Three more kids have gone crazy at Ella’s school, and the disease finally has a name: the Violence. It doesn’t have any symptoms until it happens—until someone has what they call a storm. Two of the kids who got the Violence broke out with it in the lunchroom just like Thomas Canton, and teachers dove on them, dogpiled them, pulling them and their victims apart before they could do much damage. One freshman girl had a storm and attacked a junior in the girls’ bathroom on F hall, and when she returned to class without the bathroom pass, covered in blood and specks of pink stuff and completely unconcerned, Mx. Alix went to check and found a dead girl on the floor by the sinks, her face full of shards from the mirror her head had been rammed into a few hundred times. That bathroom is closed now.
Much like with the last pandemic, the president is telling everyone that this new plague isn’t a problem, and that if it is a problem, he’ll solve it. He sounds exactly like he did when Covid hit during his last presidency, and Ella’s political science teacher straight-up said that he hopes he gets impeached again. Tons of kids are staying home, their parents writing strongly worded social media posts about the aftermath of Covid and how many kids already live with permanent physical and psychological damage.
But plenty of kids, like Ella, still have to go to school even though it doesn’t feel safe, whether because their parents think it’s not an actual dager or it’s a conspiracy or because they can’t be trusted at home, doing nothing. Ella’s dad said she has to go, so here she is, wearing a mask again, on high alert every time someone brushes past her. There are two more police officers roaming the halls, and all the teachers have had to take classes on deescalating altercations. As if that would help. After what she saw with Thomas and Jordan, Ella knows the problem isn’t making kids scared of being in trouble or making teachers quicker to act.
The problem is that these kids go as blank as sharks and attack.
It would be like zombies, except zombies don’t wake right back up and keep going about their lives despite the blood under their fingernails and the brains spattered on their flowered rompers.
She begged to stay home, but Dad told her she had to keep going to school. It would look bad if his kids stayed home like little pussies, he said. Ella flinched to hear him say that word but didn’t bring it up again. She’s taken precautions, though. She wears her steel-toed Doc Martens from her emo phase in middle school and doesn’t go to the bathroom alone and has rings on all her fingers, big chunky ones with pointy bits she bought on sale at a mall cart. If anyone tries to hurt her, she’s going to hurt them back. Or so she tells herself. She’s never been in a fight before.
Hayden keeps texting her to meet him at their spot out by H hall, but she’s ignoring it. Before, it was kind of annoying, and now it’s risking her life. Being alone with anyone is dangerous, and they’re not the only kids who use that spot to make out where the cameras and teachers can’t see. She feels a little guilty for ghosting him, and with drama club on hold and a return to the no-loitering policies of Covid, she hasn’t been alone with him in days. But on the other hand, maybe he’ll get mad enough to break up with her. If she breaks up with him, she’s a bitch who won’t put out, and everyone will believe whatever Hayden says instead of believing her. But if he breaks up with her, she’s…well, a loser, at the very least, but it won’t be quite as much her fault?
She’s hurrying out to her car after the last bell when she hears footsteps pounding behind her. She spins, hands up, keys clutched between her fingers like Wolverine’s claws, but it’s just Hayden. He looks at her like she’s insane.
“Uh, what the hell are you doing, El?”
Ella resettles her backpack and holds her keys more normally. “Just being careful. Because of all the…stuff going on.”
“Well, you look like a spaz when you hold your keys like that.”
She stares at him for a moment too long, trying to decide if he’s joking.
“Okay. Thanks?”
With a little huff, she turns around and continues walking to her car. Her heart revved up when she heard him running, and it hasn’t gone down. He’s acting weird. And the texts are getting a little out of hand. And angry. In one of them he called her a slut, and then five seconds later he apologized and begged for forgiveness and called her babe.
“Wait up.” He jogs to keep up and walk beside her, his backpack over one shoulder. “You’re gonna give me a ride home, right?”
“I can’t—” she starts.
But he interrupts her. “Because of your little sister. Sure. You always say that. And then you always give in and give me a ride anyway, so let’s just skip the part where I beg and go straight to the part where…”
He reaches for her hand and rubs his thumb across her palm. This, too, is described differently in her books. It doesn’t feel like a gentle caress meant to make her feel loved and comforted or a sensual touch meant to awaken some latent feeling. It feels like he read about both of those moves in a manual and is now attempting to get them both out of the way.
“What’s with all the creepy rings?”
Ella snatches her hand back. “They’re not creepy.”
“You look like you think you’re a witch.”
She’s at her car now and presses the button to unlock it. She puts her backpack in the trunk, her back to Hayden, wishing he would disappear. When she turns to glare at him, he’s grinning like this is all just super fun.
“Hayden, you’re being weird.”
“No, you’re being weird. Stompy boots and witch rings. You didn’t dress like this when we started going out.”
She’s pissed now and can imagine what it would be like to slap him with these rings on, their pointy bits aimed at his freshly shaved cheek.
“And you weren’t such an asshole when we started going out.”
Reaching past her, Hayden slams the trunk down, making her jump. There’s a strange, hungry ferocity about his grin, and a cold trickle crawls down her spine as she realizes that she’s seen her dad look at her mom this way. And, once, at Ella herself.
“I’m leaving now,” she says.
“C’mon, babe. Don’t be that way.”
Hayden slides around, pinning her against the car with his hands, down low by her hips. The casual observer would see a couple just playing around, but Ella is suddenly terrified. The parking lot is half full now, but most of the other kids are too busy trying to beat the traffic out the gate to get to their after-school jobs to notice that anything weird is going on. A few people are watching, avid as vultures, and Ella locks eyes with a senior in her trig class named Beth, hoping the older girl sitting on the stairs will ask her if she’s okay or step in to chat or something, but Beth’s eyes slide down to her phone.
