𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐤𝐢𝐬𝐬

Chapter Ten.

ROMEO DIDN'T EVEN take a nap, he just laid in bed, stalking people on social media. His excuse, stalking other people would justify clicking on Spider's profile. He rolls his eyes at what Anthony Vaughn last posted then finally opened Spider's account, staring at it for a moment as he takes it all in.

The bio, display name and profile photo all become engraved in his mind as he now clicks on the very first post, which were just a bunch of group photos. Him, Ant, Dusty, Sasha, Missy, Amerie and Harper. From a year ago, roughly. His eyes fixate on Spider in every single photo, especially in a very specific photo that he notices Spencer was staring at Amerie.

He frowns a bit then clicks out of the post, going to the next one. It was a bunch of photos of a party at Dusty's place, everyone clearly shitfaced and doing random and dumb shit. The next one was photos from a basketball game that they won last term. Then the newest post was just a random picture with a really odd caption. He stared at the photo, a bit confused. The caption was lyrics of a song.

Secrets I have held in my heart are harder to hide than I thought. This post is from a week ago, so Romeo just laid there, staring at the photo, staring at the caption and over analyzing it all in his head. Spider listens to Artic Monkeys? He just didn't seem like the type. This song in particular too, falls on the romantic side. Romeo hates himself for it, pressing play on the song now and playing it on repeat.

It plays on repeat again the next week, walking into SLTs, and sitting next to Enya who's just sitting there, staring at the wall as Stevie rushed over, sitting down across from them. "Mardi Gras?" She asked Romeo who just smiles, shrugging his shoulders sheepishly. "Yeah, why not?" He merely replies with.

"Alright, peeps. Let's pipe down." Jojo says, walking in with two men and Miss Woods following behind her. "Oh, shit. Five-O. Shelve your pingers, Cash." Spider says, grinning. "Shelve your kiddie porn, rock spider." The eshay replied, sounding annoyed. "Okay. Thank you." Woodsy says loudly.

"We have two very special guests speaking with you all today. I'm told Mr. Peterson is a regular visitor at the school and will run you all through some workshops. Whoo!" Miss Obah cheers, then claps her hands but the students are all silent. "Thank you. Uh, hi everyone. I'm Kurt Peterson." The man introduced himself to the class now. "And I'm Constable Paul Perry." The other next to him speaks up. "But please, guys, just call me PP." He chuckles.

"PP?" Enya says quietly. "Uh, so I'm a former police officer." Kurt goes on. "ACAB." Spencer covers up his words with a fake cough. "And believe it or not, many moons ago, I was a student here at Hartley High." Mr. Peterson ignores Spider, gesturing to the class. "So after I graduated, I decided to join the police force where I served for over ten years until injury forced me out." He tells the class.

Darren then raised their hand so Kurt gestures to them. "A question. I like it. Go ahead." He says as Darren put their hand down. "Did you injure yourself from over-policing a marginalized community?" They then ask the man and the class laugh, looking at the former officer. "No, I tripped on a fence."

"Right, so, um, we're going to split the class in two. All the girls are going to come with me and the boys will stay with Constable Perry." Mr. Peterson says, heading towards the door. "Darren, you can choose whichever group you like." Miss Woods tells the nonbinary student who stood up. "Thank you, miss. I can tell this is going to be very problematic." Darren says, looking at Quinni to their left.

"What they said." Stevie pointed her thumb at the Rivers, slowly getting up and Romeo nods softly. "We'll debrief later and laugh together." He says quietly to both her and Enya who head out the door, with the other girls, Darren, Miss Obah and Mr. Peterson. "Alright lads, you're with me." Constable Perry grins, hands on his hips. "Let's get into it." He added.

In the gymnasium, Kurt Peterson goes on with the workshop, "this program is a young woman's guide to survival. We call it... Rack Off. Sexual assault is a sad reality for far too many young women. And Rack Off is designed to equip you with the tools and the knowledge to assist in preventing it." He tells the group of female students and Darren.

Meanwhile, the boys were outside at one of the picnic tables, "PP! PP! PP! Yeah!" They cheer with their hands all together on top of the table. "Ready, set, go! Yes, boys!" Constable Perry says as Spider pounds his fists on the table, so Romeo just glanced away from them, rolling his eyes. "The key to unlocking a strong mind and a strong body is health and fitness." The man tells them and the boys agree.

"And it's all in the palm of your hand, gentlemen." He goes on as Malakai slowly looks over at Romeo and Cash standing to his right, both also leaning against the wall. The Castillo glances over at the Piggott who just glanced away. The man reaches into his pocket, looking like he was touching his junk, which made them all confusedly watch him, then he takes out a phone. "Your phones."

"Oh."

"So now you know the psychology of an offender, their selection process... it's time to learn how to get them to..." Kurt trails off, turning to the group of students. "Rack up?" Stevie says, raising her hand and everything. The man sighs. "Rack off." He corrects her and Stevie can hear somoene behind her sigh.

"Uh, so now I'm going to demonstrate some simple self-defence moves that you can practice on each other. So who wants to be a volunteer?" He then asked, but no one even looks his way, suddenly finding interest in literally anything else around the large gymnasium. "Come on, guys." Mr. Peterson says to the group.

"How about you at the back?"

"Yes, you at the front. Show us how many you can do." Constable Perry says and Ant got up quickly. "A bit of encouragement!" He says as the other boys cheer on Anthony who walks around the table. "The rest of you, I want to hear you count him. Okay? That's called external motivation." Paul Perry says then pointed, "one!" He shouts, as Anthony goes on, doing pushups as the boys all counted for him.

"Seven. Fourteen." Cash says, sounding bored and both Malakai and Romeo chuckle at him. "That's pretty fast. Alright, he'll get tired. Questions, questions." Constable Perry now asked the boys at the table. "Is it true you can't lift heavy after a wank?" Spider asks and Romeo looks over, making a confused face. "Oh, no, no, go heavy. Yeah, yeah. Always the best after." Paul answers. "Yeah! Sick!"

"Okay, alright. Yes. Nobody likes a show-off. Get up. Good job." He now says to Ant who was still doing push ups, now getting up as the boys cheer for him. "I could have done more." The Vaughn boy says sheepishly. "Yeah, nice form." Constable Perry tells the boy who goes back to sitting on the table next to Dusty. "Have you ever shot anyone?" He asks him.

"Uh, no. No, they haven't given me a gun yet." He says and Ant nods, quietly snickering at the man. "But I will. Don't worry. Yeah, only a matter of time." The man quickly tells the boys, nodding his head and smiling widely.

"So a man has a strong grip on you." Kurt begins, holding onto Harper's arm at the front of everyone else. "Okay, you can't pull down or back, but the weakest part of the grip is the thumb. So you need to cross-grip." As the man was going on with his explanation, Harper raised her hand and held a lighter to Mr. Peterson's forearm, making him scream in pain and shock, pulling his arm away.

"What just happened?" One of the girls whispers to her friends. "Did you just burn me?" Kurt now asked Harper. "Got you to rack off, didn't it?" The McLean asked. "Hell yeah it did." Stevie says, laughing. "Uh, okay." Miss Obah quickly stood up while Darren was loudly clapping. "I think that's a really great point to finish up." She says. "Thank you so much."

 

  

  

authors note
crazy part is the boys couldve also gotten a similar workshop bc literally anyone can get sa'd?? they also need to be in those workshops, not just girls 💀

+ sorry i didn't update yesterday. or the day before that. or the other day before that. i've just been busy and i also have a job now so i'll be even more busy-ish? idk but i'll try my best to update this as much as i can 🥹