Hateful by Eden Beck

Chapter Ten

We win the puzzle challenge,or at least, that’s what I’m told.

The hallways are buzzing with talk of the event in the coming days, but I do everything I can to avoid showing my face outside of class as long as I can.

The Brotherhood’s seal has been broken. Beck made sure of that.

I’d forgotten for a moment what it was like at Bleakwood when I got here. I won’t make that mistake again.

Not that my classmates are going to let me.

I have Rafael bring me my food in our dorm. He’s empathetic and obliges, mostly I think because he’d rather not have to help me shuffle away the next time someone makes an ass-wiping gesture in my direction.

Whatever his motives, I’m grateful.

“People aren’t laughing at you in the hallways anymore,” Rafael says helpfully one day as he brings me my dinner. “Not, at least, when you’re not around.”

I let out a snort and turn away from him as I tear the plastic wrap off my sandwich. If I’m being honest with myself, I’ve known this was coming all along. Some sick part of me is actually kind of relieved because the anticipation itself was almost as bad as the real thing,

And this time, at least there’s something I can do about it.

Even if that something is being used by the headmistress of the school next door.

I haven’t told Rafael about that yet. And I certainly haven’t told him that while I’ve been holed up in here, I’ve been trying to figure out a way to get into the student records room without getting caught.

“I need a file that I can’t get access to,” Headmistress Robin had said in the classroom that day. I listened as she described the file cabinet and drawer she needed. “I’ve been in the room, but always with Dean Withers. I can’t go anywhere near it without arousing suspicion. But you’re here full time. You can figure it out.”

And like an absolute idiot, I’d agreed.

I was full of rage, coming from being humiliated in front of both schools, feeling the sting of betrayal as Heath joined in when it seemed like he was trying to get along with me. I was understandably a whirlwind of emotions, and definitely not in the right state of mind to agree to anything, let alone something as risky as stealing records from my school.

And then she smiled and left, just stepped around me and out of the classroom. It wasn’t until later in my own dorm that I realized what a stupid thing I’d said.

It’s one thing if I get set home because I’m a girl. It’s entirely something else if it’s just because I’m an idiot.

“Are you going running again?” Rafael asks as I ball up the empty sandwich wrapper and stand up from my bed.

“Gonna go smoke instead.” I’m feeling antsy. My fingers are twitchy.

Rafael nods. “Yeah. Your voice has been getting less boyish. You need to hoarse it up.”

I grab a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, stuff them into my hoodie pocket, and slip out of the dorm. I don’t like smoking, but I can’t sit still. It’s getting dark, too, so going for a run isn’t an option.

I do a quick mental calculation of just how many packs of cigarettes Rafael has bought me. If I tally that up, that’s just one more reason I need to keep my grades up and stay and Bleakwood.

I’m going to need a degree from somewhere like Harvard if I’m ever going to be able to pay him back.

With my beanie smashed down over my hair and my hood up, I walk out to my smoking spot behind the school. Rafael likes to smoke in the courtyard. He normally has friends around him when he does.

Me … I like to be alone. Especially these days.

I press my back against the cold brick wall and light my cigarette. It smells awful. I take in a deep drag. It tastes awful, too.

I look up at the darkening sky and pull in another lungful of cancerous smoke, feeling it scratch my throat like tiny hot knives. I want to get into a good college. I want to make something of myself. I just have to keep reminding myself that all this stress is worth it.

As I’m standing here, the door I’m standing next to opens, and I rush to try and douse my cigarette before whoever it is comes out and catches me.

“Jasper?” I blurt out, confused, as he emerges.

“I thought I saw you.” He says with a frown. “Are you smoking?”

I look down. My cigarette is still lit despite my best efforts. I shrug, turn away, and put it to my lips again.

“What’s it to you?”

“Smoking isn’t allowed on campus.”

I blow the smoke out with a strangled laugh. A small part of me wishes I could blow smoke rings. I should get Rafael to teach me.

“You gonna tell your best friend the dean? Maybe get Beck to beat me up?”

Jasper sighs and leans against the wall beside me. I cast a sideways glance at him. He’s not even looking at me. I see his face in profile, the strong jaw, the piercing blue eyes. He has a beanie on, too. It looks warm.

I go back to looking up at the sky and smoking. My cigarette is halfway gone. Jasper stays silent while I smoke the rest of it down. Should I stay and smoke another or just leave? I don’t know what’s worse, standing out here with weird, silent Jasper, or sitting cooped up in my cramped dorm.

