by Laura Steven
A brush in his hand, he dabs away at something I can’t see, leaning close to the canvas and examining his work in painstaking detail. I’m transfixed, but I also feel like I’m violating his privacy. He once offered to show me his work someday, but like I say. That was before.
I’m about to walk away, to leave him to the painting session he’s obviously skipped basketball practice for, when he swivels his body to the side, reaching for some more paint. His shirt lifts up as he does, exposing a strip of toned torso, but for once that’s not where I’m looking.
Painted in deep turquoise on the center of the canvas is the Statue of Liberty, piggybacking on an African-American slave. The slave is sweating with the exertion of carrying the statue, and bleeding from whip wounds on his chest. Behind him are hundreds of other slaves, getting smaller and smaller as they fade into the background; into the fabric of the American flag. The colors are vivid and textured, and the light and shade are so expertly manipulated that the Statue’s torch seems to shine only on her, not the slaves below.
Damn, Carson is talented. He’s good at basketball – hell, he’s great at it – but this? This is another level. It’s so good I can barely breathe.
The soft reggae remix ends. Before the next song begins, Carson twists back to the canvas, and he catches sight of me in the corner of his eye. Our gazes lock through the window. Something unreadable crosses his face. My gut instinct is to go to him, to tell him how incredible his work is. How incredible he is.
And then I remember. He betrayed me. He sold me out.
As I blink away my awe at his talent, another song starts, and I walk away toward the fresh air I thought I craved. But at the sight of Carson, I know the truth.
All I crave is him.
6.13 p.m.
Betty has gone out to one of her ludicrous evening classes. They run them for free at the community center – I think Friday nights are yoga finger-painting, whereby they have to paint nude pictures of each other while holding impossible poses. Laugh all you want, but Betty now has the flexibility of a double-jointed circus freak, and the paintings get less creepy the more you look at them.
So yeah, she’s out all night, meaning I have some time to do some digging around on the internet to see if I can figure out who exactly made my life a living hell – and why – since the school board apparently gives precisely zero shits. Betty’s absence is doubly beneficial because a) I can cry all I want in the process without worrying her, and b) I don’t have to share the Wi-Fi, which is a bonus because she’s always downloading movies illegally, despite the fact she’s never once been able to successful open any of the files. She is the world’s worst pirate.
I make myself a pumpkin spice latte using bargain-basement coffee creamer, and settle down on the couch with Dumbledore and a box of tissues at the ready [which means a very different thing to teenage boys, I’ve come to understand]. And then I open the World Class Whore website.
The first few pages of the blog are just links to all the media coverage surrounding the scandal, usually accompanied by charming captions from the site owner such as: “This is what happens when you’re such a world class whore!” Even though it still stings, I’m not interested in this. I need to go back to the beginning.
I press “previous page” until I hit pay dirt. The very first post. The picture of me having sex with Zachary Vaughan on a garden bench. Caption reading: “Izzy O’Neill, slut extraordinaire, in action.” There are some tags too: #slut #whore #sex #bitch #noshame. Below are 1,704 comments.
Crap. When I first found this site, the picture only had two comments, both from anonymous users and both fairly standard iterations of what a slut I am. But 1,704? How am I supposed to sort through all of these?
I start with the top-rated comments. Trawl through dozens of posts about how nobody will ever take me seriously after this, about how I’ve ruined any hope of a career, about how I deserve to burn in hell for all of eternity because I’m having sex outside of marriage. Huh. Maybe Castillo is a prime candidate.
What I’m really looking for are replies from the owner of the WCW blog themselves, anything I can use to glean hints from, but there are surprisingly few. Just the odd “preach” or “amen!” or “God bless” when someone particularly vile says something derogatory about me. So I guess the site founder is on the religious side of things, which is not exactly a surprise, but that’s about all I’ve got.
A quick flip through Facebook shows me Vaughan got his offer from Stanford. There are 403 likes and 189 comments on his status, not one of them mentioning his dick pic. I don’t know why I’m even surprised.
