Page 55 of Broken by my Bully (Lessons in Cruelty Dark Academia #1)

Kai

“No! It’s not fair!” Haven screeches, hands in tight balls at her side as she glares at me. Serious attitude for a nine-year-old.

“Course not. That’s the whole freakin’ point.” I’m down to my underpants, my legs shaking as they fight the water pushing against my thighs. Thank God they’re not the Superman ones Mom bought me. I’m twelve, not five.

“Come on, Kai! I also wanna play!”

When I ignore her, raising my arms like a God as I challenge the water raging down the creek, Haven shrieks.

Damn, she’s got a set of lungs on her.

“Quit it!” I yell at her. “No one’s gonna hear you, anyhow!”

“You’re so damn mean! I hate you, Kai!” She screams at the top of her lungs, and I swear, if we hadn’t chased all the wildlife away over an hour ago already, birds would have burst out of the trees and deer would have scattered.

This is really messing with my mood, and it was crappy to begin with.

“Okay, okay!” I stomp my way out of the creek, slashing my hand through the air. “Cut it out, y’damn banshee! ”

She only stops when I’m a few feet away from the tree I tied her to. Her face is red and splotchy, her arms and legs rubbed raw where the ropes bit into her.

I guess I tie them too tight sometimes. But if I make the ropes loose enough for her to escape, she complains.

Girls are weird. Especially the ones at my middle school who whisper about my torn jeans and the bruises on my arms.

They always laugh when I look at them.

So I’ve stopped looking.

Haven doesn’t laugh at me. Only when I fall and bust up my knee or something. Or when I fart. Or, lately, when my voice suddenly becomes just as squeaky as hers.

I put my hands on my hips, staring her down. “You can’t play.”

“Why?” Frustrated tears sparkled on her lashes.

The first rains came and went last night. The ground is still muddy, the trees still dripping, but the sky is clear. Late afternoon sunlight spears through the leaves and makes patches of shadow and light on Haven’s face.

I glance at the rushing water. “It’s going too fast.” I scrunch up my face. “You’ll die.”

She pouts. “Maybe I want to die. You don’t know.”

“Oh, gawd,” I drawl, dragging my hand down my face. “Not this again.”

“My foot’s numb.”

“Why didn’t you say so? Don’t want your foot falling off.” I huff as I drag my weapon out of my underpants to cut her free. It’s less cutting and more jamming the knife into the knots to loosen them, though.

I really got to get my hands on a sharper knife. I keep asking Haven, but she gets this look in her eyes, and says she throws away all the knives at her house so no one gets hurt.

Runs in the family, I guess.

Only nine but already talking about dying like it’s normal. That’s messed up .

Haven giggles when the last rope is free and shoves me as she runs past, straight to the creek. “Fooled ya!”

“Filthy liar!” I yell, running after her.

She hesitates at the edge of the creek, wobbling as she balances on one of the big, flat rocks scattered about.

I stop beside her, waving at the water. “Go on.”

“It is going fast, isn’t it?” she whispers.

“Yeah, ‘cos I’m not a filthy liar like you.” I give her a little shove. “Go on.”

She looks down at herself. “What about my new shirt?”

I look at the grubby white t-shirt she’s got on. “Is not new.”

“Is too!”

I poke my finger through a small tear at the back of one sleeve. “Got a hole in it.”

“Yeah, fine,” she mutters, so quiet I can barely hear her over the thundering creek.

Her eyes are glazed as she stares at the foamy water. “Will I really die if I go in?”

“Probably.” I shrug, and jump in. The water rushes around my feet, almost tipping me over. “But heaven’s gotta be better than this dump, right?”

“No such thing as heaven,” she says firmly.

I look over at her and see that familiar set to her jaw. She gets it whenever I tell her she can’t do anything. That she’s too small, or too weak, or too girly to do it. I suppose I shouldn’t tell her that, but she’s just a kid, and skinny as a twig.

And a girl at that.

My big brother Ezra says females are useless, that the only thing they’re good for is sex. He’s already getting laid, so I guess he’d know.

“Only one way to find out!” I yell at her, making a point of splashing around in the water. It’s so cold it’s making my teeth chatter, but I love the way it hits my body, pounding against it so hard, but it doesn’t hurt at all.

Unless it hits my bruises. Those always hurt .

