by Laura Steven
Carson stops dribbling [the ball, not from his mouth] when he sees me lurking on the bleachers. I wave awkwardly, i.e. the way I do absolutely everything ever. He slowly makes his way over to me, buff chest rising and falling rapidly from the exertion. Oh, flashbacks.
Flumping down onto the bench in front of me, he grins. “Izzzaaayyyy. Come for round two?”
My eyes follow his dark snail trail, disappearing into the waistband of his yellow basketball shorts. “Ummm.”
He winks. He’s so beautiful, seriously. “No joke, though. I had a lot of fun last weekend. You’re a lot of fun.”
Now I’m grinning too. Stop, Izzy! Do not engage with flirtatious banter! I repeat, do not engage!
“Thanks, Carson. If only the entire world did not equate harmless fun with whoredom of the highest order.”
His face kinda drops at this point, and I feel bad for lowering the mood so soon. I didn’t mean to bring up my woeful personal life, but bam, there you go. I fidget with my keyring – an Indian elephant wearing a top hat. Ajita got me it when she went to Delhi with her family back in tenth grade. She said it reminded her of my ears. Bless.
“Yeah,” he nods, wincing. “Sorry, dude. It sucks, the way people are treating you. Like they ain’t ever seen titties before.”
“To be fair, most of them haven’t.”
“Yeah.” A sarcastic eye-roll as he spins a ball on his index finger. “Virgins.”
I’m not sure what point he is trying to make here, but he says the word “virgins” with such vitriol I don’t bother questioning it. Boys are weird.
“You got any idea who’s behind it all?” he asks as I try and fail to look him in the eye. [Not because I’m ashamed, but because his torso is just so appealing.] “The website. The leaked photo. All that.”
“Nah,” I shrug, pretending to be nonchalant when in reality my heart rate is roughly one-ninety-two. “Whoever it was had my phone at one point, though. I leave it backstage in the theater all the time. So it could’ve been anyone who took the screenshot.”
He stares at me, utterly aghast, as though I have just announced my candidacy for Prime Minister of Uzbekistan. “You gotta be the only person in the northern hemisphere not to have a passcode on your phone, dude.”
I shrug again, because apparently I am incapable of doing anything else. “I can barely remember my home address. Or the fact I have to brush my teeth in the morning. The last thing I need is something else to forget.”
A cheeky grin, which does flippy things to my insides. “Well, I don’t think I’ll be forgetting that photo anytime soon.”
Urgh. This does not sit right with me, and I guess my face shows it because he hurriedly adds, “Because you’re so hot. Not because, you know, you should be embarrassed or anything. Cos you shouldn’t. Not at all.”
But I don’t know. Making that kind of comment about naked pictures I did not want to be shared just feels kinda skeevy. I mean, he’s a teenage boy. They’re generally skeevy by nature. But . . . urgh.
Is this just my life now? Fielding skeevy remarks because I dared to send a naked picture? Will the world now just assume I’ll give it away for free all the time, because I did it once?
Do people feel like they own a piece of me, like I’m public property?
I don’t think Carson is like that. Not at all. But this whole thing has made me paranoid as hell, and now I have no idea whose intentions to trust. Not after one of my best friends turned on me for not wanting to have sex with him too.
Right then, my phone bleeps. A text message from a number I don’t recognize.
Fucking whore.
My heart sinks, I swear to God. Actually sinks. Heat prickles behind my eyes. I don’t know why. I don’t know why, out of all the abuse and all the public shaming, this is the thing that gets to me. I hate myself for being pathetic, because I pride myself on being anything but pathetic.
All I want to do is cry. The need is so sudden and overwhelming that I simply choke out, “Sorry, Carson. I gotta go.”
Almost as soon as I turn on my heel, the tears start to come.
I’m not sure why it’s an anonymous message that breaks me. Maybe because it reminds me just how many people have now seen me naked. Maybe it’s because it perpetuates that uncomfortable sensation of being watched and judged by a faceless entity. Maybe it’s because I’m tired and overwhelmed and it’s the straw that broke the camel’s back. Maybe it’s because, even though being hated by people you know is infinitely worse than being loathed by strangers, the combination of both is just crippling on every single level.
