Twenty-Two

Winnie

I bound down the stairs, feeling like I didn’t sleep at all. I must have repeated Trey’s words a hundred times in my head. Each time I love you came out, it felt better than the time before. I’ve never felt closer to Trey, and even though we can’t show each other exactly how we feel yet, I know that, with time, we’ll get there. We’ll take the next step and every step after that—together.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” he always tells me.

But how can I not? We’re so close. In a couple of weeks, I’ll have a birthday—the birthday.

After I turn eighteen, I haven’t decided if I’ll stay at Sunshine Place until I graduate or if I’ll move in with Trey. Chances are, he won’t want me to move until I have a diploma, and we’re free to go wherever we want. Besides, I’m smart enough to realize that, after the chaos at the trailer last night, staying with Doug and Cindy is safer than the trailer park.

“Winnie, aren’t you having breakfast?” Cindy yells from the living room when she catches me running toward the foyer.

“Not hungry. See you later,” I yell over my shoulder.

I couldn’t eat if I tried. With all the nervous energy in my system, a long walk is the only thing that’ll calm me down before school. Because, once I get there, I’ll be forced to sit still for hours, pretending like I care about what happens between the hours of eight and three. I should care, but my real life exists once the final bell rings, and I’m free again. Well, as free as Sunshine Place lets me be.

But, when I walk through the lobby doors, like I do every day of the week, I’m reminded of how much I hate school. A hundred pairs of eyes examine me like a specimen under a microscope in the chem lab.

Their looks aren’t full of pity or curiosity, like after I got shot. This time, they’re assigning me a new title, a sentence to add to the list of infractions I keep getting judged for. I’m not sure how I earned my new status, but I thought the worst was over.

The more Dray spoke to me in class, the easier it was to blend in. Most days, I didn’t even have to try to keep my head down. Nobody cared what I did anymore, and I thought that, with a little more time, I could fit in, maybe even consider myself to be off the daily drama radar.

Today is proof of how wrong I was to let my guard down. The comfort I got used to disappears, and I’m back to being a freak. Whispers turn into pointing, and then laughter erupts when my bottom lip quivers. Crying only makes their hate worse, so I bite my lip and press down with my teeth. If I make it hurt enough, I’ll think about cutting instead of breaking down into tears.

Each step I take, not one person looks away. Nobody takes a step forward to disagree with the crowd. They just stand as a unit and gawk at me. It gets so bad, I bypass my locker and walk into first period without so much as a piece of notebook paper. All I have in my book bag are two books for my classes after lunch and a pack of gum.

Someone left a condom, still in the wrapper, on my chair, and I kick it onto the floor before I sit down. Dray files down the row after me and steps over it, barely blinking. Any other day, that would have gotten a rousing reaction out of him, but today, he’s silent. He doesn’t make eye contact, and when I turn around to talk to him, he still won’t look at me.

“Are you mad I didn’t ride the bus?” I ask him.

“No,” he says.

He’s suddenly too focused on digging around in his bag, and he’s probably hoping I take the hint and leave him alone. I’d expect that coldness from any other person in the room but not Dray. He’s good to me. We live under the same roof and got called into the office for sex we didn’t have, and this is the best he can do when I really need him.

“What’s going on, Dray?”

“I don’t know.”

The lie hurts more than a punch to the face ever could. I wish he had hit me. At least then, I’d have a place to direct the pain. Because, right now, my heart’s almost filled to the brim with agony.

Dray knows everything that goes on in this school, no matter what grade or wing of the building the drama unfolds. He’s well aware that my partially rebuilt reputation was shattered this morning. And, apparently, he doesn’t care.

My chest tightens as the morning announcements filter through the loudspeaker. The chatter around me dies down, but the stares continue to tear my soul wide open. It’s like everyone can see inside me, and all my deepest, darkest secrets are pouring out of my body. My thigh wants to bleed from the exposure.

What did I do?

A note falls out of thin air and onto my desk. I’m too afraid to turn around to see who threw it, but I pick it up, and with shaky hands, I unfold the paper.

Slut is written in purple ink.

Dray must read it over my shoulder because I hear him exhale, and then my desk shakes. His knee is bouncing like it always does when he’s too full of nervous energy. When I found him on his bed the night he was upset, his foot was doing the same thing as it dangled off the end of the bed. Dray’s wound up.

Just as I crumple up the paper, another note lands on the desk. I shouldn’t read it, but I can’t help myself. If they’re going to talk, I need the full story. I need their words to burn so that, when I lock myself in the bathroom later, I’ll remember them with each cut, chasing them from my mind with each drop of blood.

Whore.

Easy.

Tramp.

Paper after paper, I read the words they believe that I am.

Finally, the shaking behind me stops, and Dray’s still.

“Enough!” he yells. “No more.”

