CONTENT WARNING: swearing, mentions of sexual abuse

Sometimes I think I get Lennox with his enjoyment of the most ridiculously simple things. I’m pretty sure that especially today that our great minds are alike… The warmth of the sun on my back, comfortable sneakers on my feet, and a perfect album playing through my earphones. Dramatic and theatrical just enough to be pleasant yet not ridiculous or cringey. Oh, simple pleasures.

I lifted my right arm and continuously shook my wrist to make my smart band switch on. The little thing did not as I desired, so I shook even hard. Immersed in my little activity, I forgot for a bit about my surroundings; I realized that as my hand hit a semi-soft tissue of a person standing in front of me. I looked up to see Justine as she absented-mindedly tried to cover her chest with her arm. Her gaze was distraught and not really directed at me.

“Oh, sorry Justine. I didn’t realize you were in front of me,” I apologized casually. The album had me in a really good mood. Good enough to genuinely act civilized toward her for a few minutes. She did nothing and seemed too distressed for a simple bump.

“Did I hit you hard? Didn’t realize,” Just to be sure I checked out my wrist. “Nope, no sharp bracelets today, just a rubber band so I prolly didn’t wound you. Do you have chest pains? That suck…”

Well, that finally got a reaction. Well, kind of. Her gaze focused on me; she seemed a bit shocked about the whole thing. Before she could space out again, I noticed that one of her papers was just mere seconds from slipping and falling onto the slightly wet pavement. The paper was sliding by her skirt, so I quickly grabbed it.

With this, I got another weird reaction from her. She ungracefully jumped back a step or two, her hand now covered the middle of her skirt, and she sent me another weird glare. This time thou, I felt as if she didn’t even fully recognize me.

That’s a personal bully for you. Acts all chummy in school, but once you are outside, you’re suddenly not so attention-worthy.

“Woah, chill. I just grabbed your paper before it could slip onto the dirty pavement. Ugh, and Soren wonders why I can never keep my temper with you around,” I nagged slightly hoping for her to wake up from her trance. Her silence was strange and made our little meeting even more awkward. I thought that maybe she would respond to me if I just continued talking.

“Justine, why so quiet? Left your tongue with your clique?” I teased her knowing full well that she can’t stand it when I mock her. Her eyes finally focus on me for a second and Justine sends me a slightly surprised expression as if she just found out that I was still in front of her.

“Oh, shut up butch,” she huffed and walked past me.

“If anything, I’m a chapstick, you ignorant!” I shouted at her since it baffled me how she still thought she was capable of harassing me with queer slang. Then again, if she paid so much attention to me, she could educate herself enough to know the term that suited me more.

A little annoyed, I finally found out what time it was and realized that I should get going if I wanted to make it in time to my meeting with Lennox.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t really spend the rest of my walk enjoying my little pleasures. The music suddenly seemed too loud and too distracting no matter how quietly it played, and the sunshine didn’t feel so nice and warm anymore. My thoughts would focus on my lil adventure from a few minutes ago. I absent-mindedly repeated my movements from a few minutes ago. Moved my arm to my chest, then to my waist and thighs, then again and again, and maybe once more.

“What are you doing?” I heard a confused voice to my left. As it turned out, I finally arrived at the meeting spot and still kept on repeating my moves. Lennox was right by my side and ready to handle me one of the drinks he was holding. I happily accepted the drink and scanned the area for a place we can sit at.

“I met Justine, and accidentally spooked her with checking my watch and rescuing her paper” I explained instantly realizing how ridiculously it sounded. After that, I tried to recreate my meeting with her hoping that Lennox could understand the whole thing better.

“Maybe she has muscle sores? Soren avoids people altogether when he has them since just slight touches hurt him,” Lennox muses, and I can’t help but laugh at the image in my head.

