“I heard Ohio is lovely this time of year.”
“Like hell it is! All I want to know is WHY? Why would you do it? You weren’t like this. This isn’t the girl I thought I knew. She would never ruin somebody’s whole life for no fucking reason.”
It was almost hard to fathom just how much anger there was in his eyes. He looked tired, too, as if this whole thing had been keeping him up at night. Maybe my mind should have focused on that. But inside, I felt like I’d been doused in gasoline and set on fire. For no reason? Is that really what he thought? Was he fucking blind? Deaf? Every goddamn person in this school knew that I was the butt of every damn joke, the victim of every laugh. Being shipped off to Ohio would have been like a saving fucking grace to me. This place, these hallways, these faces, they were like my own personal hell. He knew that. He wasn’t blind or dumb or deaf. In fact, he was a part of the fucking problem.
“Why do you even care one way or the other?” I hissed. “What’s she to you?”
Adam looked at me with the same hurt and confusion that I saw the day after the accident. His eyes begged me to tell him something that would make him believe me, but I had to disappoint him again. This time I was guilty. I pulled the trigger and hurt somebody who might not have deserved everything she got, even though she definitely deserved some of it. Adam wasn’t wrong though, despite my rage, and despite my need for vengeance, I was a little ashamed.
“She isn’t anybody to me, but you were. Right now, I’m just trying to find out who you the fuck you really are, Anna.”
“Didn’t you decide that a long time ago? You decided, on your own, who I really was and-”
“You lied to me!” His outburst was so sudden that I shuddered, the waves of his voice causing the painful kind of goosebumps to prickle my skin.
I swallowed, trying to push down my emotions. “There were things I couldn’t tell you, but I never lied to you.”
“Lies by omission are the same damn things. I needed the truth about why my sister was lying in a hospital bed with doctors talking about IF she would live and then, IF she would ever walk again and the only person who could tell me, was you, and you lied.”
“I didn’t lie. I never lied to you!”
“You were the one driving that night, Anna.”
“But I wasn’t the only person in the car, Adam.”
“She can’t remember anything thanks to all the shit in her system and the nasty whack on the head you gave her. And your toxicology report conveniently went missing.” His eyes narrowed as he hissed the words at me.
He hated me and there was nothing I could tell him to change things.
“I didn’t have anything to do with any of that, Adam. Nothing. Okay?”
“Just like you had nothing to do with Lauren being stalked by some crazy guy? You didn’t set her up?”
“What makes you think it was me?”
He looked at me with sad eyes and took a deep breath. “Because you haven’t denied it.”
“No matter what I say, you won’t believe me, so why would I bother denying anything. Isn’t it easier for all of you lemmings to blame me for all of your misfortunes? Lauren gets harassed by some asshole online and it’s my fault. Your sister breaks her back and it’s my fault. Never mind the fact that I was in the SAME CAR, Adam. She wasn’t the only one who was hurt that night. I was in the car too? Do you even care?”
His eyebrows shot up for a moment as if it just occurred to him that I wasn’t the monster he believed I was, but that glimmer of hope quickly faded. Or maybe I imagined it. His face settled back into the hateful glower he’d reserved for me, and me alone. Unfortunately, as much as it hurt, I understood him. Something horrible happened and it made no sense and he needed somebody to blame. He needed it to make sense. He needed an enemy to vanquish so that he didn’t have to admit that he couldn’t protect his sister from her own fate. Telling him that the accident wasn’t my fault only made me the target of all of his frustrations. He needed to believe that I was the bad guy and no amount of logic was going to shake that belief.
“And yet,” he said, pinning me with eyes that held nothing but venom, “you came out scot free and my sister is wheelchair bound. So yeah, you weren’t hurt that night, Anna. She was.”
I bit back my tears and pushed past him, moving in the direction of the library. Adam didn’t follow me, which I was grateful for.
I walked all the way to the back, past the old encyclopedias and the tattered volumes of religious scriptures. When I finally made it to the back wall, I crumbled. The words I wanted to say seemed to be choking me. I was suffocating under the weight of all of the misunderstandings pressing down on us.
I thought I had gotten used to his hatred by now. I thought I had learned to live with it. But I never thought I’d have to confront it. I never thought he would think so little of me that he would accuse me of setting others up. And worse, I never thought he would be right.
Maybe I was the monster he thought I was, but not for those reasons. I was ready to accept his hatred for the things I’d done, but I hated that he believed the lies about me as readily as he believed the truth.
I wept bitter tears and then pulled myself together. Never let them see you cry. Never. Not that turning on the waterworks was a bad thing. I’d seen plenty of girls use their tears and quivering lips to their advantage. I just didn’t want to be like them. I didn’t want to be the kind of girl who used somebody’s affections and sympathies against them. So there was no way I was going to turn up to my last classes with my face puffy and red. Not that I thought it would bring sympathy my way. I was public enemy number one in this school. Even if I walked into the room with my heart in my hand, begging them to forgive me for all the things I did and the things I didn’t, they wouldn’t bat an eye.
