11. Laura
11
LAURA
A fter Jason’s threat to share that breakup video that I was sure would haunt me for the rest of my life, I woke up and checked my phone.
It sucked, waiting on the edge like this. He was too cruel not to share it as a form of tormenting me. But he was cruel enough to make me wait in suspense. It was inevitable. He’d blast it, and everyone would see it.
I couldn’t bring myself to check on social media first thing, though. Instead, I looked for a text from Kristin, who got up super early to work out. And she’d report in.
Kristin: Nothing today.
Kristin: Well, nothing new today.
Kristin: More reposts of other stuff, but no breakup video today.
I blew out a sigh on Tuesday morning, grateful that she’d be my lookout like that.
Laura: TY
Kristin: No prob. But maybe stay off everything anyway.
I cringed as I sat up in bed. I slept terribly, thanks to the one and only Jason Reeves. He bullied me by day and at night…
I rubbed my hand over my face. I wasn’t sure how many more nights I could take of his teasing me in my dreams. My conscious and subconscious versions of him were the same, yet not. When he teased me in my dreams, sneaking in when I wasn’t awake to tell myself to ignore him and not think about him, he teased me in a good way.
Wincing at the stickiness in my panties from getting turned on by last night’s dreams of him rubbing a calculator, of all things, between my legs, I knew something had to be severely wrong with me to be turned on by my bully.
Laura: Now what?
Kristin: Ethan went on a binge last night.
Kristin: Tagging you in all these sappy breakup kinds of things.
“Please,” I muttered aloud. “Make it stop.”
Kristin: Do yourself a favor and don’t bother looking.
I didn’t. I didn’t go on to social media all day until I had to. My organic chem professor had us joining a group for a project, so I was on it for that. Then I groaned and read through all the things he’d tagged me in.
Pleas to get back together.
Poems about lost love.
Stories about how people can find love again.
Nope. And nope. And nope again. I ignored it all, refusing to let him bother me after the fact.
I had too many things on my mind. Besides the unwelcome dreams about Jason, I had to contend with the waiting game of when he’d share that video. I knew better than to assume it was an idle threat.
When it didn’t come over the weekend or all of Monday and Tuesday, I still had to put up with his frat buddies picking on me.
They didn’t stop. Collectively, they made my life hell, teasing me, catcalling me. One of my lab partners asked me what I thought of the cruel drinking game they’d made of me, dubbing a game of taking shots that they, of course, called Second-Bests, where the people playing had to one-up each other with crude comments about me.
During my last class of the day, a freshman from their frat house spilled his coffee on me, laughing and getting fist bumps from his buddy afterward. Then during the last lecture of the day, one of them snipped off a couple of inches of my hair.
Kristin fumed, looking at the damage afterward as we walked to the parking lot together.
“Tell your dad.”
I laughed weakly. “He won’t care.”
She picked up my hair and held it for emphasis. “This is illegal, Laura!”
I shrugged. “At least it’ll give me more reason to stop procrastinating on trimming my dead ends now.”
The look she gave me was a unique combination of pity, disbelief, and annoyance. “Don’t laugh it off.”
“Does it look like I’m laughing?” I huffed.
She exhaled and shook her head. “This is so fucked up that I wouldn’t even know how to advise you to fight back.”
I was losing the courage to fight at all. I was stretched thin, stressed and so damn tired. I just wanted to close my eyes, not have another infuriating dream about my bully, and wake up to this mess all magically over.
“Talk about something else,” I said.
“Nothing new here.” She shrugged. “What about the symposium?” she asked with a small, hopeful smile.
“I’ve been preparing for it,” I said.
“Preparing with the stuff your dad wants you to present? Or the cancer drugs that interested you?”
I opened and closed my mouth. “Both, kind of. But I doubt I’ll have the guts to do the one I want.”
She held my upper arms and stopped me from walking. “Okay. Tell me something. What’s the worst that could happen if you stopped caring about meeting their expectations?”
I stared into her eyes and sighed. “I… I don’t know. I’ve never dared to. Never tried.”
“I know.” She hugged me close. “But if you did. Play the what-if game.”
“What if I presented about the cancer drugs at the symposium?” I asked, hugging her back.
“Or switched to bioengineering. Or stood up to them at all.”
I closed my eyes, relishing in the simple comfort of a hug from my only friend. It’d been too long since I felt comfort or love. With the hell I’d been experiencing, her kindness almost pushed me to tears.
“I don’t know. They’ll be disappointed in me.”
