A different kind of fear shoots along my limbs now. I twist and thrash, adrenaline charging through me.
“Please,” I manage through gasping breaths. “Don’t!”
“Oh my god, she thinks we’re going to rape her,” Scarlet squeals, snorting with laughter and wiping the blood off her lip. “As if.”
“I’m sure there’s a broom around here somewhere,” Keisha says.
Scarlet’s eyes widen for a second, but then she sneers at me. “You really think we’d touch your diseased little hole? It’s probably crawling with crabs and crusted over with herpes.”
I keep fighting to free myself as they peel off my shorts. Scarlet stands up and smooths down her hair, tosses the shorts in the trash, and spits a spray of blood onto them. Then she adjusts her butterfly clips before motioning for the girls to continue. They wrestle my shirt over my head, handing it up to her. I struggle harder as they peel off my underwear, but I can’t do more than land a few punches before they pin my arms again.
“Oh my god,” Diana howls, making a face and jumping back from me. “Haven’t you ever heard of a razor?”
The girls all start howling with laughter.
“She’s got a full bush,” Scarlet screams. “Like a twelve-year-old!”
“I’m surprised all those guys have found their way through that,” Diana adds, wiping away her tears of laughter. They finally let me up, and I stand, shaking with rage and humiliation.
So much for walking out with dignity. I can take a beating, but this… This is more than a beating. They didn’t leave a single bruise, and yet, this will stay with me far longer, the shame burned into my psyche.
“Give me my clothes,” I say, my voice unsteady. I’m going to be sobbing into my pillow about this for months, but I’ll take that secret to the grave with me. I’d fucking die before I cry in front of the demon cheerleaders from hell.
“Fine,” Scarlet says, rolling her eyes. She steps back, giving the other cheerleaders a minute to straighten themselves out. They all step aside, making sure I’m fully exposed to the entire locker room. Half the class has already cleared out, since people are eager to head home at the end of the day, but the ones who remain are snickering and giving me looks that range from pity to scorn to amusement. No one gets fully nude in the locker room, which means they’re all staring. I want to crawl into a bathroom stall and hide until the rest of them are gone.
Scarlet, who’s already back in her snug Calvin Klein jeans and a striped baby tee, leads me to one of the stalls and shoves the door open. “There’s your clothes,” she says, barely containing her laughter. “I think we improved them.”
I stare in disbelief at the jeans and t-shirt that are stuffed down into one of the toilets. Gagging at the smell, I try to step back, but Keisha shoves me forward into the stall, and Diana pulls the door closed, holding the top.
“Are you fucking serious?” I ask, glad they’ve shocked the tears away. “Youshiton my clothes?”
“Hey, I said your gym clothes were trash,” Scarlet says, giggling. “Your regular clothes are shit, so that seemed fitting.”
I stare at the clothes, trying not to puke at the sight of the pile of human excrement on my “If My Mouth Doesn’t Say It, My Face Definitely Will” shirt. It would be bad enough if they just soaked my clothes with toilet water. I could at least bring them home and wash them. Now, there’s no way I’m fishing the clothes out. I want to slam the lid of the toilet, but of course it’s in the gym of a public school, which means we’re lucky it has a seat. To get lids, I’d probably have to move across town to Willow Heights, the fancy private school.
I turn around and yank on the door, trying to open it while the girls outside hold it closed.
“What’s going on in here?” demands a male voice, one of the coaches who likes to stick his head in the locker room while the girls are changing.
“We’re just holding the door for Rae while she changes,” Keisha calls back sweetly. “The lock’s broken.”
“Well, hurry up,” the coach shouts. “Clear out and go home!”
I hear the door to the locker room settle closed. “Let’s go,” Keisha says. “She’s had enough, and I don’t want to miss the bus.”
“Because Tommy’s on your bus?” teases Diana.
Suddenly they shove the door toward me, the one I’ve been pulling, and I stumble backwards, my legs hitting the edge of the toilet. The seat rattles, and Scarlet shrieks. “She fell in the toilet!”
This time, they don’t snicker and hold back. They’re all out guffawing.
I stumbled out of the stall, my hair a mess from the fight, my rage burning up through me like magma in a volcano. I see the flicker of fear in Scarlet’s eyes as she takes a step back, her tongue darting out to taste the split I left in her lip. Backing up another step, she swallows, her eyes rolling back and forth like an animal looking for an escape.
“I said you’ll be sorry,” I growl, my breath unsteady. I don’t know what’s going to come out if the volcano erupts. Tears or murder are equally viable options at this point.
Keisha snorts. “What areyougoing to do? You don’t even have clothes.”
Scarlet bumps into the big plastic trash can where she threw my gym uniform. Her gaze drops, and the next second, she snatches the clothes out of the trash and runs for the door. She’s got a head start, and I have to shove past her friends, but she’s in a pair of platform boots, and I’m barefoot. I race after her, arriving at the door just when she does. We wrestle for the clothes, the door handle, the upper hand. Then Diana grabs me from behind, fisting a handful of my hair and yanking my head back.