A shiver races up my arms again, and I curse the colder weather, the damp chill in the house that never quite leaves until April, when Faulkner turns back into a sauna.
BadApple: That wasn’t the deal.
MrD: Are you still at WHPA?
BadApple: … My debt is never paid until I leave the school?
MrD: I say when your assignment is over. I want you to keep watching, keep reporting back.
BadApple: This has nothing 2 do w ur secret society
MrD: I’ll worry about that. You keep doing what you’re doing, and you keep your scholarship.
MrD: Understood?
BadApple: yes
MrD: Good. Report back on Friday.
BadApple: k
MrD: Oh, and Harper?
MrD: Make every report as good as this one.
*
It’s worse the next day. As I walk into school in the morning, girls snicker and hide behind their phones, looks of disgust flickering over their faces. Guys do that stupid miming gesture with their hands moving toward their mouths and their tongues poking into their cheeks, denoting the blowjob. I guess it’s better than them thinking I fucked them all.
I try to ignore them, but blood rushes in my ears and my brain feels stunned and empty. I open my locker, and a cascade of condoms, lube, and little novelty sex stuff cascades out. To my surprise, I find myself thinking about what Gloria would do. She must have gone through this on her way to the top. Somehow, that makes me feel better. She started here, and now she’s homecoming queen. People will forget. The Dolces fuck everyone.
I pull out my books, dropping a cardboard backing with little nipple clamps hanging from it like earrings. I close my locker and turn to see Dixie hurrying toward me, her brow furrowed with concern.
“Are you okay?” she asks as we start down the hall, past a group of guys looking at their phones.
“Peachy,” I say.
“Really?”
“Sure,” I say. “Guess I’m a real Dolce girl now.”
“Oh,” she says, her expression falling. “You didn’t see the blog this morning, did you?”
I narrow my eyes, studying her closer. There’s something else in her expression. Guilt.
“No,” I say slowly. “What did you post?”
“It wasn’t me, I swear,” she says in a rush. “The blog was hacked. It happened once before. I deleted it as soon as I saw it, but… It already had a lot of hits.”
My blood runs cold as I notice all the people looking at their phones, groups of them crowding together, others laughing hysterically, and all of them staring at me when I walk by. Because of course some of them saved that shit, and now they’re sending it around school.
“Oh, Harper,” Gloria says, giving me a pitying look and shaking her head as she walks by with her friends. She may have been nice to me, but some things even she can’t overlook.
For a second, I let my guard down. I thoughtmaybe…
I thought if I gave up my pride and bowed to the will of the tyrants that run this school, they’d take the target off my back. I thought I could rise above, if I was just willing to stay strong, like Gloria said. I thought I had a chance to claw my way up from the bottom of the heap, that if I just worked hard enough, maybe the world wouldn’t stomp me back into the ground this time.
I should have known better. I should have listened to what my mom said when I told her I was going to Willow Heights so I could leave this town.