And then I felt Him. And it was happening. It was happening to me. But I didn’t want it to happen. So I started saying No. But he wouldn’t stop. He told me to shut up. But I didn’t shut up. I started screaming. Because it hurt.
It hurt so bad.
And he wouldn’t stop.
And then I couldn’t scream anymore because his hand was over my mouth. My face was so wet, and I realised after that I had been crying.
I had been crying and he wouldn’t stop.
I said NO and he wouldn’t stop.
And there was blood.
My blood.
Because what he hadn’t known at the time – or maybe he didn’t care – was that until that party, I was a virgin. And I wanted to stay that way until I fell in love.
That sounds so stupid now.
So childish.
I can see that now.
I was a child before Saturday and I’m not now. Because of Him. He stole that from me. And I hate him.
But mostly, I hate myself.
They’ll say it was my fault. My fault. All my fault.
They’ll say it was because I was drunk.
They’ll say it was because I wore a short skirt.
Because I had make-up on, red lipstick, black eyeliner – adult make-up.
Because my top was low-cut.
Because I wore a lace bra.
Because
Because
Because it’s always the girl’s fault. Never the guy’s. And most certainly, always my fault.
I HATE MYSELF.
SOPHIA
‘Steve!’ I hurry after him but he quickens his footsteps. He dodges oncoming students, dipping his shoulder back to swerve around them, stepping to the side to pass them. He moves so gracefully, so calculated. As if we’re all pieces in a game that’s he manipulating. Is that what I was? A game piece to shift around the board then toss to the side when he was done. If so, what was the game? Maybe I know the answer to that already. Perhaps I always knew it.
‘Steve!’ My feet dance around bags on the floor and shoes in my path – ballet flats with bows on the front, Converse hightops, Keds, leather ankle boots, until finally I catch up to him. ‘Stop avoiding me!’
He spins around causing me to stumble into him slightly. His hands catch me by the hips to steady me and I’m suddenly nose to nose with him. The flutter in my stomach reminds me that this is Steve. My Steve. The Steve with the hugs, with the words, with the kisses, with all the promises. The Steve who snuck out halfway through Star Wars which he had been dying to see for months, just to get me more popcorn after I spilled mine on the floor. The Steve who knows how excited I get when eggnog lattes appear on Starbucks’ winter festive menu. The Steve who walks me to French after the lunch bell rings just so we can spend an extra three or four minutes together. The Steve who, knowing how much of a Francophile I am, bought me The Greatest Hits of Juliette Greco on CD for my birthday. We even talked about visiting Paris one day. When we were older. When we were married.
But the expression in his eyes tell me this is not that Steve, not My Steve. This is someone else. Someone I wish I’d never met. Someone who’s destroying my reputation on social media just to get back at me for breaking up with him in front of everyone. Someone who posted private photos of me that I trusted him with. Someone who’s hurting me, making me cry, making me feel ashamed.
And then the flutters disappears. Just like that.
I move his hands away and steady myself against the wall, before turning back to face him. ‘You haven’t been responding to my texts.’
‘I’ve been busy,’ he shrugs.
‘Yeah I know. Steve, what are you doing? Take the photos down. Why would you post them?’
‘I didn’t post them.’
‘I saw them on your Facebook profile. Everyone saw them!’
‘Yeah, but I wasn’t the one who posted them in the first place. Euan and I were messing around and he saw the photos on my phone and posted them from there. You know I never keep passwords on my apps. I’d never remember them.’ He shifts his bag to the other shoulder, and rocks back on his heels. ‘I have to get to class. I can’t be late again.’
I gently touch his arm to stop him leaving, and lean in. ‘So you’re saying you didn’t post them yourself. Your friends did?’
‘Yep.’
‘So take them down.’
‘I did.’
‘No, you didn’t. They’re still up!’
‘Are they?’
He smiles slightly and I wonder why I ever felt a flutter at all for him.
‘Take them down,’ I say again.
‘I’m really busy after school today.’
‘I’ll report you on Facebook, then your account will get deleted permanently. That’s what happens. I Googled it.’