“Must be a pain to do it. I have never seen the guy alone” I say. While Soren, Lennox and I were not in the top tier of popularity, each of us had at least a few people interested in our company. To my misery, some of mine consisted of Justine and her clique, but recently a cute shy blonde gave me her number, so I guess my circle of interests wasn’t that bad.

“Your theory is the best one so far-”

“The only one!” he laughed.

“-so that’s the one I’ll settle on. You up for the party this Friday?” I say and change the topic. I enjoy our hangs out too much to spend them thinking of Justine when the situation didn’t even call for that.

“Soren and I have a shift at Urie’s, so we won’t make it,” he sent me an apologetic look. That didn’t make me all that happy, but then again, Lennox wasn’t a party animal so he most likely would leave the party early.

“That’s fine. A girl can dream thou.”

~*~

The party took place at Jordan and Jenny’s house. The twins had essentially two things in common — being relatively popular and cool with both popular and unpopular kids. That was what I liked about them, and quite frankly, that was all I cared about now. If I ever happened to feel like partying, I would crash at one of theirs, the hosts would try and make as many people comfortable as possible.

I entered their house and noticed Jenny showing off her new nails to a group of her guests. I passed her and sent her a quick nod glad that she was busy with other people. While I appreciated her good qualities, I was aware that Jenny still hoped we would work out as a couple simply because we had gone on one successful date last year. She just couldn’t accept that the rest of our six dates had been tiring, boring and awkward as hell, and her dog destroyed my favorite bag with his saliva. I loved that bag with my whole heart, I swear.

I went to the kitchen, found Jenny’s mom stash of non-alcoholic beers (perks of the successful date, the pear one tasted heavenly, and her mom always had them in stock), and mingled with people.

“I saw them last year on a walk near my place. I was trying to impress my date, so I didn’t really pay attention to them. I mean a teenager and his teacher happened to see each other nearby some primary school.” After a few rounds around the house, I found myself listening to some guy talking about the biggest gossip of the month, maybe the year — the affair of a student and his male teacher. “Thought they just small talked a bit and then each went their way, you know? So, I quickly forgot, but you won’t believe it!” the story continued, and I thought back to its main characters. I felt bad for that student, he was a cool guy. He would help me when he witnessed the clique harassing me. It felt bad to discover that a teacher twenty years older had an affair with a teenager, especially that teenager. While people just can’t forget about it, there seemed to be some sort of silent agreement. People talked, but never used their names. It always was the guy, the teacher.

 “New school year, the guy graduated, and the teacher resigned, people say he moved to a different city… A city with a university that just so happens to be the new school of the guy! Heard they are still at it. The headmaster must be furious.” The guy ended his story and people jumped on the opportunity of sharing their tidbits and opinions on that matter. Listening to that made me feel ill, so I left that group and started looking for some nice distraction. So far, the party wasn’t the most eventful — which was to my liking — but it certainly wasn’t my worst party.

A couple of minutes later, I found a cute dorky guy who argued with his friend about the best strategy to win a Jenga game. Seeing as their strategies made no sense, they were hammered. That was so hilarious that I backed up the dork a bit which earned me a cute smile and an invitation upstairs to show off his Jenga skills. I agreed so the two of us left for Jordan’s room. The cute nerd, Michael, quite quickly and easily found the game and that was impressive since everyone knew that Jordan was a sucker for board games.

Michael was a cute drunken mess unable to even build a Jenga tower so I hoped he would quickly lose interest in the tower and opt for a make out session. I put my hand on his, looked him in the eye and leaned in but it startled Michael.

“Wha— No, uh, could you not? I don’t” he stuttered a bit scared. I stopped in my tracks, and slowly straightened my back. It helped a bit since Michael calmed down a bit.

“Taken?” I asked and he shook his head. “Not into girls?” I tried again. Another shake.

I was about to ask if it was me he wasn’t into, but just then I noticed the tiniest collar bone tattoo in a card shape. Due to his freak out, Michael’s shirt slipped off his left shoulder a bit and uncovered the tattoo.