“And what would be new with that?” She sighed, stroking her hand over my hair as if I were a child who needed coddling. “Seriously, what would be worse? They’re disappointed in you by default for no reason, so what’s the difference in their being disappointed in you for something you choose?”
I sniffled and shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“The difference would be that you fought for what you wanted, for once in your life. If you can’t ever make them happy, make yourself happy.”
I wished I could. I really did.
“Hey, check it out. Second-Best can’t get it on with her boyfriend so she’s trying out a girlfriend now,” Kevin hollered from the sidewalk near the parking lot.
Kristin parted from me. “Fuck you, Kevin. You want me to come kick your ass?”
“Spoken like a true dyke,” he joked.
“That does it.” She started to gather her hair in a ponytail and stalk over there.
“Fuck, man. Go.” Rory swatted Kevin’s arm, urging him to flee. “She’s at the gym every morning. I think she could kick your ass.”
I held on to Kristin’s wrist, though, stopping her. “Don’t. Not on my behalf.”
She growled, shaking her head as we resumed walking to our cars and left.
At home, since the library emailed me that they’d closed due to a water line break, an email I forwarded to Jason, I sighed with relief that I wouldn’t have to face him today.
It almost reeked of cowardice, to want to avoid him, but it wasn’t the same as giving up. I wasn’t. I would stick with my dad’s expectation to tutor Jason until he quit. But while I thought about it, I hated that I was doing what Kristin had coached me about. That I was bound to disappoint my dad whether I did as he asked or not.
Tutoring Jason had definitely cast a negative effect on my days, but I wasn’t a quitter.
And it’s not because of those dreams.
Or that I can admit he’s seriously hot.
Even the way he teases me and excites me when he’s not actively bullying me.
I wasn’t going to think about him tonight.
Instead, I booked a late walk-in sort of appointment with a franchise hair salon and fixed up the “accidental” haircut I had earlier. My mother and grandmother would be appalled to ever set foot in one of these places that popped up in strip malls, but it worked for me. I’d always been a low-maintenance kind of girl, not putting too much effort or thought into my beauty routine. Avoiding too much sunlight seemed smart, as a starter. Since my shampoo and conditioner liked me, and I kept my hair long and straight and usually one length, I saw no reason to change things up.
If I got into bioengineering, or even if I went into medicine and maybe became a surgeon, I’d need to be able to keep my hair up. Practical. That was me. Besides, it would exhaust me and wear down my soul if I tried to keep up and compete with a natural beauty like Mai.
“Can I interest you in anything else?” the stylist said once she evened out my hair. The dead ends were gone. So was the evidence of that frat brother pulling a prank to cut it earlier. “A style? Maybe a manicure?”
I glanced down at my simple nails, bare of polish and neatly trimmed. To her, it probably looked boring, but I didn’t care. I wasn’t going to go overboard and try to impress anyone. What you see is what you get.
“No, thank you.” I sighed, ready to go home and try to relax.
“You should take a picture of her hair for a new post,” another stylist said as she swept hair from a client she’d just had. “Such straight, sleek hair.” She winked at me.
The praise warmed me from the inside out, even though she was likely only saying that in the vein of delivering top-notch customer service.
“Do you mind?” my girl asked.
“Not at all.”
She took the picture and said she’d tag me. I didn’t really care, but hey, maybe if they posted more often, they got a bonus. I was all for helping others in any manner I could. That was a big part of why I couldn’t walk away from tutoring Jason, too.
As I left the salon, I checked my feed to see her post.
I immediately regretted it.
Sitting in my driver’s seat in the parking lot, I sighed and sank further into a nasty gloom.
What waited for me in my feed was the nastiest, cruelest, and meanest cyberbullying I could imagine.
I couldn’t stomach all the horrible comments to the posts that Jason and his friends shared. I couldn’t be patient with all the sappy take me back crap that Ethan kept tagging me in.
Worst of all, I cringed and grew madder and madder at all the inappropriate videos and pictures that were popping up. It had to be photoshopped or AI. Because I’d never done any of those X-rated things people were sharing.
A single tear streaked down my cheek, the only sign of how furious I was. It wasn’t sorrow, but rage. Anger that I would be subjected to this for no damn reason.
I browsed past a dozen crude, disgusting private messages, sickened that strangers would reach out to me to comment on my body or how I could test out to be better than second-best with them. Lewd suggestions turned my stomach.
With trembling fingers, so hopeless to the relentless bullying, I logged out of all my accounts. Fuming and seething as I drove home, I swore off them all until Jason quit this farce of caring about his grades.