‘You Googled it?’ he laughs.
He’s laughing at me.
He’s not even taking this seriously. He thinks it’s funny. He thinks I’m funny. Tears pool in my eyes and I feel them spill over, running down my cheeks. Then I see it, just a glimmer in his eye, almost like he feels bad for me, that he feels guilty for what he’s done. But before I can speak again, before I can appeal to that side of him, to that Steve, to My Steve. His friends appear from around the corner.
‘Hey Sophia! Here to do a little dance for us?’ laughs Euan.
‘Wait, wait…let me get my phone out so I can take more photos,’ says Lee.
Then Steve joins in, and once again, he’s gone. Everything I once knew about him, once loved about him, is gone. They’re still laughing as I run down the hallway away from them, tears spilling out.
When I clear the edge of the hallway and round the corner, an impact hits me like a wall and I stumble to the ground. Climbing onto my hands, I immediately recognise the brown suede ankle boots in front of me. I finally gaze up.
‘You almost knocked me over.’
Lucy’s bag lays strewn beside me. Notebooks, pens, a heart-shaped mirror with lilac and rose stars all over the back.
‘What are you doing?’
‘I…I…Steve.’
Lucy’s eyes shoot up and she scans the hallway. ‘Where? I don’t see anyone?’ Her eyes dart back down to me, still on the ground. ‘Don’t just sit there. Help me pick up my stuff. It’s your fault it’s all over the floor.’
I start sweeping her things into the middle, in front of me.
She drops her hands down to her hips. ‘Don’t just scoop it into a pile. You’re gathering up all that hallway dirt. Pick up each thing, brush it off using your top and put it back inside my bag.’
Knees aching, I stay down. Her Revlon Peach Parfait lipstick trembles in my fingers, and drops to the ground again.
‘Careful! That shade is almost impossible to find. If it breaks, I can’t use it.’
Hot tears prick at my eyes again and I turn my face away so she doesn’t see.
‘Why don’t you help her? Instead of just standing there.’ The voice is familiar to my ears – sharp, accent on the rough side, lazy on the T’s. When I finally glance up, lipstick still in hand, I see Trina Davis standing over me.
Lucy’s face turns white and her eyes flicker. ‘Why don’t you keep walking and stop sticking your nose in everywhere.’
Trina opens her mouth to respond, then her eyes skim to the floor and she softly shakes her head. She pulls me up to my feet. ‘Leave it, Sophia. Let her pick it up herself—’
‘What’s going on here, girls?’ Eyes locked on Lucy and Trina, Miss Fiona, the teaching assistant in Mr Brown’s class, walks towards us.
‘Nothing. I was just walking to class,’ smiles Lucy, flashing teeth whiter than porcelain.
‘Then you’d better hurry up and get there. Second bell rang a few minutes ago.’
Lucy hesitates before bending down to scoop her things into her bag. She clenches her jaw, her face hardening to a rock, then hoists the bag over her shoulder. She glances back at Trina then to me, before pushing through us. S
he mutters something under her breath but I can’t hear her. It seems Trina does because she rolls her eyes and shakes her head.
She starts walking with me down the hall. At first she doesn’t say anything, she just mirrors my slow and cautious footsteps. Then she eventually looks up at me. ‘So what did you do to get on her bad side?’
I tuck my fingers under the shoulder strap of my bag and keep them there. The fabric sits heavy on my skin, the bag weighed down with textbooks and a French paper that I was too ashamed to hand in. I’m better at French than this. But I haven’t been able to concentrate this week. Every time I sit down to study, my phone beeps. And every time it beeps, the words on my screen weigh heavy in my mind, like the bag I carry. Ulana made a list for me to follow, when I didn’t know what to do. I still don’t know what to do. But her list tells me:
A.Turn off my notifications
B.Silence the ringtone
C.Turn off the vibration alerts
D.Deactivate my social media accounts
E.Do whatever it takes to not fall apart, and especially not in public, and not in front of Steve
OK, the last item I put on there myself. But again, nothing works. Because again, I don’t know what to do. And when I think I know, it never seems to be the right thing. Like today, when I thought I could reason with Steve. When I thought he’d take one look at me and immediately break down and tell me he was sorry and that he would take down all the posts. And then maybe we’d get back together and erase from my memory the worst month of my life. But no, that didn’t happen. He behaved exactly the opposite of what I thought would be the outcome of that conversation. Or, perhaps, he behaved exactly how I thought he would.
