Confessions of A School Slut: A Story about Slut-Shaming ✓

Chapter Four

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» Caught Out There by Kelis
» So What by P!nk

Chapter Four

The fire to the Sameer incident, as I had begun to call it, hadn't even extinguished when another episode erupted like a volcano, adding fuel to my fast gaining reputation of the school slut. In the past one month, my social life became bombarded with more problems than my whole life put together. Things of no significance found more importance than the things that mattered.

A few days after I was virtually rejected by Sameer in front of almost the whole school, a boy — my neighbour, Kush — one of the four people I knew before I started at Riviera High — approached me. He wanted some help with the answers of a test I had rocked. I gave and went back to my seat.

"Hey, was that Kush you were talking to?" the girl sitting behind me asked. Without even turning back to display my fake interest in her trash talk, I nodded. It wasn't like she was about to give me any attention otherwise. Not that I needed it anyway.

Silence followed my response. Only to be broken by her seat partner.

"Do you know he has a crush on someone?" her partner asked. A high pitched giggle. Two voices merged into one.

"Kush? And someone from this school?" the girl behind me asked back. "Who is it?"

"I don't know that much, but it is someone from our class." A shrill whisper of excitement.

This, however, caught my attention, too. With brown skin, dark eyes, black hair and perfectly outlined features, Kush was one of the few good-looking boys in our grade. I considered him to be the only one, but the other girls always pitched in a name or two more. So when rumor had it he had a crush on someone, excitement bubbled within me too. I knew the boy since kindergarten. We hadn't been great friends, since his friend circle included more rowdy boys but a hey here, and a hello there worked perfectly fine every now and then.

Yet, after what happened with me, I was a little reluctant to accept anything the people said without firsthand witnessing something that proved it happening. Besides, unlike some girls, I did not have the ability to guess when someone liked another person. I never did and I never have, and it takes me down in areas more than one.

However, soon, the secret came out. It was real. Kush had a crush on someone. Someone from our class. The rumor turned real. Just not in the way I wanted it to.

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On May 19, our summer vacations began. I returned back home in peace. Finally a month and half in quiet and calmness. No more trash talk about being rejected by Sameer. No more sympathy looks. No more hostile eyes. No more boys. And definitely no more drama.

On May 20, I logged in on my social media account. A few minutes later, a message popped up on my 13-inch wide screen. The name was Tanuj. And here I thought I was done with boys for a while!

"Hey," the message read. I decided to ignore it. The boy was in the other section. Probably wanted to tease me about Sameer. Not something that I wanted that day. His next message, however, grabbed my attention.

"I heard what went down between you and Kush," the second message read.

"Me and Kush?" I wondered and typed back.

"I heard you said yes," he wrote back.

"Yes to what?" I asked.

"You know..." he began. Something in these words seemed off. They oddly reminded me of a conversation I had had not less than twenty days earlier.