13. Teddy
THIRTEEN
TEDDY
“Figure out who you’re taking to prom yet?” I ask, frowning into the black depths of my locker, shuffling aside a few books as I search for my AP Chemistry tome.
Cash slams his locker closed, acoustic guitar in its case slung over his shoulder. With the morning rush through the halls, a few wily freshmen bump into us. He shakes his head. “Nah. That was a stupid suggestion. We’re too mature for prom.”
I halt in the middle of the hall, more people running into me and hissing “Freak,” as they pass by. Once Cash realizes I’m no longer next to him, he turns and gives me a quizzical look.
“What?”
“You fucker.”
His smirk is broad. “Who’d you ask?”
I simply press my lips together, and his grin falters, his shoulders drooping and the strap of the case slipping down his bicep.
“Eden? C’mon, Teddy, we talked about this!” he whines.
Resuming my strides, I catch up to him, and we pick up our pace to our first period classes.
“I was under the impression you were serious about wanting to get dates for prom.” I growl. I’m not taking it back now, not after I was able to…well, sort of force her into it. Our bus ride was bliss yesterday after school, me pestering her and her ignoring me. Then we practiced together under the watchful eye of Vic, and she even let me walk her to the bus that would take her home.
Threatened to stab me in the jugular if I boarded it, though, so I had to wait for the next one and follow, unbeknownst to her. I’d sat up all night, until dawn crested Rainier, painting it in watercolor hues of pink and purple. I’d kept her safe through that darkness, pondering every possibility of why she would ask me to sleep with her.
She isn’t one for nostalgia, and she doesn’t strike me as the type to check things off a metaphorical bucket list, so her bland reason for wanting to lose her virginity to me because it’s some rite of passage isn’t the truth. The obvious direction I need to search is the circus. It makes me physically sick to my stomach for a few different reasons, but that sickness is always quickly replaced by fury.
I’ll still fuck her regardless, because now that she’s offered herself up to me on a silver platter, the voices demand that virginal sacrifice, or I’ll claw my own fucking eyes out and devolve into madness. I’ll tame myself for her benefit, but hiding who I really am from her won’t last long. She’ll know every facet of me, just as I’ll know all the darkness in her. My soul feels alive at the prospect.
“Yeah, you said we needed to go, so I asked her, and she said yes,” I grunt. We pause at a branch in the hallways, Cash needing to go to the music wing, and me to the science building. He’s mad, but he’ll get over it.
“Fine, whatever.”
The warning bell rings through the halls, and a few stragglers begin to run. Cash turns on his heel and marches away. With a sigh, I turn to leave as well, prepared to reminisce more on our conversations last night. The breath stills in my lungs as I do, my eyes clashing with muddy hazel ones, a sickening spark in her gaze.
Miss Goss, the guidance counselor.
“Teddy,” she says, beaming, her teeth and mouth theatrically large, her body slender but curvy in all the right places. With her thick mane of light brown hair and the way she dresses—professional, but tight—she’s every boy here’s wet dream.
Except for mine.
“Hey,” I say, dodging around her before the late bell rings. Her claws dig into my arm as I attempt to pass, and I pause, sucking in a deep breath through my nose to calm the voices in my head that beg for her death.
She blinks up at me, then nods her head back toward the front office.
“We have a meeting scheduled. I already emailed Mr. Anderson.”
My teeth grit, and my stomach writhes, Eden’s eyes flashing in my mind. The way she’d looked up at me in the library yesterday, so timid but determined, so trusting, so innocent—it made my bones ache to hear that note of desperation in her voice. Of everyone here, she entrusted her innocence to me .
I wish that could be something we shared together, the exchanging of our virginity.
I blink again, and Miss Goss’ eyes come back into view. I have to fight the urge to vomit. This fucking cunt is the reason I can’t share that with Eden.
The bubbly counselor turns and clacks her heels back down the hall, and I have no choice but to follow.
Sophomore year, Brant’s old buddy Jeremy filled my locker with cod, and when I’d opened it, the slimy fish had ruined the new shoes my mom had bought me. Still young, still finding it hard to control the voices, I’d beat him in the hallway within an inch of his life. Fearing I’d end up in prison, I’d been awaiting the wrath of Dick.
But Miss Goss had gotten to me first.
At sixteen years old, I’d lost my innocence in her office on a chair hundreds of other students occupy daily. And for the rest of my time here at Prep, I’ve had meetings with her once a week, her finger always on the metaphorical trigger. I’ll tell everyone you raped me, I’ll file a police report about your aggravated assault on Jeremy, I’ll bury you, you’re eighteen now, what does it matter?
