Tameless: Shorty Story by Valerie Manwill
photo by Johanna BossartAt every high school, there is at least one girl considered to be the scariest and the meanest of the student body. Raven could beat any of those girls up.
She had zero tolerance for any person of any kind. That included cheerleaders, jocks, geeks, burnouts, rabble or teachers. She said what she thought, did what she wanted and made trouble when she could. She had an igniting temper and a thick stack of behavior assessments in the school office somewhere.
While everyone sat with their friends for lunch, Raven sat by herself in the library reading from her manga comic book. Her home-dyed jet-black hair draped across her heavy smoky eye and she chewed on the red balayage at the bottom. Everything she wore was dark, oversized and uninviting as if it were a giant sign that said, ‘Don’t try to talk to me’. No one ever did anyway, which is how she comfortably found herself alone in the library.
That was until she made eye-contact with him.
Tristan Dalton was huge. A semi-truck of a high schooler’s body. He was 6-foot ceiling tile and weighed who-even-knows. Pure muscle mass, billowing, and twitching under his letterman. Raven had never met him but knew of him since girls were continuously gushing and reporting his every move. The Tristan-Dalton-train of fans was lengthy, to say the least, and the idea of their recent eye-contact made her want to vomit.
Tristan approached her from across the dusty, unused library. He sat across from her with a grin as cocky as the cartoon Rooster on his jacket. The Rover High Roosters. A fitting mascot for their idiotic school. She didn’t bother to deviate her attention from her book.
“Hey. It's Katie, right?”
She raised her eyebrow at hearing her birth name. “Okay, I don't know who egged you on for that little joke. Everyone here calls me Raven.”
Tris leaned in his chair, with his hands behind his head. “Raven... hmmm, no. I haven't heard that one. I've heard Katie, Katie the cute goth girl, the fandom-Katie.” He tapped the cover of her graphic novel on the table. “I mean yeah, some people call you Katie the bitch... but definitely Katie. Or Kate. Katherine. Kat. Katie-Kat.”
“Cool,” she said with no energy at all. There’s nothing worse than someone trying to talk to you while you’re reading. Unless it was someone trying to talk to you and you generally hate the company of others.
“I mean everyone’s always talking about you,” Tristan’s voice was booming through the silence of the study tables, like a football announcer giving a play by play of a baby’s naptime. “The more I heard about you, the more I thought to myself, now that's a girl I want to take to the prom.”
Raven snorted out a laugh. She wasn’t sure why this boy was making fun of her, but he clearly didn’t know what she was capable of. “Go blow yourself at Prom.”
“I’m serious.” He froze in expectation his face beaming. It was clear that he was not going away and not giving up.
Raven licked at the inside of her salty lip ring. “You think just because you're a jock that every girl is dying to go out with you. You're just a condescending piece of décor.”
“Décor?” he repeated with a laugh.
“Yeah, decor.” Raven swept away her matte of damaged and abused hair. “Everyone loves you as if you’re this valuable thing, but really all you’re good for is taking up space and looking pretty.”
“So, you agree the attraction is mutual?”
Raven broke away from her book and gave him a proper once over. He raised a perfectly shaped eyebrow at her. His sharp jaw was outlined by a trim beard, an impressive accomplishment of testosterone for a teenager. The hair on the top of his head was unreal. She thought that volume and chestnut color only existed in Japanese video games. Dark eyelashes lined his piercing green eyes and a wide smile revealed a masterpiece of orthodonture. Okay, yes. Bamboo under the fingernails, admittedly, she was attracted to him.
She crossed her arms tight against her chest. “Fine. Any asshole can be good-looking.”
“And I'm sure yours is fantastic,” he said like it was nothing. She threw him her best eye-scrunching scowl, but he kept talking. “Look there's no point in making this a huge thing. So, prom?”
She rolled her eyes at him, gathered her stuff and left the library without another word.
Raven made her escape through the sweaty hall like a salmon swimming upstream. She usually waited until she was sufficiently late before leaving the library so she wouldn’t have to brush arms with so many sour bodies.
Tristan’s loud voice carried over the yelling and laughter that filled the hall. “I don't want to bother you, but there are hundreds of guys dying to ask you, I had to beat them to it.” He was catching up to her quick.
“Screw off, jerk.” She kept a steady pace to get away.
He stepped in front of her. “Okay, but a cute jerk, right? Like as in the kind of jerk you could imagine yourself going to prom with?”
“Nope. Just a jerk.” Usually, she was very good at pushing people away. It was her best talent. But, this Tristan guy? He was testing her, and she was losing.
She tried her best to pass to the side of him, but he got in her way again. “C'mon. Don't be a—"
“A what?” She stopped to give him a vindictive eye. Tris hesitated. “No. Please tell me what you were about to insult me with.”
“A 'B' word,” he whispered.
“A 'B' word?” She snickered at his juvenility. “Didn't your mommy teach you not to play with bees? You'll get stung.”
“I wouldn't mind coming into contact with a nicely rounded stinger like yours,” he said as he examined his nailbeds.
She curled her lip, barring her teeth. “Well, that's never going to happen with a creepy little perv like you.”
“You got me all wrong, Katie. I'm not that kind of a guy.”
