I PARK THE JEEP behind Chris’s truck and hop out. I’ve got to find Beth and I need to find Gwen. I’ll hand Gwen homecoming. I’ll tell her that Beth and I will drop out, as long as Gwen keeps Beth’s secrets. Chris and Logan lean against the tailgate and smile when they notice me. Today could be a nightmare for Beth and I’m going to need their help. “Have you seen Beth?”
Both of them shake their heads.
“Have you seen Lacy?” asks Chris. “She
was supposed to meet me here.”
I scan the parking lot and spot Lacy bolting out the side doors. “There she is.”
Chris straightens as he watches her hurry to us. “Something’s wrong.”
She bypasses Chris, reaches out, and slaps me across the face. The pain sucks, but the HC TITLE-AUTHOR
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worst part is the tears streaming down
Lacy’s face.
“How could you?” she chokes out.
Lacy’s never hit me before. She’s never hit anyone before.
Chris places himself between me and Lacy
while Logan yells at the people loitering to witness the show to keep moving. “Lace, what the hell?” Chris says.
Lacy shoves Chris and the shoves turn
frighteningly close to hitting. “What the hell?”
she screams. “What the hell is wrong with you? You were supposed to be her friend.”
From behind her, Logan pulls her hands to her sides. “Slow it down, Lace. Tell us what’s wrong.”
Tears overflow from her eyes while she
stares at me. “You promised me you wouldn’t hurt her. You promised she was no longer a dare.”
Beth. She means Beth. “She wasn’t. I mean, she was, but you know I called it off.”
She jerks her arms out of Logan’s grasp, but he stays near in case she decides to attack again. “Everyone is saying Chris and Logan dared you to sleep with her. They said you won HC TITLE-AUTHOR
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when you took Beth into the woods during
the last field party. They said you slept with her and that she told you about her past. Everyone knows what happened to her in Louisville.
Everyone knows.”
Gwen. I smack my fist into the side of
Chris’s truck. “Have you seen Beth?”
Lacy shakes her head. “Tell me you didn’t do it. Please.”
Chris hesitantly touches her cheek. “No,
baby. The dare ended the night Ryan fell for her.”
She wipes the tears from her face. “Someone wrote whore on her locker.”
Logan runs both hands over his face while Chris swears. The nightmare has already begun.
I SEARCH THE HALLWAYS for Beth and I
come up empty. The first warning bell rings and from the opposite end of the hallway Lacy shakes her head. Dammit. They can’t find her either. Logan taps my shoulder. “She just walked into class.”
Finally. I take off down the hallway and step into class right when the tardy bell rings. Lacy, Chris, and Logan trail behind me. Chris claps HC TITLE-AUTHOR
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my back and the three of them head for our seats. Someone shushes the whispering and laughing as everyone watches me. I study Beth. She’s reclaimed the seat in the corner of the room instead of the one she took next to me weeks ago.
Just like the first day of school, Beth’s hair hides her face and she doodles in her notebook.
My ribbon no longer graces her wrist.
An adult I don’t know clears her throat. We must have a sub today. “Do you mind taking your seat?”
Beth glances up at me, then immediately
looks back down. It’s as if I swallowed knives.
She’s heard the rumors and she believes them.
Perfection. It’s what everyone expects from me. Take my seat. Do my work. Go to practice.
Play ball. Keep everything bottled up and let your insides rot as long as the outside looks perfect. “Beth.”
She keeps her head down and the substitute steps into my line of view. “Either find a seat or find yourself in detention this afternoon.”
“Ryan,” Chris says. “The game.”
The game against Northside. I promised
Chris I wouldn’t miss another game and
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detention would bar me from keeping that
promise. Reluctantly, I take my seat and turn to stare at Beth, willing her to look at me.
“We’ll catch her after class,” Chris whispers to me from across the aisle.
THE BELL RINGS and it’s a race of who can get out of their seat faster. Beth is out the door first and her size makes it possible for her to duck and weave through the mass of bodies crowding the hallway. My next class is in the opposite direction of where she’s headed, but I don’t care.
She runs down the history hallway and I
grab her arm right before she enters the safety of the classroom. I lean in and look straight into her eyes. “You know I love you.”
Her eyes search my face and she appears as broken as she did two days ago at the hospital.
“Did you fuck me to win a dare?”
I fight the urge to shake her. “I didn’t fuck you, I made love to you. Don’t do this, Beth.