1.35 p.m.
Today some delightful human has printed off and photocopied hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of my nudes and stacked them in neat piles all over campus like some sort of visitor information leaflet. They’re all grainy and grayscale, but the quality of the printing is not the issue here. The issue is that everywhere I look the photo is tucked into ringbinders and journals and shirt pockets and uuurgggghhhhhhh.
As I walk down the gap between benches in the cafeteria, several gorilla boys from the soccer team fling paper airplanes made from the nude printouts at me. Ajita bats them out of the way with her palm like she’s merely swatting flies. One stabs me in the elephant ear. Everyone laughs.
But Ajita just sits me down at our usual table, sweeps away a fleet of origami boats also made from the photocopies, and launches into a monologue about the livelihood of barley farmers in Ethiopia. I mean, I wasn’t really listening, so it might not have been about that, but let’s give her the benefit of the doubt.
At this point I am so ridiculously grateful for Ajita Dutta. If it weren’t for her I’d definitely be spending my lunchtimes holed up in a toilet cubicle, or hiding up a tree trying desperately to avoid branch-swinging Tarzan wannabes practising their muscle-ups.
Still, I can’t bring myself to ask her about Carlie. It’s sheer cowardice really, but I don’t trust myself to broach the subject without upsetting her. Because in reality she doesn’t know I found that bikini pic on her laptop, and she maybe isn’t aware of the blatant attraction floating between her and the red-headed goddess whenever they’re together. I don’t want to burst her bubble and force her to confront something she might not be ready to confront just yet.
I wish I was better at this stuff. I can crack jokes and tell stories and make my best friend laugh until the cows come home, but I seem to be missing that innate ability to emotionally support someone through something tough. I really need to work on this, because it’s not okay. Is there some sort of course I can take? A diploma in being a certified good pal? Remind me to look into it.
4.47 p.m.
Unbelievable. Danny has bought me another gift to apologize for freaking out over the destruction of his previous gift – the tulips – which were also an apology in themselves. I just want to scream at him, “I don’t need gifts! I just need you to stop being a Grade-A bucket of dicks!” but I don’t think that would go down very well. Preserving his trademark Nice Guy image is very important to him.
Anyway, as we’re all walking home together after school – lamenting the bitterly cold wind – he makes the following announcement: “So . . . what are you guys doing on the first weekend in December? Oh, I know! You’re going to see Coldplay live at the arena!”
Oh, wonderful. My inner cynic suspects he probably just wants to sing along to “Fix You” while crying and staring poignantly at me.
Ajita squeals and throws her arms around him. “Danny! That’s so awesome. Thank you! I can’t even think of anything horrible or sarcastic to say right now.”
I attempt to muster some gratitude and deliver a well-intended-but-somewhat-lackluster high five. Lackluster due to my emotional exhaustion and general wariness toward the behavior of Mr Wells, which almost seems to have some kind of ulterior motive.
He purses his lips, clearly put out by my lack of enthusiasm. In his defense, they must have set him back a buck or two of his parents’ cash since it’s been sold out for months.
Again, it kind of rubs me the wrong way, this pattern that’s emerging. It feels like every time he wants me to feel a certain way about him, he throws money at the situation. Milkshakes, Harry Potter merch, tulips, Ferrero Rocher, gig tickets. Almost as if he thinks he can buy my love.
“I wanted to show you how great it could be. If we were together.”
Maybe I’m overreacting. The Coldplay tickets are quite sweet, I suppose. Danny knows Ajita and I love them, and despite the fact he himself is too hipster to allow himself to enjoy their “overrated drivel”, he’s a big enough person to swallow his own taste in pretentious hipster music and attend the concert with us. He is trying to be a good friend at least. In his own way.
I just can’t figure him out at the moment. One minute he’s looking after Ajita and Prajesh like they’re his own family, and the next he’s treating his actual family like dirt. There must be some serious shit going down chez Wells; even worse than the affair, if that’s possible. The thought alone makes me feel bad enough to overlook his weird behavior.
Plus, things are crappy enough in my life right now. And I have the option to forgive Danny’s relentless stream of weapons-grade douchebaggery, and try to rebuild our fractured friendship. All I want is for things to go back to normal, and this seems as good a place to start as any.
So I say thank you and hug him too.
6.58 p.m.
We’ve been playing ping-pong in Ajita’s basement for around eleven minutes, deftly avoiding the nude elephant in the room, when my phone vibrates. Message.
