Chapter 32 Steel Gray
Steel Gray
What’s up with the two of you anyway?” Mason asks. “You’re always together.”
Adrian has stopped searching and is making his way back to where the others are.
Jamie leans against the wall. “Be more specific.”
“Okay, I’ll be specific,” Mason says. “Did you date?”
Nicole stills for a beat while Jamie lets his answer hang heavy in the air.
“No,” he finally says, and I think I see Nicole breathe out in relief.
“So I can ask the real question.” Mason grins. “Did you do her?”
Jamie fixes his gaze on him and smiles. Mason takes it as an affirmative and lets out a “You dog!” Nicole shrinks back into her friends, and I see Hayley hold her hand.
I don’t understand what’s going on.
“Okay, my turn,” Jamie says. “What did you do to her yesterday?”
Mason tells him and then takes out his phone to show him the picture.
Jamie has gone incredibly still, his hand still holding onto the phone. “Who else has the picture?”
“Me. Adrian. That’s it. Been thinking on what do with it, you know? Print it out and give it to everyone in school. Maybe even put it on a billboard? There’s so much that could be done.”
“Is it on iCloud?” Jamie asks with a smirk.
“No,” Mason scoffs. “You think I’d have anything incriminating like that out there? If I print it out and put it in a classroom, no one would know where it came from. That’s the whole fun of it.”
Jamie hums. “Send it to me?”
“Why?” Mason asks. “No offense, but you’re way too close to her, even if you’re just having fun.”
Jamie laughs. “Oh, come on. You think Jihad is like any other person you’ve ever met before? She’d smell the fake off you if you were pretending. It’s all about the ‘real moments.’ At least it is for her.”
I close my eyes, nausea building up in my stomach.
This seems to convince Mason. “There you go,” he says. “You got it?”
Jamie is quiet for a long second before pocketing his own phone.
Then in an instant Jamie grabs Mason’s phone and throws it onto the floor before slamming the heel of his oxford right onto the screen. It makes a crack like a twig breaking. One of the girls screams, and Mason swears loudly.
“What the hell!” he yells, lunging at Jamie, but Jamie dodges him. Then he stamps again on the phone, crushing it even more. Jamie raises his head, and even though I can’t see his expression clearly, I feel his fury.
“You hurt her,” he says quietly, and I know it’s because he’s trying to control his anger. “You humiliated her. And now you’re trying to find her for more.”
Mason lunges at Jamie again and is able to nick him along the jaw, but Jamie uses his moment of triumph to bring his knee up. He slams it hard into Mason’s gut, and Mason drops to the floor, coughing and spluttering.
The girls back off, tripping on themselves, but Jamie isn’t even looking at them. He’s heading toward Adrian, who raises his hands and says, “Dude, I didn’t do anything—”
“Give me your phone,” Jamie cuts him off.
“I’ll delete it!” Adrian takes his phone out and swipes it open. It nearly slips from his hands. “Look, I’ll delete it. I need this phone, man. It’s got a lot of pictures from my… you know. I’ll just delete!”
Jamie snatches it from him and smashes it on the floor as well. The phone is in a million pieces, and I watch with my hand tightly pressed against my mouth. Adrian lets out a yell, but before he can do anything else, Jamie grabs Adrian’s hand, bending his fingers at an awkward angle.
Adrian tries pulling away, but Jamie holds him in place. “I know what you did to her. I know you touched her. You did it because you thought she wouldn’t be able to do anything.”
I hear a finger cracking before Jamie lets him go. Mason is still wheezing but manages to sit up, spitting swear words at Jamie. Jamie ignores him, walking down the steps.
“Jihad!” he calls out loudly. “Are you here?”
The fear still has my lips frozen. I open my mouth and try, but only a scratchy whisper comes out. My throat closes up.
“Jihad!” he calls again. “It’s okay. I’m here.”
I force my legs to move, my arms to push back the heavy curtain, and when he sees me, his expression floods with relief.
“Can you walk?”
I nod, my mouth still wired shut. I won’t give them the satisfaction of knowing how afraid I was.
I walk up the stairs with my head high and my eyes on Jamie’s for support.
He nods encouragingly at me, and from the corner of my eye, I see the girls cowering against the wall, their mouths dropped open.
I don’t even look at where Mason and Adrian are lying on the floor. I won’t subject my eyes to them.
Jamie doesn’t say a word to them, just opens the door so I can walk out before following me.
