Bully Her: A Dark High School Bully Romance Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  More by Bella King

  Bully Her

  A Dark High School Bully Romance

  Bella King

  Copyright © 2019 by Bella King

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Introduction

  Girls like her end up in ditches on the side of the road.

  That’s what they had told her, anyway.

  She never actually expected it to happen.

  But it did.

  She played by her own rules.

  The problem was, I didn’t like that.

  This was my school, my game, and as far as I’m concerned, she belonged to me.

  Nobody opposed my power,

  And when I got done with her,

  Neither would she.

  Chapter 1

  The good never get to rest.

  I watched in horror as the woman across from me slammed down her fifth shot, barely able to keep from vomiting as the cold liquid burned her throat. She was a small woman, with glossy brown eyes and a face that begged to please the leader of our group.

  Megan wasn’t pleased, though. She shook her head and read out the next card in the deck. “Ava,” she snapped, turning to me. “What year was Palm Valley founded?”

  That was easy enough to answer. It was engraved in a plaque in the center of the quad and was printed on every uniform shirt that the school produced. I was even wearing one of them now. I snuck a peek down at my shirt, double-checking the date on it.

  1891, just as I remembered it.

  I straightened my back, looking around at the expectant faces sitting cross-legged in the circle, then at the liter of frozen vodka that stood menacingly in the middle. I didn’t want to take another shot of that stuff. It was stronger than anything I had tried before, and it burned my insides as it moved down. I could still feel the first shot I took sizzling in my stomach, dissolving the delicate lining that protected it.

  This was what all the women did after they turned 18 at Palm Valley Academy. It was completely off the records, but it had been going on for decades according to Megan, who was the student body president.

  It was noon on an hour-long lunch break when me and eleven other women gathered in an abandoned bathroom at school to take part in the age-old ritual as we crossed into adulthood. The thing was, I was already 19, but I had just got to Palm Valley, and so I had to complete the ritual in order to be accepted among the ranks. I was quickly discovering the pecking order at this school, and I can’t say that I approved of it.

  “1891.” My voice rang out confidently, but my shoulders were still bunched up in anticipation.

  Megan’s laughter bounced off the walls of the tiled bathroom, her throaty voice loud and obnoxious. “I said Palm Valley, not Palm Valley Academy.” She looked around at the other women as though they were in on the joke, but none of them laughed. They all looked terrified to be the next one in line for these trick questions.

  I groaned. “Palm Valley could mean anything then. That’s not fair,” I blurted, pushing away a shot that had already been poured for me by one the glossy brown-eyed girl.

  Megan’s face fell, turning from a sinister smile to an even more sinister scowl. “Drink the shot, Ava,” she demanded, her voice deep and serious.

  “It’s nasty. Why are we even doing this?” I protested.

  The other women looked terrified that I would cross Megan, but I didn’t know any better at the time. If I did, I would have downed the shot with no questions asked. It would have made my life a hell of a lot easier.

  “If you don’t drink it, you can’t be an adult,” she said, her voice quivering slightly.

  I should have seen that as a sign of rage, but to me, it looked like weakness, so I continued to challenge her. “I’m 19. I am an adult, whether you say I am or not. I’m older than you are,” I said, throwing my hands up.

  Megan smiled at me, her lips shaking like they were struggling to maintain their position on her face. She fluttered her eyelids. “Ava, if you don’t take the shot, I’m literally going to make the rest of your time here at Palm Valley Academy the worst time of your life.”

  I doubted that. I had been through a lot at my last school, from bullies to deaths in the family. I was no stranger to tough times, and in my last school, it was the one who threw the punches that came out on top, not the one who submitted.

  That was how I got kicked out, actually. I punched a bully so hard in his face that I broke his nose. I would have gotten away with it too if it weren’t for the principal standing twenty feet away when it happened. Oh yeah, and it was all on camera.

  I rolled my eyes at Megan but snatched the shot out of the glossy brown-eyed girl’s hand. Some of it sloshed onto my black pleated uniform skirt, but I ignored it, tossing back the shot like it was nothing more than water.

  Megan’s face melted back into the perfect doll-like pleasantness that it usually was. She was one of the most attractive women at the school on the outside, but I could already see that her insides were rotten to the core, like a tomato that had sat too long on the shelf and had been forgotten, only to be picked up by some unfortunate sap and rendered into a pile of stinking mush.

  “There, happy?” I said, placing the shot glass back into the center of the circle.

  “That wasn’t so hard,” Megan said in a half-whisper, then turned to the next girl. “Mindy, it’s time for you to tell me what the original school uniform colors were.”

