Virgin Terri

Chapter 1: The Confessions

As someone who claimed to be an ardent fan of Gossip Girl, I suppose I should've seen this coming. But being the cheerful optimist that I was, I hadn't suspected a thing. Not when the anonymous confessions page had first appeared on Twitter. Not when it had transitioned from innocent little confessions (I wish Rachel Nevins would notice me.) to blatant pointed attacks. The humor of the Wayland High Confessions Page had started to wear off around it's third week of existence, switching into the lane of crude gossip shortly after the first football game of the year. 

I remembered returning to school that following Monday expecting the hallways to be awash with the leftover excitement from the Wayland Wolves's victory. Football players should have been galloping through the halls, beating their chests and shouting praises to the fluorescent lights overhead. Cheerleaders should have been giggling amongst themselves, giddy over whichever player had scored the most points. Band kids, they'd probably be talking about how well they'd played and how they were clearly much better than the rivaling team (clearly). But when I walked into school that Monday, an unexpected silence greeted me. 

Everyone I passed had been staring at their cell phones, rapidly tapping at their glass screens as they scurried to their destinations. During class, the usual playful atmosphere had been muted. Even the jocks appeared somber. Eyes darted back and forth. Tension simmered between friend groups.  The entirety of Wayland High School was, in short, on edge. 

Well. Not including me.

As usual, I was pretty clueless as to what was going on in the world of Wayland High. Luckily for me, my best friends were the closest things to detectives at our high school; as soon as I sat at our usual lunch table, Taylor had already slid her phone towards me while Tasha pointed at it with one red-tipped nail.

"Read that," Tasha instructed. I glanced down, skimming over the words flashing back at me. Then, once they'd processed, my eyes widened to the size of basketballs.

"Is this for real?" I gasped, picking up Taylor's phone to bring it closer to my eyes. It had to have been a mistake. Clearly, after seventeen years of perfect vision, my eyesight had given out on me. Or maybe, I'd gone senile a little early. But, even after bringing the screen to my eyes, even after increasing the brightness to make sure I hadn't completely gone blind, the words didn't change.

"It's real," Taylor replied, fingering a lock of brown hair. "The guy basically confirmed it as soon as it'd been posted." My eyes flickered to Taylor's green ones, narrowing in confusion for a second before falling back to her phone screen and re-reading the latest post from the Wayland Confession page.

Beware, Cassidy Blake. Your "loving" boyfriend Roy didn't just score at last Friday's game. 

Underneath the tweet was a collage of pictures featuring quarterback Roy Russo tangled up in a leggy blonde somewhere in the boys' locker room. They didn't seem to know pictures were being taken. My eyebrows rose in shock as I passed the phone back to Taylor. 

"Wow," I murmured. "Roy cheated on Cassidy. I really thought they'd last." 

"Yeah," Tasha mused, "Roy Russo is vainglorious, Cassidy is obsessed with him, and they both have a shared IQ of ten." She shrugged. "A perfect match." 

"Not according to this," Taylor muttered. "Plus, I didn't see them at their usual make-out spot by the school fountain." Taylor placed a hand in her chin as she stared over to where the football guys sat. It was customary for their flavors of the week to sit with them; sprawled on their lap, kissing at their neck, doing just about anything to assert their claim, no matter how short that claim would last. That day, it was just the guys at the table, all huddled around Roy. "I think they're actually done," Taylor mused. "Cassidy isn't hanging on his neck today."