Page 7 of Perfect Chemistry

“Kai! Get down here right now!!” my mother yelled from the bottom of the stairs.

After yet another night of shit for sleep, I wasn’t sure what I had done or forgotten to piss her off. To be honest I hadn’t slept well in weeks. My phone would go off at random times with various messages or calls from Kristin, the homecoming nightmare from hell.

I tried to break things off amicably, but the chick was a psycho. When did she fucking sleep, because she called and messaged all fucking night long. Last night was the worst. I finally shut my phone off at 3 am just so that I could sleep a couple of hours before school, only to be woken by my mother screaming downstairs.

I sat up and rubbed my face. I don’t know what I did to get her this fired up, but I’m sure it would be funny when she calmed down. Trudging down the stairs, I looked past the railing to see both of my parents standing in the living room with two State Police.

What the fuck? I stopped walking and just stared, my eyes darting between the cops and finally going to my parents.

“What’s going on?” I asked, still not moving from the stair I stopped on.

“The car was vandalized,” my mother informed me.

I didn’t understand what that had to do with me, so I walked down the remaining steps to peek out at the car. I immediately felt like I had been punched in the gut.

The windows had all been smashed, and the sides of the car painted with bright red letters: R-A-P-I-S-T.

“Do you have any idea who would do this to your vehicle?” One of the cops was asking.

I shook my head, trying to keep down the sparse contents of my stomach. I hadn’t been with anyone since Alison last school year, and she would never….

“Kai, go get your phone. I’m done with this,” my father barked at me.

My head jerked up to look at him, obviously confused. “I didn’t rape anyone!” I shouted back, feeling like I was being accused of the worst thing possible.

I watched their expressions soften, and my mom quickly crossed the room to hug me. “We know, sweetie. That’s not what we meant. Go get your phone so that we can turn it over to the police as evidence.”

I jerked back from her hug, becoming more defensive. “Mom! I didn’t do anything wrong!” I kept shouting my innocence, making the two officers nervous.

“Kai-” my dad’s voice broke through my shouting. “We’re not accusing you, son. The police need your phone to press charges against the person who did this. It contains evidence.”

Until my phone was in the cops’ hands, I had no idea what they were talking about. It never occurred to me that my parents had been shielding me from a lot of crazy. We ended up spending the entire day at the police station giving statements.

By the time we got home, I realized I had missed my chem lab. “FUCK!” I yelled, startling my mom.

“Kai Rayburn! Do not cuss like you have no manners! I know this is a lot of stress on you, but we’ll help you get through this,” she consoled me.

“I missed class today,” I mumbled back as she pulled me into a hug.

“Don’t worry about that. Your dad is contacting the school to get your missed assignments. Until she’s arrested, you’re staying home,” she informed me.

I went back to my room and crashed. I couldn’t even think about the world outside right now while I was living in a fucking twilight zone.

When I woke up the carousel of crazy continued. I just wanted my fucking life back. Just one thing that I could control, but there was nothing. After the second week, I stopped counting the days I had missed, and just holed up in my room to complete missed assignments.

Suddenly, it was December and I could move forward from the worst experience of my life. I wanted to talk to Kat, but I didn’t even know where to start. There was so much I couldn’t talk about until now, but now…. I didn’t want to talk about it. I wanted to forget it, to be honest.

“How’d it go?” Bradley asked, as we sat down in the cafeteria to eat lunch.

“It’s done,” I muttered. “I still can’t believe she did that shit.”

Bradley shook his head. The last three weeks had been nothing short of some crazy wild ride in some alternate universe.

“She confessed to messing with my parents’ car, stalking, communicating threats,” I shuttered, remembering all of the details that I did not know about.

“First stalker, my man, right here!” Bradley tried to make a joke. “Your parents ask for the restraining order?”

“Oh, yeah!” I chuckled. “500 yards, from me, my house, my school, no contact whatsoever or she gets tried as an adult for, and I quote ′exploiting a minor.’”

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