Page 62 of The Rebel of Raleigh High
“Fuck sake. Shouldn’t she be out by now, Jay? This’d be a lot easier if she wasn’t trying to kick me in the balls.”
Sam cackles at Cillian’s grousing like a drunk hyena. Jake growls, jerking me, digging his fingernails into my skin. “I only gave her half a dose. There’s nothing to her. I figured she’d be a little more docile.” His teeth scrape against my ear as he hisses at me. “Try and kick one more fucking time and I will break your fucking jaw, bitch. Do you hear me? Hold fucking still.”
I’m dimly aware of what he just said: “…only gave her half a dose. Figured she’d be more docile…”The knowledge that he's drugged me weighs heavy, pressing me down into the ground. The sluggishness. My inability to think straight. I should have known the way my body was reacting had nothing to do with the coke. The drink. He must have put something in the drink he made me. God, how fucking stupid could I have been? I should have known. I should have seen this coming.
But…
A cute guy I liked smiled at me and made me a drink. At the time, it seemed like a perfectly ordinary thing for him to do.
I feel like I’m drowning in glue. The oxygen in the bathroom is sluggish as I try and pull it down into my chest; it should be a relief to breathe, but every time I try and fill my chest, I end up coughing, choking and spluttering.
It’s Jake’s hand. He’s…he’s strangling the life out of me.
“Get her legs, man,” Jake commands. Cillian obeys. I try to scream again as the room tilts, and I’m dumped roughly onto my back, but I can’t make a single sound. The slate tile on the bathroom floor is freezing against my shoulder blades and the backs of my legs. Jake lets me go, twisting around, placing one foot on either side of my torso. Before he can crouch down and wrap his hands around my throat, I draw myself together, adrenalin and fear doing my thinking for me, and I holler at the top of my lungs.
I’ve had dreams before. Dreams where I’ve been in trouble, but when I’ve screamed for help, only the softest whisper has come out of my mouth. Well, that’s not what happens this time. The scream is piercing, loud enough to wake the dead. It echoes around the bathroom, grating and high-pitched, ahelp-me-I’m-about-to-be-fucking-raped!scream. Jake cuts it off with his fist.
Pain blossoms on the right-hand side of my face as my body registers the swift, vicious right jab I just took on the jaw. I've never been hit before. Never like that. My head swims, and for a horrible moment, I think I'm going to pass out.Don’t you fucking dare, Parisi, don’t you fucking dare!I’m high, scared beyond reason, and now I’m in pain, but I know for a fact that I don’t want to lose consciousness. Yes, being awake for this is the most horrible thing that’s ever happened to me, but if I pass out, I’ll never know what they did to me. I will only have my imagination to supply the details, and my imagination already likes to picture the worst. I need the cold, hard facts. I need to be able to hold each of them accountable for their individual actions.
A spiderweb of agony laces its fingers across the back of my head, where it hit the tiles just now. Jake sneers, face contorted, his features all warped and twisted as he looks down at me in disgust. I am seeing him for the first time. This is therealhim, and I suddenly have no idea why I’ve wasted the better part of the last two years lusting after him. He’s so damnugly. All the anger, and the hate, and the loathing he’s wearing on his face is enough to make him the most hideous creature I've ever seen. He grabs my face by the jaw in one hand, holding me steady, and slowly purses his lips, letting a string of saliva fall from his mouth. I try to turn my head away, but it's no good. His grip on my skull doesn't waver for one second. The only thing I can do is close my eyes as the wad of spit lands on my cheekbone, rolling into the well of my eye socket.
“God, you’re a fucking mess, Silver.” I whimper when his thumb presses down on the top of my eyelid. I have no idea what he’s trying to do for a moment, and I imagine the worst—that he’s about to gouge my eye out. Quickly, I comprehend what’s really happening, though; he’s smearing my eyeliner down my face. Not quite as awful as losing an eye but humiliating none the less. His thumb shoves into my mouth, and I do the only reasonable thing: I bite down as hard as I can, until I feel my teeth scrape against bone.
His howl of pain is almost as loud as the scream I let out a moment ago. Another blow hits me in the temple and blackness seeps in, threatening to swallow me up in its oblivion. “Stupidbitch!”I’ve never heard anything that comes close to the rage in Jake’s voice as he grabs a fist full of my hair and yanks my head up, smashing it back down onto the tiles. “Looks like you need to learn a few lessons, Parisi. Who do you think you are? Mmm?” Again, he smashes my head down, and I open my mouth, stunned by the shockwave of disorienting pain that floods my being. “You’re nothing. Worse than nothing. You’re a piece of meat, put here on this earth forourpleasure. Don’t you know how this works, you dumb fucking cunt? Me and my boys? We’re from different stock. Purebreds. We do what we want. Say what we want. Take what we want. You should be fucking grateful we even deigned you worthy of our attention.”