I open a new tab: Twitter. I haven’t checked it once since this all kicked off, and I’m not sure I’m emotionally prepared for the inevitable deluge of hurtful slander being thrown my way. But then I think, how much worse can it possibly be? Everything horrible that could potentially be said about me has already been thrown out there in the public domain. There’s no stone left unturned. It’s been well established at this point that my lopsided boobs and I deserve the most painful of demises. So, Twitter, do your worst.
After scanning my tags, searching my name and scrolling through the feed for ten minutes or so, I’m not surprised by the insults. There really is nothing new. Not from the hundreds of politicians and right-wing journalists and religious organizations condemning me, nor from the regular people reacting to the story, nor from the school kids I genuinely believed were my friends. The tweet from deadpan queen Sharon – “Am I the only one who doesn’t see the appeal? Girl should rly lose some weight before her next nude leaks” – hurts a bit, especially after I took her under my wing and invited her to appear in our sketches, but I move on as fast as I can.
Ted Vaughan is louder than them all, vehemently posting every hour about me and his angelic son. I’m scum, I’m a whore, I have no self-respect, I’m everything that’s wrong with millennials. I’m out to destroy his son’s life, to sabotage his future career, to make him look like the bad guy when really I’m the one who has no place on this planet. Blah blah blah.
But what I am surprised by is the sheer number of people defending me. There’s support from other teen girls fighting my corner, saying I’m beautiful and unapologetic and deserve respect no matter what. From feminist organizations discussing consent and misogyny. From columnists exploring gender inequality and slut-shaming, demanding that Zachary Vaughan be held to the same level of public scrutiny for his dick pic.
For every negative comment, there’s a positive one to match.
It should feel good, but it doesn’t. It’s too much. This is all too much.
Betty is out. Ajita and Danny both hate me. Even Dumbledore is more interested in licking his own asshole than cuddling with me.
The whole world is watching me suffer. Enjoying it even. Everyone knows who I am, everyone has something to say about me. And I have never felt more alone in my life.
Saturday 8 October
8.15 a.m.
I barely slept last night because of the aggressive palpitations rippling through my chest. I think I finally dozed off at around 5 a.m., and only a few hours later I’m awoken by a knock on the front door.
Bleary-eyed, still half asleep, I strain my ears as Betty pads over and opens it.
A low voice, male, sort of familiar. Not Danny’s southern twang or Vaughan’s clipped upper-class lilt. It’s warm, gravelly, confident.
Carson.
I can’t make out what they’re saying, but Betty’s tone is pretty harsh. I hear the door bang shut again, and a few seconds later she’s perching softly on the edge of my bed. I roll over so I’m facing her, aware my eyes are probably all gloopy and gross from last night’s tears. She strokes my hair, tucking the most unruly locks behind my Dumbo ears.
“Carson’s here. He wants to talk to you.”
I groan incoherently.
“He said something about tomato soup, but I might have misheard him.”
Betty’s all hunch
ed over and sad-looking. This debacle has aged her massively, and I know she has to work today. Just another thing to add to my endless list of things to feel guilty about.
“He insists it wasn’t him. That he didn’t talk to the press. Do you believe him?” she asks quietly.
“I don’t know,” I mumble. “I’m losing faith in pretty much everyone. Even myself. Especially myself.”
“Don’t say that. Don’t you ever say that. You’re the best person I know, and I love you very much. I’ll do anything to protect you.” She kisses me on the forehead as a fresh wave of sobs cause my chest to almost cave in on itself. “I’ll tell him to go.”
“Thank you, Grandma,” I croak. “I love you too.”
10.43 a.m.
Thanks to the tomato-soup fiasco, which Carlie’s parents immediately told the press about, journalists have started making comments about my grandma’s parenting abilities, or supposed lack thereof, and Betty herself had to talk me down from heading over to the local radio station and Hulk-smashing the hosts with all my worldly rage.
