Hateful by Eden Beck

Chapter Two

Maybe my mother is right.Maybe this school is too much for me to handle.

But there’s only one way to find out, and that’s only if I even end up going back.

I sit listening to everyone yelling and arguing for a while. I can’t make out what they’re saying; they’re just muffled voices drifting up the stairs. They die down after a bit, and I hear footsteps coming upstairs, but everyone seems to retreat to their respective bedrooms instead of coming to bother me in mine.

The idea of not going back to Bleakwood at all … I’d be lying if I said it hadn’t crossed my mind more than once. When I’m there at the school, everything seemed so much simpler. Everything I did, I did just to make it to the next day.

Something must have changed since the last time I was home, because in the few weeks between school breaks … suddenly, I’m struggling to see the bigger picture. Funny how perspective can do that to you.

Eventually, I change back into my nightgown. The mirror above my dresser shows a thin, slight girl, with fair hair cut short like a boy’s. If I stand a certain way, I look like a boy in a girl’s nightgown.

Or maybe that’s just what I’ve conditioned myself to believe.

I crawl into my bed and lay there for a long time as the house grows quiet—or at least as quiet as it ever does—around me. I stare at my darkened ceiling for a while, tracing the lines where the walls meet. I don’t realize that I’ve fallen asleep until I wake up, startled.

Pale morning light pushes through the slit in my curtains and lances across my comforter, which I’ve pushed to the end of the bed sometime during the night. The house is strangely quiet. It’s not the quiet of everyone sleeping; I’d hear snores if that were the case.

The silence is far more unsettling.

Just when I’m starting to wonder if I’ve been left alone in the house, someone raps their knuckles against my door, and I realize that’s why I woke up in the first place. This isn’t the first time they’ve knocked. Groggily, I push the tangled sheets off myself and sit up.

“Who’s there?” I slur sleepily, my words coming out meshed together into one barely intelligible syllable.

“It’s me.” The me is Caleb.

My stomach turns over and twists itself into a knot. I consider sneaking out the window for a moment, but one glance outside at the snow-covered lawn and I know that’s not going to happen. Not today. So, as much as I want to crawl up under my bed and hide until Caleb forgets I exist, I slip off the bed and walk to the door to unlock it.

Caleb holds a muffin in each hand on the other side. Of course, he’s fully dressed. At least that makes one of us.

“Can we talk?” he asks quietly, the look of concern on his face badly masked behind the mugs held up as a peace offering in front of him.

I knew this conversation was coming eventually. Might as well happen now.

“Yeah,” I mumble, stepping back to let him in.

He walks past me and I shut the door and turn to see him already sitting cross-legged on my floor. The hand I stabbed has a Band-Aid over the little cuts. Even though the injury looks far less severe in the sober light of day, that doesn’t stop hot guilt from coloring my cheeks.

Caleb pats the floor across from him, and I mimic him, sitting cross-legged as he hands me a banana nut muffin.

“Your favorite,” he says with a smile as I take it from his bandaged hand.

It’s not my favorite, but now is also not the time to point that out. I just settle down in my position on the floor and force a grateful smile onto my face.

“Where is everyone?”

“Mom’s dragging everyone to the mall.”

I nod. Shame floods my insides as I pick at the wrapper of the muffin.

“Nobody wanted me to come, huh?”

Caleb rolls his eyes and nudges me a little too hard for it to be entirely playful. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Though I’m guessing that’s not just because you wanted some alone time with your favorite sock.”

This time, when Caleb nudges me, there’s no guise of playful left.

“Shut up, stupid,” he snaps as I regain my posture on the floor and pick up the muffin from where it tumbled onto the carpet beside me. “I told Mom and Dad that I wanted to talk to you alone.”

“You don’t think I’m dangerous?” I ask softly.

He snorts, nodding at some of Taco’s dog hairs that have stuck to the outside of my muffin.

“I touched your food and you stabbed me with a fork. Honestly, the reaction was kind of warranted.” He shifts his weight and starts unwrapping his own muffin. “It’s just not like you, is all.”