Since I’m in the throes of a heated tiebreak with Ajita, Danny inexplicably picks it up and reads before I can even stop him. “It’s from Carson,” he says flatly. “He wants to see you.”
Shit! I forgot to reply to Carson’s last text!
Shit! Why did Danny read it?
“Oh. Right,” I respond, carefully avoiding Danny’s stare. He wants to gauge my reaction, obviously, and I want to deprive him of that luxury. I pick up the ball to serve, facial expression set to intense mode as though winning this match means more to me than anything in the entire world, even awesome basketball-playing boys who look like movie stars and make me laugh and don’t judge me for screwing up.
“Bow chicka wow wow!” Ajita adds helpfully, despite the fact I’ve told her twice a day for half a decade that nobody says that anymore. “Manning wants round two. Who could blame him?”
I try to serve, but miss the table entirely. The score’s now 22–22.
At Ajita’s comment, Danny goes bright red, hurls my phone at the couch, shoves his feet into his beat-up sneakers and mutters something about seeing us later, which I silently pray does not come to fruition. Within three seconds he’s gone.
For God’s sake. Just when I was ready to move past this confusing episode of unrequited love and emotional manipulation.
I’m so stunned at his departure I allow Ajita to ace me. 22–23. “What. The. Actual. Hell?”
She shakes her head. “I get it. The guy’s hopelessly in love with you. And he knows he’s taken up permanent residence in the Friend Zone.”
“Oh, right,” I snap. “And because he’s spent enough money and inserted enough friendship tokens, the offer of sex and/or marriage should just fall out anytime now?”
Sighing, she bounces the ball up and down, waiting for me to regain sporting composure. “I know. It’s male-entitlement bullshit.”
“But?”
“Still can’t be nice reading that message.”
“Oh yes. Poor Danny. He is absolutely the one we should feel sorry for in this scenario. Did I ask him to read it? No. I know I’m sadistic at times, but masochistic I am not. And this hurts me as much as it does him.”
“Does it really?” she asks pointedly.
“Really what?”
“Hurt you.” She lays her bat down on the table, perceptively realizing I shall not be calming down anytime soon, and takes a swig of cream soda. “You seem to be taking all of this in your stride. The website, the nudes, the whispers in the hallway. Vaughan. Danny. I know you’re a tough cookie, and you’d rather impale yourself on a garden rake than ask for help or show emotion of any kind, but you’re allowed to freak out, you know?”
I’m not taking it in my stride! I want to scream. It’s absolutely killing me! But I’m incapable of showing vulnerability and asking for help because I am a TRAGIC ORPHAN WHO USES HUMOR AS A COPING MECHANISM!!!
Instead I say: “Have you ever considered a career in the counseling profession? That garden rake image in particular is very vivid.”
She sighs. “You know what I mean. You don’t have to be unflappable all the time. And you’re allowed to ask for help.”
I do appreciate her trying to talk to me semi-sensibly for once, but honestly, I am just so filled with wrath at Danny’s self-pitying martyrdom that I just cannot face it. And also I know she’s probably dealing with her own stuff. Figuring out her sexuality and such. So it doesn’t seem fair to offload on her.
I smirk. “Can we talk about something else, like how you pissed yourself yesterday?”
Another episode of Scrubs starts in the background, with that irritatingly catchy theme tune: “But I can’t do this all on my own, no, I know, I’m no Superman.” Or whatever.
Obviously Ajita has no self-control and cannot help herself. “You are no Superman, Izzy. And you can’t do it all on your own.”
Like I say, I’m not in the mood, so I nip this conversation in the bud. “Good talk, coach.”
She finally gives up. I feel kind of bad because I know how painful she finds trying to be a decent human being, but what can I even say? That all of this is like some kind of night terror, and I’ve woken up paralyzed and can’t do anything but sit and watch?
8.21 p.m.
I head down to the outdoor basketball courts after eating five portions of Betty’s iconic mac and cheese. Don’t tell her I told you, but the secret is she crushes up salt and vinegar chips and mixes the crumbs with the grated cheese topping to make a crunchy crust thing that is basically better than sex, and I should know, because I have had a lot of both.
Because the universe clearly felt bad for leaving me in this cesspool of a situation, Carson is at the courts alone, shooting hoops. Shirtless. Seriously, what have I done to deserve this good karma? Absolutely nothing, that’s what.
It’s still light outside, but the sky has that kind of late-summer dusty quality, with tiny flies and a slight haze hanging in the air.
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.”