“And you have a lock on your phone too, right?” Yuri asked, trying to help me out.
Throwing my hands in the air, I said, “Exactly.”
“So if someone would have gotten into the locker, they couldn’t have taken a picture on your phone because they don’t have a code, right?” Shelby questioned.
Reluctantly, I uttered, “Yeah, right.”
Shelby continued, “So then that’s why it seems you took the picture, Sloan.”
I screamed, “I didn’t!”
“Shoot, forget who took the dang photo. We know who sent it to the world. So let’s go find him and get some answers… I can’t believe he sent my sister’s picture to all his horny buddies,” Slade said.
Ansli added, “That was so unfortunate. Now everyone around here is all excited, forwarding it from here to there to the next person. I thought this guy liked you. How could he do this?”
Slade huffed as we started walking to our next period, “Where is he? Do you know his schedule, Sloan? Talk to us.”
I couldn’t recall my whole name much less what class Reese was in at that very moment. Plus, the next class hadn’t started because the fire drill had thrown the day’s schedule off. As fate would have it, Reese was walking toward me all fast and in a hurry like he needed to explain something.
Yuri spotted him too and said, “That’s him right there!”
I looked at her and leaned in, “You could have just told me that? Did you have to get our sisters involved?”
“We’re involved!” Slade said in a brash tone, overhearing us. “Yeah, we do need to talk to him, Sis, because whatever part of this little prank he thinks is cute, is not.”
“Sloan, Sloan, can I talk to you for a second?” Reese said with urgency.
“Urgh no! You’re going to talk to all of us!” Slade insisted.
“Yeah!” Shelby cut in. “How could you do that to my sister?”
“People are coming up to me, asking the exact same thing!” he said to them. “But can I talk to Sloan?”
“I don’t have anything to say to you,” I cut in and said. “How could you do this to me?”
“I can’t even believe you sent me the picture!” Reese declared in an appalled voice.
“So because she sent you the picture, that gave you the okay to send it out to everybody in America?” Slade asked him.
“Oh my gosh, this is going to ruin daddy’s reputation, and he’s not even mayor yet,” I said, turning away and wishing I could hide under the school building.
Slade popped me in the head, “It’s messing up your reputation. Focus on that right now, girl.”
Looking at Slade like she was crazy, I gasped, “I get that; that’s not what I’m saying at all.”
“Hey, y’all listen, I didn’t even do this,” Reese said.
“You didn’t do what? Cause my sister embarrassment like you have?” Shelby asked.
“Yes, darn right. I’m saying I didn’t forward this.” He stepped to me and said, “I can’t explain how this got out. Think about it though. I wouldn’t want any of these guys around here looking at you like that. I’m surprised that you would send it to me even.”
“I didn’t send it to you,” I quickly let him know.
“Yeah, you did. It came to my phone from your number,” he said.
I shouted back, “No, I didn’t!”
“I don’t know what world the two of you guys are living in,” Shelby said. “Or you might just think I’m stupid.”
Slade snatched the phone from my hand and said, “We aren’t stupid. The evidence is here. Y’all might want to play all innocent and act like you don’t know how this happened, but the proof says how it happened. Sloan, you clearly wanted to entice this guy, and Ryan, Roger, Reese, or whatever your name is… you thought you were all that for a girl to send you such a picture, so you showed the world. Quit insulting our intelligence, and own up to this debacle.”
I couldn’t speak for Reese, but I was telling the truth about me. It did seem awfully suspicious that he was saying the same exact thing that I was. I got that my sisters thought we were guilty. What other explanation was there for how all this happened. Reese had to have sent it out to his boys who forwarded it out to others. The look on his face showed me he felt bad, and if he felt bad, was that an admission to guilt?
“Talk to me, please,” he pleaded.
I was so frustrated. I just threw up my hands and said, “I ain’t got nothing to say.”
