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“And? He’s hurting you! Just leave him. Tell someone. Anything is better than putting up with that.”
She turns back to look at me now. Her eyes look tired. “I’m not going to leave him, okay? Drop it.”
Frustration claws at my chest and I try not to shake her. Kaitlyn’s not my friend, and probably never will be, but I will never ever be okay with standing by and letting someone get walked all over. I’m not wired that way.
“What the hell happened to you, Kaitlyn? You’re not the fierce girl I met when I first transferred to this school. That Kaitlyn ran the school. That Kaitlyn started a war with me over bumping into the guy she liked. That Kaitlyn would destroy a boy for looking at her the wrong way. But now? Now you’re letting a guy treat you like garbage. You’re letting him put his hands on you and hurt you. You don’t have to be with him, Kaitlyn. You deserve better than him and you know that.”
“Just mind your own fucking business, Amelia. You don’t know anything about my situation.”
“I don’t have to know anything about your situation other than the fact that he’s abusing you and that you don’t have to put up with it.”
“Yes, I do,” she quickly snaps back. The air around us grows colder with the setting sun, with the chill of her words.
“No, you don’t!”
“Yes, I do!”
“No, you don’t!”
“You don’t get it!”
“What don’t I get? I get it perfectl—”
“He’s all I have!” she explodes, tears welling in her eyes as the anger turns to sadness. “Happy? He’s all I have.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Are you deaf? He’s the only person I have; my only friend, really.”
“But what about Makayla? And Krista and Alexa and Br—”
She waves me off. “They’re all just yes-men. They just agree with whatever I say because they’re scared of me. You don’t think they don’t turn around and talk shit about me the second I leave the room? I can guarantee they do. They don’t care about me, they’re just friends with me because I’m popular. Hell, even you, the girl I hate more than anyone, know what my boyfriend is doing and my ‘best friends’ have no clue.”
I don’t know how to reply to that. I can barely even process what she’s saying. “If you know that your friends aren’t real with you, why not just try to make more friends? Why just settle for fake friends?”
She runs her good hand through her hair as her shoulders slump. She seems completely and totally drained; no wonder she’s telling me all this. “I liked the way things were. Everyone was scared of me, and I was fine with it because I got to run the school my way. I could do whatever I wanted, decide who was cool and who was invited to parties. Girls wanted to be my friend and I could have any pick of the guys. I was even finally getting attention from the one boy everyone else wanted. But then you came along. You stole the boy I liked without even trying, and you showed the whole school that they don’t have to be afraid of me. I lost the guy, I lost my rule over the school, and I’m barely holding on to my popularity.”
Whoa. I didn’t think Kaitlyn was that deep. I thought she hated me, like, for fun.
“Does popularity really mean that much to you? Is it worth staying with a guy who abuses you?”
She looks away in the distance, unable to meet my eyes as she murmurs, “It’s not just about that. Without Ryan I’m just . . . I’m just alone.”
I actually feel my heart kind of break. I never thought I would feel bad for Kaitlyn. But here I am. Feeling bad for her and genuinely wanting to help her.
“Hey, listen to me. You are Kaitlyn Anderson. You’re stronger than this. And you’re not alone. You have friends and people who care about you. Leave Ryan and get your shit back together.”
“Oh God. Please don’t tell me you’re about to say that you care about me and that you want to be my friend. Because I’ll tell you right now that will never in a million years happen. Like, ever.”
“Please. I’d have to get hit really hard on the head for that to happen. Come on, let’s get back to my car. I’ll give you a ride home.”
Finally, she turns around and treks back to my car. It’s a small victory, getting her to accept a ride, but I still feel like celebrating.
Before I can say anything else, she grows serious, her voice coming out small, which is such a contrast to her normal personality. “Even if I want to leave Ryan, I can’t.”
We stop in front of my car and I turn to face her. “Why the hell not?”
She sighs, and I see her mental debate over if she should tell me or not.
In the end, she decides to tell me. “He has . . . pictures . . . saved on his phone.”
“Pictures? So what? Who cares if—ohhh.” The meaning of her words sink in, and we’re left staring at each other.
“Yeah,” she says solemnly, then leans on the hood of my car and stares straight ahead as the sun sets around us. “If I leave him, he’ll send them out.”
I move beside her and lean on my car too. “I know it’s not ideal, but would you really prefer to keep getting beaten up over him sending some pictures out?”
“Are you stupid? If those pictures get out, I’m done. Colleges actually screen their applicants, not to mention the social embarrassment. And my parents? Oh my Go—”
“Okay, okay, I get it.” I cut her off. “But you can’t just stay with him because of that. How old are you? Seventeen?”
“Yes, but I thought of that angle already. If I report him, there’s a chance I’d get in trouble for distributing child pornography.”
“What? But it’s a picture of yourself?”
She rolls her eyes for what must be the millionth time tonight. “I know, it’s stupid, but that’s the fucking patriarchy for you.”
What do we do in this situation? I can’t just let her run back to Ryan and continue getting hurt. But she clearly has her heart set on staying with him, at least as long as he has pictures of her. We stand there, leaning against the hood of my car, staring at the sunset, two girls who consider themselves enemies, in a comfortable silence, each lost in her own thoughts.
“Are they only saved on his phone?” I ask. “Isn’t there a way you can take his phone and delete them?”
She huffs and tucks her hair behind her ear. “He’s really controlling about letting me see his phone, even though I saw his password and memorized it. It’s not that hard when it’s all zeros.” She scoffs and shakes her head, as if amazed at Ryan’s personal choices. “He’d have to be distracted so I can delete them, but I can’t distract him and delete the pictures at the same time. They also save to his computer automatically when he plugs in his phone, so I can’t possibly delete all his pictures without him noticing, because then how am I supposed to get to his computer? I’ve thought it all out before, Amelia.”
Except the one aspect she hasn’t planned on is having an accomplice.
“If there was a way to get to his phone and laptop, is anything backed up to the cloud?”
If his photos back up to his cloud account that would complicate stuff, because even if she did delete everything, he’d have another copy stored online.
She shakes her head and scowls at the leaf that falls out of her hair. “He doesn’t trust the cloud. He said something about not wanting the government to spy on him, which is stupid because it’s not like Ryan has anything they would want. News flash Ryan, you don’t have launch codes or didn’t invent the next billion-dollar company. He’s not smart enough for that—he literally can’t even remember his own passwords; he writes them all down in a book he keeps in his closet.”
She scoffs then looks at me as if noticing me standing there for the first time. “Ew. Why are we standing here talking like people who can actually stand being in each other’s vicinity for more than ten seconds? Are you driving me home or what?”
We were being civil and having an actual conversation, and it’s not the worst thing ever. I shiver at the absurdity of it all. As she walks to the passenger-side door and stares at me with annoyance as she waits for me to unlock the door, a plan starts forming in my mind. One that’s risky, but I technically pulled off another version of it with Ethan Moore a while ago.
She pulls at the handle but the door doesn’t open. “I know I’m hot, but are you gonna unlock the door or stare at me all night?”
“What if I can help you delete the pictures from his phone and computer?”
She eyes me suspiciously and walks back to stand with me in front of the car. The chill in the air is still prevalent and only getting worse as the sun disappears behind the horizon, but I don’t feel any of it when faced with the cutting heat of her intense stare. “You’d do that?”
“If you leave him, yes,” I tell her, but then continue before she can say anything. “And if you tell your mom it was Ryan, not Anna, who beat you up, and let her come back to school.”
She thinks it over for a second, then reluctantly says, “Fine. If we delete all the pictures, I’ll get Anna to come back to King. But you can’t tell anyone about our plan.”
