I sat at my desk, hunched over my computer, during Tuesday morning's yearbook class. I still had a lot of work to do, from editing my photos to writing out captions, so that my homecoming page would be finished by the deadline, but all I could do was stare blankly at the screen, lost in thought.
C, another one of my color guard teammates, sat at the desk ahead of me, talking to S about Saturday's competition. They were discussing our first place win when the conversation changed to what had happened on the bus ride home.
"You know," C said, turning around to face me. "They told me that they were supposed to apologize to you last night, but that you punched them in the gut when they tried."
"What the hell?!" I shouted, maybe a little too loudly, looking up from my screen so quickly I almost gave myself whiplash. A group of students working quietly on the other side of the room glanced at me in annoyance, but I didn't care.
"You need to tell A!" S said. "Text her right now and tell her that. We need to report it every time they say something like that about Lizzie."
"What'll A do? We told her everything already and she said she'd deal with it, but apparently now it's worse," I groaned.
The bell rang before anyone could respond.
"Don't worry about it," S told me, as we shoved our laptops and notebooks into our bags. "It'll be ok. Just stay away from them."
Her words didn't do much to comfort me though and everything still weighed heavy on my mind as I walked down the busy hallway to my third period class, careful to take a route that wouldn't cross paths with any delusional exes. I took my usual seat in the front corner of the room, right in front of my favorite teacher, Mrs. G's desk, and laid my head down until my friends, E and MK, arrived.
"You ok, Lizzie?" MK, my best friend since she'd moved from Ohio in eighth grade, asked me.
I groaned and turned to face them as they slid into the seats next to me and behind me.
"No. That bitch keeps telling everyone in my guard that I've been slapping them and hitting them and stuff."
"Oh yeah!" E exclaimed. "They were telling me something in AP psych the other day about how you keep hitting them all the time. I wasn't really paying attention though, so I don't know any of the details, but it's obvious they're just still mad at you for breaking up with them. I mean, you avoid being near them all the time."
"And remember how they tried to pretend Lizzie didn't actually break up with them?" MK added. "I know you thought your parents didn't like them just because of their gender, but honestly, I think they somehow knew W was insane from the beginning."
I rolled my eyes.
"Great."
YOU ARE READING
Look What You Made Me Do
Phi Hư Cấu"Don't tell anybody about this." "If you just ignore it, it'll stop." "There's nothing I can do to help you." And so I did everything I was told. I shut up. I put on a brave face. I followed all the rules. But that was the past and it's not who I am...
