“You shouldn’t have touched Lucas.” The bubblegum bitch snaps her gum. “Marissa will stomp your ass.”
“I didn’t touch him. He did all of that on his own. I was just standing there, minding my damn business.”
“Thought you didn’t know what we were talking about?”
I open and close my mouth. Beanie Dick laughs at me.
“Here.” He drapes himself over the back of my chair. He presses play on the video queued on his phone. “Just watch. It’s already all over school. If you’re this much of an easy slut for Saint, I’ve got a fat sausage for you, sweetness.”
Inhaling sharply, I pinch the inside of his arm hard, close to his armpit. He yelps.
“You bitch!”
Twisting around, I eye him up and down. “Don’t touch me.”
He rubs the spot where I pinched with a surly frown. “Fine, whatever. Just watch this.”
He starts the video over and shoves his phone in my face.
Lucas and I fill the screen and wolf whistles sound from the speakers. The video shows his big hands digging down the back of my jeans and I’m mortified by the way I buck toward him. Before I bite his lip in retaliation, the video cuts to us kissing again, his tongue delving into my mouth and his hands all over me. Warmth creeps up my neck and pools in my belly.
It’s not even halfway through.
This video—the one apparently circulating through the school of the stolen lip lock Lucas forced on me—is doctored.
It’s obviously an amateur, too. Some whack-job with too much time on their hands and the assistance of a YouTube tutorial.
I sit in stiff silence and endure all forty-six agonizing seconds of the video. The moment where I bite Lucas and tell him off doesn’t come. The edited clip makes it look like a steamy make out with the stock moans dropped into the audio track rather than showing the unwanted advance for what it really was.
They made it look like I was panting for it. The sleeves of my blazer pucker beneath my tight grip, no longer crisp as I hug my arms.
This clip is designed to blow things way out of proportion.
Okay, Gemma. Take it in, then pick yourself up. You’re not the girl in that video.
My plan for this year is to coast by as an anonymous outsider. That goal doesn’t change if people here decide they know me. They can label me however they like.
I still know who I am. That’s all that matters.
I allow a breathy laugh of disinterest past my lips. “Man, you guys are a bunch of idiots if you can’t pick out stock moans. What porno did you and your limp dick buddies pull that one from?”
Beanie Dick blinks his beady little eyes.
I barely keep the smirk off my face.
What, did he expect this to make me cry in embarrassment? If one second of this video clip were true, the girl depicted wouldn’t give a damn about public consumption after kissing guys like that.
“This is the digital age.” I pat his dumbfounded cheek and affect a pout. “Try harder next time.”
A snort further down my row draws our attention. The nice girl who gave me the napkin coughs into her hand to hide the amused curve of her mouth. She flashes me an appreciative look, her eyes full of shining mirth.
She gets her chair kicked by the bubblegum bitch for her trouble.
“Who told you to laugh, Raggedy Anne?”
I glare at the mean girl.
The whole time the teachers don’t intervene.