The Chemistry Test

27. betrayal and revelations

Day Eleven

I couldn't look away, and neither could the rest of the student body. In a matter of seconds, the entire school was talking amongst themselves, some boys even going as far as yelling out slut, parting around where the social queen sat in the lower right side to reveal the shock on her red lips.

"You can call me whatever you want, Gwyn." Hunter's voice rang over the speakers, and the crowd erupted in screaming bros, jumping from their seats to laugh at him.

"Turn it off!" Gwyn screamed, her shrill cry tearing through the background chatter. Melanie and Andrea were on either side of her, but instead of flocking her like the other girls, they were capturing the moment to post on social media.

"Holy shit." Zak's whispered behind me.

I couldn't breathe. With blood pumping in my ears and fists clenched, I looked behind me at Mark, whose face harbored an utterly blank stare, eyes fixed on his girlfriend on the big screen.

Grabbing the microphone, Gorveau's voice boomed over the speakers, "Pay no attention to this silly technical difficulty."

Behind the screen, Damon clicked away on his laptop, possibly attempting to fix it, but, more likely, orchestrating the entire thing.

Even if it was a mistake, it was far too late to fix it now. The school body was uncontainable, the flashing of cell cameras dotting the darkness as chaos filled the room. Everyone had seen enough by this point. The secret was out.

And it was all my fault.

Stepping away slowly, paling more by the second, Mark peeled away from the cast, and I chased after him as he stormed off into the boy's locker room.

"Mark," I called, hiking my long skirt up as I ran through the rows of lockers. "Wait up." I walked over to him, wrapping an arm around him and leaning into his shoulder.

"Just leave me alone." he whispered, his head and hands pressed against the wall.

"No." I protested, but he snapped up and wriggled from my grasp, his expression cold.

"Seriously, Zoe."

I shook my head, my gaze unwavering from his cloudy brown eyes. "I'm so sorry. This is horrible, I can't even imagine what must be going through your head right now."

"Don't do that. I don't want your pity." he scoffed, looking away. His teeth grazed over his piercing, water welling in the pools of his eyes. "I'm the fucking idiot who's dating her."

I cocked my head at him, wanting to reach out to comfort him, but deciding against it. I didn't want to make him feel any worse than he needed to feel, but I wasn't sure what he wanted to hear.

The longer I looked at him, the more the guilt trickled in. If I had told him sooner--somewhere in private--I could have saved him the embarrassment of seeing it first-hand alongside hundreds of our peers. But I'd waited to say something, and this was the consequence.

"Stop looking at me like that." he said, unable to meet my eyes.

"Like what?"

His eyes flickered to mine and away again. "Like you knew better than me all along."

The last thing I wanted to do was make him feel like I was telling him I told you so--even if it was the slightest bit true. I furrowed my eyebrows, "That's not at all what I'm saying--"

"Of course it is." he snapped, "You warned me about her as soon as we started dating and have been skeptical ever since. It's like you knew it was going to happen."