Broken Pretty Things by Amber Faye

Chapter 22

Sophomore year…

It spreadaround the school like wildfire. But in this version of the story, not only did I have bad sex with Dom, I also threw myself at him all night before he graced me with his dick. I begged. Apparently I all but threw a tantrum. And then I sucked at it all, every step of the way, just to ice that terrible cake.

The gossip, the laughter, hurt my confidence a lot. “Slut,” someone barks at me as I’m opening my locker, and I jump. The boys laugh as they pass by, one cupping his hands around his mouth. “I got a bigger dick you can gag on! Hit me up.”

“She wanted it really rough,” I hear a girl whisper as she passes. I don’t even know her name, but she’s looking right at me. “He said it made a lot of sense, because she was loose she couldn’t feel it otherwise.”

I was what?

As far as I can remember, his average-sized dick really hurt when he pushed it in. It didn’t feel loose at all. I did want it, and I had a big crush on him, but I had asked him to wait until I felt a little, you know, readier. I wanted him to try his fingers first. Maybe his mouth. He said I’d love his dick more, and that was that.

I’d pretended to enjoy it as he pumped inside me. Then afterwards, I’d turned down his offer for ‘another date’. I hadn’t thought that was exactly a date at all. I didn’t really want to see him again.

I guess that pissed him off.

Gunnar struts down the hall, getting high fives, cheers, whistles. They chant his surname. I roll my eyes when he can’t see. While I’m dealing with this, he’s dealing with something else. Apparently a couple of guys saw him beat up some kid in the old baseball field. Gunnar did worry me that one time, the other day when I told him about Dom, but he’s been his cheerful, goofy self every minute since.

He’d never hurt somebody. Especially not to the extent everybody said. And he confirmed that to me, laughing. The rumor mill giveth, and it taketh away. It was just a lot more generous with people like Gunnar than me.

A couple of Dom’s friends stop in a circle around me at my locker. “See you at the Palace tonight, Andie?” one of them asks, a frightening leer on his face. I try to catch Gunnar’s attention, but he’s talking to the masses. Nothing could tear him away. He’s loving every second of his new reputation.

“Problem here?” Cole’s powerful voice cuts through their taunts. He leans protectively over me, shooting a smile at the other guys. Cole is getting taller and stronger every single day, especially now that he’s getting serious about football. The guys make their excuses and head to class. I turn to Cole and accept his high five. “What’s the deal? Why’s everyone bothering you today?” he asks.

I don’t want to tell him. I just want to rest my head on his chest for a second. He is safe. Cole, like Gunnar, would never even think about touching me like that. They both have their reasons.

“Looks like she’s got a new target already, Dom,” someone calls across the hallway.

“Looks like it,” Cole calls back, and I see the guy pale on being called out by one of the biggest guys in school. His arms wrap around me tight. An exoskeleton.

* * *

I feellike I’m concentrating so hard on the Chemistry textbook that I must look crazy. But nobody gives me so much as a second glance today.

Aside from people spreading what happened to Logan — and watching the few seconds of video I took, which has done nothing to ingratiate me with him — there’s an even newer rumor on the mill. An even better one than a naked rich kid at a party. And it has nothing to do with me.

I can’t help enjoying it, just a little. I overhear someone whispering something along the lines of, “Ew, Larissa has a grey pube stuck between her teeth,” and I have to cast a quick look over her shoulder to see her devastated reaction.

I wish it had been me who spread this rumor, but I didn’t. The only thing I overheard at that party was that she was dating somebody, or fucking somebody, and didn’t want anyone to know about it.

Whoever started this knows the guy is older. It must be true, because it’s affecting Larissa in that very particular way that only true — or semi-true — rumors tend to do.

“It’ll pass by lunch,” I hear Gunnar say softly at one point, and anger and betrayal fires up my insides. I don’t hear any such comforting from Logan, her on-off fuckbuddy since forever. Maybe he’s jealous? I wish I could think of a way to use this and really drive the knife in. To all of them.

Plus, Larissa isn’t being nice to me, but she also hasn’t been as bad as the others.

“She’s only fucking him because he’s rich and seeing 18-year-old tits might literally kill him. Then, profit.” I can’t help but revel in all this nastiness aimed at somebody who isn’t me.

“Wow, is there any girl at this school who isn’t a murder whore?”

My face clouds over at that. Then Mr Greene, the teacher, starts to tell us about our next assignment and I try hard to pay attention. “You’re going to be in groups,” he says, and someone cheers. “Let’s just pretty much keep it by tables. Whoever’s sharing a table.” He nods at me. “Andie, Ben, you two go ahead and work together,” he says. “I know everybody else gets a group of three, but I think you’ll do fine. Sorry about that.”

The small kid next to me gives a small shrug, but Gunnar steps casually over, pretending to be looking at some posters of molecules on the wall, and then leans in and says a few words to my lab partner.

Mr Greene has already moved on, but Ben’s hand shoots into the air and Gunnar wanders back to his seat. “I can’t work with Andie,” he says in a rush. A couple of the other kids laugh at his outburst.

“Uh, what?” the teacher asks. “Why not?” He waves his hand through the air. “Talk to me after class.”

“No, uh, I’d really rather you’d partner me with somebody else right now.” His eyes flick to Gunnar, who gives a friendly smile, chin resting on his hand. “Please?”