I hung out in the library for the rest of the day. Lucky for me, the teachers posted their lesson notes on the school’s web portal which meant that I could catch up on all the things I missed out with just the click of a button. I wasn’t ready to deal with any fake shows of concern or another round of bullying, and so I stayed within the library walls until the last bell rang.
The next day, the mood in the halls had changed again. Lauren was old news. The new story was something else. This time I didn’t have to use my headphones and eavesdropping capabilities to find out what the hell was going on. Aaron Lee walked over to me and smirked.
“Have you seen the Forum?”
I rolled my eyes. Anything that made Aaron Lee happy was probably going to piss me off. He was the kind of guy who would yell fire in a movie theatre just to watch the chaos. Maybe he’d even go so far as to set it on fire and watch the scattering while it burned.
“Why would I read the Forum?”
“You should. There’s a pretty interesting conversation going on.”
“And why should I care?”
He snorted and walked away. The look of mischief in his eyes remained with me.
As much as I hated to admit it, I wanted to know what it was. It had to be pretty impressive to make Aaron so happy. So, yeah, I didn’t turn a blind eye to it. Instead, I allowed my curiosity to get the best of me and I looked.
It was a new thread, started by a guest account, talking about how I was probably the person who helped dox Lauren because I was “acting out” now that my dad was going to get remarried. I knew immediately who it was because there was only one person I’d ever told about my dad’s new fiancé. And unlike all the other dad’s in this town, mine wasn’t the kind who newspapers were written about. We had enough money to make sure I was never in need, but our family wasn’t Randt rich. We weren’t newspaper worthy or even recognizable in the damn grocery store.
So yeah, fuck Adam. Even though, to be very honest, I wasn’t that upset. It was true. I doxed her, I set her up, and my dad was marrying the lovely Filipino woman my mom had hired as a housekeeper in the final days of their marriage. I couldn’t be angry at that. But, I was angry that he’d chose
n to out me without any proof; that things I’d told him in confidence were now exposed. Maybe our relationship meant more to me than it did to him. Maybe that was why it was so easy for him to believe the worst about me.
Either way, the guilt I felt towards Lauren disappeared as I saw her sashay down the hall, feigning anger over having her “rights violated” by some “crazy girl”.
“Ms. Henderson, can I see you in my office?”
I rolled my eyes and shrugged before turning to face Ms. Lidwell, the school’s counselor. She ushered me towards her office and I followed silently. It didn’t matter what either of us had to say at this point. Everything was fucked up and there was nothing either of us could do to fix it.
Chapter 8
NOW
Ms. Lidwell closed the door to her tiny office. Every inch of the wall behind her desk was covered by some certificate or diploma with her name on it. Every flat surface was piled up high with papers and folders and neat little tied up bundles of stuff.
You’d think she was a hoarder if you didn’t notice how ridiculously small her office was, despite the fact that she was the only full-time counselor for a school of nearly 1200 students or the fact that all of her shelves were organized and dust-free.
“I’m going to level with you here, Anna,” she said and held up her phone for me to see.
“The Forum? You use that junk?”
“I lurk. It’s a good way to keep up with whatever nonsense you kids are getting into before you dive-bomb into my office with a referral for evaluation,” she said.
I always liked Ms. Lidwell. She was one of those no-nonsense kinds of women. She was compassionate and understanding, but she wasn’t going to yank your chain or tell you something she didn’t believe because it made you feel better. She was the kind of woman who forced you to take bitter medicine, but then followed it up with candy if you deserved it. A fair woman. Maybe the only person in this school that I would dare to call trustworthy and considerate.
“So tell me, before Lauren gets her father down here demanding your blood, did you do this?”
“I didn’t dox her. I didn’t send any creep to harass her. I didn’t have anything to do with that.”
She narrowed her eyes as she watched me speak.
“So what did you do?”
I don’t know why I didn’t lie. Nobody could prove anything. But, I wanted to tell the truth, at least a little bit of it, just once, and have somebody believe me.
“I ranted online about how stupid, shallow, and vapid she was. I used screenshots of her IG posts to prove my point.”
“And?”
“And I guess the wrong kind of guys saw it and took it a little bit too far. But I never intended for it to get this far. I was just venting.”
“On Chan-Chan?”
Her words stunned me. She really had been doing her homework, hadn’t she? If my heart wasn’t pounding a mile a minute, I might have been impressed.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she said. “I told you, I keep up. I know this whole thing started there. Nice work on covering your ass, by the way. What’d you use? A VPN?”
I nodded. I was getting emotional and I didn’t trust my voice not to break.
“I always use a VPN, even for homework.”
“Why?”
“Aaron Lee,” I whispered.
“Oh, him!” She nodded and handed me a tissue. Tears I didn’t know I’d been hiding burst from my eyes the moment I took the tissue. I wasn’t sure if I was more relieved to be caught or to have somebody believe me and take my side.
“You have been the topic of conversation for a while, Miss Henderson. You have a lot of people worried. I looked at your records and your attendance and grades haven’t slipped a bit. That means you’re bright and strong. I don’t know if I could keep coming to school every day if people were dogging me the way they do you. You have my respect.”
