Chapter 5 #2
I spent my twenties trying to bury the girl I used to be, but she’s still here, hunched in the leather booth across from me, her fringe so long it covers half her face.
And she isn’t alone. A stocky redhead sits beside her, sucking an Alpine Ultralight despite the ‘No Smoking’ signs.
Rhys Muldoon, the only person who was openly nice to me at school, committed suicide a year after graduation.
I don’t know if the daily torment he took from the likes of Jenny and her future husband was a contributing factor, but I do know it can’t have helped.
Rhys is gone, but I’m still here. And so are Jenny and Will. And all the rest of them. I will hunt down every last person who made our lives hell fifteen years ago and slice a pound of flesh from each of them. I’m gonna make what I did to the stag party look like a fucking baby shower.
The only foreseeable roadblock is one I resent even having to acknowledge: Jake Graves-Holland.
The ghost I can’t bring myself to Google.
The best sex I’ve ever had, despite what I told Cece and Aggie.
He must have been there, blurred into the background of my high school memories.
Had I known I was going to the reunion, I’d have laid my tracks more carefully.
But I can’t take screwing him back now. And regardless, aside from some sloppy ‘you up?’ DMs, I’m not going to hear from him again.
I grab my phone and look at the selfie I took in his bedroom.
Just seeing his stupid tattooed bicep makes my clit tingle.
It feels like a slight to Teen Ada that I fucked some guy who must have witnessed her humiliation.
Jake remembered my pencil case. He must have been there, watching me get tortured, and I slept with him just for a chance to fuck with a fridge. ..
“Hey!” Cece says, materialising to my left. “Is that the picture I sent you?”
I exit out of Jake’s photo like it’s cursed. “What is it, Cecelia-ella? More happy snaps of Prince Charming?”
“You’ll see!”
Sure enough, the image she texted is of Will Sharpe. He’s wearing a canary-yellow polo shirt and wayfarers and somehow looks douchier than ever. “Fuck, he’s a five.”
“He is not!”
“He threw more than one apple at me, you know? He got me in the ass at swimming sports.”
“That was during the food fight!”
I bite my tongue. As much as Cece’s naivete sometimes makes me want to scream, it comes from a good place. She’s not foolish or victim-blamey, she just genuinely believes most people are nice.
I believe most people are mean, narrow-minded assholes who will be treated as such until they prove otherwise. But that’s not Cece’s MO. She’s forever ‘trying to see things from other people’s perspectives’ and ‘empathise.’
It’s as endearing as it is infuriating. There’s no one irritating enough for her to write off; not aggressive drivers, not people who whine about housing prices, not even her peabrain brother, who deserves the ‘No Angel’ label more than anyone who usually gets slapped with it.
But nowhere does Cece’s blinding optimism incinerate my corneas more than her eternal soft spot for the blockhead rugby lads who ignored the shit out of her in high school.
When I was fifteen, I had crushes on Aragorn. The Count of Monte Cristo. Rick from Casablanca. Men of honour with kind hearts who fundamentally don’t exist. Cece, on the other hand, was always a sucker for the Big Man on Campus. And they, in turn, had a vague fondness for her and nothing else.
It wasn’t her looks—she’s always been gorgeous. It’s that she’s earnest, open-hearted, and wholesome. The kind of girl you want running your group history project, not splitting a six-pack of Woodstock in your back shed before an enthusiastic dry-humping.
Cece spent a lot of time in the friendzone back in the day. That might be worse than being treated like toxic waste, but I wouldn’t know. Knowing would’ve required the popular guys to do something to me other than quote ‘American Pie’ and peg apples at my back.
Still, hopeless as she is, she’s my best friend. And I’m going to pair her with someone who doesn’t suck if it kills me.
“Are you still working on your reunion plan?” Cece asks.
“Kind of,” I say truthfully enough. “Speaking of which, would you mind if I took some photos of both of us working behind the bar tomorrow?”
She frowns.
“I won’t actually do bar shit, and I promise it’ll be good promo for Stabbies. You know I’ve got a bunch of followers.”
“I do. But is this to help Afterglow, or is it more related to avenging yourself on everyone we went to school with?”
“Both,” I say brightly.
I have no intention of keeping Cece in the dark about all of my shadow scheme. She’s cockstruck, not in a coma. But I won’t give her any details, and she probably won’t ask, and that’s better for both of us.
“Okay,” she says. “How about you can take pictures, if I can see them and the captions, before you post?”
