Touched By The Devil (Boys of Preston Prep 3)

“Even if that were the case, that doesn’t mean his problems have to be my problems.” I clench my jaw. “Either way, I’m going to do everything I can to stay the hell away from him. The last thing I need in my life is another toxic, aggro dude who can’t control his temper.”

I glance back up at Georgia, worried I’ve revealed too much, but she’s busy staring down at her hand, twisting her ring around her finger. Like the car, I don’t expect this girl to understand where I’m coming from, but now that I’m starting a new life, I’m thinking my old routine of hiding and denying is for the birds. Starting over here, I’m going a different way, establishing my boundaries early. Firmly.

Rule number one: Keep your hands to yourself.

Rule number two: No assholes.

As the afternoon passes, the dormitory fills up with returning students. Georgia, I find, is a pretty popular person, and why shouldn’t she be? She’s pretty and nice and normal. She has a lot of friends popping by to say hello.

Half of me is fascinated by these people—girls mostly—coming in and out, lying on the same bed, touching one another’s things, fingers always moving and pressing and brushing and stroking. There’s an intimacy in the movements that I’ve never experienced or wanted. I feel like I’m watching a nature documentary, expecting them to turn into primates picking bugs off of one another.

The other half of me is simmering with impotent fury. I knew this was coming, intellectually. Sharing a space with someone, being at their whims, comes with a certain amount of compromise. Why shouldn’t she have people over? This is her home, too. It makes me want to get up and pace around, shove my fingers into my hair and pull. I just want them all to get the fuck out. As much as I try to fight it, the space feels even less like my own than it already had, which wasn’t much to begin with. Skin itching from having so many people in such a tight space, I keep cracking my knuckles, trying so hard to school my expression into something easy and blank that I’m pretty sure I just end up looking like a psycho.

It’s hard to miss the looks—curious and wary. I’ve spent months fighting the escape of this wild, nervous thing inside of me, but I’ve never perfected the act of normalcy. I focus my energy on organizing my desk, just to give my hands something to do, feeling like an animal. Trapped. Cagey. Observed.

I wonder what Georgia would say if she knew that bully who just ‘has his own problems’ was the catalyst to the way my lungs feel shrunken and flooded.

A girl name Caroline comes in, dressed in black and red flannel pajama bottoms and a T-shirt. She has on thick glasses and gives me a quick smile when we’re introduced.

“What happened to Zadie?” she asks, claiming the end of Georgia’s bed. “I thought you two got along okay.”

To be honest, I’d wondered myself, but thought it was rude to ask. I like Caroline already.

“She moved in with Daphne when her roommate changed schools,” Georgia says. She’s facing the closet and changing out of her shirt and into a tank top. When she bends over, I see the top curve of a tattoo sticking out of her shorts, right above her butt cheek, but I can’t make out the design. “She didn’t like that I had ‘guys over all the time’.” She uses air quotes and

rolls her eyes, then looks at me. “For the record, it was only like two—well, maybe three—guys, and I specifically picked a weekend she wasn’t here. I made sure they didn’t touch her stuff or bother her at all.”

My face screws up in response. Guys, here, in my space? I bite back a strained groan at the thought. But then I remember Georgia so sweetly offering to give me three hundred dollars, just like that, and I think… okay. Fuck.

Maybe if I just keep to the boundary stuff. “Just… maybe not when I’m here?” I try to compromise. “If you give me some notice, I’ll find somewhere to hole up, so no wires get crossed.”

Georgia looks pleasantly surprised at this, so maybe I hadn’t hidden my distaste so well. “Really? That’d be awesome! And hey, I’ll do the same in return. If you ever want the room to—”

“Yeah, no,” I scoff, head shaking. “I’m good. Dating is not in the cards for me this year.”

Caroline snorts. “I’m not sure what Georgia is talking about counts as dating—”

“Hey!” Georgia shouts, but then just rolls her eyes. “Fine, you have a point. But there’s nothing wrong with playing the field until you find that perfect guy to settle on.”

The girls catch up and eventually begin talking about people I don’t know. Some girl named Vandy just finished some kind of program. Her boyfriend, Reyn, gave her a personalized portrait of her cat for Christmas. Some couple named Emory and Aubrey are still a thing, and rumor has it he’s giving her his Devil ring for Valentine’s Day. I finish organizing my desk and glance back when things go abruptly quiet. They’re talking in lower voices now, leaned in close, expressions serious. Whatever it’s about, it’s not for me to hear.

I feel weirdly relieved to see it. All of the openness and expression was starting to freak me out. Secrets, privacy, boundaries… those are comfortingly familiar.

“I think I’m going to go walk around campus before it gets dark,” I say, wanting to give them some space. Honestly, I could use some myself. It’s been a long twenty-four hours. I grab my coat and camera, and wave when Caroline offers that it was nice to meet me.

It’s late afternoon, but being the dead of winter, it feels later. The leafless trees stand guard over the old buildings and I snap a couple photos here and there, trying to capture the odd sense of Preston’s somberness.

In an effort to avoid other people on campus, I step off the main sidewalk onto a well-worn path. I know there’s a lake on the back of the property, I’m just not sure how to get there. The trail cuts behind the buildings, one I recognize as the dining hall. Along with the whir of ventilation, it has that smell—heavy, stale grease—the dumpster pushed up against the brisk wall. A thick grove of trees runs behind the building and I eye it, wondering if I have enough time to explore before it gets dark. I’m about to march on into the grove when I see movement across the grass. The shape is dark and small, a creature hiding in the thick stalks. I tip toe over and duck down to see a black cat, paws out, ready to pounce. Before I can react, another cat slinks forward, a few feet away, deftly climbing up an old tree trunk. This one is white with orange patches.

“Hey guys, what’s happening?” I say to them both. My voice disturbs the hunter, and he jumps away, closer to the trunk, eyeing me distrustfully. They’re skinny—not exactly scrawny, though. They remind me of the cats that hang out on the dock back home. Not quite feral, because they rely on the people nearby to feed them, but also not completely tame. The orange and white one watches me carefully and I’m not sure, but her belly looks swollen—probably pregnant. I drop down to a less threatening level, bringing the camera up to snap a few shots. “You guys like it back here away from everyone, too, huh?”

They hug the trunk and just stare back at me, a perfect exercise in contrasts. They’re good subjects, nice and still, and I don’t regret spending a whole roll of film on them. The black one has big yellow eyes, but the white and orange cat’s eyes are a gorgeous emerald green. I sit with them for a while, but neither will come very close.

Well I can’t say anything about that. I don’t want anyone touching me either. Sure, I have to rely on other people, family and some friends, but I know better than most that any of those people can turn at any moment.

The dark one is more interested in hunting and it’s getting dark. I can tell I’m keeping it from a potentially fulfilling meal. I stand and spot a third cat, this one an ashen gray, sitting at the edge of the tree line. “I should probably go, but maybe I can bring you guys some treats. How about that?”

They stare at me like I’ve lost my mind. I probably have. Coming to this school was a crazy, desperate decision, one that has already had consequences. Here I am, stuck without a car, and the very source of the thing I’d been so determined to run from is right here, in the very town I ran to.