My cheeks are aflame, and I feel embarrassed at what just happened. Like this is all my fault. We walk in silence, my mind reeling, and only when we’re near the front part of the school by reception and there are students around us do I ask, “How did you know?”
He stops walking and I pause. The anger on his face is gone, like it never existed. “One of the girls from our class—Maria—saw me looking for you and told me where she saw you running.” He looks at me intently. “Did they do anything?”
I shake my head and glance backward. “You know they’re going to raise hell over this. They’ll go to the principal.”
“I don’t care,” he replies.
“Don’t care?” I repeat, and the full realization of what happened descends on me. “Jamie… you…I…I don’t know what trouble we’ll get into. Mason’s dad is a judge. I don’t know about Adrian or the rest of the girls, but this is serious.”
He studies me carefully, his jaw straining. “Would you rather they found you?”
A shudder runs over me. “No. No. That’s not what I—”
He raises a hand, and I instantly flinch, a reaction I never thought I’d have. He pauses.
“I would never touch you,” he says with pain his voice. “I would never betray your trust like that.”
“I know,” I whisper.
His gaze drops to below my eyes, where I can feel the foundation has cracked, streaming in streaks down my cheek; I know slivers of the bruised skin must be appearing. “I don’t care about the consequences. I don’t care what happens. I saw…Damn it, Jihad, I saw.”
The picture.
I can only imagine how I looked. I feel sick, my stomach revolting, and I want to throw up but there’s nothing but bile.
I hate that he saw it. I hate it so much I could be ripped out of this body of mine.
This body I hate right now. It feels disgusting, like a dirty suit I’ve been forced to wear.
It’s been less than a day, but I feel I’ve lived ten lifetimes since that camera flash.
I want to forget it.
I want him to forget it.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I say through gritted teeth.
The sweat has dried on my forehead, and I feel cold in my bones.
“I’m not looking at you like anything,” Jamie argues, but I see the angle of his eyebrows and lips. He’s pitying me.
“Don’t look at me like I’m a wounded puppy you found on the side of the road,” I hiss, feeling irrationally angry. Maybe it’s because he took my revenge for me. But I have no idea how I would have been able to take it. There’s nowhere for this energy to go.
“I’m not supposed to feel bad for what happened to you?” he snaps, and the volume of his voice draws people’s attention toward us.
I ball my hands into fists. I don’t know how to explain it. The gratitude. The fear. The anger. The doubt. Then all at once, my thoughts go quiet.
“What do you want to do with the picture?” he asks. “We could go to the—”
“No.” My voice comes out sharp, full of fear. “No, no one is seeing that picture. Please delete it.”
He stares. “Jihad, this is evidence.”
“I know what it is.” I hug myself tightly.
“But if it gets out, this is all people will see when they look at me. Nothing I ever do will let me escape it. I didn’t let them get to me once this whole year.
Not the stupid comments or the jokes or anything, and I know it made them angry.
That I never backed down. Which is why they did this.
But this picture means they did win, and they didn’t.
” My eyes burn with tears, but my gaze is angry. “They didn’t win.”
Even though my voice trembles, my expression is steel. He takes out his phone, pulling it up.
“There. Deleted.”
“Thank you,” I say, and rub my eyes. “God, I know they’ll pin it on me. I’m going to get expelled. My dad is putting all his life savings into this. I can’t—”
“Jihad, it’s okay,” he says quietly, and I look up at him. “I did this. Not you. And I would do it all over again. So what if I get expelled? It’s not the end of the world.”
Breathing hurts. “The police were here for a mural. What do you think will happen when a judge’s son was hurt?”
He looks unbothered, maddingly calm. “I’ll take responsibility. It was all me. I won’t let them pin this on you.”
By second period, the whole school knows what happened.
Rumors spread between the truths, and I hear flashes of them.
That Jamie threatened Mason and Adrian with a knife.
Mason had pictures of me without my hijab, and I asked Jamie to beat them up.
I slapped Nicole and called her a bitch while Jamie took care of the boys.
The more plausible rumor, which may be true, is that an ambulance came to the school to take Mason and Adrian to hospital.
That Mason was suffering from a ruptured stomach or something.
I don’t see them the whole day, and my anxiety rises.
One girl I’ve never talked to before gets the courage to ask me if Jamie and I are dating.
“No,” I reply vehemently.
“Okay, fine, jeez.” She rolls her eyes. “You really live up to the stereotype, don’t you?”
Before I can ask her what the hell she means, she’s gone.
Jamie sits with me during classes. He’s distracted, his knee jumping, and now that the adrenaline has calmed down, it’s dawning on him what happened.