“Oh, is it making out you’re not into?” I ask with a smile. If that was the truth, I liked it better than my last hypothesis. Michael nods shyly. Oh, he’s a real cutie.

“Yeah, I’m aro ace.” He explains nervously playing with a Jenga block with his free hand.

“Cool for you,” I said with a smile. It’s not cool for me, but I kept that for myself. No need to be a jerk to him just because he can’t give me what I want. “That’s a nice tattoo by the way.”

He offers me a cute smile.

“It was really fun to talk to you, Michael, but I still want to make out with someone so… We can still play Jenga once, preferably sober,” I got to my feet and head for the door. If he wasn’t so cute, I would stick around but he got me in the mood to get some sweet kisses and it was hard to ignore that mood.

“Off you go then, good luck!” Michael laughed and waved slightly.

I left the room, seconds later a pair left the room in front of me. Thankfully, I didn’t crush into them.

“Can you stop it, you idiot?” the guy yelled aggressively yanking the girl’s wrist. At that moment I recognize them — Justine and Chase, one of her short-term boyfriends. “Stop being dramatic over some touching, Jesus Christ!”

Justine was clearly uncomfortable with his behavior, and I was pretty sure her wrist would be all black-and-blue since the guy’s hold on it was quite strong. The girl shifted and tried to free herself, her other hand quickly fixed her unzipped shirt before joining in the struggle for freedom. That woke me up from my shock. Justine was always confident and relaxed among her boyfriends. They never treated her roughly, and they never had to resolve to force to get some of her affection.

I made my way to them and put my hand on his fingers.

“Hey, Justine, I need you for a bit,” I said cheerfully and looked and the guy. “Chase, can you leave us for a second? That’s personal.”

Leave us alone? Wishful thinking on my part. He did not like that, quite the contrary. Mad he tried to shake my hands of his, all ready to get her back to the room they had just left.

“The fuck? Get lost you ugly bitch!” Well, ain’t he a sweet thing.

“She clearly does not want to go with you, you brute” I fired back and focused on freeing Justine. I surprised him by digging my sharp nails in soft spots between his fingers and then crashing my high heel on his foot. Yanking Justine free, I pulled her after me as we ran down the stairs and dashed for the door. We didn’t stop until we reached my house. I spent the whole way silently thanking for leaving relatively close to Jenny and Jordan’s place.

I led Justine inside my house to my room. Inspecting her wrist, I noticed that she was an overall mess. Smudged make up, partially unzipped shirt, a little hole in her thigh matched with a skirt that normally didn’t hang that low on her hip. When she brushed off her hair to the side, I noticed a hickey on her neck.

“Hey, what happened? That guy was a total creep!” I decided to break the silence as I reached for my favorite oil make up remover. She silently accepted it, took off her falsies and started removing her eye make up.

“He wanted to go all the way,” she started, then shivered. “Didn’t feel like it.”

“Oh, good thing you left before that,” I let out a sigh making her turn away from me. “Wait, you didn’t? Did he hurt you?”

Justine tensed up, stood up and tried to enlarge the distance between us. “What? No, do you see bruises on me, dumb face? He just grabbed me cos I left before he got enough”

I honestly could not believe what I was hearing. In the meantime, Justine had removed her bold red lipstick. She seems less intimidating and much weaker than ever.

“It doesn’t take bruises to be hurt, Justine. What did he do?” I demand.

“Geez, touched my boobs and ass, put his fingers in my pussy. I didn’t want to go further than kisses, so I didn’t enjoy, then left the fucker, alright?!” Her voice went weaker and cracked a few times before she finished those two sentences. I felt ill to my stomach.

While I despise Justine for obvious reasons, at that moment I wished she would start laughing and make fun of me. I wished it all turned out to be one of her stupid jokes, a highly insensitive one, but a joke, nonetheless.

I silently waited for her to laugh.

She did not laugh.