She reared her arm back and struck him across his cheek. Wham! Everyone in the hall stopped what they were doing and stared. That should do it. He would leave her alone now. His shoulders pulled low as his chin dropped. She couldn’t tell whether he was in shock or what. His pale eyes flickered upward piercing into hers.
She wasn’t afraid of him and she had no problem showing him that he had reason to steer clear of her. “If you weren't that 'kind of guy', you wouldn't be following me around and harassing me,” she said as she left to her locker.
She opened her locker trying to block him out. He grabbed a hold of the door from the other side. “Okay, I came on a little strong. But it's only because I wanted to get to know you. And I can't do that if you don't give me a chance.” He was so close that she got a good whiff of his syrupy cologne.
She unloaded her backpack one heavy book at a time. Tristan started to help her, but she wrenched the book out of his hand. “Sorry. It's hard for me to give a chance to anyone with a big chicken on their jacket.”
“Hey, if you don't like it. It's yours,” Tristan slid the jacket off his shoulders and offered it to Raven. “You can wear the rooster or burn it or whatever you want.”
Raven grimaced at the letterman as if maggots were crawling all over it. “I thought I made it very clear that I don't want your cock.”
He leaned against the locker door. The locker groaned as it held Tristan’s solid weight. “Are you always in this good of a mood?”
“Only when I'm around a complete skeeze-bag.” She roughly slammed her locker making Tristan lose his balance and nearly fall.
“You mean me?” he asked, beginning another pursuit down the hall.
She stopped at the bottom of the stairs and pivoted hard on her heels giving him a round of sarcastic applause. “Wow, the brain on this kid.”
He rested his elbows on the railing and batted his eyelashes like a cartoon. “Is that the problem? I'm just a kid to you?”
Raven continued up the stairs, but Tristan stayed at her side. He held on to the railing and dangerously walked up the outside of the stairs, crossing one foot in front of the other in between the narrow rungs. “I know the whole junior/senior thing is kind of awkward, but I don't mind going to the Senior prom, I have more friends there anyway.” Tristan walked on the outer rim of the staircase like a circus monkey on a tightrope. A teacher gasped and scolded him from below.
“You're a junior? You look like a freaking forty-year-old.” Raven raced to outclimb him her boots hitting the tile steps hard.
He jumped over the rail again blocking her from making her way. “Probably because I have a lot more experience than other guys my age.”
“Ew.” She dodged him by ducking under his arm and took off running.
Raven veered to the side and hid underneath a stairwell. The shrill bell rang, and the voices of her classmates died down. She caught her breath and peered around the underside of the stairs.
There was Tristan, blocking her in. “I'm not letting you get away that easy.”
Defeated, she sighed and pressed against the brick wall. “Just leave me alone. I promise the more you hang around me the worse I'll make you feel. I tend to have that effect on people.”
“No, not at all.” He approached her slowly, getting a bit more into her personal bubble. “You're not at all what they say. They don't get you. You're funny. And beautiful and interesting. And strong, very strong. You're not like other girls and I like that. I like you. More than anyone else.”
She glanced from the crisp scented pomade to his warm eyes. He cupped his hand on her waist and her skin tingled beneath his fingers. He wasn’t as loud as he had been, he sounded sincere, truly sincere. Raven couldn’t help that bright flicker of infatuation that tried to ignite inside of her.
There was this hanging life-longing moment in which she could reach out and take the bait. Hook, line, and sinker believing she was everything he said. She could jump into a starry sea of youth and romance and swim all the way to the moon. But, she couldn’t let her guard down around him. No one, and certainly not Tristan Dalton would win her vulnerability.
She forced a huff that blew the hair off her face. “Did you practice that little sweet talk before-hand, or—” His sappy monologue had left her mouth sticky.
“I made it up on the spot. Pretty good, aren’t I?” He asked, springing forward with an energetic bounce on his toes.
“Don't quit your day job.”
Tristan gave her a quick nudge on the arm. “I follow you, you know.”
Yeah, no kidding. He was following her around all over. He was like a lost and desperate puppy attached to her hip with an invisible leash.
“On what?” she tested him.
“On everything. Instagram, Snapchat, um— YouTube.” Tristan smiled as if nothing was creepy about the situation at all. Raven stepped backward to physically distance herself. Red flag. Stranger danger. This had stalker written all over it.
“Everything you post. Your pictures. Your sense of humor. No one at this school gets the real you. But, I do.” His volume rising again. “Don't go to Prom with anyone else, Kaite. Go with me.”
Raven paced around in a tight circle like a trapped rodent. “I— you’re such a— If you honestly think—” She growled and clawed a hand down her face. “Okay, yes. I’ll go with you,” she muttered at the floor. His eyes ignited.
Going to the prom with Tristan. Wow. Every girl at the school would gather together with pitchforks no doubt. At the risk of the pack of wolves, she had said yes to that long-dimpled grin. What happened to her? She agreed to go, despite the fact that he was a controlling psycho chauvinist that had bullied her into a date. She had lost her raging fire to a hunky head of hair.
“Go to hell,” she added, pushing past him and leaving the stairwell. Her cheeks were beginning to flush.
