Rhodes
Why am I here? I have no interest in seeing these people. They weren’t my friends. In fact, I don’t keep in touch with a single person from high school.
We don’t leave the room right away. Bennett helps me retrieve all the collapsible bowls from my babies’ bags and fill them with water. They sit patiently and wait for their specific bowl, something that Bennett coos over and praises them as if they were the most brilliant animals in the world.
They are. I’m not biased in the least.
I love to see how much my babies preen at the way Bennett talks to them, though. Which is why I let him put each bowl down after I’ve filled it with cold water, so every pup gets the kind of love and praise that the last one does. They all smile.
Yes, dogs smile. If you haven’t been smiled at by your dog, then you’re probably not a good dog owner. My babies smile widely with their tongues lolling out all the time.
Once they’ve had a fresh drink, I pocket the dorm room key and lead us back into the hall. This time, I take Bennett’s hand. He’s supposed to be my partner, after all. I need to be better at making that obvious with physical touch. It reminds me that I’m not well-versed in relationships.
When you have as many family secrets as I do and wield a weapon that is the perfect pack of canine killers, it’s difficult to let someone get close.
One person could truly damage the entire family if they chose.
Especially if they act rashly out of fear before they have a chance to think things over.
By then, it could be too late to undo the damage.
I envy my cousins who have managed to find lovers who accept their dark sides. It takes a special kind of person to do that.
Glancing at Bennett, I can’t help wondering if he’s the kind of person who can. It’s a dangerous game I’m playing, telling him my actual profession and instructing him to offer it should the conversation call for it. No one will believe him.
I don’t lead us back to the door where everyone is moving in and out as they arrive or return to mingle. Instead, I bring us to the side and enter close to the classrooms. It’s quiet down here. We’re far enough away from the primary entrance that the noise doesn’t follow.
Most of the classroom doors are open. I peek into the closest. It’s not one I’ve had a class in. Further down the hall is where I had science with Dr. Alice Hornsby, so we make a stop there.
The posters are new, but the room itself looks exactly as it did years ago. “Huh.”
“What?” Bennett asks.
“I feel like I’ve stepped back in time. Nothing but the posters have changed. It’s eerie.”
“Yeah? Where did you sit?”
My eyes turn to the desk where I’d spent my days. I pull Bennett along. With one hand, I pull the chair out, and with the other, I bring him around so he sits down. His smile is back. Always wide and bright. I swear, it’s casting some light within the dim room.
I slide the chair forward. I can almost see the shadows of my tenth-grade class. Beside me was Jeff Laurett. Bethany Mortin sat at the desk in front of me. Beside her was Chris Conner.
Until he wasn’t.
Echoes of voices from the past fill the room.
“Gross. Look at his hair,” Don Miller mutters as he and his three buddies walk by.
“His hair? Look at his clothes. Daddy can’t afford real clothes, I guess,” Kennedy Vance laughs.
Behind them, JayDee Frump shoves Don as he snickers. “I don’t know why he’s still here. No one wants him around.”
The last in the crew, Rubio Fox, leans down and loudly hisses in Chris’s ear, “You hear that? Why are you still here?”
Chris does a great job of ignoring them entirely. He shifts down in his seat a little further, trying to make himself smaller and less noticeable.
“Come on,” I say, grabbing Bennett’s hand. I lead him outside again and into the trees. I’m practically jogging, so my pack is trotting around us to keep up. Since I’ve moved into the dense forest, they’ve spread out to weave through the trees, but they’re still in a perimeter around us.
The big tree is still here. I stop abruptly and stare at the thick branch. There’s a ribbon on it. It looks brand new. My heart races as I try to forget the image of Chris Conner hanging there with a note in his pocket naming the reasons he hung himself.
Four reasons.
In his room, they found a notebook filled with all the things that Don, Kennedy, JayDee, and Rubio had been doing to him. They found cut-out and pasted screenshots of text messages from them, telling him different ways he should kill himself.
What happened to the boys who bullied this fifteen-year-old kid to the point where he killed himself, just as they insisted? Nothing.
‘Boys will be boys.’
‘They didn’t force him to kill himself.’
‘Such a tragedy. I’m sure it was daddy issues and not my son.’
Nothing happened to the boys. No consequences. They remained at school—untouched, undisciplined—until we graduated two and a half years later.
