Ashley ✓

Forty-Three | The Look

SOTC: Tumblr Girls by G-Eazy (ft. Christoph Andersson

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On Monday morning, I woke up really not wanting to go to school.

Did I experience this sensation five days a week upon waking up at the ass crack of dawn? Hell yes. No frequency of Mrs. Zigenhorn's updates about her new boo could un-wire a three year battle of senioritis. But the nausea that festered in my core upon my eyes snapping open to my alarm clock was previously unfathomable. I thought I'd vomit at the image of that brick building.

I almost did when I got up regardless, but the overall dread hitting afterward was unshakable. It was like a ball of impending despair hung from my heart like the pendulum ball of a grandfather clock, a sensation lasting all the way through the time I'd gotten ready and hugged Belle goodbye at 7 A.M.

I walked alone to school today, as Sienna had an early book club meeting at West and Fedor was sick. It was only halfway through that walk that I'd calmed my anxiety enough with a gratitude practice I'd found on YouTube a couple months ago. Corny, I know, but you'd be surprised at its benefits.

It was these main subjects encapsulating the gratitude exercise that eased my anxiety further and further from my body. Finally, like I'd used scissors to cut a rope, most of its weight had fallen into the abyss of knowing that I had nothing to be scared of.

That's when the nightmare started.

Just as I went to cross the final street to West, I whipped to my left just as someone grabbed my shoulders. Curses flew out my mouth as this someone— a guy— spun me around so I faced him, but that curse died upon my processing of his features.

"Oh shit, wow, I knew that would've got you but goddamn!" the guy said, releasing himself from me to hug his stomach, one fist over his face. But it couldn't hide who I could've recognized from across the globe. The tall lanky figure. The chin length bleached hair that had been pulled back by a backwards hat. The fuckboy smile. And most of all, the scar one of my acrylics once gave him right by his eye at Britney Milano's party in Freshman year.

"Tanner," I whispered.

Tanner Johnson.

Ex-fling Tanner.

My ex-fling Tanner as in the boy I used to link with at the Mother Teresa parties was standing right in front of me.

"Damn, those photos weren't lying!" he exclaimed, cocking his head to analyze each side of my body. "Corset looks great on you by the way. It really snatches up the waist— have you been working out?"

I just stood there stuttering, my eyeballs bulging from my head.

"You don't look too excited to see me, baby," he drew out with a frown.

"Hah-How the fuck did you find me?" I barely felt the words exit my numb mouth.

"The Instagram account. Duh."

"What Instagram account?" I gasped right as I thought it.

"I don't know. Someone from your shitty ass school sent it to me," he said with a shrug. "Someone spray painted the handle on the building wall—"

But by then I'd almost gotten hit by three cars upon streaking across the street to West's parking lot. Eventually, with gasps for breaths, I'd reached the scene just outside the front of West High School.

Distortion. That was the first characteristic of all five hundred horrified faces that whipped their heads to me, the phones in their hands all having the same color schemes. It was only afterward that I found Jordyn and her gang, with their arms crossed in pride, beside the characters spray painted across the school's two front doors.

@sinsofashleywalker

I whipped out my phone to type them into Instagram until I clicked on the account, the profile being one of the many mugshots I donned a manic smile in.

"Holy fuck— holy fuck, no, no, no, no," I gasped as I clicked on the stories first. Every one of them showcased the worst of my party activities, mainly featuring every guy I ever stuck my tongue in if they hadn't already and more than a couple seconds of the one time I'd stripped on Jessica French's island table one Saturday in sophomore year.

And then there was the grid.

Detailed essays about victims, dates, evidence, and punishments were splattered together in all parts of my blurred vision in a never ending stream of photos and reels. Matt Fisher. Carmen Santiago. Sydney Prescott. The girl at church camp. The boy I slashed the tires of. Barcode girl. Waterboard boy. A few hundred other highs lost in memory had made it to the account, all of them public. And with the help of the school's cam footage, the time I stuck it to Jordyn in the bathroom.

The worst of them all came at the end, where you could see the account's first ever post. A photo of me and a certain boy kissing for the camera on homecoming night, with my hands running through his thick noir curls as he placed a tiara on my head, three of our closest having photobombed the background. Its caption read, 'Ms. Walker's longest victim.'

"I dare you to say it isn't true."

I'd never forget it, the moment I dropped my phone and looked up to that certain, now blotched-face boy that the horrified crowd had made way for, who'd said my name feet away with a growl originating from the depths of hell, his veined hand clasping a phone lit with the same screen.

"Mustafa— Mustafa, please, you have to listen to me— please," I started in the coherency of a rapid animal lacking a tongue. "I swear to god it's true, but it's not me! Not anymore, I'm not that girl anymo—"

"Oh my god, I can't do this," he breathed with a snort, covering his face as he turned around and started away.

"Mustafa, please!" I screamed, fumbling and tripping until I finally clasped his shoulders.

"DON'T YOU FUCKING DARE TOUCH ME, BITCH!" I stumbled back upon his spin around to face me, but the fury distorting his face had fallen to reveal the real one, one of a twisted, jarring agony.

The look.

The look of a boyfriend who no matter how many apologies or evidence of her victimization or that she was sorry or someone was out for her, he'd never see one girl the same ever again. The same look that had given me the high for all these years, and the same look that caused my grasp to loosen off him.

"Just stay from me and my son," were his final words upon walking away.

All I remembered afterward was falling on my knees.

Well...