“Thank you,” I sobbed.
“But it’s obviously been hard on you. Do you want to tell me how all of this started?”
“What?”
“I mean, how did all of this start? Was it a boy?”
I almost laughed in her face. I wish this was as simple as a catfight over a boy. It was so much more complicated than that and though she might not have known just how complicated, there was no way she couldn’t put the pieces together if she tried. News of the accident had spread around the school like wildfire even before the car had finished tumbling down the hill. There were sympathy cards from pretty much every teacher and I’m sure even they whispered a little about what I was doing behind the wheel and the condition I was in and the missing toxicology report.
“Not exactly,” I coughed. She was the only one not giving me a hard time and I wasn’t going to bust her balls for it.
“But there is a boy involved, right?” She gave me a smug smile and closed her laptop. “So tell me about him.”
I smirked at her. I hated her smug, dismissive expression more than anything else in the world right now. She might not have been bringing up the accident. She might have been taking what she felt was the easier route for me. But it still sucked. Maybe I was young and my problems didn’t amount to a whole hill of beans in the “real world” but that didn’t mean it was okay to treat my feelings as trivial.
Breaking up with your boyfriend wasn’t the end of the world. I knew that. But that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt like hell. And breaking up over a lie that you never told only made it that much worse.
“Why?”
“Because it obviously bothers you, and I don’t think anybody really knows what’s going on with you. So, I’m asking. You can either trust me a little and tell me what happened, or you can keep getting referrals from your teachers until you graduate...if you graduate.”
I sobered up.
“Why wouldn’t I graduate?”
“Because some people think you’re too dangerous and would prefer that you finish your senior year elsewhere.”
“They can’t do that!”
“Technically, no they can’t. This is still a public school. But they can make being here so miserable that you’d beg to be somewhere else. And that’s what I’m worried about.”
“Don’t worry. I’m tough.”
“You aren’t the one I’m worried about. You made one post online and nearly ruined a girl’s life. If these little squabbles were to escalate, where would it end? How many people would you hurt before you’d be satisfied? Before you realize that retaliation is not the answer? Before you get the help you need instead of trying to solve all your problems yourself?”
“I didn’t start it,” I argued.
“But, you’ll finish it. You’ll get the last laugh because like I said, you’re smart and you’re strong. A lot stronger than most of these kids. I’m not knocking it. I actually admire you for it. But, I don’t want you to become the thing you hate. I don’t want you to become a monster. So, are we going to talk or not?”
We sat in silence for a solid minute, deciding where we would go from here. My mind told me that there was no way I should trust her. She was part of the system. The same system that failed to clear my name after the accident. The same system that had my dad shuttling me to a crappy child psychologist every week to talk about my feelings. The same system that let Lauren set me up and then walk around acting like a wounded victim.
But my heart told me Ms. Lidwell was different. She was the only person who didn’t seem to believe that I was a monster. She was the only person who even offered to really listen to my side of the story since this whole nightmare began.
“Do you have a few hours?” I asked, and laughed at myself. Where did this all begin? The accident? Before that? It was hard to know.
Ms. Lidwell got up from her seat and walked to the door. Her actions startled me a little – the way she got up without indicating she was going to do so, the quickness of her steps, the urgency in them.
“Cheryl, please let everybody know I am u
navailable for the next few hours. I am in with an important student,” she said before closing the door again. “I have all the time you need.”
It took me a minute to regain my composure. My chest felt tight and the beginnings of tears started to form in my eyes. Since their divorce, I don’t think either of my parents have been this willing to give me all their hours.
Sucking in a deep breath, I decided that now was as good a time as any. Lidwell was offering an olive branch and an open ear – this was the teenage version of being plopped into the center of a candy show.
“His name is Adam Randt, and he meant everything to me.” Just saying the words was like ripping the scab off of a gaping wound. Everything came pouring out. And without pause, I ran through the story of Adam and me.
It was easy, too. In the beginning, falling back into those memories. The truth of the matter was, as much as I wanted to forget Adam, I could remember everything, down to the first day I saw him. He ran into me while he was horsing around in the hallway. He was tall for his age and most of his friends were older so I thought he was a sophomore or a junior. He helped me up, smiled down at me, and said sorry before running off with his friends.
We didn’t really know much about each other. We passed each other in the hallways, and he would smile and nod. That was it. It wasn’t until I had an English class with Eva that I got a chance to say more than two words to him. I told Miss. Lidwell as much.
“Were you close with Eva?” she asked.
I shook my head. We were classmates and friendly to each other, but not what I would call friends.
“We were competitors, really. She’s really smart. I’m not really a competitive person but I didn’t want to look dumb compared to her.”
“Why not?”
It was the blonde hair and the bright blue eyes that irked me. It felt like some kind of cosmic joke. She was gorgeous and glamorous and smart too. Girls like me, girls with unremarkable features and zero fashion sense shouldn’t have to compete with that. I had always believed in substance over style, it wasn’t fair to have to share a classroom with a girl who managed to have both.
Filthy Pride: Dark Bully Romance Page 5