Page 20 of Serpentine Valentine

I had barely made this man bleed. Hardly enough for real retribution. Barely enough to curb that ferocious hunger in me for vindication.

But just enough, I thought, to prove a point.

To spread the fear.

There was a click of a shutter as Effie took a photo of our masterpiece. Jerrod Ericht strung up in the watershed like a bug suspended in a web, stapled with a poster that read “I rape women.” In the bottom corner of the page, twin snakes curled together in a figure-eight ouroboros.

It was a symbol. A signature.

Xoxo, the Man Eater Crew

The only thing standing between women on campus and the men who were systemically allowed to hurt us and get away with it.

“I’m not sure which is worse: intense feeling, or the absence of it.”

––Margaret Atwood

Luna

Everyone was laughing,but I couldn’t focus enough to find the joke funny. My mind was on Lex Gorgon. It irritated me that I was so fixated and that irritation led me to obsess over her even more. Why was I so intrigued?

She was defiant.

Maybe that was it.

I’d always been a good girl, a rule follower, and an overachiever. The kind of girl to sit at the front of class, to make friends with the quiet kid, to say yes to my elders and authority figures. I didn’t do any of these things because I particularly wanted to.

I did them because I was told.

I did them because I was afraid of standing out, of being different and other.

So maybe something was compelling for me in Lex’s defiance. In the way she didn’t seem to care at all about anyonearound her. It was this characteristic that set her apart from anyone I had ever met before.

Her exceptional beauty had nothing to do with it.

Not really, at least.

After all, I wasn’t attracted to women that way.

But I was still human. Still moved by loveliness.

And she moved me, somehow.

“Luna,” Pierce said, suddenly standing over me, leaning down to pick me up and take my seat so he could settle me on his lap. “What does a guy have to do to get you to pay attention to him, huh?”

He nuzzled into my neck, moving my hair to press a kiss to my throat.

I fought the urge to squirm. Public displays of affection––or really any physical affection at all––made me uncomfortable.

“You’d think being named captain this year would be enough,” his best friend, Andrew, said from across the library table.

“Yeah, that definitely deserves a celebratory blow job, at the very least,” Beckett joked, prompting the rest of our table to laugh.

Pierce didn’t laugh, and I was grateful.

His hand tightened on my thigh as he shot his friend a glare. “This isn’t the locker room, Beckett. Cut that shit out.”

“Aw, is Princess Prude gonna cry?” Beckett sneered as he waggled his brows at me.