Yeah, nothing about her has changed.
Blue is still the same. Loud, spunky… bright. Brimming with so much life that it’s hard to look at her.
But still I looked.
I watched her get humiliated for years. I watched her get pushed around, get insulted, laughed at.
For years, I was her bully.
I’m not a fan of words or letters or anything. Never have been.
But bully is the word I hate the most. I hate it so much that it might be a living, breathing person.
A person I want to strangle and choke the life out of.
“I’m not defending her. I’ve never defended her,” I say to Ashley. “I’m just letting you know how things are.”
“What did they do to you at Oxford?” Ashley muses.
“That’s the thing. I never was at Oxford. I’ve never been to the UK. I was in New York, crashing on strangers’ couches.”
And realizing that the world is a much bigger place than my dad had me believe. A place where people look at me like I’m worth something, even though I’m only a high school dropout.
My dad will shit a brick when he hears of this, that I outed the secret. The prodigal son wasn’t at Oxford but squatting in buildings like a homeless bum.
You’re not trying hard enough, Zach.
You really are dumb, aren’t you?
You’ll never amount to anything if you can’t even spell your name right.
But that’s nothing new, is it? He’s been shitting bricks ever since he found out his perfect little son has long, deep cracks.
I know the staff’s still here, watching everything. At The Pleiades, it’s hard to keep secrets. I make eye contact with a brown-haired, mousy one. “Escort her out. She’s a little too drunk to walk on her own.”
Ashley calls out my name and I spin around to face her one last time.
“Don’t ever come here uninvited. And don’t harass the staff. You’re not gonna like how I react the next time. Just a fair warning.”
With that, I leave.
I thrust my hand down my pocket and wrap my fingers around the bottle of laxative. I have a headache coming on; I need a fucking cigarette.
But guess what? I can’t have any. Because someone stole them from me.
My fingers tighten around the bottle in frustration.
Fucking thief.