Keanna

 

“Don’t worry, none of us believe any of that shit,” Jett says, as he reads a text from one of the guys. Their words mean nothing to me. I am already worried and I haven’t seen what’s going on yet.

“Would you please tell me what the hell is going on?”

Jett turns to me, his eyes slowly meeting mine. “It’s nothing, babe. Someone just decided to talk trash about you online.”

I groan. “What is it this time?”

“It’s nothing.”

I hold out my hand. “I want to see it.”

With a pained frown, Jett hands me his phone. Someone has sent him a link to a Twitter post. I click it, and the Twitter app opens to a very long thread. I see my name, and my heart pounds as I scroll up to the start of the long post that’s bashing me.

And then I start reading, and my entire life flashes before my eyes. Not the good life I have now, with family and a little brother and a great boyfriend. My old life. The life that almost broke me.

We were in Phoenix. My biological mom, Dawn, and me. It was the longest we’d lived in one place in a long time, and I was starting to feel settled down in my school. It was freshman year. I had a couple of friends who would sit with me at lunch. One day they invited me over for a party, and I was eager to go. I’d worn my best jeans and shirt, which wasn’t saying much, and stole some of my mom’s makeup in an attempt to look prettier. Then I walked the fifteen blocks to the girl’s house. I remember her name was Mindy, and she was really popular despite living in a run down trailer. Where I came from, all the popular people were rich, but not in this case. Mindy was pretty and outgoing and a lot of fun. Later, I’d realize that her popularity stemmed from the fact that she’d sleep with any guy who wanted it, but at the time I had no idea. I was just happy to be included. I was out at a party with lots of people, drinking free beer, and trying to enjoy myself, and it was a lot better than sitting at home where we didn’t have a TV or internet or anything fun.

Mindy bumped into me with her shoulder. “I see you staring at him,” she’d said, making flirty eyes at me.

I probably turned beet red as I shook my head and said I wasn’t staring at anyone. But she knew I was lying. “His name is JJ,” she said, nudging me with her cup of beer. “Go say hi.”

I did. I don’t know why, but I did.

JJ was tall, older, and cute in this rugged bad boy way. I’d only been watching him because he was sitting alone on a couch and looked just as bored as I was. But with Mindy’s encouragement, I walked right up to him and sat down on the other side of the couch.

“Hello,” I said meekly when he looked at me.

“Yo,” he said back.

And that was that, for about ten minutes. Then Mindy sauntered over and sat herself between us, throwing an arm around both of our shoulders. “JJ, this is Keanna. She has a crush on you,” she’d said entirely too loudly. I wanted to drop dead of mortification, but JJ just looked at me like he’d suddenly seen me in a new light. “Cool,” he said with a nod and a sly grin in my direction.

“My work here is done,” Mindy said, just before hopping up and disappearing into the crowd.

“So how do you know Mindy?” JJ asked me.

“We go to school together,” I said.

He slid a little closer and kept up the conversation. We talked for a few minutes about nothing in particular, and my heart was pounding a mile a minute.

“You want to find somewhere more quiet to talk?” he said.

And I remember it very clearly because he said to talk. Not anything else. Talk. I was a total idiot back then and assumed that what he said was what he’d meant. I said yes. He stood up and took my hand and I was so excited that I guy was holding my hand that I let him lead me down the hallway and into a tiny bedroom at the end of the house. He closed the door behind us and then twisted the lock, securing us from the outside world. My stomach flipped.

Then his arms were all over me, pawing at me like some rabid beast. His tongue was hot and tasted gross as it shoved in my mouth. I froze for a second, not knowing what to do. I’ll admit, part of me kind of wanted to make out a little, just to know what it was like. He was cute, after all, and he clearly liked me. But then he got too handsy, and he reeked of alcohol, and I panicked.

“I want to take things slow!” I said, my words rushed and panicked and stupidly shaking from my fear.

He jumped back as if I’d electrocuted him. Then he chuckled and ran a hand through his hair. “Baby girl, I don’t take things slow. I think you got the wrong idea here.”

“What do you mean?” I stuttered out.

He laughed, a cruel sound that made me feel very small. “I don’t want to date you. You’re Mindy’s friend, which means you’re just good for a hookup.”

Those words stayed with me for months. Even after Dawn uprooted us again and we moved to anther town, I still thought about it all the time. I wasn’t the kind of girl worthy of a relationship. I was just a hookup. A loser. Not girlfriend material.

But that wasn’t the worst part. Just two weeks after the party, I’d come home from school to find my mom hooking up with a guy on the couch.

“Dammit!” she cursed when I walked into the room. “You’re not supposed to be home yet!”

I just ran into my bedroom and closed the door to give her privacy with her guest, and didn’t bother telling her that this was the exact time I got home from school every day. I’d only seen them for a fraction of a second, but it was all I needed.

My mom was hooking up with JJ. And he saw me too.

Shame falls over me as I scroll through these tweets, disregarding Jett’s plea for me to just ignore it.

Some girl is tweeting the whole story, but she’s embellishing it a lot.

Let me tell you something about Jett Adam’s girlfriend, she begins in the first tweet. I happened to meet one of her old boyfriends, and he had something to say about her. Not only is she a big slut, her mother is, too.

It only gets worse from there. The tweets say that I had been sleeping with JJ, and all of his friends, for weeks. And that my mom also slept with them. I’m called every bad name in the book, and then my reputation is dragged as far down as it can go.

She was begging for any guy to sleep with her, the tweets continue. And after I asked around online, I got many people to confirm this.

“This is all a lie,” I tell Jett, tears filling my eyes. “You know this is a lie, right? I never slept with anyone!”

Jett’s lips are pressed into a frown. “I know, baby. No one believes that shit. It’s probably just some fan who is obsessed with me. Please don’t read any more of it.”

Tears pour down my cheeks. I click on the tiny picture of the person who posted all these tweets and look at her profile. Her name is Tawny, and she lives in Dallas. I zoom in on her picture, and realize that this is all my fault. It’s the girl from the steakhouse. The one I called a slut.

Looks like I didn’t have the final word, after all.