As many of the most vile insults usually are, these comments are disguised as concern, like when fat-shamers preach to the obese about their health when really they’re just judgmental reptiles who don’t like to look at stretch marks lest they choke on their meal-replacement shakes. These reporters are framing their comments as concern over the social-care system and its supposed failings, in the context of how an elderly woman with such a meager income was granted custody of her orphaned grandchild, and whether or not she was emotionally equipped to raise me after going through such a trauma herself, and whether it is in fact Betty O’Neill’s fault that her granddaughter is such an indiscriminate whore.
You should add that to your résumé. “Izzy O’Neill: talented writer, below-average mathematician, indiscriminate whore.” xo
At this point I have to imagine what Ajita’s commentary would be. I think I nailed it.
Betty’s acting like the public disapproval of her parenting skills isn’t bothering her, but I know it’s getting her down. Normally she sings upbeat Motown in the shower, and though this morning’s rendition of ‘Everybody Hurts’ with improvized rap segments was beautiful yet haunting, I’m worried.
I read the shortlist email one more time. About how I have three weeks to act on the next round of feedback before they select the finalists. About how I show a lot of promise, and about how the judges are sure that a bright future in screenwriting awaits.
I still don’t care.
12.34 p.m.
Holy fuck. I know who’s behind World Class Whore. And . . . holy fuck.
The site creator made a fatal error. They set up social-media accounts for WCW and linked them all together. Then they posted the garden bench pic to the Instagram account.
And accidentally shared it to their personal Facebook account.
When I mindlessly log in while I’m eating my lunch, the first thing I see at the top of my feed is the garden bench photo, with the caption “Izzy O’Neill: World Class Whore”.
It’s on Danny’s account.
My former best friend has ruined my life, sparked a national sex scandal, made me feel like a worthless piece of shit – all because I rejected him. All because I put him in the Friend Zone.
“After everything I’ve done for you.”
He thought he’d earned the right to my love. And when I didn’t give it to him, he retaliated by tearing me apart.
I think a dark part of me always knew it was him. I believed his denial because I wanted to; because it was easier than confronting the fact my best friend had betrayed me.
No. Looking back, he never did deny it. Not once did he say, “No, I didn’t do it.” Instead he said:
“I’ve been defending your honor for thirteen years. Protecting you from jerks at school, from social workers. From yourself.”
“What are you accusing me of ?”
“I can’t believe this. I genuinely thought that when you asked to talk to me, you’d had a change of heart. About . . . us. But no. You’re actually accusing me of setting up that blog.”
“Fuck you, Izzy O’Neill.”
He never denied it. And still I turned a blind eye. Let myself believe that I really knew the guy standing in front of me. That he cared too much about me to let rejection and jealousy stand in the way of our friendship. That he had seen me cry over my dead parents for so many years, and he would never do anything to hurt me.
I should be convulsing with anger right about now. I should be ranting to Ajita, or screaming in Danny’s face, or seeking elaborate and brutal revenge on that pathetic prick. But I’m not. I don’t have the energy, or the conviction. I feel hollowed out by his betrayal.
And, beneath it all, bereft. Bereft of one of my best friends. I think of the Danny of even just last year. Funny and smart and protective and loyal. Happy. Lately, there have been glimmers of Old Danny – playing dumb games, taking Prajesh under his wing, supporting Ajita through her crisis over her future, wrapping his arm around me when I was being attacked in school – but there’s no denying it. He hasn’t been happy for a while. He hasn’t been Danny.
Maybe it’s because of me. Maybe it’s his parents. Maybe something else; something so far below the surface he’ll never let anyone close enough to see it. And yeah, that sucks. It sucks that he’s going through a hard time. But sadness is not a get-out-of-jail-free card. It doesn’t allow you to treat the people around you like human punchbags. Like they exist solely to make you happy again.
All of this is Danny’s fault. He’s become spiteful and jealous and cruel. I know that, deep down. And yet a dark part of me, the part forged in this fire of hatred, still wants to blame myself.