I walked away, feeling worse than I ever had. I was a disgrace to my family. Shoot, I was a disgrace to myself.
Not even fifteen minutes later, I was sitting in the office. I had gone to my class, and my teacher wouldn’t even let me in. She told me I was being summoned to the office. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out I was in trouble for sexting. At some point you get tired of trying to explain your way through the madness, and you just accept whatever fate was coming your way.
The door to the office opened, and Reese walked in. He was told to have a seat as well. He sat down at the empty seat next to me.
I turned away and said, “Please sit over there.”
He complied. I didn’t want to talk to him. I didn’t want to hear his lies because the more I thought about it, what guy wouldn’t want to brag that a girl thought so much of him that she’d be willing to send him her assets? If that guy had any sense, he’d share the photo so his stock would go up.
I guess that’s just what got me about Reese. I didn’t think he cared about trying to please guys and be popular. I thought he was his own man, not caring what peers he impressed. I guess I was wrong.
Dr. Garner came out of his office and called for me to follow him. He said hello, but he wasn’t even looking at me. When we got to the office, he couldn’t even look my way. Clearly, he was embarrassed about what he’d just seen. The picture had gotten all the way to the principal in less than an hour. I was so in trouble. There was no way I was going to be able to explain this to my dad. Ironically, out of all of my sisters, I knew my father would think I would be the least likely to mess up in this way.
“Sloan, I, I, I, I just can’t believe what I’m seeing here,” Dr. Garner said, stuttering “But you know we can’t have this, and as much as it pains me, I called your parents. You’re going to be suspended.”
“You haven’t even asked my side of the story, sir,” I uttered, needing to speak out now.
“When I have evidence like this, young lady, that’s sent from your phone, unfortunately this unflattering selfie, as you young people call it, is all the proof I need. This has got to die down around here. I’ve got to set some ground rules so that everyone understands forwarding this type of material is criminal. I’m sure you saw Reese out front. As a young man who’s a leader in this school, working with my parent group and my teachers to make sure that this school has everything it needs, I’m disappointed in him too. You wait here for your mom. I’m going to talk to him separately. While I don’t condone you taking this kind of picture and sending it to him, I certainly have an issue with him sending it to others as well. I’ll be back in just a second.”
Dr. Garner got up and went out the door. I started hitting my head. This was a nightmare, and I wanted to wake up.
When the door opened, I just knew it was my folks. I turned and got a knot in my stomach, seeing the assistant principal, Mr. Hobby. The smirk plastered on his face creeped me out.
Mr. Hobby said, “Well, well, well, what do we have here? Somebody trying to accuse me of doing wrong and the very next week, you’re the laughingstock of the school.”
“Sir, are you supposed to be saying all this to me right now?” I said.
“Seeing the picture I saw, saying something to you isn’t what I’m thinking about. I just got to be honest.” He licked his crusty lips.
“Sir!” I yelled. I never imagined wanting to pose for Playboy. I didn’t have any desire to. I thought it was absolutely disgusting, but sometimes you fi
nd yourself in places you never thought you’d end up. I could see what it felt like being someone who had a great job, lost it, and the next thing he knows… he’s homeless. Or a teenager falling in love, getting too close to a guy, and the next thing you know… she’s pregnant. Or one of the brightest girls at school minding her own business, and the next thing you know… she’s the laughingstock of the school because everybody’s seen places she hasn’t even examined on her own body.
Mr. Hobby left me to wallow in my pity. The next voices I heard were that of my mom and Dr. Garner coming into the office. She didn’t give me a chance to explain. She didn’t look at me either. They were talking all around me.
Dr. Garner told her, “Yes, kids make mistakes. Yes, even the brightest children do things that their parents aren’t expecting sometimes. I hate to give her these three days.”
“Well, with everything she just did, trust me, she can use three days,” my mother told him.