“Rhodes?” Bennett asks, his hand squeezing mine.
I blink back into the present and look around. “Sorry. I lost a classmate here.”
His eyebrows knit together as he looks around. “Here?”
I look up at the ribbon, and he follows. “Oh my god,” he murmurs. “I’m so sorry.”
“I haven’t thought about it in a long time,” I admit. Guilt fills my chest. Chris doesn’t deserve to be forgotten.
“I-I can’t imagine what that must have been like. Were you friends?”
I shake my head. No one dared to be friends with Chris. Not when he was the primary focus of the Fucked-Up Four. No one wanted that focus on them.
Including me. Van Dorens might be an untouchable name now, but twenty years ago? We were just gaining our wealth. We weren’t a powerhouse. We were just another wealthy family.
What had me afraid was that I saw a lot of myself in Chris Conner.
My hair was the same color. My eye color was close to his.
I think my clothes were far more ‘trendy’ or some shit, though.
My grades hovered around the top 10% of the class, so I wasn’t the smartest or the dumbest, both of which were reasons enough to catch the Fucked-Up-Four’s attention.
“No,” I answer out loud. I step closer to the tree and place my hand on the trunk. “But I should have been. Sometimes I think that if he had even a single friend, then things would have been different.”
“He was lonely?”
I meet Bennett’s eyes. “He was the victim of really bad bullying.”
His eyes widen. I know what he’s thinking. Here? In a fancy, richy-pants boarding school?
If nothing else is evident about politics in the US, this one thing should be—there’s no bigger bully than one with money.
I imagine that the reason I choose the targets I do is that I subconsciously choose the biggest bullies.
It’s not something that I truly think about.
Not a reason that I consciously think, yep, this one reason right here.
But I can see the pattern in my head now.
If there’s something that sways my opinion to take a target on, it’s when I see evidence of their bullying.
If their bullying behavior leads to someone’s death, theirs is long and painful.
It isn’t until I’m standing under this tree, forced to face the skeletons I’ve hidden in my closet for nearly two decades, that I realize Chris’ suicide shaped something inside me. I felt helpless and afraid as a teenager. Never again will I feel that way.
Never again will I sit aside and watch someone get bullied so badly that they take their own life.
I’m shocked out of my thoughts when Bennett wraps his arms around me. My external reaction must have been alarming because Lee and Floofy Pants move closer, eyes on me.
To put their minds at ease, I wrap my arms around Bennett. It’s awkward. Are all hugs awkward?
He giggles. “Wow. I can tell that you only hug your puppies.”
“What does that mean?”
“You’re so damn stiff right now.”
“No. I’m an expert hugger.”
Bennett laughs again. “I have some notes.”
I wrap my arms around him tighter, picking his feet up off the forest floor, and squeeze him tightly. “See? Expert.”
Bennett is still laughing. “We’ll work on it. I’ll make you an expert hugger before this weekend is over.”
He takes a step back, and I glare at him. His smile doesn’t fade at all. He turns on my pups and says, “I’m going to teach you how to make sure he stays an expert hugger, too.”
Sugar lays his ears back, and I’m pretty sure the message in his eyes when he looks at me is HELP. I grin. If I’m being punished with hug lessons this weekend, so are my babies. It’s only fair.
Bennett turns his attention back to the tree and then lays his hands on the trunk. “What was his name?” he asks, voice quiet.
“Chris.”
“You aren’t forgotten, Chris,” he says. “I’m so sorry that you went through that alone.”
I don’t know why his words choke me up. I have to squeeze my eyes closed, or I’m in danger of crying. Wow. When was the last time I cried? And in front of someone.
I didn’t allow myself to cry twenty years ago. Crying meant someone might see, and I could become the Fucked-Up Four’s next victim. Maybe Chris needs to be cried over now.
“Did they stop bullying kids?” Bennett asks, putting his hand back in mine.
“No, but I think it wasn’t as… severe. Or maybe not as concentrated on one person? It didn’t stop. There were no consequences for their actions. They didn’t force him to put a noose around his neck, after all.”
This is the first time since I met Bennett that he looks anything other than bright and cheery. He scowls, shaking his head.
“Their methods changed. I think the only thing that stopped was that they no longer alluded to someone that they should kill themselves.”
“I hate that.”
Me too. I nod. With another glance at the tree and a silent apology to Chris, we slowly walk back to the school.