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Chapter Twelve
Nala
I was not an innocent teenager.
I wasn’t hateful or spiteful, I didn’t go around hating people and making lives miserable. I simply wasn’t the Pollyanna on the block, though I wasn’t the naughtiest girl on the block either. Early on, the summer between my eighth and ninth grade, I tested the physical waters with a boy I had known forever. He was cute, he was safe, and best of all, he was willing. We spent the entire summer splashing in the ocean and rolling around on the sand, which I quickly learned was only romantic in pictures and movies. We made out at the movies, and in darkened corners whenever we could, hands sneaking small touches before shying away.
After that, as my freshman year in high school got under way, I tested more waters, always in control, always willing to go a little further and learn what it meant when people talked about being physical.
Although I had moments of good and exciting, it wasn’t being felt up by Roy Elkins after the homecoming dance that piqued my interest and spurred my lust enough to keep me searching for more experiences. It was my own curiosity, and my deep-rooted need toknow.
I wanted to know how to look and act seductively. I wanted to know what it felt like to have a boy wrap his arms around me and hold me close, like I was the one thing he needed at the beginning and end of the day. I wanted to know what it felt like to be led around the side of the school, or pushed up against my locker, or the side of a car, and kissed to within an inch of my life, until my lungs threatened to burst and my lips were swollen.
Mostly, I wanted to know what it felt like to not just be anyone’s girl, but to be Malcolm Brady’s girl—to feel his strong hands at my hips, and his beautiful lips at my neck.
That night, the one where I finally told him how I felt, I was ready for him. We’d been talking all week, text messages with a few actual phone calls since he knew I was worried about Ashton, and I knew it was my chance. Malcolm paid attention to no one like he paid attention to me. At fifteen, that was enough to convince me he loved me as much as I loved him.
When he called, I made sure to tell him I had plans, because I knew that if he asked me to meet him, it would be alone, on the beach, and I didn’t want it to be somewhere that we had been together before. Malcolm had been gone a lot this past year, and in his absence, I had grown up. My breasts weren’t huge like some girls, but Roy and a few others boys had seemed intrigued by them, and my swimsuits definitely fit snugger. I wanted Malcolm to see me as this girl, the one who dressed up and met him at a party—an equal, like any other girl he would see and take home, or upstairs.
So, I told him I was busy, and I knew from Ashton that Mal, Brooks, and Hunter were going to a party a few blocks off Balboa Park. My outfit was the result of careful planning, a combination of my style with sexy, something I’d seen a few of the older girls at school wear and knew Malcolm would like. When I finally got to the party, it was Mal who opened the door; it was like fate had put him there to give me a sign, and that, plus his look when he saw me, were all the security and prompting I needed to prove that telling him how I felt was the right choice.
My heart never wavered in its decision, not even when Malcolm pulled me outside to yell at me for drinking, demanding to know how often I partied. I snapped back at him, secretly pleased with his concern about me. Like the night at the beach when we had first become friends, I saw his concern as a sign of unending love, and it only sparked my own love until it was too great to ignore.
That’s when I kissed him, and that’s when he kissed me back, and for those brief seconds, I believed in all of it. Love, happiness, soulmates, unicorns, and wizards, because how else could it be that the boy I had loved for three years was kissing me back like he loved me too?
Before I could answer that, he was pulling away, his movements so harsh and jerky that he shoved me, his face angry, and his voice cold when he told me that I was not his girl. That I would never be.
“Nala, no.”
Those words slammed into me, but like a car crash; I was in disbelief. No one kisses a person like Malcolm just kissed me and then saysno. But he did, and then he walked away, like I didn’t matter.
I followed him to the kitchen, because even at fifteen, I was a proud girl, a girl who showed very little weakness to anyone, a girl who had just enough pride that she wasn’t walking away without a fight. But Malcolm wasn’t just any fighter—he was a professional fighter, one who had spent years in an abusive relationship, forming his armor and learning to sling barbs. When he grabbed that girl, spitting words at Brooklyn to take me home, like some pest, or worse, younger sister that needed watching, my fight left me, and so did my pride.
All that was left was heartache, the kind that wraps itself around a heart and makes it so that even breathing hurts.
I didn’t go home. Instead, I got a beer. And then another. I waited until Malcolm came down the stairs with his bimbo and left, and I stayed even longer, talking to boys who were filling the void inside of me with just their attention, and I convinced myself that I didn’t want Malcolm Brady.
That I didn’t need Malcolm Brady.
That I didn’t love Malcolm Brady.
I convinced myself of this over and over in the next few weeks, at every party I went to, with every boy who paid attention to me. It was like a scorecard, or a boxing bell, signaling the end of one round and the beginning of another. Every party I went to, every flirtatious interaction I had, every kiss or touch I shared, was done to prove that I wasn’t a girl who was brushed aside, and I wasn’t a girl who stayed down because one boy had rejected her.
And that was true—until that girl was too drunk to use her whole strength to push away when she wasn’t ready for the man advancing on her. Until that girl couldn’t form the wordnofast enough, and when she did, it was too weak, too far away, and too filled with agony and horror to be heard above the sounds of the party she’d been at. Until that girl lost the one thing of hers that she had cherished and saved with the idea of one day, and become nothing more than a victim of someone else’s desires.
It was then and only then that she realized exactly what being rejected by one boy had done to her.