I feel Trina’s eyes burning into me. ‘It’s OK. You don’t have to talk about it.’
I know Ulana was friends with her when they were younger, and I trust Ulana, but I don’t know Trina Davis for myself. I don’t know if I can trust her. I don’t know if I can confide in her. Besides, Lucy hates her. And if I stand any chance of changing this situation, I need to avoid looking like I’ve teamed up with her enemy in any way. Trina’s reputation is done here at Birchwood High School. But I still have a small window to change my fate. This can’t be it. I won’t get through the year if it is. I won’t get through the week.
Trina places a hand gently on my arm and turns me towards her. ‘Look, we don’t know each other. We never really…socialised I guess, this year. Or the last few years actually. But I know Ulana, and I know you’s are close, so if there’s anything you need, you know, like if you just want to talk, or rant or whatever, then just let me know. Because I know how you feel. And I know when school gets like this, and it does for everyone at some point, then it can be really isolating.’
Her face is soft. Her eyes glisten slightly, as if she could cry too. Her touch on my arm doesn’t feel strange or unfamiliar. It feels comforting, like maybe I could trust her after all.
Her hand drops from me and hits against her side. Then she turns and walks away in the opposite direction. Her walk is slow, controlled. Like me. She looks nervous about what awaits around the corner of the hallway. Like me. She glances back to see if anyone is following her. Also like me.
But there’s also nothing about her that’s like me.
Because no one can understand how I feel, how alone I really am.
LUCY
I miss you.
My fingers had trembled above the keys before I’d hit Send late last night. My belly had been doing flips. My cheeks burning. My hands sweaty. But I had sent it. Even though I knew it was a risk. Because if he didn’t respond, I’d obsess over it more. And guess what?
He hasn’t responded. And I’m obsessing.
It’s been ten and a half hours and he hasn’t responded. I know he would have checked his phone in ten and a half hours so that means he’s seen it, and he’s made the decision not to respond. Why? We had so much fun at the party. It was like old times. Before everything went so wrong. Before Trina came along and ruined everything. Rhys and I would still be together if she hadn’t stolen him from me. Had it not been for her, I wouldn’t have got together with anyone else and I certainly wouldn’t be in this situation. This is all her fault. She made It happen. And now It is ruining my life.
I’m sitting in the back row of the classroom waiting for attendance to finish so I can go throw up in the bathroom again. It’s already happened twice this morning. Twice I was reminded of this…It inside me. It’s not a baby, not yet anyway. So I don’t have to refer to it as him or her. Right now, it can stay as It.
Maybe it doesn’t have to be anything. And it won’t be if I can help it. I can’t do this alone. I need someone. I need Rhys.
He would know what to do. He wouldn’t leave me alone to sort this out. He would think it’s his baby (I’d have to be creative with the date of conception of course) and then everything would be better. He comes from a good family. He’s going to be an engineer. He’d support me regardless of what I decide, no, what we decide. Because we’d be a ‘We’. And I need that more than anything right now. I can’t be an ‘I’ – I need to be part of a ‘We’.
Now.
Like I said, it would be a close call with the dates but I could fix that…I think. A few weeks won’t make much of a difference unless Rhys does the maths. Which he might. But by then it’ll be too late. We’ll be together and he won’t leave me, not like this.
If only he would respond to my texts. Then we could hurry along this ‘We’ process.
‘Lucy McNeil?’
I glance up to see faces turned towards me.
‘Sorry?’
‘Say “Here”,’ whispers Lily, from across the table.
‘Oh, yeah. Here…obviously,’ I mutter.
‘And Lucy?’ prompts Mr Brown from the top of the study room.
‘Yes?’
‘No phones in the classrooms. You know the rules.’
