12. River #2
The frat brothers all shake their heads. “Nope. Ass up, buddy, unless you want to fail immediately. ”
There’s a moment of hesitation before the pledge turns around and presents his ass. The guy closest to him swats him hard, and the pledge howls in pain.
I’m not sure whether to be disgusted by his lack of composure or sympathetic to his plight. Of course, I’ve never been paddled, but it can’t be much worse than a fist to a broken rib.
Given that we ultimately hadn’t had much time to study, I’ll probably find out soon.
Zayden goes around the room, asking everybody questions. A few of them answer correctly, and their relief is palpable. The ones who screw up whimper through the pain of the paddling.
Blaze looks at me. “Name three of the founding members,” he says, smirking widely.
“Xavier Kingsford III, Mason Bouchard, and Benedict Preston,” I reply promptly with a smirk of my own.
Take that, fucker.
Blaze’s eyes narrow. “Good job,” he mutters, but the disappointment is palpable. He wanted to hurt me.
The impromptu quiz continues, until Zayden claps his hands and declares, “All right. Time for the ice breaker portion of the game.”
Only one guy except for me has managed to avoid getting paddled so far. Franklin got all three questions they threw at him wrong, and he’s visibly sweating and shaking now.
“You need to share a humiliating secret,” Zayden declares. “Prove that you trust your brothers. If we don’t deem it good enough, there’s going to be more pain.”
I grit my teeth. I still haven’t come up with a good enough supposed secret.
I listen as the other guys go through their mortifying secrets. One of them claims to have wet the bed until he was thirteen, which takes away the one idea I did have, and the others are all mild.
It seems like only I have the real secrets, the ones that are beyond humiliating and downright dangerous.
I guess I’m going to find out what it’s like to be paddled after all.
“So, River, what’s your secret?” Blaze asks. Asch stands behind him, stroking the paddle menacingly.
I wish I could say I wasn’t feeling anything about it, but what if I do embarrass myself? There’s one secret I can share, though somehow I think they’re going to think I’m being flippant. “I came in three seconds the first time I had sex,” I tell them, shrugging.
It’s not even a lie.
Pandora had been fucking furious, and I’d been beyond humiliated.
Asch snorts, and he eyes me, probably trying to figure out if I’m being serious or if I’m dodging the question.
“You and most of the guys here,” Blaze says with a cruel laugh. “That’s way too tame. Turn around and take your paddling.”
I knew it wouldn’t be enough, but anything truly juicy isn’t getting unlocked. Not for them, not for anyone.
I could protest that it’s true, but protesting too much would only make it look even more like I’m lying.
I turn, presenting my ass like I’m about to get properly fucked, which would be far more preferable to finding out what the wooden paddle is going to feel like.
I can take it, though.
It turns out that it hurts, especially with the force that Blaze puts behind it. Somehow, I don’t think he’s gone that hard with anyone else, but he only gets a grunt from me.
He’s probably disappointed about that, too. The other guys have yelped from half the effort he had to put into it.
“I should mention, nobody is joining without sharing a good secret,” Zayden says.
One of the pledges suddenly goes for his clothes. “I’m out. Fuck… fuck all of you!”
He’s one of the guys who’s gotten paddled the most.
Before he can get far, Zayden grabs him and shoves him back into the center of the room. “You can leave,” Zayden says with a nasty smile. “But if you speak a word about this to anyone … Let’s just say, yo ur life on campus is going to be hell. Don’t forget who owns the school.”
The guy shakes, but he nods quickly. “Yeah, fine, I get it, you asshole.”
I’m not surprised someone’s bailing this fast. If anything, I’m surprised there aren’t more people beelining toward the door.
I’m not going to be one of them.
I am going to have to make up something they’ll think is “juicy” enough to qualify. It’s a ridiculous game. The whole point is to paddle us.
“Your turn, River,” Blaze says. “Let’s try again. Maybe this time you’ll give us something real.”
I open my mouth to lie, when Asch interrupts, “His finger. He should tell us how he lost his finger.”
I’ve had almost a year to think about valid excuses for how I lost my finger, but it never fails to knock the breath out of my lungs.
I hadn’t even fucked up that much.
I’d been a virgin who had come too fast.
I’d refused to eat Pandora out.
All right, and maybe I’d called her a crazy whore, which I did regret about five minutes after I’d left her house.
I’d planned on apologizing, but after her family had made it clear that making her cry meant body parts were on the line, that had gone out the window.
I grit my teeth. “It was an accident.”
That’s not a lie either.
I don’t want to talk about it, I don’t want to think about it, I don’t want to remember it.
They’re going to push, and I should make this easier on myself. I should tell the truth and be done with it. Zayden had said no one is getting in without a valid secret.
But I can’t bring myself to say the words.
It isn’t until Asch is grabbing me to force me back down so that Blaze can bring the paddle back down onto my ass that I realize I’m shaking. I bite back another cry. The pain reverberates through me.
The pain, and the humiliation.
They ask again; I tell another half-truth.
“Seems like he’s still holding out,” Blaze says. He grips the hem of my boxers. “Maybe this is softening the blow too much.”
Before I can complain, he pulls my boxers down, revealing my ass to everybody.
I hear somebody cough, but nobody says a word.
I want to be bitter and angry about that, but the pain is starting to get to me. All of it is starting to get to me.
I can practically hear my father’s voice in my ear telling me to man the fuck up, to do this, to tell them the truth instead of being a pussy.
Or maybe he’d tell me to take the beating and keep it to myself.
Then again, he’d always been up my ass to play nice with Pandora, because playing nice with Pandora meant making her father happy.
The next time the paddle comes down on my ass, I cry out, and that’s more embarrassing than the fact that my ass is hanging out into the air. Tears have begun to blur my vision — tears I am absolutely not letting fall — and I blink them back as I grit my teeth.
The moment I realize I can’t handle more than a handful more of these is the moment disgust races through me with such ferocity that I can barely stand it.
“One more time,” Blaze says, and he sounds positively gleeful about the idea of hitting me again.
It’s because of Pandora. I know it is. They think I’m her protector.
They don’t realize I want to destroy her as much as they do.
As soon as we find out what happens to Rachel, and as soon as we avenge her death, I’m done with her. They can do whatever they want, as long as they don’t get in my way in the meantime.
I have to give them something, or I’m the next one out of the door .
“I got in trouble with the mob, and they cut it off!” I finally say around the lump in my throat. “All right? That’s the fucking… the fucking truth.”
The paddle stops short. Blaze runs the smooth wood against my overheated, bruised ass, and I hate the sudden spike of pleasure that gives me.
“That wasn’t too bad. Good job, River,” Blaze says. “That’s how it’s done, boys. We’re your brothers now. You don’t fucking keep secrets from us. Got it?”
I plan on keeping a lot more secrets than this one.
I fall to the floor. Blaze ruffles my hair, and the condescending gesture pisses me off, but I don’t have the energy to argue with him.
I can’t handle more of the paddle, either.
I hear more secrets getting shouted, things that feel so insignificant compared to mine.
Nobody gets paddled as hard as I did.
And finally, Zayden says, “All right. One night down. You’ve got six days of hell week left to go.”
Six days.
If I’m already this shaken on the first night, if I already came this close to breaking down, what will the last day be like?
I guess I’ll find out.