AllFreeNovel
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“Devon,” I start. I lay my free hand on the side of his cheek. “Devon, I’m so sorry. You can hurt me if you want to—if it will make you feel better. I’ve been hurting anyway. It won’t make a difference to me.”
He jerks his head away from my hand. “I can’t believe I ever fell for this shit,” he laughs. “You’re pathetic, you know that?”
“I’m just glad you’re okay.”
“You think I’m okay?!” he replies, his tone drenched in rage. “Does it look like I’m fucking okay?”
He releases both the paper cutter and my wrist simultaneously, and I yank it out of the blade’s path just in time. I clutch the hand to my chest, pulse racing and breath heaving.
“Devon—” I start again. I scream when he reaches around me, grabs me by my hair, and jerks my head down toward the cutting mat. I hear the distinct sound of the blade rising again and squeeze my eyes closed when I hear it come down, cutting through my hair.
“What did you do?!” I exclaim, looking at the ten inches of hair still gripped in his fist. I run my hands through my hair and watchit fall to the ground in chunks. What’s left seems to settle just past my chin. “I’m going to get in trouble for this!”
“Do you think I give ashitwhat happens to you now? This is just the beginning, Ally.”
“This isn’t you,” I tell him, my eyes filling with tears. “At all.”
He closes the space between us, grabbing me by my chin and tilting my head up so that we’re face-to-face, despite me standing at only 5‘7” to his 6′1”. “Take a good look. Because I promise you, it’s me.”
“You can’t hurt me,” I tell him. “There’s nothing you could do that would make me feel worse than I already do.”
“If that’s what you think, then you really are as stupid as everyone says.”
I jerk away from his grip and turn toward the door, letting the tears I’ve held onto fall when I do. A sob escapes my throat, and he laughs.
Laughs. Him.
I pick up my pace, and instead of walking in late to math class, I head to my locker and dig through it until I find a pair of scissors.
“What…happened?” a voice asks.
I close the locker, scissors in hand, and turn to face Laurel, a junior I ran track with last year, and sigh. She’s one of those people who once showed me a moment of kindness—a small one that mattered.
“Devon...he...can you help me?” I sob, holding out the scissors.
“Come on,” she says. She links her arm through mine and leads me down the hallway to the locker room. I sit on a bench, and without asking for the details, Laurel evens out my hair while I cry.
“It’s not that bad,” she tells me. “It looks chic—highlights your cheekbones.”
“Yeah, right.”
“What are you going to do now?” she asks.
“I don’t know. Just hide in here until volleyball practice, I guess. I don’t want to…deal with people right now.”
“I bet he still loves you,” she says.
“No,” I tell her. “Hehatesme. And he should hate me.Ihate me.”
Not as much as I hate Darci. I wish she were still here. Not just because I wouldn’t be in this fucking nightmare, but because I never got to scream at her; I never got to shake her, break her nose, or punish her for what she did.
“Fuck!” I scream before standing up and punching the metal locker in front of me.
“That’s a good way to end up benched with an injury,” Laurel says.
She’s right. I’m lucky the lockers are low quality, like just about everything else at our small town, underfunded school. But I also don’t really care. I participate in school sports so I don’t have to go home. It’s nice that I’m actually decent at volleyball, and I do enjoy it.
The bell rings, signaling the end of fifth period.