“Hayden, let me go.” She hates how high and tremulous her voice is.
“Let you go? We’re just talking,” he says, smooth and sweet. His eyes are lit up in a way that would be mischievous if he didn’t have her pinned and she didn’t want so badly to be very, very far away from him.
“Whatever this is, I don’t give my consent,” she says, remembering what she’s been taught, what they talk about in health class.
“I don’t need consent to stand here and talk to my girlfriend.” He innocently holds his hands up before shoving them in his pockets, but he doesn’t move, and even though he’s not a lot taller than her, Ella is very aware of his size, of the wiry strength in his muscular arms when he’s playing baseball or in the weight room or lifting his partner during the dances in the musical. Her heart is thumping a thousand times a minute, and he just looks so calm and confident, as if nothing could ever touch him.
“Sorry, but I don’t think I’m your girlfriend anymore,” she says with as much determination as she can muster. “It’s not you. It’s me.” She spins in place to open her door, but she can’t, because there’s not enough room, nowhere to go. He spins around, too, sliding to lean against the door, his body now blocking the handle.
“Last I heard, it takes two to make that decision,” he counters, slouching lazily, eyebrows up.
Her escape cut off, Ella doesn’t know what to do. She glances around the parking lot again, desperate for any help, but no one is watching, no one except Beth, who looks like she’s low-key recording the whole thing on her phone from the steps.
“Help,” Ella mouths silently, but maybe Beth is too far away to see it on the screen, because she doesn’t do anything, doesn’t say anything or come over to help or tap on her phone to call someone. She just sits there, staring at her stupid screen.
“Help,” Ella says, a little louder, not quite a shout, trying to project her voice while sounding calm.
“What did you say?” Hayden hisses. “You’re not going to make some embarrassing scene, are you?”
Ella wants to shrink into herself. She squeezes her eyes shut, a million scenarios running through her head, the computations of a prey animal trying to escape.
“Look, do you want to just go somewhere alone to talk about it?”
Hayden’s voice is soft and gentle and sweet, and Ella knows that voice all too well.
She’s heard it in her kitchen a hundred times.
Instead of turning around or answering him, she takes a deep breath and bolts.
Or tries to.
Instead, one of Hayden’s big boots is there, and she trips over it and goes sprawling. Her head cracks into the SUV next door and she barely catches herself on her hands, the asphalt cutting into her palms. Her fallen keys are just a few inches away, and she grabs them, clutching them for dear life. Her vision splinters into little pinpricks, her head reeling and aching and stuffy. Hayden’s hand is fisted in the back of her shirt, almost as if he could’ve caught her but was a second too late.
“Whoa. Are you okay?” he asks. His big hands wrap around her shoulders to help her up, and she’s so dazed she lets him pull her to standing. She puts a hand on her car to steady herself. Hayden runs his thumb down her temple, his palm cupping her cheek like it’s a basketball. “Poor girl. You’re bleeding.” But he doesn’t sound sorry. “I’ll drive you home. Where’re the keys?”
Ella shakes her head, her fingers shaking around her key ring. She can’t get in the car with him. Everything is wrong.
She steps away from him, one step and then another, but she’s slow and clumsy now and he snags her arm easily and yanks her back.
“I told you. I’ll drive, we’ll talk. Just get in the car.” The soft, reasonable tone of his voice is vastly different from the bruising grip he keeps on her arm.
She tries to yank it back, barking, “No!”
He doesn’t let go. He leans close, as if they’re sharing a secret. “Ella, you’re making a scene. People are staring.”
“I don’t care.”
He jerks her arm toward him, grabs her other arm, too, his fingers biting in. “Well, I do!”
Ella is breathing hard now, her heart pounding in time with her head. Her stomach goes cold and her feet want to run. Somewhere in the back of her mind, Mx. Alix is explaining fight, flight, or freeze and an adrenaline drop. Knowing what it is doesn’t make it any easier to move. Shaking her head, she wrenches her body away from him with everything she has until she stands on her own.
“I said no!” she shouts. “No! Don’t touch me again!”
She hears the slap before she can really process what he’s done.
When she puts her hand to her cheek, it stings.
No one has ever slapped her before.
Her jaw drops. Her brain rattles like a maraca. She can feel the tiny balls of stone on her palms from the parking lot asphalt, pressing into her now swelling cheek.
He slapped her.
He hit her.
And he must realize the weight of what he’s done, because suddenly he, too, looks terrified.
“El, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean to. It was an accident. I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry. I can get a ride home from someone else. Or drive you or whatever. Just don’t tell anyone. Just don’t…just…you make me so crazy, baby.” His desperation raises his voice, makes him seem like a spoiled little boy, and she can’t remember why she ever liked him at all.
Ella swallows the lump in her throat and lets her hands drop to her sides. She can’t remember if the car is unlocked, so she fumbles for the right button on her key fob. He’s not blocking the door anymore, just standing there, so she clicks the button once, gets in her car, closes the door, and locks it.
“I’m sorry!” he screams, his voice high and shredding. “I didn’t mean it!” His fist slams into the car roof to punctuate his harmlessness.
The car is on now, and she puts it in reverse and backs up, daring him to stop her. He doesn’t, he can’t, he just stands there looking much younger and smaller than he did a few moments ago. There’s a satisfying thump as she rolls over his backpack.
“I’m sorry!” he screams again, now in her rearview mirror.
As she drives past Beth on the stairs, the older girl holds up her phone and silently points to it.
Bleeding, aching, bruised, possibly concussed, Ella nods and chuckles to herself, a mad, half-sobbing sound.
Some kids at her school have leaked nudes, which spread like wildfire. But if she knows how things work, soon everyone is going to see firsthand what their golden boy did to her.