Ominous, Part 1 by K.V. Rose
4
Eli
I slide off my tie,grazing the choker around my neck with my knuckles as I do. Sturdy leather, when I take it off at night—if I take it off at night—my skin can breathe.
Slamming my locker shut, I shift my bag on my shoulder and head toward the commons, threading through students, ignoring the clap on my shoulder, head nods, someone from the team calling out my name.
I see Eden at the farthest bank of lockers, her dark hair again piled high in braids on her head, and even Dominic’s eyes cutting to mine in my periphery can’t stop me from getting to her. Friday, it’s been three days since he shoved me against the lockers. I hope he got the fucking point.
As usual, when Eden sees me, she pretends she doesn’t. But I can tell she’s a liar, in the way the slender column of her throat rolls, her lips press tight together, and she’s shaking those bracelets down her wrists so the rubber bands float just over the top of her hand.
School dismissed two minutes ago, and I walked out of Intro to Law early just to get here in time. My last class of the day is on the second floor of Castle Hall, and Eden’s history course is five feet from where we stand now, on the first floor.
She closes her locker door after tipping Chaucer back into her checkered backpack, then zips up the bag, threads her arms through the straps, tucks a few stray locks of hair behind both ears, showing off all of her piercings, before she finally turns and meets my gaze.
I like the fact she doesn’t feign surprise. Maybe it’s not even she pretends she doesn’t see me. Maybe she simply doesn’t feel like she’s got to acknowledge me.
I kinda like that. It’s a little bitchy. She’s been like this all week, no matter how many times I’ve approached her.
“I’ve gotta go.” Her voice always sounds slightly hoarse, like she needs to clear her throat. It does things to my dick.
Not giving a damn about my dick, or me, by the looks of it, she glances past me, tilting her body to the side a little as she does, trying to see something out the bay of windows behind me. She’s a lot shorter than I am so she doesn’t see much, I know that.
I like our height difference.
Her body is compact. Not tiny despite her height, she’s got thick thighs that touch in her school uniform, a fat ass, and a smaller upper body. Including her little fucking neck.
“Someone picking you up?” The sounds of lockers slamming, people whistling, a few guys laughing and a teacher telling someone to, “Watch it!” echo in the hall behind us as everyone gets ready to head out for the weekend. There’s a football game, and Dominic’s family has a vigil tomorrow night, so it doesn’t conflict. He’ll probably throw a fucking party afterward like he does every weekend. His question about the one next weekend—when his parents will be away—in front of Eden on Tuesday was a way to get under my skin. But his parties are frequent, not exactly special. You ask a dozen people here what their weekend plans are, you can find a dozen different answers. Heading to the coast to hop on a yacht, political networking, Ivy League campus tours, sports, drugs.
And Eden, who is…
“Yeah, I have to work.” Probably won’t hear that answer from anyone else here. The way she says it, as if daring me to ask why she needs a job, I know she’s very aware of the fact.
She brings her gaze back to me, and not for the first time, I can’t stop staring at her eyes. Shards of blue, green, and brown, they don’t meld together nicely. Jagged edges, I could extract each piece out and the other two colors I left would remain untouched.
“Work?” I repeat. “Until when?”
Her brows pull together, a shade darker than her hair which catches the light from a row of windows on the opposite wall. Chestnut and soot, it’s impossible to describe the shade exactly, particularly in those braids roped on her head. But I’ve seen her with it undone, and it hangs to just above her waist, curled at the ends.
When she wears the uniform white dress shirt, the buttons up to her throat but the fit showing the slight curve of her tits, her hair spilling over and past them, it’s really, really fucking hard to think about dead languages and verb conjugations in class. And she sits behind me. And never wears the plaid fucking skirt.
I grit my teeth to stop from groaning out loud, just imagining it in my head.
“Why do you need to know?” she asks in answer to my question about work.
I want to know so much more than that.
But she looks slightly annoyed, her cherry red lips tugging downward.
Her bottom lip is the plumpest, but she has this white scar above her top one, right beside her Cupid’s bow. It’s tiny, from far away, impossible to see. But this close to her, looking down at her, it’s in my line of sight, and I want to kiss her, just to scrape my teeth over it.
I pull my phone from my pocket, ignoring her question. I unlock the empty screen, open up a new contact, leave the name blank, and turn the phone around to her.
She looks down through heavy, dark lashes, the slightest crease in her forehead as she does. I take in the profile of her face from this angle. A strong nose, wide lips, lifted, round cheekbones. She’s almost a contradiction in some ways, prominent features with delicate touches. She’s small but not skinny. Wide eyes, thick brows, the slightest of curves to her ears.
A little strange to look at.
I think that’s why everyone can’t seem to stop.
She glances up at me, almost like she’s furious, and I think she’s going to say something about me having no right to ask for her number like this, which we both know is a lie, or else walk off without saying a word which seems to be her preferred exit.
But instead, she snatches the phone from me, and her thumbs fly over the keyboard while I watch the rubber bracelets around her wrist slide further toward her inner forearm. I see a faint tan line, a jumble of pale circles in her otherwise summery skin.
