“Are they still bothering you?” she asks, her voice low.
“Something like that,” I mutter vaguely.
“Well, you just keep your head up and don’t let them get you down. No one can dull your light unless you let them.”
Rather than respond to her unsolicited platitude, I glance back at the doors to make sure Carter didn’t follow me inside to terrorize me some more. He didn’t, so I push out a breath of relief.
“We should have a coffee date after school,” Grace suggests, already onto the next thing. “When forces of evil are trying to get you down, focus on the things you love—liked iced coffee, and me.”
I do love Grace, but I don’t have the emotional capacity to deal with her right now. Sometimes she is so unwaveringly optimistic, I want to shake her. Luckily, she doesn’t require much in return to keep the chatter going. A nod and murmur here and there, and she can talk for days without end. It’s probably the main reason we’re friends.
My first classes of the day pass uneventfully, but when it comes time for history class, my stomach knots up until I think I might actually be sick. Will he try to talk to me? Make fun of me with his friends? How will I even be able to concentrate on this test?
I’m a few minutes early, so I head to the bathroom before class begins. I stop before I get there when I see Carter walk out of the boy’s bathroom.
Without time to think, I pivot and race back to the classroom. I don’t want to be there with him, but I definitely don’t want to get trapped alone with him in the hall or by the bathrooms. I don’t think he would follow me inside the girl’s bathroom, but who really knows? Clearly, I have his attention for the time being. I probably will as long as he thinks he can corrupt me. I should hurry up and give my virginity to someone else so he’ll lose interest in me. If only there were some contenders to choose from.
My heart races as I drop into my seat. I sigh with relief, putting my books down atop my desk. A moment later, Carter walks in. I have no idea what to expect. After last night, I shouldn’t even be surprised when he approaches my desk, but I was hoping he wouldn’t.
He doesn’t linger, though. Just places his giant hand down on top of my books and says, “You should join the track team, Ellis.”
“I’m not fast unless I’m runnin’ from monsters,” I inform him.
He flashes me a smile over his shoulder, his golden boy smile, the one he uses to charm everyone. I roll my eyes at him. I’m not fooled by that bullshit, and he knows it. I’ve seen who he really is, and I won’t soon forget.
Unexpectedly, that small interaction does more to calm my nerves than unsettle me. Half of my anxiety today is the uncertainty, not knowing what to expect, what he will do or say, how he’ll treat me. For the moment, I’m relatively safe, because I’m in a classroom full of other kids and a teacher. Carter may be ballsy, but he’s not going to pounce on me in front of a teacher. He could still make me uncomfortable, though.
Despite my lack of concentration studying for it, I manage to finish the test. I can’t help looking over at Carter once I’m done. He finished his test before I finished mine. Because he’s sharp, or because he doesn’t care? Now he’s kicked back in his seat, playing on his cell phone. His attention isn’t wavering and his thumbs are moving across the screen like he’s texting someone. I wonder if it’s a girl. I never paid much attention to Carter’s love life before, as jocks have never been my cup of tea.
I am also not someone they usually notice. Now that a portion of the team has seen me naked, sure, I have their attention, but before Jake noticed me, there’s no evidence the rest of them even knew I existed.
It makes me feel foolish now, how flattered I felt when Jake first noticed me over the summer. Carter wasn’t on my radar then; he was so far out of my league, we didn’t even exist on the same plane. We still don’t, now we’re just bonded by a bizarre instance of abuse at his hands, by a dirty secret I have to keep.
I wonder how many other people have seen that side of Carter. Do all of his teammates know what he’s really like, or just Jake and Shayne? What about girlfriends? Who has he even dated? I can only think of one ex-girlfriend of his in our grade—Erika Martin. She still associates with him since she’s a cheerleader, but I don’t know if she actually likes him. I’m tempted to pay closer attention, to see if she regards him more like an ex-boyfriend, or a former abuser. Was he like that with her? Does anything else get him off, or does he need to do what he did to me?