9: Honey Blood Moon

Time: 14:14. Location: Back area of Hoover High School.

Clarissa's boot repeatedly hits the dumpster, already sagging from previous bouts of frustration coming from the same girl. With each kick a new profanity erupts from her screaming mouth, all directed at herself.

"Goddamn it, you stupid bitch! What were you thinking! Shit!"

She plants her palms against the dumpster lid, her chest heaving up and down, hot and panting. Clarissa catches someone out of the corner of her eye, but it's not until she catches her breath that she decides to speak.

"Will you stay quiet forever like a freak?" She starts to look sideways at Veronica, who had been staring at her for a couple of minutes.

"Stefan is worried about you"

"He has the mouth and legs to come and tell me"

"Do you want me to call him?" Veronica's expression is so serene that it's hard to tell if she's playing or she means it, and her almost imperceptible smile doesn't help either, the one she seems to keep almost 24/7 as if she were immune to rebuffs or bad moods.

Clarissa grits her teeth, she wants to yell and hit her, and also tell her to leave her boyfriend alone. But instead she takes a deep breath, thinks of Stefan, and controls herself.

"No... Just go away"

The gray-eyed girl doesn't move a muscle. Clarissa arches an eyebrow.

"Do you want a fight, Vera?"

"Do you know Gordon?"

Clarissa's face reddens at the implication, she breaks away from the container and strides forward with angry steps, grabs Veronica by the collar of her blouse and plants her against the brick wall, pressing her arm and lifting the girl off the ground. 

"I don't need a shrink!"

Veronica takes the arm that lifts her up in her hands. Without breaking eye contact and with a strangled voice, she says:

"He is not a shrink, he is a psychologist... And he helps me"

Such a piece of information, as novel as unexpected, causes Clarissa to open her eyes wide and loosen her thrust, but without letting it rest against Veronica's neck.

"What the fuck are you talking about? You don't have any problems, you're the blandest girl in all of Hoover, and that's saying a lot if there's also the weirdo from the library"

"Her name is Lorena, she's from Spain, and she's not weird, she just likes to collect insects in formaldehyde..."

As Veronica speaks, she slowly digs the nails into the arm that oppresses her, working her way into the upper layers of the skin. Clarissa clenches her jaw, a growl escapes between her teeth, until she can't take it anymore and pulls away.

"Fuck" She pulls the small wounds up to her mouth and wipes the blood away with her tongue.

Veronica strokes her neck, then bends down and wipes her fingers on the navy blue of her skirt, just at the hem below the knees. 

"Are you suffering from some disease I should know about?"

"Fuck you!"

"I'll take that as a no..." Veronica straightens up and adds: "Look, Clarissa, I'll talk to Gordon and we'll set up a session. If it doesn't work for you, you'll have every right to send me to smell the flowers. But if it works, I bet Stefan will be happy and improve his relationship with you"

"I'd like to send you to hell"

"I prefer flowers. And I'd rather my friend didn't suffer"

They stare at each other, Veronica waiting for an answer, Clarissa thinking of possible reasons for Veronica to visit the school psychologist. 

"Your father seems like a nice guy... Is he really?"

Veronica arches an eyebrow at the question, but decides to answer frankly.

"To me, he's the best dad in the world"

"And why are you in therapy? Is it because you're a loser? I'm telling you, it doesn't get fixed"

Veronica ignores the barb. She takes a few seconds to put her words in order.

"To get to know me better... And to talk. Having someone to talk to helps a lot, and Gordon is a knowledgeable man. We're social animals socializing" 

"Animals, huh? So you're not a dangerously unbalanced person trying to pass for a normal girl?" Clarissa smirks.

Veronica replies with a more demure smile, without a word. Clarissa nods.

"Looks like you're alive enough to joke, bitch. Give me your number" Clarissa pulls out of the back pocket of her jeans a cell phone with a broken screen, which is still functional. 

"I'd rather you gave me-"

"Give me your fucking number!"

"Okay, okay, jeez"

Veronica dictates it to her. Clarissa records the new contact with the pseudonym: Gray Rat, and returns the cell phone to her pocket.

"I'll tell you my decision on Monday. I have plans this weekend, and I don't want you or anyone else to screw them up for me"

"Wrestling fair?"

Clarissa squints.

