Girls with Razor Hearts

I reach to twist a lock of hair around my finger, smiling. “Good girl, remember?”

Jonah laughs and takes a sloppy sip from his cup. “Yeah, all right. I like it,” he says. “Anyway, fucking Garrett. Last semester he locked himself in the art room closet with Bernice. It was wild,” Jonah says. “I mean, he didn’t even touch her, but I thought she was going to stab out his eyes.”

Maybe she should have.

“And he doesn’t get in trouble?” I ask, pretending to sound fascinated.

“For what?” Jonah asks. “I just said he didn’t touch her.”

I don’t know, how about false imprisonment? A number of other harassment charges?

Jonah licks his lips before his mouth turns up in a grin. “Not you, though,” he says. “I heard you broke a lunch tray over his head. What did he do? Hand up your skirt?”

I physically recoil from the suggestion, and Jonah laughs an apology.

“No,” I say. “It wasn’t me. He was pretending that Adrian was …” I know I have to stop being so formal, but I’m truly not sure how to word this. “That she was jerking him off,” I say quickly, internally cringing. “She was crying. It was traumatic.”

But Jonah scoffs.

“Crying? What a baby,” he says. He uses his cup to point at me. “We need more girls like you,” he says. “Ones who like to fight a little. You can hold your own, Mena. What made you so brave?”

Dealing with men like you.

The wind blows my hair across my face, sticking it to my lip gloss. I peel it away.

“I’m not sure how I got this way,” I say sweetly. But I might have a guess.

Jonah stares at me like he’s trying to figure me out. Between us, my phone begins buzzing again.

“Should you get that?” he asks dreamily. He leans noticeably closer.

“It can wait,” I say. I pretend to feel something crawling on my leg and use it as an excuse to move back a few inches. Jonah trails me with his eyes.

“Why aren’t you dating anyone?” he asks. I don’t want to stray into this conversation, I need him to stay focused.

“Do the other boys act like Garrett?” I ask. “Locking girls in rooms?”

He stares at me a moment, seeming confused. He takes a drink. “No. I’ve never had to lock a girl in a room to have sex with me, if that’s what you’re implying.”

“I’m sure you haven’t,” I say. “It just seems …” I search for the right way to phrase this. “It seems that at least Garrett does this a lot. I wondered if I should watch out for others.”

“Stick with me and you won’t have to,” he replies. He’s growing tense, possessive.

“I’m thinking about my friends,” I say. “Who they should look out for?”

“I don’t know what you’re really asking,” he says. “But none of us do anything that they didn’t beg for first. The girls at school? They beg.”

I hate him. It comes so clearly to me. I hate him and everything he stands for. The sense of entitlement, privilege. That girls being afraid of his reaction is the same as consent. Jonah thinks he deserves girls. That they’re his possessions.

And I understand why the men of Innovations created us. It’s not just about the needs of guys like Jonah. They fill the desires of men who don’t have youth or looks or popularity, to give them the access that Jonah has. Through Innovations, they can buy it. They can buy us.

“And after you give those girls … what they begged for?” I ask.

Jonah sips from his cup before crushing it and tossing it off the roof into the yard. “Well, after that they’re sluts and I’m not interested,” he says. “But you … You seem fun. You might be able to hold my attention for more than three seconds.”

It’s a telling statement, and I debate infuriating him to make him spill details. But his irritation with the topic is making his cheeks glow red, splotches appearing on his neck.

“Why are you asking so many questions?” Jonah says. “Marsh already told us to leave you alone, so I don’t know if you’ve got something going on with him, but—”

“Mr. Marsh did what?” I ask, surprised.

Jonah pauses. “Yeah, the history teacher is suddenly Mr. Fucking Proper. Told us to leave you alone or he’d file a report. I told him I’d have his job if he ever talked to me like that again. So if you’re—”

“I don’t have any kind of relationship with Mr. Marsh,” I say, cutting him off.

Mr. Marsh had allowed the harassment by not saying anything, but it seems that he’s finally standing up to the boys at school. He’s finally doing the right thing.

“Then what is this?” Jonah asks, motioning between us. “Do you want to hook up or not?”

And I realize that if Mr. Marsh is willing to report the boys, if he’s willing to stand up to them, we don’t need undercover recordings and anonymous posts. What we need is for good people to stand up against bad people—simple really. But in this society, they never put the burden on men to be the good people in this scenario. Maybe Marsh is willing to change that. I need to call the girls and talk to them.

“No,” I tell Jonah, getting to my feet. “We are definitely not hooking up.” I teeter slightly on the slanted roof but hold out my arms to find my balance.

“Wait, what?” Jonah asks, a sudden darkness in his voice that sends goosebumps over my skin. When I look back at him, I can see his hurt ego. His anger.

Next to him, my phone buzzes again in my purse. When I start toward it, he grabs it and holds it out of my reach on the other side of him.

“Give me my purse,” I say, annoyed, but also worried.

“Who the hell has been calling?” he demands. He begins to go through my purse, tossing items that are in the way as he tries to get to my phone. My eyes widen and I rush over, my shoes slipping on the tile and sending me hip-first onto the roof, the rough material scraping my thigh. Jonah chuckles.

He takes out my phone and then tosses my purse over the edge. He freezes, staring at my phone for a moment before turning to me in silence. His eyes are raging. On the screen, the red button shows that it’s recording.

“Jonah,” I say, as a way of explaining. He quickly turns off the recording and then cocks back his arm and throws my phone over the side of the house as hard as he can. There’s a rustle of bushes across the yard.

I’m scared. I step back from him as he gets to his feet. I quickly turn and rush for the window. I barely get one foot inside before he wraps his arm around my waist, yanking me back. We both lose our balance and crash onto the roof tiles.

I roll a few times, but right myself before tumbling off the side. Jonah pulls himself to his full height, blocking my path to the window.

“You were trying to get me to confess?” he demands. “To tell on my friends?”

There’s no use in pretending anymore. I lose all pretense of flirtation or nicety.

“We saw the posts online,” I tell him. “The bragging. Tomorrow, it’ll be in the papers. You’ve terrorized girls, but you’re not going to get away with it anymore.”