“Totally.”
“Then it’s a deal. What are you thinking? Glam shots?”
She knows me so well. “Exactly. I want to bring all the dogs to the yard pre-reunion. On that note, who d’you think the biggest catches are gonna be at this thing?”
“You mean the single guys all the single girls will go for?”
“Yes, Will Sharpe aside, obviously.” I have other, more sinister plans for him.
Cece makes a thinking face. “Well, there’s Jake, obviously...”
My stomach squirms at the sound of his name. Of course, Captain Popular will be the hottest property at the reunion. Every local woman who can draw breath is probably going to try and jump on his huge, perfectly curved dick.
“Already checked that box. Who else?”
“Hmm, Thrasher Thompson’s divorced, and he’s from a really rich family. Do you remember him? He owns that massive kiwifruit farm.”
Does it feel good when you slide that flute up your box, wog girl?
“I do.”
“I’m forgetting some guys for sure... Can I make you a list?”
“Sounds good.”
Stabbies’s front door swings open, and a big group of men walk in.
“Gotta go,” Cece says, straightening. “Want a margarita?”
“Sure.” I glance at Davis, who’s sitting at the bar pretending to be absorbed in his plate of lamb roast while staring point-blank at Cece’s ass. “Could you please get Davis to bring it over?”
“You’re not gonna annoy him, are you?”
Probably. But there are a few more things that could stand to be set in motion tonight, regardless of how annoying they are. “I promise to be nice.”
Cece dashes away, and I open my notepad. The bar will be my pre-reunion hunting ground. It’s familiar, safe and largely my domain, but I need backup. I got enough shit in high school to know teasing a bunch of emotionally stunted guys is a dangerous game.
My shadow scheme has a subsection entirely devoted to making sure Cece doesn’t suck Will Sharpe’s dick, and the lodestone of this plan involves Davis admitting he wants to have babies with her.
He might be boring and a fake cop, but he’s also hot and has a decent head on his shoulders, which is more than you can say for most men Cece’s dated.
I’ve had it with her mean boy shtick. God help me, she’s going to be with someone who deserves her.
“Margarita,” Davis says, depositing it in front of me.
“Perfect timing.” I close my notebook. “Please take a seat.”
Stabbies’s most overqualified employee scowls down at me. “Why?”
“Careful, Bacon, or I won’t fill you in on my scheme.”
Davis, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else, reluctantly sits across from me. The ghosts of Teen Ada and Rhys vanish as I smile at him. “You may be wondering why I’ve asked you here…”
“I wonder about a lot of things you do.”
“And that’s great. Here’s the deal: I want to sabotage all marriageable prospects at my stupid school reunion for the hideous popular girls still looking to snake a husband.”
“Right.”
“This means flirting, drinking, and possibly sleeping with multiple large, dickhole guys, all of whom I hope to persuade to have a huge, jealous fistfight on the Pukekohe High rugby field. And, or, slap them with a fake paternity suit. I haven’t quite decided yet.
I wish I already had a communicable disease because I can definitely get them all to go bareback. ”
Davis looks like he wants to die. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I need your help. I’ve seen Promising Young Woman, and I am not getting burned in a paddock if things go south, vis-à-vis fucking with dudes. I need muscle.”
Davis looks deeply unimpressed. “You can handle yourself.”
“Not as well as I want to. You don’t have to go on dates with me or anything. Just look out for me when I’m at the bar and intervene if it seems like I’m about to be choked to death.”
His forehead wrinkles as much as his youthful skin will allow. “If you’re that worried, why are you doing this?”
A valid question, and one I came prepared for. “Were you bullied in high school, Davis?”
“Not really.”
“Well, I was. And since I thought you might want proof, here you go.”
I open my notebook and hand him the paper I printed in Cece’s office earlier.
It’s an email my mother sent to Principal Friezen two months after I started at Pukekohe High.
It concerns the wad of chewed gum Colin Wintergreen pushed into the base of my ponytail during a study period.
My mum wanted to know if Principal Friezen was going to punish Colin, who’d told everyone he’d slipped, or Jenny Wallis, who filmed my agonised screams on her pink Motorola Razr and posted the video to both Facebook and Myspace.
The email also mentions how I had to go to the hospital because of a panic attack afterwards, and how the whole thing had really taken a toll on my flute-playing—always a primary area of concern for my parents.
That and me not making them feel guilty for moving us to butt-fuck nowhere and having the nerve to have a terrible time.