Chapter 28
Isabelle helped me into my Jeep, climbed into the passenger seat, and then turned on the radio to try to take my mind off what had just happened, but I immediately turned it off. I just wanted to sit in silence with my best friend by my side.
“Allie?” she asked, but I looked straight out the windshield and didn’t reply. “Do you want to talk about what happened?” But I just shook my head as the tears continued to roll down my face. “Okay,” she said, nodding her head.
“Thanks for sitting with me. I don’t know what I would do without you. I’d probably still be sitting on the pavement if you hadn’t been here with me,” I said, as I turned to her. She reached across the car and pulled me in for another hug and held me until I was ready to let go.
“Do you want to go get some ice cream?” she asked. “That always makes me feel better.”
“No, I just want to go home,” I said, so she got out and I headed home.
Once I got home, I went right to my room, dropped my stuff on the floor, and buried my face into my mountain of pillows.
I was finally alone and could release all of the emotions that I had kept bottled up all day.
Until now, I hadn’t been able to process everything that had happened.
How had Griffin found out that it was me who turned him in?
The Judicial Council was sworn to secrecy, and I knew they would not have risked jeopardizing my social integrity like this. Just then, my Mom knocked on my door.
“Come in,” I said quietly. She opened the door cautiously and came to sit on the bed beside me.
“Hi, sweetie. I heard what happened today. I can’t imagine what you are feeling.
” It was the first time I could remember that she had offered me comfort like this, and it was foreign.
“I want you to know how proud of you I am, first for getting an A on your math test—,“ ah, there it was.
She cared about academics first, “— I know how hard you studied for that. And second, for turning in that cheater. He deserves whatever punishment he gets.”
“But what about the punishment I’m getting?
” I asked. “You should have seen the way I was treated today, Mom. They behaved like I was the worst person on earth, when I was just doing what the school had always taught us to do. They have threatened us to turn in cheaters, and here I am, doing it, and now I’m the bad guy.
It’s not fair. And to top it off, Chris broke up with me,” I said.
“You’re right. It’s not fair, and I wish there was something that I could do to make it better.
Whoever it was that spread the rumor about you turning them in clearly is unhappy with their own life because that is just despicable.
I’m sorry about Chris, maybe he will come around once he realizes that you did the right thing, or maybe he doesn’t deserve you,” she said.
Her words meant a lot. “I’m headed downstairs to get dinner ready.
If you need anything, you know where I am.
I love you, sweetie.” And then she got up and left the room.
I rolled over on my back and pulled out the note again.
The words were written in block letters, perhaps disguised to maintain anonymity.
The only people who knew were the Judicial Council and my journal.
Then suddenly, it clicked. Maybe it was Amy.
On the one hand, she was the only one who had access to my journal, but on the other hand, she didn’t know where I hid it.
Slowly, I raised up off my pillow and moved to the side of the bed to look between the mattress.
As I reached my arm in, I was relieved to find that my journal was still there, safe and sound, exactly where I left it.
The next morning was no different when I arrived at school. Thankfully, Isabelle was waiting for me in the parking lot to walk down to the locker hall with me. As we walked in the door, everyone stopped and stared again, and Isabelle came to my rescue.
“What!” she shouted as I entered the corridor, and although people turned away and kept talking, I couldn’t help but notice that they kept glancing at me.
“What now?” I said only soft enough for her to hear me.
“I’ll go find out,” she said, then she set off to find someone with reliable information.
I waited by my locker, eager for her to return, as I watched her chatting with a girl at the end of the hall. Isabelle turned to look at me a few times during their conversation. Oh no. She walked back towards me slower than she had left.
“It’s bad, isn’t it. I just know it,” I said as soon as she returned. She pulled both lips tightly into her mouth and closed her eyes for a moment. I knew it.
“Tell me, Is!” She opened her eyes again and blurted it out.
“Someone wrote something on the bathroom stall in the boys’ locker room.”
“What? What are you talking about?” My stomach was now doing backflips. “The boy’s locker room? What does it say?”
“It’s just… there’s something written in there that I don’t think you should hear. It would be upsetting, and it’s been reported to the Headmaster, but please, don’t go in there, Allie.”
As if my feet were rockets, I took off running towards the gym.
“No! Allie! Wait!” she called after me.
As I dashed past hoards of snickering people in the courtyard, heads turned to follow my direction, and I just knew I was in for something awful.
I slowed my steps as I got to the outside of the boys’ locker room, bracing myself for what I was about to find.
The door whined as I pushed it open. I didn’t even care if there were boys inside. I had to see it for myself.
“Where is it, Is?” I demanded, my hands balled into tight fists.
