Chapter 32 Chapter Thirty Two
Lena’s POV
I stood in the middle of it with the cold still on my coat and the strobe lights washing everything in slow blue arcs, including everyone towering above me, and I made a decision.
"I'm not playing," I said.
Alison blinked. Then she laughed mockingly, pointing her finger at me.
"I'm sorry?"
"I said I'm not playing your game." I kept my voice as steady as I could manage, which wasn't very steady, but it was something. "I don't want to be here. I didn't come here for this, so I'm just going to—"
I took one step toward the door and her hand shot out and caught my hair, twisting it tightly in her grip.
I gasped in pain and shock. The pain felt hot and blinding, a white-hot streak across my scalp as she yanked me back by the roots, spinning me around to face her. The circle erupted, some gasping, most laughing, phones flying up everywhere at once.
"You're not going anywhere," Alison said, very quietly, directly into my face. Her eyes had gone flat and cold and so empty that I knew exactly what it meant, because I’d seen that face many times before.
Now she was done pretending and she had moved into full bully mode, "Did anyone say you could leave?"
"Alison, you’re hurting me. Please let go of my—" I whimpered, grabbing uselessly at her hand.
"Do you have any idea," she said, still in that quiet voice, each word laced with hate, "who my father is?"
Her grip tightened and I bit down hard on the scream that wanted to come out.
"I bet he'd find it really interesting," she continued, her free hand smoothing the front of her crop top like we were having a perfectly normal conversation, "to hear how rude you've been to me, his only child. How disrespectful."
She tilted her head. "He's on the school board, you know, not dead and useless in the ground like yours is. Did you know that?"
"One phone call," she said pleasantly. "That's all it would take. One phone call from my father and your little scholarship disappears. Poof."
She smiled. "Gone. Just like that. And then what do you have left, exactly? You'd be just another broke girl from the wrong side of town with no future and nowhere to go."
She released my hair with a push, "So I suggest you sit back down and play the game like a good little nerd."
It sounded like an unbelievable threat, that she would get me expelled and put my future in jeopardy over something as little as a party game.
But she would do it. She would absolutely do it and you know she would. I thought to myself. No one is coming to save you, so you'd better do as she says and hope for the best.
I sat back down.
The circle settled, buzzing with anticipation.
"Good girl." Alison walked back to her spot right across from me, asking "Truth or dare?"
I looked at the floor. "Truth."
"No."
I looked up.
"Pick dare."
"Huh? I thought… I thought you're supposed to let me choose…”
"Pick dare, Lena. I won't say it again." She picked up her phone, pulled up her father’s phone number and pointed the screen at me threateningly.
Don't. Don't do it. Think of something. Think of anything.
"Dare," I whispered.
The crowd of students whooped around me, cheering with excitement.
“Whoo! Someone get her a beer or something for courage!” One boy yelled, shoving his red solo cup at me.
I shook my head slowly and looked at the ground. I didn’t drink.
Alison's face split into a smile so wide it looked like it hurt, and she turned to share it with her girls who reflected it back at her, all of them feeding off each other.
A horrible ring of cruelty that had been running at my expense since the first day of freshman year.
I felt a wild sense of danger creep over my neck as the shouting got louder. I panicked, there was no way I would agree to one of Allison's sadistic dares.
I need to get out of here. Right now! Whatever the cost!
In a rare flash of courage and adrenaline, I got to my feet and ran.
I moved fast, faster than I think anyone expected, ducking left around the nearest gap in the thick crowd and making a break for the main doors. My coat caught on someone's outstretched arm and I yanked it free without stopping, two steps, three, four—
"Get her," Allison commanded.
The two football players came from nowhere.
They were enormous, both of them, and they moved like they'd been waiting for exactly this, which they probably had. One caught my left arm and the other caught my right and I pulled against them with everything I had, which was not very much compared to two varsity players.
"Let go of me…"
"Loosen up. Come on, it's just a game—"
"Let go, please, I don't want—"
They dragged me back to the centre of the circle, one on each side, my feet barely touching the floor, still laughing about it above my head as though manhandling me was nothing to them.
I looked up and caught Jace's eyes across the room mid-scream.
His face was completely blank and expressionless.
He wasn't on his phone like he had been before I came in. He'd been on his phone all night, scrolling and ignoring everything around him like none of it was worth his time.
But now that I was sitting face down on the floor close to him, his eyes were tracking the situation with focused attention that he hadn't given to anything else all evening.
Maybe he was only paying attention because he liked watching me suffer.
I looked away before I could do something stupid like look for something in his expression that wasn't there.
He had betrayed me, fair and simple, and I would be stupid to make excuses for him or expect better of him. I shut my eyes tight and awaited my fate.