Haven peels off her t-shirt and lays it carefully on the rock beside her. Jeez, her ribs stick out like a xylophone. Kid needs to eat more.

She squares her shoulders and jumps into the raging creek.

“Whoo!”

For a moment she stands with arms outstretched, wobbling on the rocky riverbed, giving me a bright smile that makes my heart light up.

A second later, she’s on her way to find out if heaven really exists.

She told me once God hated her because, after her mother died, He turned her father into an animal.

Maybe it’s true, because the river changed that day. It went from playfully pushing me around to dragging us both under like a sea monster. All because Haven jumped in.

I barely react in time to grasp her arm, and then I’m knocked off my feet, too. It’s like an invisible hand dunks my head under the water. Once, twice, three times, until my nose and throat are burning from icy water going places it shouldn’t.

“Haven!”

An arm flashes, then a leg, but there’s too much angry water between us.

“Haven!”

As if she heard me calling her name, she bobs up and tosses her head to look back at me. The terror in her eyes makes me want to pee myself, because I’m so far away I can’t do anything but watch her struggle to stay afloat.

Until she hits the rock splitting the flow of the river in half.

Horror flashes into pain.

I hear her howl before water rushes over her. But she’s pinned against the rock just long enough for me to reach her, to catch her, and to haul her against me before we’re swept down the river again.

Yards later, I snag the root of a fallen tree. The storm water must have uprooted it last night, because it was still standing the last time me and Haven were in this area.

I drag us closer to the tree, letting its trunk shield us from the worst of the creek so I can catch my breath.

She’s holding on to me, and I’m holding on to her, and we’re both shaking and crying as water pounds against our shivering bodies. But my hand is slipping, and it’s going to take both of our strength to get to the bank.

“Grab the tree!”

She shakes her head against my chest, and I grit my teeth as I struggle to hold on to the root.

“Be brave!”

She’s got her arms and legs wrapped around me, and when she doesn’t react, I know it’s over for both of us. We’re still on kinda even ground. A few yards away, the land slopes down to the Agony River.

My hand slips.

We’re both dragged away from the tree.

But just as we shoot past the last crooked root, Haven shoots out a hand and seizes it.

She holds on so tight that when the river pushes us, we swish straight through the current, toward the bank. When Haven’s hand is ripped from the root, I’m close enough to the tree to grab the trunk with one arm, and Haven with the other.

We kick and claw and scramble our way out of the water, the tree shielding our bodies against the worst of it.

Haven coughs and splutters as much as I do as we fight to breathe and puke out water at the same time.

Then we’re both quiet, panting.

“Screw being brave,” Haven murmurs, her arms thrown dramatically over her head. “I’ll stick with being a coward.”

“Good.” I’m on my stomach, my skinny chest pushing me up and down as I try to catch my breath. “’Cos I’m tired of saving you all the time.”

“I don’t want to die, Kai,” she whispers.

I roll my head to look at her. “Then don’t, stupid.”

She props herself up on one elbow, blinking at me through her tears. There’s a nasty scrape on her chest, and it’s only now oozing blood. That stroke of red seems to make her blue eyes pop.

“But sometimes I don’t want to live either.” A tear races down her face, merging with the water droplets covering her skin.

“Jeez, Heavenly, I told you before, just keep at it. One day at a time. That’s what Mom always says. One day at a time.” My arm shakes as I reach out to wipe at the blood beneath her collarbone. “But keep jumping into rivers like that, you won’t have to put up with it much longer.”

She giggles, and it’s like my heart only just started beating for the first time.

“Haven?”

“Yeah?”

“Where’s your bra?”

She stares down at herself, frowning hard. “What you on about?”

A beam of sunlight hits my eyes when I sit up, so I squint at her. “Shouldn’t you be wearing a bra?”

“I’m nine, Kai!” She scrambles into a sit, then crosses her arms over her chest. “I don’t need one yet.”

“Dunno. Pretty sure you?—“

She slaps me so hard I see stars. And then all I see is her stomping along the riverbank, her wet hair clinging to her neck and shoulders, one hand fisted at her side, the other wrapped over her chest.

I still have her blood on my finger, and I use it like paint to draw a matching scar on my chest.

Then I wipe it away with a quick rub of my palm so she won’t see it.