Hateful by Eden Beck

Chapter Eight

I pauseon the hiking trail to catch my breath. I’ve taken a different path today; these trails snake all over these woods, tangling over themselves, but they always lead back to the same entrance point. I imagine it would be easy to get lost in these words, but so far I’ve always ended up back at the school.

Whether or not that’s a good thing.

I haven’t told anyone about my conversation with Headmistress Robin, not even Rafael. I remember what happened the last time he heard a threat aimed towards him because of me … and I don’t think I could handle him abandoning me right now.

Not when everything has started to feel so complicated again.

Breath caught, I start running once more, heading back toward the main trail that will take me to the school. I’ve been out here for what must be close to an hour, not that it feels like it. I haven’t been running the entire time, sometimes I just pause beneath a tree and enjoy the cold and the sight of the crisp white snow all around me.

The silence is what gets me the most, though.

Out here among the trees it’s just me and … well … myself, I guess. Anything else that might be alive out here in this forest has long since fled or gone into hibernation. It’s become a welcome break from the ever-more-stifling halls of Bleakwood.

It’s been about two weeks since I started this, and my leg muscles are already getting tighter. It hasn’t been enough time for me to notice any difference in my weight. But the more I run, the more running I can do, and even if my butt doesn’t magically melt away, I’ll at least be able to outrun anyone who tries to come after me.

Whether that be The Brotherhood or Headmistress Robin herself in those high-heels of hers, I’ll be prepared this time.

My thoughts are interrupted with the sound of abnormal rustling in the trees up head, my head immediately snapping forward to investigate the sound as I skid to a halt and lean against a tree to catch my breath for a moment. It doesn’t sound like wind or an animal. It sounds like a human crunching through the underbrush.

I push myself off the trunk I’ve been leaning against and look around suspiciously. I don’t see anything right away, nothing out of the ordinary, anyway, but I decide it’s better to be safe than sorry. It’s probably time for me to start heading back.

Just as I’m ready to start running, none other than Heath steps out onto the trail up ahead.

I freeze, and he grins.

“Hey!” he calls out, raising one arm up over his head in greeting.

I have to squint at him through the bright reflections off the snow. His face is red, and his breathing is coming to him heavily.

“Have you been chasing me?” I snap, taking a half step back away from him.

He just shrugs. “Not really, but—damn, you’re fast. I’ve just been trying to catch up.”

“Why?” I look around. I’m alone. There’s not another soul for miles, unless you count the people at Bleakwood, and I doubt they’d hear me if I scream.

Even if they did, I doubt even more that they would do anything about it.

“I wanted to talk to you.”

The words make my stomach knot up in a betraying way. No. No more of this.

But I also know there’s no avoiding him. If Heath—or any other member of The Brotherhood—has something he wants to say to me, I might as well let him say it.

“Talk while you jog,” I say, picking back up and running past him, expecting him to stay behind to catch his breath. To my surprise, he pulls up beside me, still panting.

“Why are you running so much?”

“Seriously? That’s what you wanted to talk about?” I shoot him an incredulous look. “You wanted to ask me why I’m our exercising?”

“Well—” He pauses to pant a little, and I hate the way my body reacts to the sound. “I just wanted to tell you that what happened the other day was just a joke.”

As if I needed any reminders. My stomach drops, but I keep pushing on. The image of his face so close to mine flashes into my head, but I have to force it away.

“Okay.”

“Yeah. Just want to—wow, can we slow down? No? Fine. Well, I just wanted to … to let you know I wasn’t trying any gay shit. Y’know? You’ve been acting weird around me so, like, just want to clear the air.”

I listen to him huff and puff beside me as I run, gaining a grim satisfaction from hearing him struggle when this is so easy for me now.

“And when I mentioned what happened to Jasper, he started acting weird too, so—”

My feet get a little tangled at that. I stumble and falter, managing to right myself before I fall flat on my face. He told Jasper?

I can’t help myself.

“Jasper’s been acting weird?” I blurt out the question.

“Yeah.” He doubles over and puts his hands on his knees, panting heavily. “Wow, you’re fast. How come you never tried this hard at lacrosse?”

I don’t answer. I put my hands on my hips and watch him.

“What do you mean, you mentioned it to Jasper?”

“I don’t know, I just said it in passing. We were talking about how weird you’ve been acting, and—”

“You’ve been talking about me?” I demand, outraged. And flattered. No—just outraged. No, actually, flattered. I bury my face in my hands for a brief second.

I thought I wanted The Brotherhood to keep ignoring me. But if that was truly the case, why does the thought of the three of them chatting about me over breakfast somehow feel … good?

Now Heath is the one looking at me funny. “We talk. We’re friends.”

“What do you guys talk about?”

“All sorts of stuff.”

“I mean, what do you say about me?” I stare down at him, and he shrugs as he regains a normal breathing pattern.

Heath straightens to stand upright. “Look, I just wanted to let you know that I wasn’t trying anything on you the other day. That’s all.”

“But why would Jasper be weird about you doing that?” I ask, hoping he doesn’t pick up on the slight quiver in my voice.

“I don’t know, I didn’t ask.”

I’m instantly flooded with relief. From the sounds of it, Jasper hasn’t told him—or I’m guessing anyone else—the secret he discovered just over a month ago now.

I stop and take stock of what I know while Heath finishes catching his breath.

So Jasper knows I’m a girl. He thinks Heath made a pass at me—which he definitely did, joking or not—and is now acting weird.