I choose the cigarette.

I flick the butt onto the ground and stomp it out. I reach into my pocket and pull out the rest of the pack.

“Have a spare?” Jasper asks quietly, but no less shockingly.

I pause just as I’m sliding one out of the pack to look at him. He’s not looking back. He’s leaning forward with his hands in his pockets, his gaze lowered toward his feet.

I slide one out and hand it to him. “Need a light?”

“Yeah.”

I pass him the lighter and he lights his cigarette and stands up straight to draw in a deep breath. He holds it, then leans his head back, parts his lips, and lets the smoke roll almost lazily out into the air around us.

He hands the lighter back after a moment and I light my own cigarette.

“I needed that.”

“I didn’t know you smoked,” I say, the stark normalcy of our conversation not lost on me. We could be just what we look like to a casual observer. Just two boys sneaking a smoke behind school.

I take a draught as I tuck the lighter back into my pocket.

Jasper shrugs. “Used to do it a lot more often.” He pulls the cigarette out of his mouth and fiddles with it. “But it’s a nasty habit. Fucks up your teeth.”

As if to demonstrate, he bares his teeth at me like an animal. I’m just stricken by the whiteness of them between the blush of his lips.

His lips, coming close to mine. But not close enough.

I shake the thought from my head. It’s a hazy memory, blurred by time and alcohol. And change. So much change.

We stand in silence for a few more moments, side-by-side along the wall. After a moment, he turns to me and leans just his shoulder against the wall. I see the glow of his cigarette when he takes a breath, but he directs the smoke away from me when he exhales.

“About the other day,” he says, just as quietly as before.

I roll my eyes. I don’t want to say anything.

“I want to apologize.”

But now I can’t ignore him.

“Oh?” I ask in spite of myself.

“Yeah. I didn’t—Beck’s been weird lately. I’m sorry.”

“So you wanted to apologize on behalf of Beck, then?”

“And Heath,” he retorts. “And … me. I’m sorry.”

I don’t know what to say back. He seems genuine. He seems … sad, almost. He looks at me thoughtfully for a few minutes before looking down at his feet again.

“I didn’t want to—I didn’t want for that to happen.”

The next words are tumbling out of my mouth before I have the chance to catch myself. “You didn’t do much to stop it.”

“Beck’s kind of a scary guy.”

Surprised, I look over at him, but he’s still looking down, scuffing his toe along the ground.

He takes another drag on his cigarette. “He’s been obsessed with everyone thinking he’s tough. It’s been happening … shit, ever since that big lacrosse game last semester.”

I feel my stomach clench. Right after “that big lacrosse game last semester”, Beck kissed me outside the locker rooms. It was confusing to say the least. Confusing for both of us, especially because as far as he knows, I’m still a guy.

It could be a coincidence … or it could not.

“Oh,” is all I can say.

We smoke the rest of our cigarettes down in silence. He doesn’t seem to want to pull forgiveness out of me, which I appreciate. Appreciate. Never thought that’d be a word I’d use to describe something Jasper did to me.

The silence doesn’t last forever.

After a while, though, he puts the tiny stub of his almost-done cigarette to his lips, takes a deep breath, and then says, “Can I ask you something, Alex?”

“Sure.” I’m a little startled that he called me by my name.

He fiddles with the cigarette and then takes a final drag. “Before Christmas … in that classroom.”

My stomach sinks. I’ve been trying to forget that night. I thought we both had.

But Jasper just clears his throat again and pushes onward.

“Did I just imagine things, or …?”

My heart is pounding so fast I’m sure he can hear it. What do I say? Do I deny it? Do I confirm it? I don’t want anyone to find out.

Just say you don’t know what he’s talking about,I think to myself, trying not to panic.

That panic can’t be quelled however, not at the very least before Jasper must catch sight of it on my face.

He shrugs, taking a half step away and looking away from me. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter.” He flicks the butt of his cigarette onto the ground and stomps it out, just as I did before. “It doesn’t change this.”

“Change what?” I ask, but before I can get the words all the way out, Jasper closes the distance between us, pulls me to him, and presses his lips to mine.

It’s like being struck by lightning.

The cigarette falls from my hand as I become suddenly aware of every square inch of my body and how it forms into his.

This isn’t like when Beck grabbed me months ago. This is … soft, almost yearning. His arms slide around my waist as he pulls me tighter. He’s warm, solid as he holds my rigid body in place. His big hands spread out and travel up my back, up the back of my neck. His fingertips slide into my hair.