  The vodka that I had ingested bubbled in my stomach. I felt like I was going to puke already, and I was only two shots in. At this rate, I was going to be wasted before lunch break was over, but I suspected that was Megan’s intentions. All of the questions were intentionally difficult so that we would have to make a fool of ourselves. It was a sick display of power.

  I knew that Megan didn’t like me. She had singled me out early on, but what I didn’t realize was that it wasn’t for anything but my attitude. It never got me in trouble before. In fact, it was the only thing that kept me out of trouble at my last school, aside from my careless punch. Back then, you had to show attitude to keep yourself in a higher social status. Things here clearly weren’t the same. That same attitude was getting me into a world of trouble.

  Megan had a pretty big stack of cards left in her hand, so I assumed this was going to go on for the rest of lunch break. That was a shame, because I was starved.

  “H
ey, are we going to have time for lunch today?” I asked as the next girl failed to answer the question correctly and had to take a shot.

  Megan glared at me, her blue eyes turning cold. “If we finish in time, you should have a few minutes to grab something, but you’re the one who is dragging this out.”

  “Alright, but I don’t really feel like drinking anymore,” I replied.

  “Ava,” the glossy brown-eyed girl whispered, tugging at my blouse.

  “Get off me,” I said, jerking my arm away. Perhaps I should have heeded her warning, but I didn’t feel like getting wasted with this woman in the middle of the day at school with no lunch.

  “If you answer the questions correctly, then you wouldn’t have to drink,” Megan replied, pulling out the next card. “Daisy, what is the middle name of our school’s founder?”

  I shook my head. I had enough of this. I thought that Megan had some kind of fun initiation in mind when she gathered us up and pulled us into the bathroom, but I had come to realize that this was a demented display of her power more so than a bonding experience. I was out.

  I sprung up, my skirt billowing like a jellyfish as I rose. Everyone looked up at me as I stood up, their eyes wide with surprise and fright, all except for Megan. She looked pissed.

  “I’m going to get some food. I’ll see you all later,” I said, pursing my lips together in an awkward smile and waving goodbye.

  “You aren’t going anywhere,” Megan said, springing to her feet.

  “Bye,” I said, turning around and waving her off.

  I heard gasps behind me as I exited the bathroom. I suppose the vodka may have had something to do with my foolish courage, but I wasn’t the kind of person to tolerate treatment like that. The other women here might be terrified of Megan, but I didn’t think she was all that scary. What’s the worst she would do? Kill me?

  Chapter 2

  Black sheep aren’t always different.

  I fit in on the surface – blonde hair, blue eyes, parents so wealthy that I was raised by multiple nannies throughout my formative years. I didn’t stand out from the other students at my school, but despite that, I still ended up almost dying on a mountain retreat because the school bully didn’t like me.

  I went to a small private school called Palm Valley Academy, which I liked at first because of how nice everyone was to me. That was until I started to say no to some of the crazy things people did there. Apparently, that’s a one-way ticket to bully central.

  Palm Valley was split down the middle by two groups. The first one was Megan’s supporters. This included the cheer team, the jocks, the popular students, and surprisingly enough, the computer nerds as well. I think Megan catered to them specifically so that she would have access to their technical skills. Her operations around the school were on a lot higher scale than you would initially presume.

  I belonged to precisely none of those groups, but I could have joined the cheer team if I was half-assed enough to try out. The thing was, I didn’t give a shit about looking cute in a cheer uniform for the jocks. I found them brainless and boring, which wasn’t my style.

  I believed that I fell somewhere off the grid between Megan’s supporters and her ignorers. There was no opposition. The second half of the school was merely the ignorers, people who didn’t care enough to get involved, and were passive about Megan’s activity at the school. These people stepped out of the way when Megan came down the hall and didn’t fight back if she asked something of them. They were of lower status than her supporters.

  The ignorers included the chess club, the drama club, and the entire English department. I would have fancied myself as one, but Megan didn’t let it slide that easily. Since I didn’t belong to any group in the school and I was an attractive wealthy blonde woman, Megan wanted me on her side.

  I guess that should have come to no surprise, because I found that her closest supporters were very much the same in appearance and background as me. They were all at least 18, blonde, with parents who had more money than sense. It fitted that she thought I would be a good addition to her posse, but I wasn’t buying it.

  That really pissed her off. When she had pulled me into the bathroom with the other girls for a drinking game, I initially thought that it had been as a peace offering of sorts, but it was just another way to try to gain control over me. I’m not that kind of lady.

  I excused myself early and joined the rest of the school in the lunchroom. If I had known better, I might have stayed and continued ruining my stomach with the other flimsy girls that were there, but I had a rebellious streak in me that didn’t just end where the opposition began. It grew stronger there.