Carson calls after me, but I barely hear.
9.48 p.m.
Back in my bedroom I pull out my phone and stare and stare and stare at the nude picture of myself until it’s burned into my retinas forever.
I look at it in the way a stranger might, picking out the imperfections and flaws and telltale signs that I’m still just a scared teenage girl. I look at the soft belly I’ve never hated until now. I look at my boobs, one bigger than the other, one nipple pierced on a reckless whim last summer. I look at my short legs, one crossed in front of the other as I stand in front of a dusty mirror and try to angle myself in a flattering way. I look at my va-jay-jay and want to die, knowing how many people have now seen it too.
I look at a happy, naive kid who has no idea how much she’ll come to regret taking that naked picture in a moment of carefree spontaneity. That it’ll make her question every single man in her life and his intentions. That, above all, it’ll make her question herself in a way she never has.
Betty hears me sobbing and taps softly at the door. I don’t reply, so she lets herself in.
“Sweet girl,” she murmurs. “What’s wrong?”
I sniffle and press my face into the pillow before handing her my phone.
“Please don’t hate me.”
Friday 30 September
8.47 a.m.
I wait for twenty minutes by my gates, but Danny never arrives.
10.05 a.m.
Ajita is shocked to see me in school. Her parents, who are unbelievable fascists at times, would make her come to school even if her arms had fallen off in the night, but she knows Betty is a bit of a soft touch. She once let me stay home because of a paper cut. To be fair, it was in the webbing between my fingers and thus a deeply traumatic experience, on a par with losing my parents if we’re being honest. But still.
Thing is, Betty is generally in tune with what I need. She’s amazing like that, like some sort of psychic presence. Such as the paper-cut thing – we both knew I was actually having a horrible day. I’d got my first period the week before, and even though my grandma was great, I really felt my mother’s absence that whole week. It just felt like the kind of thing she should’ve been there for, like riding my bike for the first time, or accidentally getting stoned on pot brownies and breaking into the old folks’ home. And so the paper cut became a scapegoat for my grief, and Betty let me stay home.
On the same level, she also knew that what I needed today was not to stay at home obsessing about a nude picture on the internet, wondering how bad it’d be when I eventually did show my face. So she sent me to school.
I somehow make it through first period without having a breakdown, then Ajita grabs me and hauls me into an empty classroom near the cafeteria. This feels a little like stumbling into Narnia, as empty classrooms are like gold dust at Edgewood High.
All the lights are off, and that’s how we keep them as we close the door, dump our stuff on the teacher’s desk and slip into a few chairs near the back of the classroom. The sky outside is overcast, and after the bright strip lighting of the corridor it takes a while for my eyes to adjust to the dimness.
Ajita’s face is covered in zits. She’s obviously been stressed about my well-being. “Dude, what did Betty-O say?”
We love calling her Betty-O. It makes her sound like a low-end cereal brand.
I sigh and rub my eyes. They sting from tear
s and sleep deprivation. “She was actually really great. I expected her to nail me to a cross like that scene from The Passion of the Christ, but alas—”
“Like ‘the scene from The Passion of the Christ ’? Izzy, you do know that movie is actually based on the Bible? It’s important that you know that.”
I feign outrage. “What? No way! Next you’ll tell me Santa Claus has his very own testament!”
Faux-exasperated, she replies, “We’ll talk about this later. Now, I need deets. What did the old girl say?”
Even though the door to the classroom is shut, some scumbag sophomores have gathered behind the glass, staring at us agog. Without hesitation, Ajita strides up to the window, pounds it with her fist – causing several of them to flinch – then hastily wrenches down the blind that usually stays up until the end of the day. She rejoins me in our seats as though the last ten seconds never happened. Maybe they didn’t. Like I say, I’m pretty sleep deprived at this point.