"Stefan needs to learn to keep his mouth shut"

"Oops... But don't bother with him, he's a nice guy" 

Clarissa averts her eyes and nods.

"Maybe too nice..."

"It's still surprising that they became boyfriend and girlfriend after all the bullying you were doing to him"

Instead of taking the comment badly, the quarterback lets out a loud laugh.

"If I had a dollar for every asshole who said that to me" she shakes her head, turns her back to Veronica, and looks at her from over her shoulder. "Tell Stefan that his hot girlfriend looks great. Oh, and another thing, Vera. Don't think we're friends just because of this little chat... I'm still itching to smash that obnoxious little mouth of yours. We'll work it out someday, believe me"

Clarissa leaves in the direction of the parking lot. Veronica follows her with her eyes for a while until she loses it, then she looks at her nails again, clean and trimmed arches. 

"This turned out better than I imagined" she murmurs.

A moment ago, for a second, Veronica feared she would have to push Clarissa's head against the end of the dumpster.

...

Time: 14:30. Location: Infirmary, Hoover High School.

"Look, mijo, be a hombrecito and hold on, I won't tell you again" says Rosa, the school nurse, a dark-haired woman in her forties, with fatigue coloring the bags under her eyes. She carefully passes the gauze soaked in medicinal alcohol over Barry's wounds, who shrieks and writhes on the stretcher. 

"Where are my teeth?! Where are my teeth?!"

"That's the fourth time you've asked, Barry... We have your teeth here!" Martha gestures with her head towards the white handkerchief that Lucy holds in both hands, where a pair of bloody teeth protrude. The group hopes to have them reimplanted by a dentist. 

Nurse Rosa finishes the treatment and leaves the infirmary to smoke on her break. Lucy puts the handkerchief aside, picks up her digital tablet and shows it to Barry. The following message appears on the screen: Congratulations for resisting! Accompanied by a drawing of a smiling girl in anime style. Barry's face contorts in pain, but in the end his lips create a battered smile of thanks for Lucy. 

"That wasn't so bad... Beaten up by a rough and sexy girl... There are worse ways to die"

"You're still dazed. Shut up before you say more nonsense" Martha advises, folding her arms.

On the next bed sit Jordi and Stefan. The student council president was sporting a growing bruise over the bridge of his nose, but after examination the nurse decreed that the damage was minor and would heal in time. The nurse offered Stefan some pills for the pain, but the boy refused knowing that he had to drive to take Veronica home, and then go with Jason to karate class.

The Scale Storm Project team clarified the misunderstanding that occurred in the parking lot, explaining that while Jordi, Martha, and Lucy were getting permission to film first by talking to the principal, Barry went ahead to add a few shots of the school to his already thick repertoire of the town. One girl saw him filming, thought wrong, and accused him of being a pervert, others joined him, and Clarissa jumped on him without question.

Once the misunderstanding was overcome at a high cost of bodily pain, the true purpose of Scale Storm Project was revealed.

"Are you planning to make a documentary about Sweet Hills?" Stefan asks Jordi.

Jordi nods. Veronica, sitting on the third gurney and still researching on her cell phone, decides to raise her voice:

"For what? Nothing ever happens here"

"I agree with Veronica. Sweet Hills is very safe and quiet"

"I thought so too" Jordi says with the confident smile of someone who has more information than the rest. The students look at him with growing curiosity. "You see, boys, a rule that never fails in the world, is that if you delve into a seemingly simple and finished story, you begin to notice the seams of a false and premature closure. Tell me, what do you know about the founding of this town?"

Stefan is the one who takes the floor, Veronica just listens. Jordi nods without smiling as he hears the typical version about the beekeeper and the Israeli businessman, the trip to Nepal, and the procurement of Himalayan honeybees.

"The best lies always have a grain of truth in them. I want you guys to see something. Just promise to keep it discreet" 

Stefan nods, his eyes widening a little at the journalist's sudden seriousness. Veronica gets up from the gurney to walk over and see what Jordi pulls out of the backpack. The youtuber extends them some four letter-sized photos, first Stefan glances at them and frowns at them, then passes them to Veronica, who doesn't change her countenance in front of the sepia-colored images that illustrate different piles of skeletons hidden among the naked and rocky folds of a mountain. 

"Who are these people?" Veronica asks as she returns the photos to Jordi.

