broken bikes

of labels

Juliet Nottingham is a slut. 

That is what everyone says. They cough it into their hands as she walks by. They write it on sticky notes and pin it to her locker. They ball up bits of paper with the word scrawled on them and throw it at her. 

They all think so. They all think Juliet Nottingham is nothing more than a slut. 

But what they don't know, is that Juliet Nottingham has never even kissed a boy before. They don't know that she loves looking at the stars and that she hates peanut butter and that she wants to live in Rome. They don't know that she had a little brother who died of cancer and that her mother abandoned her when she was just a baby and that her father has been remarried four times. They don't know that she hates being called names and that she cries into her pillow at night and that she has gashes patterned across her thighs.

No one knows these things about Juliet Nottingham. And no one cares to ask. 

Because to them, Juliet Nottingham is an outsider. She doesn't deserve to be accepted. And damn it, she definitely doesn't belong. She isn't one of them, and she never will be. She should know that. Well, unless she is a stupid slut. 

Juliet Nottingham thinks she is a slut, too. Even though she has never even kissed a boy, she knows she is a slut, somehow. Because if everyone calls her a slut, and no one seems to think differently, then she must be. The world doesn't just make labels and slap them onto people without knowing some inkling of truth, after all.