Hateful by Eden Beck

Chapter Four

My dorm isempty when I arrive, but Rafael has definitely been here. I unzip my puffy coat and hang it up before starting the process of unpacking.

I’m in the middle of tucking shirts into my dresser drawers when the door bursts open and Rafael darts inside, kicking it shut behind him. He grins at my startled posture from his newly tanned face.

“Alex!” he says happily, coming forward to hug me. “I’ve missed you!”

“You have?” I ask, freezing at the touch.

He laughs and lets me go, but my middle is a little sore. “Of course, I have.”

I open a different drawer and start putting my underwear into it. They were the one thing I insisted on buying new. Just the idea of borrowing some from my brothers … it makes me want to gag even now.

“You seem happy,” I say, as Rafael breaks out in a cheery whistle.

Unusually happy.Rafael has a habit of finding the worst in well, everything.

“Ah,” he says with a contented sigh, “I am. We went to Fiji over Christmas. I spent a long time swimming and sunbathing, and I had a whirlwind romance with a local boy who worked at the resort.” He sighs and drapes himself dramatically over his bed. “I feel infinitely better now that my balls are empty.”

“Rafael!” I gasp, and he laughs at me.

“Don’t be such a prude. How was your Christmas?”

I shrug. “It was fine. Nothing like yours. I think the highlight of my vacation was when I stabbed my brother with a fork.”

He doesn’t even balk.

“Ah, the struggles of the middle class.” He rolls over onto his stomach and reaches over to his nightstand. “I see you ate quite a bit, too.”

Heat rises to my cheeks, and I fold my arms over my stomach. I’ve just taken off my oversized hoodie, and the T-shirt I’m wearing underneath is a little form-fitting than I remember.

At least this is the Rafael I remember.

He’s eying me with an intensity that makes me want to wriggle out of my skin entirely and just leave it here on the floor behind me.

“You didn’t gain weight there. Look at your hips.”

I position myself in front of the full-length mirror and gasp. I do have hips. If my breasts were larger, I’d almost have an hourglass figure.

“Oh no,” I say quietly, running a hand over the tops of my thighs. I knew something like this might happen eventually, but I’d really been hoping the bean-pole figure I thought I inherited from my father would hold out just a while longer.

“Those are some birthing hips.”

I pat them. Is this something dieting and exercise will help? What happened to my straight-as-a-stick figure from last semester? I thought I hadn’t been blessed by puberty at all; now it’s kicking in with curvy hips seemingly overnight?

“And your ass, too,” Rafael says, helpful as ever.

“Ah, shit.” One quick turn and I know he’s not wrong. “Maybe I can just be a boy with a nice ass?”

The hopefulness in my voice just sounds pathetic.

Rafael snorts. “Never seen a boy with an ass that nice.”

“Not even your Fiji boyfriend?”

“Boyfriend is a strong word.”

I don’t want to talk about Rafael’s sex life anymore, so I turn toward him to change the subject, pushing my butt out of his view. “So, what do I do?”

“Eat less Christmas cookies.” He tips his face up toward me and shrugs. “But you should be careful. Boys forget themselves in locker rooms.”

My throat goes dry as the memory of Beck pushing me up against the wall and kissing me comes to mind. Compared to what Jasper tried to do to me, that was positively tame … and it still scared me.

It’s not so much that I was scared of Beck, but that I was scared of myself. Scared of what that kiss meant, how it made me feel … how … how …

No.I can’t think thoughts like that. I need to keep a clear head this semester.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask, narrowing my eyes at Rafael.

“One wayward grope and your secret’s out.”

“Grope?”

Rafael laughs bitterly and rolls over onto his back, tucking his hands behind his head. “Just because none of these boys have proclaimed they’re gay doesn’t mean they’re not curious. They make up all sorts of excuses for it. They grab each other in the locker rooms and pretend it’s all in good fun.”

I turn back to the mirror. “You’d think they’d do that?”

“Think?” he snorts derisively. “I know. I’ve had my ass squeezed a time or two.”

I’m definitely more woman shaped than I was last semester. I think longingly of all the desserts I’m going to have to miss out on. And here I was thinking I’d gotten past this already.

Seems I was wrong.

Seems it’s only just begun.

* * *

We still havethe same classes as last semester, so I keep walking with Rafael on the way to our shared morning class. It’s the first full day of back, and I’m nervous. Much more nervous that I expected to be. This is supposed to be the normal now. This is supposed to be easy. Natural.

I guess a few weeks away did more to me than just pad out my deceptively female figure.

I try to keep Caleb’s words in my head. Avoid, avoid, avoid, I think as Rafael and I enter our classroom and pass by Jasper’s desk.

Jasper.

I half expect him to do another unexpected switch since I saw him last, to suddenly go back to his old aggressive, confrontational self … but once again, I’m wrong.

As soon as I walk into the room, Jasper averts his eyes, his body shifting uncomfortably in his seat. He sits between two empty desks, so I suppose Beck and Heath aren’t here yet.

My stomach sinks as I find my own seat. What will things be like with them?

Surely they haven’t grown as timid as Jasper.

I tap my fingers nervously as I watch the door. A steady stream of fellow students trickle in, and I find myself jumping as I see familiar things like a shock of blonde hair the same as Beck’s, or a certain color I know Heath wears often. My tapping increases in speed until Rafael reaches over and pushes his palm against my knuckles, flattening my hand against the desk. I glance at him, but he’s not even looking at me, just scribbling something on his notebook.

“If you keep making that noise,” he says, still not looking up at me, “I’m going to break your fingers.”

I scowl and jerk my hand from underneath his, but I know better than to keep provoking him. I shove my hands into my armpits and clamp my elbows down to my sides.

And then, suddenly, there they are. Beck enters first, his eyes wide and searching, his fingers curling and uncurling at his sides as though hoping for a fight to start so he can participate. Tall, broad, blonde, blue-eyed, and with cheekbones sharp enough to slice me in half, his gaze snaps to Jasper before he drifts over to take a seat on his left.

Then comes Heath. His hair is a little longer than last semester; it curls over his ears just a little. A relaxed grin stretches across his face as he saunters in, hands in his pant pockets.

Heath sits, and The Brotherhood—The Wicked Brotherhood—of Bleakwood is all in one room once again.

I watch them for a moment, looking for any sign that something has changed in the other two over break. But the more I look, the more normal Heath and Beck seem. Beside them, however, Jasper looks positively stiff, like a wax version of himself.

Has he told them anything about what happened that night? Do they know … about me? Not one of them looks my way, and I’m mostly thankful—but part of me fumes a little. What, after all the shit they put me through last semester, they think they can just ignore me now?

“All right, class,” sighs the professor, and I tear my gaze away from them, grabbing my pencil to take notes. I need to get my head on straight.

But throughout class, I find myself sneaking glances in their direction.

It’s good that they’re ignoring me. I need to avoid them, anyway.

I just didn’t expect them to be the ones doing the avoiding.