“Honestly, Betty was awesome. For one thing, she didn’t bring up my lopsided boobs, which I appreciate. Some grandmothers would express concern at my lack of aesthetic perfection and haul me straight to the plastic surgeon, but not Betty.”
Ajita frowns. “I don’t think I know any grandmothers who would plausibly take that course of action.”
“Ajita, will you please stop taking everything I say so literally. Never in your life have you taken me seriously, why doth thine haben started now?” [Oh wonderful, now I’m throwing random German infinitives into my bastardized medieval sentences. Things just keep getting better and better on the intelligence front. I think my brain cells might actually be falling out of my ears in the night. Remind me to buy plugs.]
Before she can interrupt with another painfully literal interpretation of my strange answers, I add, “No, really. She was all kinds of amazing. At first she was super mad, but not at me, just at the scumbag who made the website and at all the other scumbag minions who do things like make paper airplanes out of my nudes.”
“Then?”
“Then she told me to stay calm, hold my head up, all that clichéd crap . . . and she’ll figure out what to do next. Whether that’s go to the principal, or to the police, since it’s harassment and all that, or string every guy on the basketball team up on her washing line by the nuts.”
“Hopefully a combination of all three.”
“My thoughts exactly, Ajita. My thoughts exactly.”
She smiles sympathetically. “Hey, so, um . . . guess what?”
“What?”
Her perfect little face lights up. “I made the tennis team! Turns out my hand-eye coordination is actually quite good thanks to a decade of ping-pong and video games. Who knew?”
“Oh my God! Dude!” I consider giving her a hug, but decide against it because unsolicited bodily contact gives her the willies, and even though I’m like a house cat who likes to be touching people at any given opportunity, I have to respect her wishes. “That’s awesome. I’m so fricking proud of you.”
And I mean it. I’m really happy for her. But as she skips off to meet Carlie before lunchtime practice, I can’t help feeling slightly abandoned. I know that sounds so selfish, and I hate myself for being this petty, but without her by my side, everything just feels so much more overwhelming.
Like I say, I really need to be a better friend. She deserves so much more.
6.58 p.m.
I hang out with Carson at the basketball courts again after school. I love late September. There’s all kinds of fall foliage around now, burnt oranges and dark reds and whatnot, and I can smell smoking chimneys on the crisp air. It’s almost beautiful enough to make me forget about the hellish implosion of my personal life. Almost.
We shoot some hoops together, even though I have the sporting ability of a concussed hippopotamus, as I fill him in on the latest developments. This time I manage to avoid a full-scale breakdown, which is good for maintaining the illusion that I am not certifiably unstable. Anyway, he seems genuinely concerned about my well-being, which is all new fuckboy territory. He is like a pioneer. A beautiful, beautiful pioneer whose bones I’m in mortal peril of jumping at any given moment.
“Anything I can do?” he asks. “To help y’all, I mean. You and Betty.” It’s such a small thing, but the fact he remembers my grandma’s name warms my heart.
Barely even looking where he’s aiming, he gracefully tosses the ball in the direction of the hoop. It makes a perfect arc then slides straight through the net, not even skimming the rim. Even as a nonsportsball lover, I have to admit it’s impressive.
He hands me the ball. I bounce it a couple of times, pretending to know what I’m doing, and say, “Nah. Don’t worry about us. Everybody has shit to deal with, you know? Even you, I’d imagine, despite your hot-yet-unintimidating demeanor.” He grins at this, and I grin back, before adding, “So I’m not in the habit of offloading mine. It isn’t fair.”
Clearly picking up on the fact I have no idea what I’m doing with a basketball in my hands, Carson comes up behind me and places his hands on my hips, tilting them toward the hoop. My pulse quickens as he angles my body perfectly to make a winning shot, even taking the time to rearrange my feet. I’m not sure why this feels so intimate, given that we’ve already had sex. But I like it. I really, really like it.
As he works, he says, “You know I have nine brothers and sisters?”
He’s back upright now, still behind me, a hand on each of my arms. I focus on steadying my breathing. “Wow. That’s a lot.”
“Yeah. A fertile woman, my mother.”
