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I just want it to go away. I hate feeling like this all the time, filled with so much rage I want to rip my hair out, rip my skin off, rip my piercings out just to bleed. I want to take it all out on Gloria, dump it into her with my cum, and for it to be gone. But it follows me like the shadow of a toxic storm cloud. We moved halfway across the country trying to leave it behind, but it’s still here. No matter how violently I pound it into Gloria, it never abates. It’s stuck in me, like I’m stuck in this place. I can’t get rid of it, and I hate her for that, for not taking the burden of my rage from me.
“Are you done?” she asks after a minute.
I roll off her, so filled with self-loathing I want to put a gun to my head like Dad. Instead, I pull up my black jeans and arrange my wallet chain while she goes to the bathroom to clean up. When she comes back, she sits in front of the mirror and touches up her makeup that smudged when her cheek was pressed into the bed. Her black lipstick is still perfect. We didn’t kiss.
We haven’t kissed since I moved here.
“You should come,” she says, like nothing happened at all.
When did she stop feeling? Not just for me, but for anyone? She’s plastic, nothing but a blowup doll for me to fuck, with nothing inside.
“I don’t like football.”
“Half the people there don’t like football,” she says. “You go to hang out. If you’re my boyfriend, you’re part of the inner circle. It’s weird that you don’t come to things.”
“I’ve always been weird,” I grumble. “You never cared before.”
“You’re not weird,” she protests. “But this is how things are at this school. I told you. The Dolces run everything. They said you could date me, and that means you’re popular.”
“I don’t even know anyone except you and your sisters,” I point out. “How can I be popular?”
She sighs. “That’s not how it works. If the Dolces say you’re popular, then you’re popular.”
“What if I don’t want to be popular?”
For the first time tonight, the slightest flicker of emotion passes over her face, though I can’t read it before it’s gone. “You don’t want to be my boyfriend?” she asks carefully.
I think she’s hurt by the idea. A spark of malicious joy fills me at the thought. Maybe there are still torn pieces of her heart floating around in all that emptiness inside her, like the little torn pieces of butterfly wing floating down her forearm from the tattoo on her wrist.
“Do you want me to be your boyfriend?” I ask. “Because it seems to me that all you care about is being popular and doing what the Dolces want. Maybe you should fuck them.”
“That’s not true,” she says, sounding genuinely hurt. “You know that’s not true, Rylan. You know me.”
“I knew you.”
We stare at each other in the mirror for a long moment.
“What do you want me to do?” she asks. “Leave their crowd? They wouldn’t let me if I tried. They want the image of the blonde cheerleaders at their table.”
“So what?” I ask. “What are they going to do if you sit somewhere else? They’ll find another blonde cheerleader to sit at your spot. What’s the big deal?”
“They literally control everyone’s life at Willow Heights,” she says. “Not just the other popular people. Everyone from the homecoming queen to the loser smoking under the bleachers.”
“That seems like a lot of work for them.”
“Have you met Baron Dolce?” she asks, raising a brow. “He’s a force of nature.”
“Is that the one you’re trying to impress?” I ask, knowing I sound like a sullen little bitch. I don’t understand why she’s so concerned with doing exactly what everyone wants, though. Gloria Beauregard was a cheerleader, and she dated a guy like me without a second thought to what anyone thought of it.
Where’s the girl I fell in love with, the fun girl who hotwired her dad’s cars, wanted to make out with me all the time, teased me by grinding on my dick, and played hide and seek in her huge house? The girl who was always full to overflowing with laughter, generosity, and love.
What happened to all that? How did she become this empty shell, the cocoon of the butterfly tattooed on her wrist? And where did the butterfly go?
She shudders and turns back to her makeup. “No. I don’t try to impress Baron. I try not to piss him off. We’re all his puppets, though. That’s why I have to go to the game and to the party afterwards. Please come? You said you don’t know anyone, but how will you get to know them if you’re holed up at home?”
“I’m not sure I want to know your friends,” I say, thinking of the lunch table where I’ve sat for the past couple weeks with her. The guys are dicks, and the girls are no better.
“Come on,” she says, sliding off her chair and coming over to me. She takes my hand and tugs on it, giving me a pleading smile. “If you give them a chance, maybe you’ll like them. And if you give them a chance to knowyou, I know they’ll like you.”
