Chapter 17 – Clover
Chapter Seventeen
Clover
It’s funny this happens the day I talk to Thomas about blackmail, right? I open the door to my bedroom and for once, Molly’s in there.
“Oh hey,” she says, barely looking up from her video game.
I don’t know how she has so much time to play video games.
She’s seriously always online. Only a few weeks into the semester and I’m already drowning in homework, dance practice and avoiding every single guy on the rowing team.
I only have time to feel like shit about my dumb decisions and do homework.
Why did I act like someone I wasn’t? Why did I get into such a mess with Jude or Kit?
I’ve always had to act like someone I wasn’t.
I drop my stuff on my bed, trying not to think about the kiss.
His lips were so soft. And mine feel like tires, all rubbery and raw.
Why did Thomas kiss me? He hates me. We both hate each other.
Now I have to think about the kiss and finish the Ethics project.
Was this just his shitty way of tricking me into doing his homework?
No. Thomas isn’t like that. He might be annoying, but he studies and he always knows the answers to our teacher’s questions.
Most of the other intense athletes at this school aren’t half as smart.
Too bad he uses his intelligence for pure evil. As I climb onto my bed and drag my laptop onto my lap, Molly closes her book. She’s reading The Bell Jar for an English class and she sighs once she closes the book.
“Boys. They fuck you up,” she says.
Like all the British people here, Molly has a cute accent.
Her voice is soft and everyone here says she sounds “Northern”, but I don’t really know what that means.
Her swearing sounds hilarious, but there’s nothing funny about the expression on her face.
Molly’s into the school play — it’s a highly problematic all white production of Once On This Island this semester — but the guys into the school play aren’t exactly fuck boys.
Which one of these twisted sonnet writing fools messed with my roommate?
“What happened?”
Molly pushes her glasses up her nose and turns to face me, burying her cheeks into her palms.
“Martha made me look like a complete idiot in front of Kit Barclay. I wanted to ask him… Oh, never mind. I feel like a twat.”
“You’re not a… twat.”
Molly snickers. “That word sounds weird in your accent.”
At least I made her laugh.
“Thanks.”
“We were walking together from Chemistry and I was talking to him about the problems when she wanted to pass with her slut gang.”
By her ‘slut gang’, I think Molly means Juno and Rebecca, other girls on the tennis team. Very popular girls. I don’t like that she calls them a slut gang, but she’s probably just emotional over what happened.
Molly continues, “She shoved me and everything went flying. I bruised my knee at the bottom of the stairs. Kit laughed at me. I tried to stand up for myself and Juno did this…”
Molly lifts the sleeve of her shirt and I wince when I see the wound Juno left behind. She burned Molly with a cigarette and the burn mark looks incredibly painful.
“Did you go to the health center for that?”
Molly shakes her head. “They wouldn’t let me. She said if I told she’d do much worse. She’s such a bitch.”
“I’m sorry. But you should report this to someone. They have to do something.”
“They don’t have to do anything,” Molly says. “I don’t need to run and tell. I’ll get revenge on her. Eventually.”
I think she’s just trying to cope. I can’t imagine Molly standing up to Martha Bloom and her friends. They’re all elite tennis players and all several inches taller than her.
“If you need someone to talk to her, I can get Sylvia to do it. She’s not afraid of anyone and I think they take a class together.”
Molly scowls. “It’s fine. I’m going to make ramen in the common room and finish this book out there. You sleep well, okay?”
“Sure.”
Molly grabs her cup of ramen noodles and her book as she leaves.
I can’t believe what Juno did to her arm.
There was a whole section on the Fox Academy website about bullying that probably should have been a red flag to me, but I didn’t think it would be as bad as school in America.
Getting burned with cigarettes was definitely worse than any of the schools I went to back home.
When Molly leaves, I get back to my Ethics project. I can’t even think of the word ‘ethics’ without thinking of Thomas kissing me. His hair was so soft and his body… Holy fuck.
It’s so unfair that assholes have the best bodies.
He definitely has a way better body than Kit and Jude.
I know I shouldn’t compare him to other guys — it’s not fair to him or to them — but it’s true.
They’re muscular, Thomas is chiseled. There’s a big difference.
Jude has tattoos but they’re weird to put it mildly.
Thomas curated his body to look like a work of art with those sexy patchwork tattoos.
And his lips… Ugh. I need to stop this shit and focus on homework.
I open my email to see if Thomas sent me any more notes to finish the assignment. He sent me three.
From: tbainbridge@
To: crobinson@
Subject: Ethics Conclusion
Attachment: conclusion_points.docs
Dear Clover,
Please include the attached points in the conclusion.
Cheers,
T
P.S. Sorry for kissing you.
Sorry for kissing you. Ugh, why does he even have to bring it up? I open the attachment and paste his points into my document. I guess he expects me to turn these bullet points into coherent sentences.
I take a few minutes to finish the task, bobbing my head along to Fantasy by Mariah Carey on repeat as I work. Once I organize Thomas’ points into coherent paragraphs, I open his second email.
From: tbainbridge@
To: crobinson@
Subject: Fuck
Dear Clover,
Fuck. I didn’t mean to make things weird.
Thomas
His third email only has a subject line.
From: tbainbridge@
To: crobinson@
Subject: I made it weird, didn’t I?
I catch myself smiling and sober up quickly, forcing myself to roll my eyes. Three emails for all that? Whatever. And where’s that last notification from? I thought I had my inbox at zero. Ugh. I scroll a little and see an email from a couple hours earlier in the library.
There’s a fake name on the email, but our school emails are spam free, so this can’t be spam. Hm. I open the email.
From: spicyfreak69@
To: crobinson@
Hey slut,
It’s bad enough you passed your dirty pussy around to Jude Fox and Kit Barclay, but now you throw yourself at THOMAS and think that you can fucking get away with it?
Listen, bitch, you are absolutely wrong if you think I’ll let you get away with this.
I’ve watched your shitty little show and I know you are NOT MISS INNOCENT.
You’re a DIRTY SLUT and you had better watch your fucking back. Might be a knife in it soon.
SLUT.
I stare at my screen, re-reading the weird ass words in front of me. Who would send something like this? Spicy freak? What the actual fuck?
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