I shake my head as the confused teacher splits us up. “Alright Ben, you can …”

“I’ll work with Andie,” Gunnar says, eyes on the pen in his hand and his other hand raised lightly in the air. He’s informing the teacher, not suggesting it. “Ben can work with Larissa and Logan.”

“That OK with you, Mr Chung?” Mr Greene makes a show of asking. Poor Ben nods once, not making eye contact with anyone. Least of all me.

I wait for people to start moving around and talking again before I lean over to Ben. I make sure I say this loudly enough for Gunnar to hear. “You don’t have to be scared of Rayne,” I say. “That thing about him beating a kid half to death for no reason? That never happened.” I’m sick of people submitting to Gunnar over a baseless rumor. “He’s a fucking liar,” I can’t help but add, anger fizzing up inside me.

“You should listen to Andie,” Gunnar says with another one of his calm, disarming smiles. “She’s the reigning monarch of fucking liars.” He stands up, a quick movement that scrapes his chair loudly across the floor, and Ben flinches away. I sigh. So much for trying to add a little bit of truth to this school.

“He’s not,” Ben hisses at me when the bell rings and the three of them have sloped out of the classroom.

“What?” I ask him, dumbly.

“Me and a few other kids, we were there. We saw it.”

“What?”

He frowns deeply at me, eyes narrowed, as if I’m a moron. “Gunnar nearly killed that guy. There was blood everywhere. And he was panting, wild, crazy. If Dallas hadn’t pulled him off, I think he would have killed him.”

“Who?” I ask, so loudly people look over at me.

Ben looks even more irritated. “Dom McMahon,” he said. “How did you not know this?”

That’s a really good question. The answer is that Dom had transferred out of school without much word to anyone, and I can’t say I was too upset about it. I had asked Gunnar a couple of times if he had really beat somebody up, and he’d just laughed and said no. He always believed me, and I always believed him.

He beat a kid ‘half to death’? ‘Blood everywhere’?

I guess it turns out we were both lying to each other. For years.

I’m left stunned, moving through the hallway towards my locker like a ghost. I almost don’t realize that spray-painted on my locker in red is the word ‘Whore’.

A couple of people around gasp and mutter. I wonder if they’re really that bothered by a word, but then I see the other thing. A paper half-obscured by paint was stuck to the front of my locker, too. I can’t quite see what it is, but that’s OK — an identical piece of paper is stuck to most other lockers on the row. As well as the wall behind. People are holding copies and laughing, staring over at me.

It’s a photocopy of a text chain between me and Dimitri. The name at the top clearly says ‘Andie’. The first picture is an image of a nude chest — not mine. A girl with her face and hair cropped out, shirt pulled up, tits exposed. There’s a nipple piercing, which I don’t have, and a cute little tattoo of a bird in flight on the sternum. And, to be honest, my boobs are bigger than hers. These are small, pointy, elfen. It would be very, very clear to anyone who had seen me naked that this isn’t me.

I know whose they are, though. I went with Larissa to get that tattoo done.

Ironically, cruelly, nobody in this school has seen me in any state of undress, so there is nobody out there who could defend my honor.

The conversation below is short, but to the point.

Andie: When are you gonna fuck me, stepbro? :’(

Dimitri: Never, nasty ass slut.

Andie: Pleeaaase?? I’m so wet and ready for you.

Andie: I’ve been fucking a dildo I labeled with your name, Dimitri.

Andie: Kiss me, fuck me, I need that huge cock

Andie: Mommy and daddy don’t need to know. xxx

Great.

I tear up the one attached to my locker, for all the good that does, and head for the library. The cafeteria will be a zoo right now.

“Holy shit, you are such a fucking whore,” Cassidy whispers as I stalk past her. She looks truly disappointed, more than anything. I see all the eyes on me, and I think about how horribly unfair this is. They did this. They did it to get the attention back on me, and off Larissa and Logan.

Well they’re not going to win. I have one very specific comeback they can’t take away from me.

I head to the cafeteria, and stand up on a table, almost in a daze. On autopilot.

I hear kids clap and cheer me, ironically, as I stand as tall as I can on the cafeteria table. The noise gives me strength. I smile and wave with one hand, unbuttoning my shirt with the other. Students are clutching the copy of the fake conversation between me and Dimitri, staring up at me.

“Slut!” someone cries. I just smile and wave.

“Now we know you stuff your bra!”

“That wasn’t me. That was Dimitri writing himself a little fanfiction about me,” I announce simply to the cafeteria.

Then I open up my shirt, pulling up my bra. No tattoo, no piercings. And a couple of sizes bigger. Then, before anyone can snap any pictures, I hope, I lower my bra again. Wolf whistles fill the room, and a boy even helps me down from the table.

“Nice tits, dude,” he says, and high fives me.

“Thanks, man.” I turn to the full cafeteria again. “Stop being so fucking gullible.”

The group isn’t here, but Dimitri is. His mouth has fallen open, his tray slack in his hands, as a hundred students turn to him, and to my delight, start to give him hell.

“Be sure to give him a really good nickname,” I call over my shoulder, and when the doors shut behind me, I jog to the stairs heading to the library. I can’t believe I just did that.