The teacher looks up from his desk, but Dray’s as much of a king in class as he is around campus. Mr. Jones doesn’t say a word about his outburst because all of our teachers love him, too.

My red face goes unnoticed by Mr. Jones, and that only makes the heat spread across my cheeks faster. Nobody cares about Winnie Dawes. Not even Dray, who decided to stick up for me about an hour too late.

I don’t wait for another insult to take flight and land on my desk. My body goes through its own battle between staying and going, and then, like always, running wins. It’s the only defense mechanism that ever survives besides the cutting. Since I can’t do that here, I grab my bag, toss it over my shoulder, and disappear like they want me to.

Muffled snickers and a couple of whistles follow me into the hallway. Eventually, the silence feeds some air back into my lungs, and I take the deepest breath I can, just in case another one doesn’t follow.

“Winnie, wait!”

Any other day, Dray’s voice would comfort me. He’d stop me from running, and he’d talk me into going back to class with just a smile or a joke. But he’s not my friend anymore. Like all the other hopes and dreams in my life, I have to let him go.

Out of a graduating class of approximately three hundred students, two people were on my side. The odds of having a good day really weren’t in my favor, yet I was having them. For once in my life, I didn’t completely dread waking up for school.

As a senior, I ate my first meal in the cafeteria instead of locked inside a graffiti-filled restroom stall or on a bench in a locker room, surrounded by smelly gym uniforms. Dray gave that to me. The good grace of one popular kid was all it took to end the loneliness of a school day.

But Dray’s gone. He’s back to being Alex, and he’s teamed up with the two hundred ninety-eight other students who either treat me like shit or don’t care that their stares and whispers hurt.

“Winnie, stop!” he yells again.

Outside of the classroom, I don’t have to listen to anybody. His word isn’t golden anymore, but he still catches me before I make it outside.

Tugging on my arm, he forces me to a stop. “You can’t leave school, Winnie.”

“Watch me,” I tell him. “Don’t act like you care, Dray. I’m not going back in there, and nothing you say will change my mind.”

“You have to go back. Just stay in the building. Don’t be stupid and walk out the door. You never cared what anyone said about you before.”

That’s how good of an actress I must be. So good, I never realized I was even acting. If Dray was paying attention, he’d have seen just how much I cared, how every word spoken against me ate me alive. My self-worth was stripped away until I was bare. Day after day, I walked around these halls, naked. No confidence. Zero dignity. And a whole lot of shame.

“You think this is me being stupid? The pieces of paper spelled it out. Mr. Jones has enough paper in that classroom to keep the notes flowing for hours, probably days. Was I supposed to sit there and take it? Keep reading until they ran out of colorful words to label me with?”

“I told them to stop, Winnie.”

“Oh, so you finally spoke up, and all is right with the world again. I’m just supposed to forget about how they treated me because you told them to knock it off?”

“No.”

“Exactly. I could get into trouble for this. I’m underage. All they have to do is connect a few dots, and my world blows up.”

His usual tan skin becomes eerily pale. I’m the one being crucified, yet he’s the one who looks like he’s about to pass out. Then, it all makes sense.

“It was you. I can’t believe you told them.”

“Winnie, I swear on my life, I didn’t say a word. I’d never get you in trouble. We’re both under a microscope in the foster system.”

I don’t believe him. Not even for a second. It’s too much of a coincidence. I asked Dray to cover for me and filled him in on a little bit about my life, and then he showed me his true colors by turning the whole school against me.

“I guess you had the right idea, Dray. Find someone with bigger problems, so it’s easier to keep your own life a secret. Because, if they’re occupied with me, they’ll leave you alone.”

“You have it all wrong,” he says. His tone is sincere, yet it doesn’t mean a thing.

There might have been a time when Dray was on my side, but Alex, he’s always been like everyone else. I’ve finally reached the point I can see it for myself, and if I don’t get away from this school and all these fake people, I’ll completely crack. This time, I won’t have it in me to put the pieces back together. I’m done trying.

“Why didn’t you try to stop them then?”

“I’ll go back in there right now and stop Mr. Jones in the middle of his boring-ass lecture. I’ll tell them all to apologize.”

“That would only make it worse.”

Too little, too late.

“What happened to Jasper?” Dray asks as he looks over my shoulder.

I turn around and see Jasper’s black eye and his arm that’s in a sling. My heart sinks to the floor as he walks toward me.

“What happened, Jasper?”

He glances at Dray, and the second they make eye contact, Jasper shrinks a couple of inches. His posture changes, and his shoulders slump even further. I don’t know why, but Dray gives him a look so evil, Jasper keeps moving, entirely ignoring me.

I try to follow him, but Dray grabs my arm and says, “Stay away from him, Winnie.”

“He’s my best friend. And he’s hurt.”

Dray pulls me into the boys’ restroom. “There’s something I need to tell you,” he says.

“Say it fast because I need to find Jasper.”

