Havermouth's Triquetra

Chapter Four

Tuesday

Aislen entered the covered locker bay and was forced to duck as a football sailed over her head, coming close enough to shift her hair. She clutched her books closer to her chest and hunched her shoulders defensively as she opened her locker, fumbling at the still unfamiliar code.

Someone brushed against her, accompanied with a flash of a cheerful kitchen and a large man wearing a floral apron, whistling as he washed the dishes. She felt her ward burst, the shock of it shuddering through her. She stared at the empty shelves of her locker as the bubbles released their cacophony in waves, flooding her brain with hormone-driven erotic randomness and thoughts competing with conversations that she could not tell apart.

(He doesn’t know what it takes to…) “I don’t know what he wants,” was spoken aloud by a cheerleader with a hair flick. “He doesn’t appreciate me.”

(f**k, I have math and I didn’t…) “What class is first? Please tell me that I have a free. I totally flipped and didn’t do my algebra last night…”

(Egg sandwiches. Who the f**k wants egg sandwiches?) “I’m on a diet. Salad and lean meat only, and mum has packed me this crap.”

(An image of breasts contained in a white lace bra.) “f**k, Amanda’s filled out.”

Aislen braced against the lockers, feeling the metal bow under the heel of her hand as she shoved the contents of her bag into the shelves. She closed the locker door, taking her time, each breath creating a bubble around her, muffling the roar of sound, until mental peace was restored.

She turned and wound her way through the students, hunching in on herself as she did so, her posture both seeking invisibility and avoiding physical contact with others. With so many people around her, the hum of their voices was a constant murmur of sound. But touching someone was like stripping back everything that separated them, rendering that person bare and overwhelmingly exposed to her.

She flinched back as the football hit the lockers next to her face. This time she couldn’t tell herself that the proximity of its strike wasn’t deliberate. She looked up and saw Cameron look away whilst running his hand through his hair and whistling. Next to him, the blonde boy from math stared at her with eyes that seemed to see straight through her.

They were waiting for Rhett, who was digging into an overcrowded locker three doors down from hers and hadn’t seen her yet.

The Triquetra. Suddenly the name didn’t seem so odd. In fact, it was as perfect as the three boys. Three boys, three points of a triangle, three triangles interlinked.

She turned away, flushing, as Rhett straightened.

“Hey Aislen!” He called out slamming his locker shut. He left the lock undone and headed her way. She saw the blonde one, who had to be Heath, close it for him before he and Cameron followed, the three caging Aislen into her locker as Rhett braced his elbow against the top of the rack and leaned into it. “Glad I caught you,” he told her. “Want to introduce you to my friends. This is Heath Gale and Cameron, you already know.”

“Aislen,” Heath’s lips curled into a smile that was decidedly predatory. “We have a free period and were just about to head to the back of the oval, Rhett’s favorite smoking spot. Why don’t you come with us? Rhett’s dying for a taste, and we’re betting that you’re cherry flavoured…”

Her jaw dropped. Had he just made a reference to her being a virgin? “I… ah,” she stammered, uncertain how to respond. If she was wrong and snapped at him, then she would be embarrassed. If she was right, and didn’t snap back at him, it wasn’t any better. “I have class.”

“Class sucks, we have better plans for the day,” Rhett’s eyes warmed with his smile. “Come on, Aislen. It’ll be fun. We’ll buy something to drink, go to our favorite spot, get wasted…”

(and f**k) Cameron’s thought came through loud and clear as he draped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her a little away from the locker. “Like Rhett said, come hang out,” he entreated whilst her mind filled with images of c***s and breasts and sweat. Aislen cringed. “You won’t believe it after you see Heath party, but his father is a Pastor. Heath only looks like a good boy, for the photo op.”

“Shut up,” Heath laughed warmly at Cameron. “Better posing for photos than knee-deep in cow s**t,” he nudged Cameron with his shoulder.

“Hey, it’s sheep s**t at the moment,” Cameron retorted. “My family farm,” he added to Aislen with a dismissive shrug, trying to act humble, but his thoughts filled in all the details.

Heath Gale, Cameron Edison, and Rhett Salem. All three were from privileged backgrounds.

Heath’s father was a pastor at a local church; a man of influence and piety whose face, along with that of his beautiful wife and son, often graced the local newspaper reporting about a charity event that the Gales had attended or organized.

Cameron’s mother, Catherine, was from a historic family from the region, with big money. She had brought to her marriage a sizable bit of land and shares in the family farming business.

Rhett’s father was a lawyer who was based in Rideten. Officially Mrs. Salem preferred the country lifestyle, and thus she and Rhett stayed in town for most of the year, whilst Mr. Salem lived in the city of Rideten, where he worked - but in reality, Mrs. Salem was conducting an intense affair with a local florist.

Aislen squirmed free of Cameron’s arm and his expression shifted from jovial to irritated.

“What is with you?” He demanded. “Yesterday you stared at me like I’d grown a second head, and today…”

“I’m going to class,” she managed to close the locker and lock it. “Like you should be.”

“I guess I’ll see you in math then,” Heath cupped her cheek on his palm. “We’re very interested in getting to know you better,” he told her, his voice low and his eyes on her intense.

He wanted to know if what lay beneath her oversized jumper matched her pretty face, and whether she’d scream or beg for more as he, Rhett, and Cameron took their turns f*****g her. She saw herself so clearly, in a nightmare of flesh and heaving muscle, her nails scoring his skin, her cries for mercy unheard as he thrusted over her, that she wheeled and slapped him before she had thought the movement and its motivation through.

Her handprint stood out clearly on his cheek.

When he turned his face back to her, the light caught the iridescent surface of his eyes, before he fought his wolf back, and his hand closed on the collar of her jumper, twisting the fabric, and lifting her up onto her tiptoes so that they were nose-to-nose.

“You f*****g w***e!” he snarled. “You will pay for that.”

There was an echo in his mind of his father holding his mother the same way, using the same words. All around them, the throng of students had stilled and fallen silent, made so by the sharp clap of skin against skin, their faces aghast at her audaciousness.

The new girl had slapped Heath Gale. It was unheard of, unimaginable, and no one was sure what the outcome of the action would be.

Aislen, however, was less concerned with the present than she was with the past that flashed through her mind as Heath growled down at her. She saw it as clearly as if she had stood in the room at the time: a slap knocking a woman back, a man’s shadow pulled long across the floor and wall by an upended light, and the woman, pressed into the corner, her hands over her face as the man who owned the shadow slowly dragged his belt out of his trouser loops. The woman’s fearful breath was overloud, competing with the gameshow that played on the TV in the background…

“Which of the following is a deity which means darkness in Greek mythology?” She whispered the question on the TV screen in that memory, the words starkly clear as if Heath had memorized them in an effort to shut out the altercation between his parents; the trauma burning them into his retina. Heath drew in a sharp breath, his pupils pinning within the grey of his iris.

“What did you say?” He breathed the words through his teeth.

“Are you alright, Heath?” A beautiful blonde asked, pushing between him and Aislen, her hand going to Heath’s cheek. “f**k, she hit you hard! You should f*****g report her. There has to have been forty witnesses here to the fact that she assaulted you! She needs to go down for this.”

Heath’s hand released his grip on Aislen, and she was able to pull back.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, but his eyes remained on Aislen over Lillian’s shoulder. “It’s nothing.”

Aislen turned on her heel and hurried away, the hair on the back of her neck standing on end. She shouldn’t have said anything, she told herself angrily. She shouldn’t have said anything about what she had seen. And she definitely shouldn’t have hit him.

Tuesday wasn’t off to a good start.