  While I was busy stuffing my face with the expensive meal that the school catered, I didn’t notice the entire football team slowly gathering around me. That should have been the first sign of more trouble, but again, I was new here and I wasn’t aware of how deep I was in trouble.

  “Ava, I heard you ditched initiation today,” a large man jeered across the table at me.

  I looked up, sucking up a noodle from my authentic Japanese dish. Sitting across from me was a man nearly triple my size, muscular to the point where he looked like his skin might tear and sporting a neatly parted cut that hung into his forehead loosely, the front being longer than the back. He was strikingly handsome, but I had the feeling that was only on the outside, like Megan. It was also obvious that he was on the football team, which meant he sided with her.

  “Word travels fast,” I noted, waving my form in the air in a little circle. “I just got out of there like ten minutes ago.”

  The man grabbed my fizzing pink soda from beside my plate and held it up to the light. He squinted his eyes through the liquid. “What is this? Strawberry?”

  I nodded, swallowing my food. “Strawberry didn’t actually become a popular flavor in Japan until recently.”

  He tossed the contents of the cup straight at me with a sudden jerk of his hand, cutting me off. Pink liquid sprayed over my white blouse, staining it with red dye #40. There was no washing that out.

  My mouth dropped open in shock, and it took me a few moments to collect myself enough to speak. “What the fuck?” I mouthed at him.

  “I didn’t ask you to lecture me on strawberries, nerd,” he sneered, tossing the plastic cup onto my plate. It landed in my noodles.

  I wasn’t a nerd, but I did know a bit about Japan since my family had traveled there on vacation last summer. It was a nice country with a lot of interesting beverages. I didn’t see anything wrong with mentioning a little factoid about it during lunch, but this football player seemed upset that I had spoken out of turn.

  I wanted to flip my whole plate in this asshole’s face, but I wasn’t ready to take on a three-hundred-pound jock on my second week of school. Plus, I didn’t want to get expelled again. My parents had paid some pretty hefty fees to get me relocated to a new school, especially considering my track record. I would be in deep shit with them if I got violent so soon.

  I gritted my teeth so hard that my jaw hurt, picking at my nails underneath the table. I didn’t know what to say in response to him.

  “My name is Bradly, by the way,” he said, standing up and extending a hand.

  “Fuck off,” I said, attempting to slap his hand away.

  He caught my hand in mid-air and shook it, gripping it hard enough to where I felt my joints pop. Any harder and he would have broken something. I jerked it away as soon as he loosened his grip enough for me to do so.

  “I suggest you listen to Megan. She’s not too happy about you skipping out on required learning. Our history here at Palm Valley is important to us.”

  I mentally rolled my eyes but kept my gaze steady at him so that I wouldn’t provoke him further. He seemed just as unstable as Megan was. This school was full of nutcases, and I was walking on a tightrope above them.

  I cleared my throat, regaining my composure and ability to speak. “I don’t want to be involved with all this.”

>   Bradly chuckled. “Then you better drop out,” he replied, the cruelness of his voice betraying the amused expression on his lips.

  I stood up, leaving my tray on the table. “I have to go,” I said, turning around quickly and retrieving from the table with anxious steps. I could feel the heat of Bradly’s gaze on me as I walked shamefully away, unable to cover the pink stains on my blouse from the other students.

  Chapter 3

  The weak need saviors, but the world is out of those.

  I made it a point to find the bathroom furthest from Megan’s initiation meeting to clean myself up in. My shirt wasn’t going to be accepted by the staff of the school, and if it was dirty enough, they would likely send me home. Palm Valley Academy was anal about image.

  I rushed into the women’s bathroom and turned to a row of pearlescent white sinks with silver knobs to control the water. With a school this expensive, I would have thought that they would be able to afford automatic facets, but they preferred to keep things old-fashioned. It was all about maintaining a certain appearance.

  I didn’t think anyone else was in the bathroom until I heard the sound of liquid splashing in a stall on the far side of the room. I was desperately soaking my shirt and dabbing it with a towel to get the stains out, making little in the way of progress. If anything, I looked worse with my pale green bra showing through the wet blouse.

  The liquid sounded again, followed by coughing and the acidic scent of vomit. I shook my head. Who was already getting drunk in the second week of school? It only occurred to me that it might be one of the girls from Megan’s initiation after a few moments of continued sickness.

  I tossed a crumpled piece of brown paper towel into the silver garbage bin beside the sink and went to the stall to check on whoever was in it. They sounded like they were on the verge of puking up their internal organs, and I wasn’t apathetic enough to just ignore someone dying.

  My knuckles met the black plastic stall door with a satisfyingly loud clack. “You okay?” I called.