His lips are so soft. They move slowly, ever so gently, against mine. His breath smells like cigarettes, but so does mine. I close my eyes and let myself melt into him for just a second, to let go and forget everything else as my hands come up to rest on his chest.

Everything about this is wrong, I know.

But that doesn’t stop him. So, it doesn’t stop me.

Our breathing becomes more labored.

I reach up and put my arms around his shoulders. He pulls me even closer, deepening our kiss, crushing my chest against his. His hand cradles the back of my neck. His tongue gently touches my parted lips, and I open them just a little to let him in, let him taste me just a bit, let me taste him in return …

And then he stops and suddenly pulls away. The twilight feels colder when he steps back and puts his hands in his coat pockets.

“Now it really doesn’t matter,” he says softly. “I know the touch of a woman’s body when I feel it.”

A strange mix of emotions floods through me—excitement, fear, happiness, anger—and I can’t move or speak for a few seconds. I want to talk, to say something.

But when I open my mouth, I ask, “Why didn’t you say anything before? Why didn’t you do anything before?”

He shuffles a little where he stands. “I’ve been … ashamed. Of what I did. What I … almost … did.”

I nod. I still remember his fingers closing over my throat, the blood trickling from my nose, the pain of his fist slamming into my chest. Then the frenzy afterwards. The way his hands groped my body looking for the appendage that wasn’t there.

I don’t like to think about what he was going to do to me before he was jerked out of his near trance-like rage. I don’t think he does either.

But just the memory of it sobers my spinning head. At least, a little.

“I wanted to change,” he continues, holding his hands out, curling and uncurling his fingers, like he can’t figure out what to do with them. “But I—I couldn’t. I could barely stop myself from hurting you—really hurting you. I could barely stop myself from … from …”

He stops, panting a little.

He obviously can’t bring himself to say it, and I don’t know if I want him to.

“Did I stop,” he asks himself finally, staring at his hands, “just because you’re a girl?” He looks up at me, and his face looks … strange, foreign. I can’t put my finger on it, but I’ve never seen him like this before. “How fucked up is that?” he asks quietly. “How fucked up am I?”

That’s when it hits me like a ton of bricks.

The reason he’s been avoiding me. The reason the whole Brotherhood has been, because of him.

Because he’s scared.

I’ve never seen him look so scared. That’s why it seems so foreign. He’s always seemed big, imposing, and powerful, even. Now he looks almost like a little boy.

“Did you tell Heath and Beck?” I ask quietly, after a moment.

He shakes his head. “No. How can I? Without telling them what I did?”

Thank God. Somehow just having my suspicions confirms brings with it a flood of relief.

I rock back and forth on my toes. “So … you won’t tell anyone?”

“No. I can’t. I won’t.” He takes a step toward me, but I take a step back. There’s a strange gleam in his eye. “Promise you won’t tell them, either.”

“What? About me being a girl?” I shrug irritably. “That’s the whole point of masquerading around as a guy.”

“No—don’t tell them—about what I did. Promise me.”

A chilly hand grips my insides.

“Is that what this is all about?” I ask, suddenly, taking another step away from him. I glance over my shoulder at the empty courtyard. “You just want to make sure I’m going to keep your secret now?”

My voice has gotten low, dry, more like a dangerous hiss of a viper than my own voice.

“No,” I say firmly. “I won’t promise that.”

A desperate look flashes across Jasper’s face. “Please. No one can know.”

I shake my head. “Me being a girl is my business to tell whoever I want. And what you did was awful. That’s my story to tell, too … should I choose to tell it.”

“You can’t tell anyone!” he croaks, and he reaches for me.

But I duck underneath his arms, dance around behind him, and shove myself through the door to the school. I hear him call for me, but I take off running to the dorms.

All this running lately, I know he won’t be able to keep up.

I take the stairs two at a time just in case. I don’t hear footsteps behind me, but I don’t stop running until I stumble through the doorway to my own room and slam the door shut behind me.

Rafael looks up from his phone. “What’s up with you?” he asks, frowning.

“Long story.” I tug off my oversized hoodie. “I’m going to bed.”

He shrugs and goes back to his phone. I change into my pajamas and lay on my side with my back to Rafael’s bed, staring wide-eyed at the wall.

What is happening with The Brotherhood?

And more importantly, what is happening with me?