I could tell steam was piping out of my mom’s ears, but she was playing her role with Dr. Garner. She was being all nice and chummy, talking about how excited she was for my father and all his great plans for the city. Yet there her daughter sat embarrassing the heck out of the family. She wasn’t cool with that. I knew it. Finally, when we were in the car, I was ready for her to let me have it, but she drove in silence with an angry look on her face.
“Say something, Mom. Tell me. What is it that you want to say? Or you want to let me have it even though you haven’t even heard me out,” I demanded.
Finally, she broke. “Hear you out? Sloan, are you serious? I have to look at my daughter’s bare body on a phone! First of all, why you would even think this is okay? To take a picture of yourself and send it to some boy is just crazy. I knew your sisters were talking about guys, but you assured us, ‘My head is focused. I’m not even thinking about guys. All I want to do is graduate top of my class.’ Yet here you are doing something way worse than anybody in this family ever has!”
“So you’re perfect?” I said in an angry tone.
“I didn’t say I was perfect, but I’m your mother, and I never took naked pictures of myself and thought it was okay.”
“Well, I didn’t either, Mom!”
“So now you’re in denial? That’s just great, Sloan. That’s just great! You had a dream of Harvard. You had a vision to be top of your class. Why couldn’t you just stay focused?” When we got to the red light, she looked over at me and said, “I know I’ve been working hard at the firm on this food poisoning case. Obviously, I need to pay more attention to my child. So if you want me to apologize, then I’ll do that.”
Really pissed at this point, I said, “No, Mom. You need to pay more attention to your marriage.”
Squinting her eyes she said, “What are you talking about, Sloan?”
“I’m talking about you all mad at me about little pictures that you saying that I sent…”
“You sent? I’m not talking hearsay that you sent it. Dear, I’ve got the proof! You sent it, okay! What are you talking about, about my marriage?”
The last thing I wanted to do was hurt my mom, but she was hurting me by not even giving me a chance to explain, by not even asking me what was really up, by not trusting me. I wasn’t lying. She knew that I wasn’t a liar, so I reached inside my purse and pulled out the picture that Mr. Brown had given me and showed it to my mom. She snatched it out of my hand, and as tears welded up in her eyes, she had nothing else to say from that point on. As bad as I felt about my own situation, I now felt way worse for breaking her heart. She being way too hard on me though. What else was a girl to do?
I wanted to snatch the picture out of my mom’s hands and pretend I’d never shown it to her, but what was done was done. I could see she was not only confused but hurt as well. She didn’t grill me more about how I got it. She didn’t want to discuss it either. We simply rode the rest of the way home without a word spoken.
She didn’t have to tell me I was grounded. She didn’t have to tell me to go to my room. She didn’t have to tell me I was on punishment. I knew my fate. Even though I wanted some alone time, a part of me wanted to hug her and reassure that it had to be more to the story than what we saw in the photo. However, even if she gave me the time of day, I couldn’t give her the answers that would give her comfort because I really believed, deep down, that my dad was engaging in some type of uncouth relationship with the mystery chick.
Later that evening, I heard a whole bunch of arguing. The walls were trembling because of the yelling going on. I peeked my head out into the hallway and looked over the steel railing.
“So you mean to tell me you don’t know where she got this from?” my mother questioned my dad.
“No, I don’t know where she got it from, but I’m telling you it doesn’t mean anything,” my father replied.
My mom retorted with attitude, “Funny, seeing you all locked up in somebody’s arms like you’re whispering sweet nothings in her ear doesn’t look like nothing to me.”
“Shh, hon, keep your voice down. The girls are upstairs.”
“And with my daughters talking to boys, they need to know there are trifling men in the world. Sometimes you can’t trust none of them,” my mom said as she rolled her eyes at my dad.
“Aw, baby, don’t be like that,” he said as he tried to wrap his arms around her.
Pulling away, she said, “Well, you’re not telling me any details. I’m supposed to trust that it’s nothing? That it’s not what I see?”
