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I told him terrible things about her. I said that Camille was a filthy nympho who loved to suck cock. I told him she liked it up the ass. I described other things that she did with me, and with other boys, and I told him that she made lies about me and got me arrested because she’d found out that I was having sex with her best friend.
Word would be out all over school tomorrow. She’d ruined me, so I was ruining her right back.
Then I methodically destroyed my phone and returned the pieces to their hiding place.
Shortly after that, my father came in with a dinner tray for me and told me I was confined to my room.
“Will someone walk Pascale for me?” I asked.
My father shakes his head. “We’ve sent him to live with friends.”
They sent away my dog because they thought I’d hurt him.My stony heart ached. I got Pascale as a puppy. I loved that dog. I’d had him for six years.
I didn’t beg or cry. I just looked at my father with pure hatred and didn’t say a word.
The following morning, I was sent away to a psychiatric institute. Doctors and counselors questioned me all day long, putting little electrodes on my skull and a blood pressure cuff on my arm. They showed me Rorschach blots and tried to figure out if I was a psychopath or a sociopath, eager to label my particular brand of madness. I’d already read about the tests for psychopathy online, and they were stupidly easy to fake, so I did.
They showed me pictures of gruesome torture while monitoring my pulse. I knew how to control my heartbeat. I knew it would be bad if I looked at pictures of mutilated bodies and remained calm, so I made my heart speed up and manufactured grimaces of distaste.
The doctors knew I was lying to them, but they couldn’t prove a thing.
After a month, my parents sent a limo driver and a bodyguard to fetch me. When I got home and settled in my room, which no longer had a lock on the door, my father came to speak to me. I put down the book I was reading and looked at him.
“We’ve spoken to Camille’s parents.” He leaned on the wall, and anger and disapproval dripped from his voice.
“And why would that interest me?” I’d never spoken to my father like that before, but the only way I could survive this was to wall away my feelings for my parents forever.
He let his temper show. Once upon a time, the look in his eyes would have frightened me. It didn’t anymore. For me to be scared, I’d have to have something to lose, and I cared about nothing now. Not my life, not anybody else’s.
“You will fucking take this seriously, and you will change your tone, or I’ll take my belt to you,” he says.
“Go ahead.”
My mother lingered in the hallway, and she rushed in. “No!” she said furiously. “It won’t change a thing. I forbid it.”
My father stalked out into the hallway, and she followed him. I heard the two of them yelling at each other. They’d never fought before, not like this. I’d never heard them raise their voices to each other.
What was left of my heart felt pain. I was rot and corruption, ruining everything around me.
I heard my mother say something about how my father was raised, and I felt a prick of interest. They never talked about their parents. They’d told my brothers and sisters and me that they had no living relatives, and they cut us off immediately when we tried to ask questions. It suddenly occurred to me how odd it was that two wealthy, successful people had absolutely no family to speak of.
But as their voices rose, the thought faded away. It didn’t matter.
What mattered was my parents looked at me as somethingothernow.
My father walked back in, stiffly. Alone. “Camille told her parents that you made her do… certain things for you.”
She told them that? Why, for the love of God? That was between us. That was our secret.
Why am I even surprised at this point?
The girl proved her loyalty. Or lack thereof. She never truly cared for me.
I smoothed my face into a mask of indifference. “You’ve made it clear that you will believe anything that she says and nothing that I say.” I picked up my book again and flipped it open, staring at the page. “Why even bother asking me?”
He pressed on, relentless. “They also said there are all kinds of ugly rumors flying around school. Rumors that seem to have been started by you. And your sister, unfortunately, seems to be encouraging it.” I didn’t need to ask which sister. Emilie was a fierce warrior who would throw herself on a sword for me. “We’ve spoken to Emilie about it. She’s grounded for the next three months, but the damage is done. Nobody at school will talk to the poor girl. What you’ve done was very harmful to her. Camille’s parents dragged her to the doctor and forced her to undergo an exam to verify she’s still a virgin.”
She was so shy, so fiercely protective of her body. That would have been excruciating for her. Instead of remorse, I felt a fierce swell of triumph. I imagined the scene, Camille forced to strip naked and spread her legs for a stranger, weeping with humiliation, and it excited me.