I loaded the gun. He just pulled the trigger.
4.09 p.m.
I decide to go over to Ajita’s and beg her to talk to me. Can you feel homesick for a person? I have a constant pit of guilt and sadness in my gut. I need her. It’s selfish, but I need her. I need her to not hate me anymore. There’s no way I can survive this otherwise.
I arrive at her house on my rickety old bike, and it takes me a good ten minutes to pluck up the courage to walk up the drive and ring the bell. [What a boring sentence. Where has my sense of humor gone in these blog posts? Maybe Ajita was my sense of humor, like that Samson dude who cut off his hair and lost his super strength. Maybe I’m just not funny without her. I certainly don’t feel it. Here, have an Izzy O’Neill original joke: Did you hear about the time Shakespeare used IEDs against his literary rivals? They were completely bomb-Barded. Ha. Ha ha. No, Ajita was definitely my comedic lifeblood.]
Her mom answers the door, dressed for celebration in a red sari. She doesn’t say anything, just looks at me sternly. She is absolutely terrifying. She’s short, as short as Ajita, and incredibly round. Knowing how intelligent she is just adds to the stress. I’m intimidated both physically and mentally.
“Hi, Mrs Dutta,” I choke out, through the driest of throats.
“Izzy. What do you want?” The house is weirdly silent behind her. Usually there’s so much going on, with Ajita’s brother playing super-loud video games and their five cats running around and knocking things over and generally wreaking havoc on the Dutta household. But today it’s like a cemetery.
“Is Ajita home?”
“No. She’s not.”
I don’t buy this for a second. “Okay. Do you know where I might find her?”
Mrs Dutta sighs and takes off her glasses, rubbing her eyes wearily. She looks tired as hell. “I’m not sure my daughter wants to see you, Izzy. Not after the lies you’ve been spreading about her.”
Lies. So Ajita denied it to her parents, whether or not it’s true – which I still don’t know for sure. It makes sense. They’re hugely traditional, hugely conservative Hindus. I doubt her coming out at the age of seventeen would go down all that well. [Look, I even managed to resist a joke about people who do go down well. I am a reformed human. Sort of.]
>
“Please. I just want to explain. To apologize. Please, Mrs Dutta.”
“What is there to explain? Was it just an attempt to shift the attention off yourself for a minute? Is that it?” A heavy sigh. “Do you really think our community has been blind to your antics, Izzy? Do you really think . . .” She trails off. Her words are harsh but her tone is soft as she holds up her palms. “But it’s not my place to judge. You can do what you like. It’s your life to ruin. Just don’t involve my daughter, okay?”
My heart is shattering into a thousand pieces. “Please,” I whisper, more desperate by the second. “Let me talk to her. Five minutes is all I ask.”
A strange expression flits across her face. I think it’s pity, and I hate it.
“My heart goes out to you, Izzy. It does. You’re just a kid, and you’ve been through a lot. Losing your parents at such a young age . . . I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. But it only excuses so much. And this? This is inexcusable.”
I’m about to get down on my hands and knees and beg when I hear babbling voices behind me. A millisecond of fear flashes on Mrs Dutta’s face before a giant fake smile emerges, I’m guessing for the benefit of whoever’s behind me on the driveway.
Turning to see who she’s smiling at, I see a group of Hindu women, around Ajita’s mom’s age, dressed in beautiful saris of turquoise and violet and peach. I wrack my brain for the date. Is it Navratri? Diwali? They’re both in the autumn, but I’m not sure which days the festivals fall on this year.
God, I’m such a shit friend. I should know this, but I’ve been so self-involved lately I’ve barely been able to look past my own reflection. No wonder Ajita hates me.
Hissing through her teeth, Mrs Dutta mutters, “Go. Now.”
I bite my lip to prevent a heaving sob from escaping, and I back away toward the women. They all stare right at me, silence falling on the small group. One of them, wearing a gorgeous sari of cerulean and seafoam, shakes her head and tsks.