"The Kiratas... An extinct tribe from the Himalayas. This documentary did not begin as a spontaneous investigation of an idyllic North American town, but as a follow-up to a genocide ignored for too long, specifically from the 20th century to the present day"

Stefan and Veronica exchange glances. Stefan looks the most affected. 

"But Jordi, you don't mean to say that the founders of our town...?"

"That's exactly what he means, Stefan" Veronica beats him to it.

Jordi nods in satisfaction at the speed of understanding of both of them. 

"You're smart youngs, you two. See, for the Kiratas, honey didn't just mean an occasional dessert... The red honey of the giant bees was linked to their business with other tribes, and even to their religious rites, since it is well known that red honey possesses certain hallucinogenic effects, which the Kiratas believed were visions of the future and the gods"

"My little brother loves to eat red honey, and I have never found him drugged" Veronica doubts this information, and looks to Stefan for confirmation. 

"Jordi is right, that effects exists, but Sweet Hills Honey.inc somehow overrides it and avoids mentioning it to prevent lawsuits or bad publicity. But if you search about the pure stuff on the internet, there are many testimonials and proofs about it"

"It is just as you say. Now I want you to do an exercise in candor... Would you hand over your livelihood and the substance to receive messages from the gods, to strangers who appear out of nowhere with the intention of destroying the ecosystem and taking away the creatures that have blessed you for generations?

Stefan and Veronica shake their heads in sync. 

"Now you see what I mean. Sweet Hills, and its million-dollar honey industry, is built on murder and theft from the Kirata people"

Jordi's disposition is clear, he will bring the facts to light even if Sweet Hills Honey.inc, and many of the townspeople, are in for a rude awakening. It is true that the United States was built on the death of Native Americans, but no one likes to be reminded of that, much less interested in the exterminations of other latitudes. 

Stefan sighs.

"If this brings justice to those poor people... I support you, Jordi" The boy looks at Veronica again. "What do you think of all this?"

"I can't say that I feel the pain of those people as if it were my own..." She comments, looking at the photos from afar. "But I understand the difference between good and evil, and... Keeping this a secret would be wrong, wouldn't it?"

"Besides being smart, they are good kids" Martha's tall figure joins them in the conversation. "We wanted to talk to the president of Sweet Hills Honey.inc, but he's a very suspicious and elusive guy. He's more like a ghost than a man... At best we know he's Ukrainian. Do you happen to know more?"

Oleksandr Onyshchenko, a name that keeps coming back. Stefan glances sideways at Veronica, whose calm expression reveals no hint of her interest in the man she is also investigating. Stefan has questions for his partner, but decides not to ask them for the moment and focuses on attending to the reporters.

"We don't know much, I'm sorry"

"Are you sure?" Martha insists. 

But Jordi intercedes, not wanting to antagonize the only Hoover students with whom he has good relations. 

"Don't worry, kid. Anyway, we already have an attack tactic prepared to make Onyshchenko want an interview with us, or at least give us his version of events"

"Or bribe us" Martha says.

"Yes, or bribe us"

"What are you planning?" Veronica asks, and adds: "It's just that this whole thing is so mysterious, I would love to know more about the truths of my town"

Stefan is surprised at how easily Veronica plays dumb. 

"Maybe you have the soul of a journalist and you don't know it" Jordi says, winking at her.

"Or a detective" Martha adds.

"There will be no problem if you know our plan. We will publish the first part of the documentary, clarifying that the investigation is still incomplete, but making clear all the murky facts of the story, especially the Kirata genocide"

Martha smiles and says:

"I bet Sweet Hills Honey.inc's public image department will be fuming"

"And what will the documentary be called?" Stefan asks.

"Honey Blood Moon, it's got a hook, doesn't it?" Jordi smiles. "Lucy chose it, she's our expert in networks and algorithms"

The girl with painted hair waves her hand in the background. Stefan and Veronica respond in kind. 

The Scale Storm Project team, after leaving their cards for Veronica and Stefan to call them in case they need anything or want to share information about Onyshchenko, say goodbye to the students and the nurse. With Jordi walking with Barry's arm around his shoulders, they climb into the RV and drive away. While Veronica climbs into Stefan's gray 2008 Ford Mustang, and they march together to the Mayers house.

History twists, and a town's secrets promise to come to light.