun.
Instead, I stand there, silent and useless, feeling like the biggest piece of shit in the room. There’s nothing I can say—nothing that could ever make up for what I let happen. I turned my back while they shoved garbage through the vents in Shannen’s locker. I knew they scrawled “slut” in black marker across her sketchbooks, filled her backpack with tampons soaked in fake blood, and laughed until their faces turned red. I passed her in the hallway when her books were kicked across the floor, while she scrambled to pick them up, and they circled her like wolves. I walked by when her jacket was stolen and strung up the flagpole with the word “trash” taped to the back of it.
Shannen laughs, but I see the tears she’s trying to hide. “Your silence says it all, Phoenix. You don’t know me anymore. So go back to what you’re good at and pretend I never existed.”
She brushes past me, her bag slung over her shoulder, and some asshole yells, “Run along to the trailer park, skank!”
I don’t move, but it takes everything in me not to turn around and slam my fist into the nearest jaw.
Whoever said that just made my list.
I’m going to hurt them one day.
Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow.
But one day.
“What the hell was that, Phoenix?” Ava laughs, tossing her hair over her shoulder. “I mean, I know you used to hang around with that little dork, but seriously? You don’t have to lower yourself like that anymore.”
“Fuck you, Ava.” Her mouth drops open, and I don’t wait for whatever bullshit she’s about to say next.
Lunch comes, and instead of joining the noise and the crowd that never really felt like mine, I drift to the back of the bleachers—the place that still feels like ours, even if I lost the right to call it that a long time ago.
I didn’t expect her to be here after this morning, but she is, tucked into the shadows and curled up so tight she looks like she’s trying to disappear into herself.
The girls at school don’t understand her, so they hate her. They call her weird. They call her poor. They say she dresses like she’s ashamed of her body, but I’ve seen the envy in their eyes. They pretend they’re above her, yet they still watch her out of the corners of their eyes.
She doesn’t show her body off, but I’ve felt it. Once, in the hallway years ago, she slipped on some shit on the ground and fell straight into me. My hands caught her without thinking, and for maybe three long, greedy seconds, her whole body was pressed against mine. I grabbed her by the waist, my hands spanning almost the entire width of her, and she looked up at me with those wide eyes behind her cracked glasses. I felt the soft dip of her hips and the way she fit against me, then she mumbled something before pulling away, brushing it off like it meant nothing. But it wasn’t nothing, not to me.
Maybe I got a little obsessed.
Maybe I still am.
Standing here, looking at her now from just a few feet away, all I want is to cross the distance between us, kneel beside her, wrap my arms around her, and drag her into my chest until she realizes I never stopped being hers.
“Shannen…” She looks up slowly, and I raise both hands in surrender, not because I expect forgiveness, but because I want her to see I’m not here to fight. “I just wanna talk.”
“Go away.”
“No.”
