Special Tutoring

Prom Night

"What do you want?"

Outwardly my voice was so calm that I scared myself. Inwardly I was screaming WHY over and over again. Why couldn't Sam Rhodes move on? Why must he continue this nightmare?

Snap out of it, Mai.

You need to stay calm and continue to engage him in conversation. As if he is not pointing a gun at you. As if he is not going to kill you, your sister and your friends. As if you are not afraid.

I retreated as the human calamity stomped across the threshold. He slammed the door behind him, enough to make the front windows rattle.

"Mai, can you please be more ladylike," my sister called from upstairs. "And get your guest a drink."

Sam Rhodes' grin widened until his eyes disappeared into slits. "I have forgotten about the sister."

I did not like those words.

The gun was too shiny. The light in the doorway reflected off its menacing silver. Putting my palms up, I decided to distract him. "Come on, Sam. Let's talk like rational adults."

His answer was to smack the gun grip across my cheek. BRUTAL. I fell onto the floor, seeing stars.

"SHUT UP! Always Yaking Yak Yak!"

"You!" He yelled at Trevor. "Get up! Give me her phone."

I heard a nasty cracking sound as my phone met the wall on the opposite side of the room, and Sam Rhodes' satisfied laughter.

"Switch off the lights. I don't want anyone to see what's going on." Trevor followed his next instruction. The room went dark, somehow intensifying Sam's vehemence and evil.

"Now go upstairs with me and bring everyone down to the living room. I've been watching the house, so don't think you can hide anyone from me."

I listened to their disappearing footsteps, as I grimaced at the sting from my rapidly darkening cheek. Fuck that asshole Sam Rhodes. No amount of concealer was going to be able to cover this bruise. Of course that was dependent on us surviving the situation.... Sam had clearly lost it, and he clearly did not respect me, so there was no point engaging him in conversation. I must get a knife.

I stumbled into the kitchen where I found a small fruit knife. I also snatched up a kitchen knife as an added precaution. Hearing three muffled thuds upstairs (he must be smashing their phones), I knew that they were all coming down soon. So scrambling and scuttling, despite the now cumbersome and tiresome layers of taffeta skirt tangling my legs, I somehow made my way back to the living room.

I could hear their footfalls on the stairs. In my haste, I mistakenly slid the fruit knife under the seat cushion of a nearby armchair before falling back into my prone position, eyes closed, with the kitchen knife underneath me. Even in the darkness, Sam would need to be blind in order to miss the large knife.

"Mai!" I heard my sister wail like a banshee, as she thumped towards me. I could hear the other two girls sobbing. Even the usually collected Emily had given way to fear. Feeling my sister lift me up into her arms, I worried that she would either expose the knife or cut herself with it.

Rhodes sounded bemused. "She isn't dead. Yet."

"Sam Rhodes! What do you want!?" my sister snarled, holding me tighter in her arms. "We have no business with you. Why did you hurt my little sister?"

"Yes, we do. That sneaky little cunt deleted all the photos and videos on my phone some weeks ago. And not only that, the second I reached home, I discovered that all my computer hard disks were destroyed. I couldn't recover a single byte."