That last one was said to my face two short weeks ago. It fucking matters, and it matters even more now that I want no one in this life but Eden. As I follow Miss Goss into the office, I can’t help but to shake the feeling I’m about to betray the girl I’m falling hard for. Rage so overwhelming that it blinds me seeps into my veins, and the voices begin to seethe.
Kill her. Strangle her until her eyes pop out. Slit her throat with the scissors on her desk. Make her watch you take the life from her in that mirror on the back of her door.
All grand ideas, and it fills me with a sense of peace as I allow them to speak, each voice distinct and forceful. They know her time is soon, and so being patient and enduring this is the smallest bit easier.
The office doors shut quietly behind us, phones ringing and a printer whirring while the thick scent of black coffee permeates the air. Through the glass windows, a few late students slink by in the hallway, but Mrs. Smite is quick to catch them.
“You have mail, Megan!” one of the office ladies quips to Miss Goss.
“I’ll get it after my appointment. Thank you, Dotty,” she says, voice sickly sweet. We continue down a back hallway to her office at the very end. A dank, cramped space I’m sure she detested until she figured out she could rape me and get away with it. I’m no stranger to enduring hellish circumstances, I just have to wonder (with what little hope in me remains) when they’ll end. When will my life just be…peaceful? And by that time, will I even be able to enjoy it, as fucked up as this journey has been so far?
She allows me in before she follows, shutting and locking the thick oak door. The chair—the seat and back of plush leather, the arms of sturdy wood—jumps out at me, so stark and filled with such detestable memories. Even the scent in here—some sort of vanilla lotion with hints of sugar—makes me sick.
Slipping my book and binder onto her desk, I sit dejectedly, praying like every time that I’ve somehow developed erectile dysfunction. I was so angry at myself the first time, so furious with my body for betraying my soul in such a way. Now, I’m just resigned.
She giggles behind me, giddy at having me all to herself in her lair. Like every time, she kicks off her heels, pulls up her too-tight skirt, and straddles me. Reaching her hand down between us, she cups me, rubbing me until I begin to harden. I look anywhere but her face, my fingers gripping the arms of the chair so hard I hope they break.
“Relax,” she breathes, voice fanning over my face, her curtain of hair obscuring my view of anything but her. When our eyes catch, I see nothing but hedonistic desire and raw lust in hers, along with a predatory glint. Her jaw clenches, a flicker of anger behind her eyes. She always threatens me, uses her power to manipulate and control me. Not much longer , I promise the voices. Maybe I’ll cut her up into little pieces but keep her alive so she can watch as maggots devour them. That wouldn’t make up for the three years of molestation, but it would at least quell that particular festering wound.
Her fingers fumble with my zipper, but she eventually frees me, coaxing me until I’m hard enough. My eyes slip closed. I refuse to make a single noise as she sinks down onto me, instead biting my tongue until I taste blood. She moans quietly in her sickening ecstasy, and every muscle in my body tenses as I fight the urge to pin her by the throat against the wall and choke the life out of her.
“God, you’re so…big…so good,” she breathes, bouncing on my lap, simply using me to masturbate. Bile rushes up my throat, bringing with it the plain, stale bagel I’d grabbed from the counter this morning before I rushed to catch the bus. I focus on that, on my morning, how I raced home at the crack of dawn to shower and eat and change after I ensured Eden was safe. It annoyed me, not being able to watch her get on the bus to school, but seeing her in the hall running to class soothed that worry away.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
She bounces harder, faster, and for the first time in three years, when she climaxes, I don’t. Shivering as she comes down from her stolen high, our eyes meet. Instantly, I go soft inside her, and her brow crinkles, fear rippling across her forehead.
I sneer, hand lashing out, fingers curling one by one around her throat as I lift her off of me and stand. She tries to gasp, her eyes bulging, her legs kicking and hands clawing at my arm as she sways by her neck, my hand the noose. My vicious smile grows, her skin turning pink, then red, then as purple as Eden’s eyes.
My Eden .
“Someday, I’m going to kill you,” I swear, a newfound strength residing in my bones, a new reason for me to fight, to stay alive.
Eden . Mine .
Miss Goss’ mouth gapes as she struggles to remain conscious. I know I’ll leave bruises, but I don’t give a fuck anymore. I see it in her eyes, know she believes my threat, especially as she dangles in the air.
Slowly, I bring her back to earth, and she wrenches away from me, clutching her desk and gasping in heaping lungfuls of oxygen.
“You…you’re…done,” she rasps, a pathetic attempt to threaten me. So quickly she doesn’t fight it, I lash out and grip her hair, pinning her with my body to her desk, smashing her face into the wood.
Her terrified eyes find mine.
“I have bigger problems than you now,” I hiss. “You’re going to die at my hands. And not even the Devil himself will be able to stop me.”