“It’s nothing. It’s not what it looks like,” he said as he followed my mom around to the foyer of the house.
I went around the corner and saw all four of my sisters perched on the stairs, looking over. My parents must have known we were there. They stepped into my dad’s office.
“Where did Mom get a picture from?” Slade asked.
“Need to ask Sloan,” Shelby said with a bit of anger in her voice.
“I can’t do this right now. I just can’t take this.” We heard my mom scream out. “Please, don’t touch me. Sleep in the guest room.”
My mom fled out of the office. She looked up at us, and we saw watery eyes. She went into her bedroom and slammed the door.
My dad came out of his office. He picked up his keys and went out the garage door, slamming it behind him. My sisters turned to me, looking at me like I was evil.
“What did you do?” Shelby said in an accusatory voice.
Not afraid of any of them, I responded, “I was with Momma, and she was talking about me and that I needed to get myself together. I didn’t want her thinking that I was the only one who had issues. She had issues too.”
“So you just gon’ give her a picture? I mean what was all on it?” Ansli asked.
“I tried to tell you guys. Y’all don’t want to listen to me. She needs to know. Dad is cheating. He can stand here and act like everything is okay when it’s not okay.”
“How do you know that for sure?” Yuri asked me. “You want us to believe you didn’t take that selfie of yourself, so if Dad has some picture where it looks like he’s in some relationship with another lady, maybe there is another explanation.”
Slade jumped in and said, “Yeah, you should have found that out before you just assumed and gave it to Mom.”
“You could be messing up our whole family over nothing,” Ansli said.
“I didn’t think it was nothing. If there was no explanation to it, then why doesn’t Mom believe him? She’s an attorney, for goodness sake. She investigates with the best of them. If she’s not believing what he’s saying, it’s probably because she knows her husband. Maybe he’s been smelling like unknown perfume. Maybe some of the late nights really can’t be explained. I don’t know, but she needed to know what I know. I don’t apologize for that.”
“Well, you need to,” Shelby said, giving me a look that cut like a knife.
“Until you have all the facts yourself, you should have kept your mouth shut. This isn’t just
about you. This is our family too. And it might be okay for you to go around half-cocked, but the gun has gone off, and it looks like you’ve blown a hole through our family. That’s not okay with me, Sis. I love you to pieces, but you always think you know everything. You don’t. You’re the one who’s the joke. You’re the one who’s suspended, and you’re the one who messed up our parents’ relationship, probably over nothing. I mean, don’t get it twisted. Dad is a fine-looking brother with a bunch of power. There’s going to be a whole bunch of women coming at him, but Dad’s got way too much to lose for him to get with some trick,” Slade added.
“But you’re so naive, and you think you’re so smart,” Shelby said as she came close to my face. “The only thing you’ve done is ruin everything. Mom didn’t need you to fix her problems. You can’t even fix your own. Gosh, sometimes I hate you!”
My sister had said she loved me in the past, but the way she said she hated me seemed more real. She turned around and left, and so did her three other goons. Even Yuri left my side. I was left standing there to contemplate. Yes, I still believed my dad had done something wrong, but they made a good point. The world thought I had done something wrong too, and I hadn’t. So had I gotten this all twisted for nothing? Just thinking that I could be wrong left me speechless.
CHAPTER SIX
SEEK
My three days at home suspended from school seemed like the longest three days of my life. While my parents had seemed to work out whatever it was going on between them, my sisters hadn’t forgiven me, and I don’t know if my dad was so upset with me that I was crossed off his list or if he was just so busy that he hadn’t had a chance to come and deal directly with me himself.
But the morning I was to go back to school, my dad said, “Hey, I’m taking you.” It actually was fine with me because I didn’t want to ride with my sisters. I could always depend on Yuri to side with me, but now she was hanging out with Slade more than me. Certainly my mom knew my dad better than I did, and if she was okay with him now, maybe I did need to cut him some slack.
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