Once he knows I’m not going to run, Dray lets go of me, and his eyes become so intense, I take a step backward. Putting an extra couple of inches in between us might lessen the impact his words are about to have. Or so I hope because nothing could ever prepare me for what comes out of his mouth next.

“I wasn’t sure until just now, but I think Jasper’s responsible for the rumor about you. Someone sent out a mass text last night, and it spread like wildfire around the senior class. Some of the juniors even got it. I wanted to tell you last night when I got it, but I didn’t know how. You were in such a good mood at dinner. I didn’t want to ruin it.”

Correction, two hundred ninety-nine students hate my guts.

With only one person left on my side, I look at him and say, “Show me the text.”

Dray hesitates. He closes his eyes, and then he digs into his front pocket and pulls out his cell phone. A quick swipe across the screen and then a passcode later, and Jasper’s text seeps into my brain.

Winnie Dawes is a dirty slut. She’s such a whore that she’s too filthy for the trailer park.

My best friend—the guy who picked me up each time I fell and who showed me that rock bottom was nothing more than a pit stop, not a final destination—has betrayed me. One text does more damage than I could ever do with a blade.

Bile rises up the back of my throat, and no matter how many times I swallow, the heat won’t stay down. I cover my mouth with my hand and run outside onto the lawn, heaving into the perfectly manicured bushes that spell out the school’s mascot—a wolverine. I’m hunted by the wolves every day of my life.

The saying is true; the strength of the wolf is the pack. Jasper’s the wolf, and his pack stands at the classroom windows, watching as I hunch over and empty my stomach. Thank God I skipped breakfast, or this would be even more humiliating.

One of the office staff must have alerted the counselors because there’s a hand on my back, rubbing little circles that are supposed to be comforting. If this woman knew me at all, she’d know I didn’t like to be touched. I tell her that as soon as I stand up, and she seems appalled by my tone.

“Let’s go inside and talk,” she says.

I go back inside to grab my bag, and then I turn around and walk right back out the doors, ignoring her pleas to come back inside. If I don’t leave right now, I’ll end up in the restroom with the sharpest thing I can find in my hand.

Counselors should understand space and boundaries and teenagers in general. But this one doesn’t have any common sense. She just runs after me, spouting off a million ways we can make this better. There isn’t a single way to make this not hurt. Nothing will take away the pain Jasper inflicted. Absolutely nothing. Razors don’t fix broken hearts. I’ve tried.

“Winnie, the person who sent the text will be found, and appropriate actions will be taken. It was sent outside of school grounds and hours, so there’s only so much we can do, but we’re aware of the situation, and I promise we’ll get to the bottom of the accusations.”

“Don’t bother,” I tell her. “I’m not a situation, and Jasper’s not wrong. I’m all the things he said I am.”

All the men who snuck into my room told me I was a slut. They talked to me like I couldn’t hear them and made me their prize. One touch was so rewarding, they needed more—until I was theirs, and they were mine.

The future can’t wash away the past, no matter how hard you try to scrub away the memories. I am who I am. I’m Winnie Dawes, trailer trash.

She says my name over and over, begging me to go to her office so that we can talk. I’m done talking, and I walk out of school without a note or a parent to pick me up.

I’m sure she’ll call Cindy and Doug and tell them what’s going on, but that does nothing to change my decision. They won’t want me anymore. Cindy said one more strike, and I was gone. Everyone gives up on me, even when it’s not my fault. Bad Karma follows me around like a cloud on a rainy day, pouring buckets of shame over my head. They took me in when I stopped believing a better life existed, and since I’ve lived with them, I’ve done little to show them that I’m capable of getting my shit together. They met me when I was shot, lying in a hospital bed, wondering if it would have been better if I hadn’t woken up.

I should have died in the parking lot.

The universe got it wrong when it sent me back, and now, it’s my time to set things straight.

A quick text to Trey, and my suspicious are confirmed. Jasper’s responsible for breaking the trailer windows. And Trey’s the one who gave him the black eye and the broken arm.

Jasper must have followed me to Trey’s again and got jealous that we were inside together. Only this time, he didn’t kiss a girl in a coffee shop to feel better about himself. He retaliated by smashing windows and destroying Trey’s property. He had to know Trey would catch him, but in his twisted thoughts, he probably thought that hurting Trey would hurt me just as bad. And he’s right. Because, if anything were to happen to Trey, I’d end it all today and go along with him to heaven. He’s the only reason I wake up in the mornings, the only reason I have left to get out of bed.

Jasper made his own bed though. If Trey finds out about the text he sent around school, his injuries won’t matter anymore. He won’t know what pain is anymore because Trey will kill him.

All the more reason I’m finished with school and this town. Diploma or not, today is my last day of high school. I’m going back to Sunshine Place, packing my things, and running away with Trey.

I can’t do this anymore.