“Here,” she mutters, thrusting the phone back toward me. She’s marching past me before I can say anything else, even though an invitation for this weekend is on the tip of my tongue as I watch her blush. But I lose the words because I’m staring not at her number, which she surprisingly gave me, but at her name in my phone.
Eden Rain, and beside that, a knife emoji.
I bite my tongue to hold in my smile and turn around, watching her hips sway as she walks with her head held high through the crowd. She’s full of surprises, and she seems so much more confident when she’s not close to me. Do I make you nervous?
Just as she rounds the corner for the front entrance, she looks over her shoulder, and I swear to God she winks at me.
Okay, baby girl. Do that to my face.
* * *
“Wereyou at Luna’s last night?”
Sweat drips down my back as I twist out of my cousin Jasper’s cradle. He releases me because he knows I’d get out anyway, and we roll away from each other on the mat. All around us, those who showed up for pre-season practice are sparring, and Coach Pensky is talking to his wife, Annie, at the front of the wrestling room. She’s got an armful of black robes with huge, silver pins dangling from them. To represent each pin we get, but probably a pain in the ass to wash. Still, Mr. and Ms. Pensky are from New Jersey, the high school wrestling capital of the country, and they’re married to the sport. Both short and slim and with New Jersey accents and raised voices, they’re arguing now about who-knows-what.
Someone bumps into me, and I look over my shoulder with a frown, only to find Josh Holland stammering apologies.
I almost choked him out one day, I guess that’s why he seems so nervous now, sweat dampening his blond hair over his eyes.
I ignore him and turn back to Jasper, who’s fucking with the waistband of his gym shorts. None of us are in singlets for practice.
Jasper is carefully avoiding my gaze, and I know he has a crush on Janelle. She was just leaving when I got to Luna’s, and he must’ve heard I went there last night. He doesn’t want me to corrupt Janelle before he gets a chance to fuck her.
I think the corruption is the fun part. Besides, Janelle knows too much what I’m like. She’d never sleep with me.
“No,” I lie easily enough because it’s better that way.
Jasper picks his head up, running a hand through his sweaty, black hair. He frowns, and I get the distinct feeling he doesn’t believe me. But I know he won’t question me.
We didn’t see much of each other growing up. Dad wanted to hide me away, and Uncle Edison wanted to protect his son from his brother’s own. It’s a miracle he lets me work at his body shop. Still, Jasper’s been at Trafalgar with me the past three years. Addison secrets stay hidden, but some things even Dad can’t conceal.
Jasper drops his hand to his thigh and curls his fingers into a fist, then spreads them, the bones in his wrist working as he repeats the motion. He looks down through thick lashes, sweat dripping from the tip of his nose. “Dom was talking about the new girl.”
I run my tongue over my teeth, fingers splayed on my thighs as I stare at Jasper, willing him to look up. But he doesn’t. “Oh yeah?”
Jasper nods once. “At lunch, said he was thinking of going to the library because she hides out there. Said he wanted her to come to the party next weekend when his parents are out of town.” He snorts. “I mean, Luna wasn’t around, or he wouldn’t have said shit, you know?” He glances up at me.
Yeah, well Luna was sucking my dick last night so it’s not like she’s got much room to… talk.
I bring my thoughts back to Eden. I know she eats lunch in the library. It’s not unusual. We can leave campus, and a lot of people don’t stay in the cafeteria. They disperse all kinds of places. Theater kids on stage, art kids in the studio, athletes in this building.
But I’ve never interrupted her.
I really like to watch her when she doesn’t know I am. People are more themselves without an audience.
“Did he say anything else?” I ask my cousin quietly, watching his throat bob as he swallows. I wonder what he’s thinking about. Is he remembering his dad breaking the news about the first time I went away? Did he give him all the gory details? Or is he thinking about when Mom left, and what I did in the aftermath? Uncle Edison has never chastised me. He’s never been afraid of me, either. But I know him and his wife, Maria, want their son safe above all else. What do they tell Jasper, so he keeps loving me, but his guard stays up around me, too?
Jasper blows out a breath, then lifts his big brown eyes to mine. “No,” he answers me. “If you take her to the party… just watch her. She seems like a nice girl, and you know how he is, with drugs and shit.”
It’s why Jasper won’t go. I offer my cousin a smile, because I’m not so sure I can get Eden there either. But I know exactly how Dom is.And he doesn’t want Eden. He just wants to make sure if I have her, I share her. Because that’s how he wants everything between us. Except his darkest secret. He wants me to keep that, doesn’t he?
“You ready to go again?” I ask, letting it go as I stand. I stretch my arms behind my back, loop my fingers and pop my shoulder. I drop my hands and crouch into a sparring stance.
Slowly, Jasper pushes to his feet too and nods. His eyes linger on my face a second longer than they should. He saw me this morning, walking Eden from class.