The momentary relief suddenly starts to dissipate. What Heath’s saying, it doesn’t necessarily sound like a good thing. It’d be good to know if Jasper is about to out me.

At least then I might be a little, I don’t know, prepared? As if anyone could really prepare for that.

“Is he jealous or something?” I ask Heath after a second, when he hasn’t said anything else.

Heath looks away. “I just came out here for one thing.”

“You’re impossible. What are you saying about me?”

“What me and Jasper and Beck talk about isn’t any of your business, actually.”

“So, Beck talks about me too?” I snap.

Heath presses his lips together, but that gives me the answer I wanted.

I let out a strangled sound of mild rage and tighten my hoodie sleeves around my waist. I shouldn’t even be talking to Heath. I’m supposed to be avoiding any and all contact with the Wicked Brotherhood.

“Don’t follow me out here again,” I say to Heath. “Just leave me alone.”

I turn and run off, my feet pounding on the trail beneath me.

“You can’t run from The Brotherhood!” Heath yells, but it sounds … different. Last semester, hearing that called after me as I ran away would have chilled me to my core and sent fear shooting down my spine. Now it just sounds sad, almost desperate.

Maybe it’s not that I can’t run away. Maybe it’s that Heath doesn’t want me to.

* * *

The dorm room is dark,so I’m startled when Rafael sits up from his bed, and I let out an inadvertent shriek as I stumble back against the door.

“Oh, calm down,” Rafael sighs. “You woke me up.”

“And you scared the shit out of me, so I guess we’re even.” I untie my hoodie sleeves and toss it in the pile of dirty laundry by my dresser. “Why were you even asleep?”

“I’m bored. So, I was napping.”

I turn on the light and Rafael lets out a hiss as he rubs his eyes. “You okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

I laugh bitterly as I shake off my sweaty clothes. “I would’ve preferred to have seen a ghost.”

“Run into the headmistress again?”

I pause a second, remembering that I still haven’t told him the details of our last encounter. Or even that there was an encounter.

“No,” I say, after a moment. “It was Heath.”

“Heath?”

I nod. “I’ve been running out on those hiking trails, and he saw me there the other day. Today he caught up to me.” I start gathering my shower things. “Started telling me that he and Jasper and Beck have been talking about me.”

Rafael frowns. “The hiking trails in the woods?”

“Yeah. So, Heath found me—”

“Those are pretty secluded trails,” he says, cutting me off. “You know there are wolves out there, right?”

Wolves.This is the second time I’ve heard them mentioned, but never so much as heard a howl.

“Sounds like stupid rumors to me,” I say. “The kind of stuff Beck would make up to scare the new kids.”

“Think what you will,” Rafael says, “But the dean warned us about it during assembly. Weren’t you listening?”

“No,” I admit, tucking my hands into my pockets. I still haven’t sat down. My shower things sit in their basket on my dresser. “I don’t care about the competition thing, so I got bored and started watching you draw.”

Rafael sighs heavily. “You shouldn’t be out there by yourself anyway.”

I shrug. “I’m more concerned about the wolves inside the walls than outside them.”

Rafael stares at me flatly until I feel myself getting antsy. He holds my gaze for a moment before turning away to grab his phone from his nightstand.

“I guess my nap is over,” he sighs.

“And I smell like an entire gym class, so I’m gonna shower.”

He wrinkles his nose. “I know. I can smell you from here.”

“Shut up.” I breeze past him toward the door, making sure to waft my scent toward him on the way. He pretends to gag.

I pause right outside the door. “Um … can I talk to you about something?”

“Take your shower first.”

But I can’t wait that long. “A few days ago, Heath made a pass at me,” I say.

He immediately jerks his head up from his phone. “He what?”

Now I’ve got his attention. I can’t believe I didn’t at least tell Rafael this. This is the kind of stuff he lives for.

“Yeah. That’s why he followed me on the hiking trail. To tell me he wasn’t trying any ‘gay shit’.”

Rafael snorts. “Straight boys.”

“But that’s the thing,” I say, setting my shower basket on Rafael’s dresser, ignoring his irritated expression. “Now all three of them have made a pass at me somehow.”

For a second, I almost stop myself from saying what I do next. But I can’t help it. I have a problem holding in my thoughts today, apparently.

“Do you … do think they actually like me?”

For once, Rafael doesn’t make a joke of it. In fact, he just sits up a little straighter and looks at me like he’s trying to size me up. What might surprise me more, however, is that he doesn’t immediately tell me I’m wrong.

“Uh—I don’t know?”

I start to sit on the end of his bed, but he waves me away with one hand still clamped across the bridge of his nose. I have to settle on pacing across the floor instead.

“And they think I’m a boy,” I press on. “Doesn’t that mean they’re not straight? And if they find out I’m a girl, will they not like girl-me anymore? Would they only like boy me?”

“Maybe they’re bi, I don’t know, but look.” Rafael holds up a hand for me to be quiet. “I’m already your shaman for acting like a boy. I can’t be your sexual shaman too. It’s too weird.” He wrinkles his nose as he grabs his phone again. “Plus, straight people freak me out.”

I rock back and forth on the balls of my feet, waiting, but Rafael stares determinedly down at his phone.

“Please, Alex,” he says, glancing up only for a moment before looking back down, “don’t make me explain to you how wrong this is.”

It’s clear he’s done talking about this, so all I can do is purse my lips and grab my shower stuff off his dresser and slip into the bathroom, shutting the door behind me.

I just wish I didn’t know exactly what he means by that.

I also wish I didn’t know that he’s right.