Matt had no compunction in telling anyone who would listen the things I did to him behind the bleachers. Jared gave him a few truthful details to make the story believable and the tiny school ate it up. By lunchtime, it was everywhere.
Worse, someone spilled the beans I’d given two different reasons for my scar. Now everyone was calling me Joker. I heard it whispered as I walked down the halls and one kid jumped in my face to demand, “Why so serious?”
Marnie and Adam didn’t quite know what to make of me when I sat down with my lunch tray at the Mo Vay Goo table.
“Is it true?” Marnie asked straight away. “You and Matt King?”
Adam shivered. “Ugh. He’s such a beefcake. You couldn’t pick someone with a little more personality?”
“I wouldn’t touch Matt King with a ten-foot pole,” I said.
“Really?” Marnie regarded me intently. “Given the specific details I heard, you were quite intimate with his pole.”
I rolled my eyes. “Hilarious. I didn’t touch him.”
“Then why the rumors? Every time I turn around, someone else is regaling your exploits behind the bleachers.”
“They’re assholes. You need another explanation?”
“Okay, they’re assholes. But why you?”
The million-dollar question. Why me? Why had I done this to myself? Or more to the point, why did I suddenly care? In the past, I took the slutty reputation and wore it with a twisted kind of pride. My terms, my call. The Pretty Woman code. I say who, I say when, I say how much. But this time around it was too much. I wished I’d never touched Jared Piltcher and not just because the whole school heard about it.
Because Evan is going to hear about it.
I looked up to see Marnie and Adam waiting for an answer.
“I’m new. I’ve got no reputation beyond what they decide to make for me. Easy pickings. The scar is just icing on their cake.”
Marnie nodded. “Makes sense. Matt is going around saying he felt sorry for you.” She wagged her fingers over her cheek. “You know what I mean.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean. This isn’t my first rodeo.”
“It’s horseshit anyway,” she declared. “It’s totally okay for random guys to screw around with random girls. It makes the guy a god but the girl gets called a slut.”
“Sounds like a good editorial for our next edition,” Adam mused.
This got Marnie all excited, and the two of them began chattering away about the last issue of Mo Vay Goo before the end of school.
My thoughts drifted away to Evan. They were tethered to him with some kind of invisible string. No matter how hard I tried to think of other things or distract myself, I always came back to last night, our talk, and how he wanted to see me again.
Rumors of me slutting it up with Matt King might change Evan’s mind.
The gods of attendance were smiling on me: Evan wasn’t at school that day. I didn’t see him anywhere and his desk beside mine in Western Civ was empty. I was relieved as hell while hoping he wasn’t sick, because then I wouldn’t see him at the pool that night.
For our date.
I had a date with Evan Salinger. It was as far a cry from dinner and a movie as you could get. I had no reason to think of it as a date, but I did.
I sure as hell did.
As I biked home, I realized I was in danger of becoming one of those girls who gets all flustered about a boy. Part of me recoiled at the thought and part of me reached for it. Wasn’t it what normal girls did? They met a guy, they liked him, they wanted to hang out. No big whoop.
I could admit I liked Evan. A little. But it didn’t mean I was going to be stupid enough to get attached. Everything and everyone I had ever been attached to had vanished or died. Evan was going to vanish too.
He’s skipping town in three weeks.
With that thought shouting loudest in my head, I almost didn’t go to the pool that night. Then changed my mind back again, like ping-pong. Not showing would mean I couldn’t control myself. Screw that. I wasn’t some weak, lovesick airhead. I was the school slut, right? Not only would I go to the pool, maybe I’d fuck Evan sometime before he left town. A little going away present…
I sank down on the edge of my bed, suddenly on the verge of tears.
What the hell is wrong with me?
I huffed deep breaths, pressing the air inside, pushing the emotions down with the rest of the sewage. When nine o’clock rolled around, I put a bathing suit on under my clothes and headed to the pool.
My stupid heart fluttered like mad to see Evan already there.
Waiting for me.
He was treading water in the deep end, wearing boxers and a plain white t-shirt that clung to his skin. I wondered why he bothered with a shirt, but I was too relieved to see him there to ask.
“I didn’t see you at class today,” I said, keeping my tone ultra-casual.
“Harris needed me at the shop,” Evan said.