I grin. “Are you saying I should get stabby more often?”

“Maybe,” he laughs. “Mostly, though, I’m saying that something’s up, and I wanna know what.”

I sigh. I don’t even know where to begin.

I’d originally planned to keep my entire adventure at Bleakwood private from my family … right up until they figured out for themselves that I’d been pretending to be a boy this whole time.

And like everything else, they didn’t seem to care.

Not enough, anyway, for me to worry that telling Caleb a little more is actually going to change anything.

So, for lack of a better lie to replace the truth, I start at the beginning.

Right there on my bedroom floor, I start telling Caleb about everything that happened over this past semester. How I was marked for torture by this thing called “The Brotherhood”. How this fraternity, these boys—Jasper, Heath, and Beck—have been bullying me for months, taking my food, pushing me around.

I even show him some of the scars I have from throwing myself down the stairs.

He’d asked about that before, but I’d been too banged up then to actually show him. It’s relieving in a way. And also, in a way, it only serves to make the heat in my face burn brighter.

And despite all I tell Caleb, I don’t tell him everything.

I leave out that they all seem to be attracted to me despite me looking like a boy, and that Jasper now knows I’m a girl. I also leave out mentioning Dean Robin, since I’m not entirely sure what that means for me anyway. She said she wants some eyes and ears at Bleakwood, but I have no clue what that’s actually going to entail.

The last thing I want is Caleb or anyone else worrying about me more than they already are. Bullies I can handle. Pretending to be a boy, that seems reasonable enough.

But add in that those same bullies have tried to assault and kiss you … and that one of your only allies seems determined to use you, well …

Even I know that’s a bit much.

Caleb sits, chewing silently until I’ve finished speaking.

“So,” he says, nodding seriously. “Do you want to learn some good fighting techniques?”

“What?”

I’m a little taken aback. I didn’t expect anything mushy from my brother, from anyone in my family, but I also didn’t expect this.

“Some stuff for self-defense,” he says, shrugging. “I know how schools are. The professors won’t do shit, and this is a rich kid school, right? Their parents could probably just pay them off to look the other way.”

I nod, feeling a slight swelling of something somehow reassuring in my chest. Ever since I arrived at Bleakwood, there’s been the quietest voice in my head saying I was wrong about The Brotherhood. Somehow, Caleb assuming the same thing that I have—that there’s no point in trying to fight them the administrative way—it’s validating.

Caleb has taken on a far-off look as he considers what the first step will be.

“So, self-defense. Or, try to never be alone. Do you have any friends?”

“Rafael,” I say, thinking of my roommate. “He knows I’m a girl. He’s gay,” I add quickly as Caleb frowns. “So, he’s not going to make any moves on me.”

“Has anyone made moves on you?” Caleb asks.

“No,” I lie, trying not to answer too quickly. It’s not entirely a lie, either.

Beck kissed me, sure. But he kissed me when I was a boy.

As much as I keep trying to tell myself otherwise, I have to remember that boy Alex isn’t me.

Caleb shrugs, his attention already returning to the remains of the baked good in his hand. “I think you should stick to crowds. Try not to be alone. Find out where the professors hang out,” he adds. “If something happens right in front of them, they have to intervene. Hang around near them.”

I nod. This is all good advice, actually.

Too bad it won’t be much use at Bleakwood. When The Brotherhood wants to corner me, they’ll find a way to corner me. It’s as if the school itself was built with nooks and crannies just for that sole reason.

“And eat your damn muffin,” he snaps. “I bought it for you with my own money.”

I grin and unwrap it. “Fine.”

We eat and keep talking, and he tells me about college and how that’s going. But I don’t tell him that the pit in my stomach hasn’t gone away, that I’m still nervous.

I don’t tell him one more thing. I don’t tell him that I’ve started to wonder if I can even go back at all.

Because I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t.

As much as I’m worried who Bleakwood is turning me into, I don’t know who I am without it anymore.