“Third stall, but I warned you. You don’t want to see this.”
I ignored her and stepped into the stall, scanning until my eyes landed on the graffiti that Isabelle had warned me about. I was speechless as my heart hit the beige tile floor. There, carved in big letters right into the back of the green stall door, it read, ‘ALLIE IS A SLUT AND FAKES ORGASMS.’
OH MY GOD. Why was this here? Why, why, why?
Had Chris written this? I sat down on the toilet and began to sob.
I guess Chris wanted to tell everyone we had sex and could tell I had faked it.
Now I knew that this was how mad he was.
Great. Now everyone knew. How would I ever recover from this?
First, the cheating, and now this rumor is floating around the whole school.
This was social suicide. After what felt like years, but was only a few minutes, Isabelle knocked on the stall.
“Allie?” she said softly. “Can I come in?”
“Just leave me alone, Is,” I replied. I was too ashamed to face anyone. I just needed to absorb the horror of this moment and process what this meant. How would I or could I move forward?
I could hear footsteps fade as Isabelle left the locker room, and I was finally alone.
I wasn’t even bothered by the grotesque smell of body odor that surrounded me.
Eventually, I got to my feet and ran my fingers over the etched words, then left the stall and headed back up to the locker hall.
Isabelle was waiting by my locker with a hopeful look on her face.
“I’m here for you, Allie. I wish we had classes together,” she said. “Things might be rough for a while, I think. How’s French going to be?” she said, with a nervous expression.
Oh my God, French. I had forgotten all about the one class that I shared with Chris, and it was first period today. Not only that, but I was already twenty minutes late for class. Great.
“I guess we’ll find out. I’ll keep you posted,” I said, and she blew me a dramatic kiss as I headed to my locker to get my books for the day. I appreciated her light-hearted attempt to cheer me up, but my emotional tank was on empty.
I made my way slowly to French class and took a deep breath before entering the room, as class had already begun.
There he was, but he was sitting in the front row by the windows, and he didn’t even look at me when I walked through the door.
I was going to do my best not to let this get to me as I headed straight to the back of the room to take my normal seat.
Hopefully, I could roll the clock back to the time before I met him.
Back to the time before he abandoned me and broke my heart.
As I passed him and caught the smell of his Axe, it sent me over the edge, and I rushed back out of the room.
I wasn’t expecting that type of reaction, but after yesterday, I hadn’t fully processed what he had done.
He had asked me to trust him. He had promised me that he was different and wasn’t going to abandon me like other people in my life.
He said he wasn’t going to break my heart, but he lied.
Once again, I had misjudged someone whom I had chosen to trust. A week ago, we had sex, and now he was ignoring me like I never mattered.
How was I supposed to move past it? I was a mess.
Once I was out in the hall, I leaned my back up against the lockers, breathing fast, heart pounding as Madame Holly followed me out of the room.
“Allie! My Dear! Please, are you alright? Please go get some water and join us again when you are able,” she said, then she patted my shoulder and proceeded to shut the door and return to the lesson. At least she had noticed that I was suffering.
I was unable to return to the room; I just couldn’t face him in my current fragile state.
My wounds were too raw, and I needed space to breathe, if that was even possible.
Right now, it feels like I would feel like this forever.
It felt like Chris had slit my wrists and I was slowly losing consciousness as the life inside me was slipping away.
I was relieved when Isabelle found me in the hall after class ended.
“Allie, what are you doing?” she asked when she saw me sitting on the floor.
“I don’t know,” I said, with my face buried into my knees.
“Have you been out here all period?”
“Yeah. I went in for a moment, but the second I passed by him, I caught a whiff of him, and I fell apart, so I rushed out of the room and have been sitting here ever since.”
“Okay, let’s go,” she said, as she pulled me to my feet and put her arm around me. She walked me to my next period, put both hands on my back, and shoved me through the door.
“You got this,” she said. When I looked over my shoulder, she was smiling an encouraging smile.
That afternoon, when the bell rang, I headed to my locker with Isabelle by my side, grateful to have somehow gotten through the day.
“You did it,” she said.
“Thanks to you,” I said, and then I opened my locker and something fell out.
There, sitting on the floor at my feet, was my hoodie, and it knocked the wind out of me all over again. I guess Chris was officially done with me. I couldn’t breathe.
That afternoon after practice, as I headed up to my Jeep, I dropped his hoodie on his soccer bag while he was down at the other end of the field putting equipment away in the shed.
As it left my fingers, I felt like a piece of me was slipping away.
Now we no longer had anything that belonged to each other. I guess it was officially over.