He’s dripping blood onto the floor, a red, gory circular welt around the knuckle of this thumb. The sight of the wound I gave him does something to me. I should stay quiet. That’s what I should do. I should ride this out, keep my mouth shut, and hope they’ll go easy on me. Be a good possum and play dead. But…I can’t. It’s just not in me to lie down and take something like this. I will fight them every step of the way. I will kick, and scream, and bite, and I will cause as much chaos as possible, if it means that this won’t be easy forthem.
“If you’re waiting for me to show gratitude,” I spit, choking on the word, “then you’re gonna be waiting a hell of a long time, Jacob Weaving. I amnotnothing. I have a voice, and I will use it. I do not give you permission to touch me.Let…me…go.”
Jake’s had my arms pinned by my sides all this time. He snatches hold of my wrists and pulls them roughly up high over my head, a dangerous, malicious, crazy light in his eyes. “Hmm, that’s it, is it? Pretty Princess Silver. Too good for all of us. Too fucking special. Don’t bite. Don’t kick. Don’t scream. Spread your legs and keep your mouth shut, bitch, and we’ll see if we can make this quick.”
Setting my jaw, even though it hurts, and my teeth feel like they’re shattered, I look him dead in the eye. The drugs are still there, churning around my system, making it difficult to focus, but in this moment everything becomes crystal fucking clear. He wants more than my body from me. More than my pain. He wants myfear. He, alone, is so much stronger than me, but with Sam and Cillian thrown into the mix, I don't have a hope in hell's chance of fighting them off. They're going to do what they set out to do. I've pissed Jake off, so heisgoing to make this hurt. But there’s one thing I can do, one thing I can keep from him, and that’s my fear. I won’t fucking givethatto him.
Jake’s sickening smirk deepens as he leers, eyes roving down to pause on my chest. “Sam, what the fuck are you doing, dude. Get over here. Take her hands. Hold her tight. Wait. Are they scissors over there?”
“A razor blade,” Sam says, holding up a blade that’s identical to the one Kacey used downstairs to cut her drugs. “You want it?”
“Yeah. That’ll do nicely.” He takes the blade from Sam in exchange for my wrists. If anything, Sam’s grip is even harsher, grinding the bones of my wrists down into the floor. It hurts. It feels fucking terrible to be so vulnerable, at their mercy, but I draw in a breath, holding it in my lungs. Then I force my face to go absolutely blank. It would take more control that I possess right now to stop pulling and straining, trying to get free, but my face Icancontrol.
I barely even blink as Jake makes a show of holding the blade the material of the dress I borrowed from Kacey, slicing easily through the fabric. He tears and rips at it, pulling away handfuls of black, his eyes glinting with frenzied expectation. “What you staring at, Parisi? You like this after all?” he growls. In no time at all, the dress is gone. I don’t even flinch as he greedily saws through the pretty red bow between the cups of my bra. My breasts spring free, and frightening tension begins to mount in the room.
“Shit, Silver. You’ve been holding out on us,” Cillian says thickly. “Who knew you were hiding those bad boys underneath your clothes all this time. Fuck, look at her nipples. They’re so fucking pink.”
Sam uses a knee to pin my hands, reaching for me, cupping me in his hands, his fingers pinching painfully at my nipples, rolling them as he grins down at me. “Goddamn. And here I was, thinking this’d be a waste of time. If I put my dick in your mouth, Parisi, are you gonna suck it for me?”
Jake punches him hard in the shoulder. “Wait your fucking turn, asshole. I brought her to the table. I get to fuck her first.”
“All right, man. All right! No need to get shitty.” Sam leans back, his weight on my wrists, and the pain is excruciating. I breathe in deep through my nose, trying to compartmentalize it, distance myself from it, but it’s just too much. Jake’s gaze crawls over my skin, feasting on me. He sits back on his heels, looking at me, and I’m dreading what will come next, but I don’t look away. I meet his gaze, burning my hatred into him.
“You’re blocking the view, man,” Cillian complains.
“Shut the fuck up,” Jake snaps. “We’ve got all night, haven’t we?”
Cillian mumbles something inaudible and unhappy in return, but Jake ignores him. Getting to his feet, he shrugs out of his letterman jacket, removing the button down shirt I admired downstairs, slowly unfastening his belt, and then his jeans. It’s probably not the smartest move on my part—definitely not the smartest move on my part—but I let out of a bark of laughter when I realize that he’s planning on leaving his MVP medal on.
Jake falters, glaring down at me. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” he hisses. “Don’t you have any sense of self-preservation?”
“Don’t you have anypride?” I fire back. “Is this the only way you can get a girl to fuck you, Jake? Do you have to force yourself on women ’cause none of them will voluntarily climb into bed with you?”
