“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.”
Friday 30 September
8.47 a.m.
I wait for twenty minutes by my gates, but Danny never arrives.
10.05 a.m.
Ajita is shocked to see me in school. Her parents, who are unbelievable fascists at times, would make her come to school even if her arms had fallen off in the night, but she knows Betty is a bit of a soft touch. She once let me stay home because of a paper cut. To be fair, it was in the webbing between my fingers and thus a deeply traumatic experience, on a par with losing my parents if we’re being honest. But still.
Thing is, Betty is generally in tune with what I need. She’s amazing like that, like some sort of psychic presence. Such as the paper-cut thing – we both knew I was actually having a horrible day. I’d got my first period the week before, and even though my grandma was great, I really felt my mother’s absence that whole week. It just felt like the kind of thing she should’ve been there for, like riding my bike for the first time, or accidentally getting stoned on pot brownies and breaking into the old folks’ home. And so the paper cut became a scapegoat for my grief, and Betty let me stay home.
On the same level, she also knew that what I needed today was not to stay at home obsessing about a nude picture on the internet, wondering how bad it’d be when I eventually did show my face. So she sent me to school.
I somehow make it through first period without having a breakdown, then Ajita grabs me and hauls me into an empty classroom near the cafeteria. This feels a little like stumbling into Narnia, as empty classrooms are like gold dust at Edgewood High.
All the lights are off, and that’s how we keep them as we close the door, dump our stuff on the teacher’s desk and slip into a few chairs near the back of the classroom. The sky outside is overcast, and after the bright strip lighting of the corridor it takes a while for my eyes to adjust to the dimness.
Ajita’s face is covered in zits. She’s obviously been stressed about my well-being. “Dude, what did Betty-O say?”
We love calling her Betty-O. It makes her sound like a low-end cereal brand.
I sigh and rub my eyes. They sting from tears and sleep deprivation. “She was actually really great. I expected her to nail me to a cross like that scene from The Passion of the Christ, but alas—”
“Like ‘the scene from The Passion of the Christ?’? Izzy, you do know that movie is actually based on the Bible? It’s important that you know that.”
I feign outrage. “What? No way! Next you’ll tell me Santa Claus has his very own testament!”
Faux-exasperated, she replies, “We’ll talk about this later. Now, I need deets. What did the old girl say?”
Even though the door to the classroom is shut, some scumbag sophomores have gathered behind the glass, staring at us agog. Without hesitation, Ajita strides up to the window, pounds it with her fist – causing several of them to flinch – then hastily wrenches down the blind that usually stays up until the end of the day. She rejoins me in our seats as though the last ten seconds never happened. Maybe they didn’t. Like I say, I’m pretty sleep deprived at this point.
“Honestly, Betty was awesome. For one thing, she didn’t bring up my lopsided boobs, which I appreciate. Some grandmothers would express concern at my lack of aesthetic perfection and haul me straight to the plastic surgeon, but not Betty.”
Ajita frowns. “I don’t think I know any grandmothers who would plausibly take that course of action.”