I glance down at the gold iPhone in my hand, the weight suddenly heavy in my palm. Swiping the screen, it flickers to the clock.
Still no response from Rhys.
Sliding the phone back into the side pocket of my black leather rucksack, I turn to Lily and lean in. ‘Did you see Facebook last night?’
Lily throws her hand up to her mouth. ‘Did Steve post another photo of Sophia?’
‘I can’t believe you hooked up with him. Gross.’
‘I wasn’t the only one.’
‘That’s actually worse,’ I laugh, rolling my eyes.
‘Ugh.’ She playfully hides her face with her hand. ‘Did you hear about Trina?’
‘Girls in the back, please turn off your voices for the next three minutes,’ hollers Brown as he finishes setting up our day on an antiquated blackboard with a stubby piece of green chalk.
‘We have assembly this afternoon?’ Lily groans.
I sit up in my chair and lean further in. ‘What about Trina?’
‘You didn’t hear this story?’
‘I’ve been a little…preoccupied this weekend,’ I mutter. ‘But tell me.’
‘Of course you were preoccupied. You were probably sucking face with Rhys all weekend.’
‘Yeah,’ I mumble, refraining from biting my lip.
‘Well, you’ll love this story.’
I lean across and touch her arm. ‘Tell me!’
‘Girls!’ Mr Brown puts the green chalk down and rests his hands on his hips.
Lily sits back in her chair and goes back to inspecting a poorly completed manicure, likely done at that cheap nail spa she goes to with Mollie on Saturdays. Mum and I get our gels done at the Sheraton Spa in the city centre. Or we used to. Before…before Dad left and we suddenly had to watch our spending. Anyway, we’d never go to that nail place in town. The air bubbles on Lily’s fingertips are a dead giveaway.
My toes twitch and curl in my brown suede ankle boots as I wait for the bell. Lily stifles a yawn and shoots me a look when I start to loudly drum my fingers on the table. Whe
n the classroom finally vibrates under the ringing of the bell, chairs screech back. We start filing out, but I lock my arm through Lily’s and lead her quickly to the front. ‘Now, tell me everything!’
‘Well, let’s just say Trashy Trina lived up to her nickname! I don’t think Rhys will be looking in her direction anymore,’ she giggled. ‘Lee’s brother texted me last night that—’
A pang hits my stomach, and I quickly put my fingers up to my mouth.
‘Are you OK?’
My hand drops down quickly to my side. ‘Just suddenly feeling a bit queasy.’
‘Well, you will be after this story. Adam – Lee’s brother – said Trina was “putting it about” at the party apparently, to anyone who was interested.’
‘Yuck!’
‘I know. She slept with at least two of his mates at the party.’
‘This is amazing!’ I laugh. Perfect. Exactly what I need to end this between Rhys and Trina, whatever ‘this’ is.
‘Oh my God, here she comes!’
I glance up and see Trina walking down the hallway. Pale face, dark shadows under her eyes, hair lank and sitting limply on her shoulders.
She looks at me, waiting. I turn away, pretending to ignore her, then as she’s just about to pass, I step in front of her. She stumbles into me then quickly steps back. ‘Trina, you look like hell. Even for your standards. Another busy weekend was it?’
Lily giggles beside me.
‘Get out of my way,’ she mutters, and tries to shove past me, but I side step and block her exit.
‘What’s wrong? You don’t have to hide it. We all know what happened at Lee’s party.’
Her face whitens and her eyes water slightly. ‘What?’
‘You heard me.’ I shift and get close to her face. Really close. ‘Do you know what you are?’
‘Get out of my way!’ she screams again, this time loud enough for a couple of girls to stop to see what will happen next.
Then I see Rhys. He’s standing behind the girls, close enough to see us but not enough to hear us. I know exactly what he’ll do. I wouldn’t have to do this if she’d just back off and let Rhys decide for himself. But she’s suffocating him, texting him all the time. She was all over him at Lee’s party. Her short little shirt, her low top, her dancing. She did this. Not me. This is her fault.
We Are Not Okay Page 10