I wasn’t comfortable with the attention. It didn’t help that I’d donated fourteen inches of hair to Locks of Love, gotten platinum blond highlights, and had my eyebrows waxed.
Bobby Donaldson, varsity baseball pitcher and player extraordinaire, who’d never said a word to me in my life, approached me at my locker with one heck of a lusty red aura before school started.
“Hey, girl. How you doin’?”
“Um, fine?”
“I’m Bobby. Where you from?”
Annoyed, I closed my locker, swung the purple-and-black bag over my shoulder, and attempted to stuff long bangs behind my ear.
“I’m not new. You know me. Anna Whitt?”
His eyes ran across the features of my face.
“Hot daaay-um, for real?”
I forced my eyes not to roll back, and walked past him. He ran to catch up.
“So you hooked up with Scott?” he hollered over the din of excited first-day voices.
“No, I didn’t.”
I sped up, dodging other hall walkers, but Bobby stayed on my heels.
“’Cause it’s cool if you did. Hey, you wanna go out sometime?”
I stopped so abruptly he ran into a girl passing us.
“It’s just me, Bobby. I’m the same weird, prudish girl that you’ve been in youth group and science class with for the past three years and never talked to. All I did was go to a party and get a haircut.”
“I heard you aren’t such a prude anymore.”
And before I could give a lame comeback about how he’d heard wrong, he tweaked my cheek with his knuckle and headed for his own class. I swallowed down the bile in my throat and blinked back moisture building in my eyes. I was not going to cry because of Bobby. It didn’t matter what he thought. I went to first period.
By lunch it was clear that I hadn’t taken Jay’s warnings seriously enough. The rumors were out of control. I could ignore the stares and whispers, but I couldn’t pretend people weren’t cornering me for information. What happened with you and Scott? He says you’re making it up about the drugs. Did you really hook up with some guy in a band? I’m having a party this weekend; wanna come?
I told each one of them I didn’t want to talk about it.
I had one class with Scott, Spanish again. He sat on the other side of the room and never looked my way. Even Veronica avoided me, maybe too embarrassed about the BFF stuff. They were the only two people in school not interested in talking to me.
I thought I was unsociable in years past, but for the first few weeks of this year I was a recluse. I kept my eyes down and went straight home after school. No football games. No hanging at Jay’s house. And definitely no parties or clubs.
But despite how hard I tried to be invisible, all eyes were on me. Only one person was able to shake me into clarity.
Lena was a shy girl who worked hard and didn’t go out of her way to impress others—traits I appreciated. She usually hid her face behind a headful of shiny black curls and kept to herself.
Lena came into the bathroom after me between classes one morning. Afterward I realized she had followed me. Lena shuffled next to me, leaning into the mirror to check out her creamy skin, catching my eye. We both messed with our hair, and then she bent down to see whether there were any feet in the stalls before speaking.
“I...” She bit down as if mustering courage. “I heard about what Scott McCallister did to you.”
“Oh?” I continued to dig around for some pretend object, surprised she would stoop low enough to care about such gossip, and hoping she would drop it. I almost missed her next words, spoken softly.
“He did it to me, too.”
I tensed and looked up at her. “He did?”
“Well, kind of.” She shuffled her stance, eyeing the cracked wall tiles. “Last year at a party over Christmas break.”
So Kaidan was right. It hadn’t been a solitary incident. Lena’s light gray nervousness darkened with apprehension when I didn’t respond right away.
“I believe you, Lena.”
With that reassurance, her gray worries cleared into the sky blue of relief.
“Did he—” She stopped herself, but I knew what she wanted to ask.
“No,” I told her. “We were interrupted.”
She continued avoiding my eyes, adjusting the book-bag strap on her shoulder. “That’s good. Unfortunately we weren’t. He didn’t drug me. I mean, he talked me into taking it, but afterward he told me I came on too strong, and he didn’t like me that way. He was just trying to be nice.”
“Oh, my gosh, Lena. That’s...” I didn’t know what to say. She looked at me now.
“You’re the only person I’ve ever told. I just wanted you to know you’re not alone.”
“Thank you,” I said.
She nodded and rushed out the door. I stood there thinking for two minutes and received my first tardy ever.
Jay was shaking when he sat down next to me at the lunch table. Band and drama kids sat at the other end.
“Where’s your lunch?” I asked.
“I’m not eating.” His knee bounced as he glared around the cafeteria.
“What happened?” I pushed my tray away.
“Nothing.”
I moved closer, stomach turning. “No, tell me.”