It’s why he told me any of this. I think he thinks it’s like some kind of bro code. I make a note to throw him a bone with Janelle at some point. We’re not close. We never will be. But I’ll take the loyalty for a little longer.
Regardless, I still get him in a quick pin. It’s mindless, really. We’re hovering around the same weight class, but I don’t have to think about going for a sweep, dragging his feet out from under him as my shoulder connects with his solar plexus. It’s over faster than it should be considering my head isn’t in the game. Then again, maybe that’s why it’s so fast. Maybe this is the flow state Dad’s business gurus like to talk about.
Either way, even after five consecutive takedowns and pins of five different wrestlers on Trafalgar’s team, I’m still on edge after I shower, catch a fresh Trafalgar Dragons tee from Ms. Pensky in the hallway as she grins at me, and pull it over my head, grabbing my duffel bag and heading toward the parking lot. Our mascot is a dragonfly. Someone, probably a man, didn’t think it looked too good on our athletic gear, so they shortened it. Guess what’s on the back in blue?
A dragonfly. Personally, I feel it makes us look stupid, like we don’t know the difference between a very real insect and a very mythical creature, but I didn’t make those decisions.
I grab my phone from my sweats, the warm feel of the mid-September sun heating up my bare arms and the back of my neck as I stare at my screen and see Luna has texted me several times.
Her: You didn’t say anything, did you??!
I roll my eyes, and I don’t bother texting back as I dial her, holding the phone to my ear and heading to my car, double parked behind the gym.
She answers on the first ring. “What the fuck, Eli?” Her words aren’t angry so much as panicked.
I press the button on my key fob, unlock the doors to the G35, open up the trunk, and toss my shit inside. Then I close it and slip into the driver’s seat, shutting the door softly after I’m in. Once I start the car, my phone connects to Bluetooth, and I throw it into the passenger seat, the scent of coconut enveloping me in here. It’s from one of the air freshener bags Mom used to make. They’re full of essential oils and some organic beads or some shit, I don’t know, but she had a whole stock of them put away in the attic. One week straight when I was a kid, it was her nightly project. I don’t even think she slept.
I wonder if she intentionally made them smell like… me.
I grit my teeth as I put the car in gear and start to drive off, lifting my fingers from the wheel as a few of the guys wave at me, and Dominic, coming out from swim practice, offers me his middle finger.
I smile at him, and drive around the castle of the school, glancing up at the gray turrets stretched out into the darkening sky.
“I’ve sent you like, five texts—”
“Seven,” I correct Luna under my breath, but I know she hears me because she starts going off.
“Yeah, because last night you sneak into my bedroom and today you act like I don’t fucking exist so you can go after that weird fucking—”
“What do you really want, Luna?” I downshift as I coast to the red light leading out of school, past the gates. But after waiting several seconds while Luna sighs loudly on the phone, I see there’s no traffic in either direction. Biting my tongue and glancing in my rear view—no one behind me—I curl my fingers around the shifter and shoot through the red light, changing gears smoothly as a smile graces my lips and Luna keeps talking through the speakers of my car.
“Did you tell him?” Her voice is quieter now, her swallow audible through the line. Luna has a lot of friends, won from fear. Her and Janelle both play lacrosse, and while they’re friendly, they couldn’t be more different.
Janelle knows exactly who I am, and she won’t let me get too close because of it.
Luna thinks because she’s known me for years now, she owns a piece of me, despite the fact this week her and Dom are “on.”
She’s constantly disappointed when she realizes… it’s never going to be true. She doesn’t like to lose things. It’s what drew me to her in the first place, back in middle school.
I know she knows I didn’t tell him; she just wants to ensure I’m still thinking about her.
I rarely ever am. “Why would I do that?” I ask her as I shift gears, feeling my adrenaline spike as my speed does. I feel free like this. Alive. I wonder what makes Eden feel alive.
In my head, I see her downcast eyes, the way she’d look up at me in Latin as if she didn’t know I had ever noticed her. How could I not? It’s like… it’s like she called out to me without saying a word. I don’t believe in fate. Life doesn’t care enough to be anything more than random. But something about her, it fits with something in me. I don’t think she’d care about my secrets. I don’t think she’d judge me for any of the terrible things I’ve ever done. Even the ones Luna and Dom don’t know about. Even the ones they do.
Maybe it’s just a fantasy inside my head, but I think I can make it true.
“I don’t know, Eli, because you like to… fuck shit up.” I can picture Luna shaking her head, raking a hand through her bright auburn hair as she sits in her white Mercedes, tapping manicured nails against the steering wheel. “Dom is pretty vulnerable right now and I know you said some petty shit to him on Tuesday in the hall. Just… don’t ruin this.”
I smile to myself. “You mean don’t tell him we’re getting each other off every night he’s at home having a breakdown?”
Luna groans. “Eli, I’m serious!”
I smile to myself. “Good talk.” I end the call with the buttons on my steering wheel, biting the inside of my cheek as I turn up Landon Tewers, glancing at my GPS to ensure I’m headed the right way.