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Lucas grimaced. “Let’s not get too far into the bra-burning here.”
“Yes, let’s not. Waste of time getting you and Steve riled up. Are you girls with me?”
Callie looked straight at Lucas, which was when I realised I was probably fucked.
“Callie doesn’t know anything you don’t,” Lucas said. “I know that because I don’t know anything about this you don’t.”
“For fuck’s sake, Callie, do you speak for yourself any more or do you have to have Lucas around to tell you what sort of person you are?”
Callie was packing fists now too. “Lucas is right though, I don’t know anything that proves Axel is guilty. Just what you’ve told me. Are we expected to lie?”
“I won’t be lying for you,” said Tamara really fast, glancing at Steven like she thought there might be trouble if she didn’t.
I couldn’t believe the two of them. They absolutely knew Axel was guilty of this. They’d already been nearly split up because of it, and now they were back on track they were going to use everything they’d learned to turn on me?
Now Callie and Tamara were shooting one another looks. This was definitely something they were doing consciously, a decision to fall on the side of their new group rather than me. And when I’d given up a lot to stick by them over the few years we’d known one another, had been proud of that because it always seemed like the right thing to do, that was the biggest slap in the face I could imagine.
My friends weren’t who I always thought they were. But that was not the sort of thing that should have been a surprise to me. “So what you’re saying is you’re going to let me stand on my own when I try to stick up for myself.”
Callie squirmed. “I just don’t think any of us really understand what’s going on here, Aileen. You’re having a stupid fight over… something your dad invented years ago that actually belongs to Axel? I didn’t think your dad really did much of anything.”
Tripped up by my own need to hide so much. “It doesn’t belong to Axel, it…” I shook my head. Why should I have to explain this anyway? “You’ve made your decision about which way you’re going to fall on this, I’m surprised there’s any way you can twist your brains into supporting someone who would make such appalling pictures of another person public, but that’s going to be on your conscience, not mine.”
I stalked off back to my locker to grab my bag out before the bus arrived, ignoring the few weak calls after me. I’d been planning to just put all of this out of my mind for the rest of the day so I could have a nice evening with Dad and figure out what to do about the problem another time, but it ended up being sort of hard to ignore the cartoon woman someone had drawn in thick black marker on my locker door. She had a pea-sized head, gigantic boobs with nipples that would have signalled the need for a trip to the doctor to me, and the rest of her was an elongated, hairy vulva.
There was no way any of that was just sanding off easily. I found a marker in my own bag and graded the drawing a D-minus. I thought I was being generous, too.
“Aileen?”
I whirled around at Mr. Henderson’s voice, even though there was no way for me to hide the fact that I’d been vandalising my own locker at this point.
“It’s okay,” said Mr. Henderson, “we already saw that.” Matt was standing beside him. “I assume you have also seen those two images being circulated.”
“Matt, Mr. Henderson…” I took a moment to try to figure out how to say it in a diplomatic way, then I realised we were all way beyond diplomacy here. “I know you’re probably both trying to help, but you are in the half of the human race I least want to be discussing this with.”
“We know it’s fake, Aileen,” said Matt.
Well that immediately made things very different.
“I, uh, when you zoom in on the parts where there have been additions, it’s quite obvious.” Matt had turned so red he might easily have been about to burst into flame.
“Well, um, I never thought I’d have to say this, but thank you for performing the service of zooming in sufficiently on my fake boobs.” I knew there was a surprisingly accurate drawing of the other prominently-displayed part in that photo right next to my head—and I said ‘surprisingly’ because I would bet on the artist not knowing that part wasn’t actually called vagina—but I was happy to pretend that wasn’t there if nobody else brought it up. It was awkward enough talking about the boobs.
“I didn’t need to zoom in to know it was fake,” said Mr. Henderson.
“Well, thanks again.” I waggled my marker at him. “I’ll give you an A-double-plus and ask absolutely no questions about why you’re good at that particular thing.”
“I’d like you to join us in my office for a moment, Aileen.” Mr. Henderson was looking from left to right with an air of this not being something he was supposed to be offering as part of his teacherly duty. “You know the College is going to be unable to adequately help you with this situation. The Bennett family are respected benefactors to this school.”
My jaw was on the concrete. I had expected disbelief. But this… “You can not be suggesting what I think…”
Matt shrugged at me. “It’s unfortunately how it will work,” said Mr. Henderson. “The school board has a very strong incentive to keep Axel Bennett happy. Obviously they will take on your complaint if you make one, but I would expect you to be pressured to accept a mediation setup. Something that enables him to say he’s made reparations while not forcing him to admit guilt or face any profound consequences at all.”
The only consequence I had ever wanted in the first place was for Axel to get the hint and leave me alone, but the deeper I went into this, the less that was true. Or, at least, I was starting to realise that once you tangled with someone like Axel, you couldn’t just disengage by going through the reverse process. The only way out was through, and you had to get a little dirty.
Perhaps that was what had happened to my poor friends. They’d gotten caught up in the webs of these handsome menaces, and they’d seen the way out but gotten hopelessly tangled along the way.
Mr. Henderson’s foot was tapping on the concrete of the alcove. “Anything more we say about this should happen behind closed doors.”