I consider this as he runs his hands slowly down my arms until his hands are cupping mine. “You probably know I’m an only child, and an orphan, and an all-round disaster,” I say.
He nods. “Yep.” I wait for him to continue. I get the impression he’s been thinking about this for a while, and as usual I am ruining his flow by stating obvious tragic details about myself.
Both of us holding the ball, Carson takes aim. I can feel his heart beating against my back, even through my sweater. Like he’s working a bow and arrow, he gently guides my arms back, then flicks the ball deftly up toward the hoop.
Again, it slides straight through the net.
I whoop, then turn to face him, grinning. He matches my smile. “You’re a natural.”
See? He is a good guy. Which is very different from being a Nice Guy à la Danny Wells.
Also, for some reason, I don’t feel the need to constantly crack jokes and prove how funny I am when I’m around Carson. At first I thought this was a bad thing – like, shouldn’t I be bouncing off him and being hilarious? – but it’s actually quite nice to just relax and have a normal chat like normal people. So it’s weird.
Our faces are so close together that for a moment I think [hope] he might kiss me again, but after a tantalizing moment, he skips off to retrieve the ball.
I take the opportunity to continue the conversation. “So is everything okay at home? You mentioned family issues. I mean, you don’t have to talk about it. But you can if you want.”
He grins again, bounding back over to me. He really is cute with a capital C. Huge smile, smooth brown skin, symmetrical features, striking eyes like Will Smith’s. “Thanks, Iz. It’s really okay, though. Nothing compared to what you have to deal with.”
“Well, that’s dumb,” I retort. “I don’t have the monopoly on messed-up family stuff. Just ask the Fritzls.”
Carson actually recoils a little here. “Izzy, that’s awful.”
“So is your face.”
“Really? Still making ‘your face’ jokes in this day and age?”
“Look, I don’t care what anyone says, your face and your mom jokes will always be hysterical.”
He laughs. “Whatever you say. You’re the comedian.”
But I haven’t even been trying to be funny! I want to say. Is it possible that my natural state is entertaining in itself ? What a relief that would be!
&n
bsp; “Nah, honestly, it’s a’ight,” he says. We both watch a nearby seagull doing some sort of Macarena dance as it maneuvers its freshly caught prey into its mouth. “My mom’s partner of eight years left us a few weeks back. Left us in the shit too, financially. Eleven mouths to feed and all. So I’ve been picking up extra shifts at the pizza place downtown.”
“That is unbelievably crappy. I’m sorry.”
“Nah, don’t be. I get free pizza.”
I gasp exaggeratedly. “That is the Holy Grail of job perks. I love pizza more than most things, including oxygen.”
He lets his eyes drop to the ground. [Again, not literally. That would be deeply uncomfortable for him. Nobody wants gravel in their corneas. I mean, maybe you do. I don’t know your fetishes.]
Biting a lip, he finally says, “Then, uh, maybe we should get pizza together sometime.”
Wow, he has such long eyelashes. [Good grief, I really need to stop objectifying this poor boy – it is very unfeminist of me.]
I smile. “Yeah. Maybe we should.”
After we’ve finished shooting hoops, Carson offers to walk me home, which I happily accept. There’s something about being around him that just makes me feel calm and level, despite everything going on, but also tingly and excited. And that’s a sensation I appreciate now more than ever. I can’t get enough.
We walk and chat as the sun is setting, casting a warm glow over the town. Carson and I live in the same neighborhood, so I don’t have to be embarrassed as we stroll past the beat-up cars and overflowing dumpsters and stray dogs scavenging for food. To be honest, the only time I ever properly see those things is through other people’s eyes. Danny and Ajita’s mainly, and even though I know they never judge me, it’s kinda nice to be with someone who lives in the same world. It’s just . . . easier.
On one street I’ve walked down a thousand times, a woman I recognize sits on her doorstep, smoking a roll-up cigarette as two toddlers run around her ankles. She berates the little boy for pushing the girl a bit too hard, even though the girl looks totally unfazed.