High Heels and Lipstick (9 page)

But her family and friends would always remember she'd wanted to die. One of them had probably been the one to find her. I couldn't even imagine what that would have been like.

I didn't go to the donut shop that morning. I was planning to, until Holly texted me and said some of her friends were talking about Maryellen. The last thing I needed was to hear more about her. I ended up being late leaving the house, so Marcus gave me a ride to school. He tried to have boring small talk conversations with me, but I ignored him. I wasn't in the mood to talk. Or to go to school. Or to do much of anything except find out what the court was going to do to Jim, and tell all the people who were screwing with Maryellen and me to go to hell.

One of Maryellen's friends, a girl whose name I'd never figured out, hurried over to me when I walked through the door. “Maryellen's out of intensive care. I thought you should know.”

“Thanks.” I gave her something close to a smile. “I'm glad to hear it.”

El-Al was suddenly beside me. I hadn't seen her coming, and I couldn't help jumping. “Damn, El-Al!”

“Sorry.” She put her hand on my shoulder. “Hi, Brittany.”

“Hi,” the freshman girl said. Of course her name was Brittany.

“Chastaine, I was watching for you,” El-Al said. “Mr. Lawrence needs to see you. Like, before you go to class or anything.”

“Great.” I hadn't been in the building long enough to do anything wrong, so I couldn't even guess what the vice principal wanted with me. “Brittany, thanks for telling me about Maryellen.” I hesitated. “Do you, um, is she going to be in the hospital for a while?”

“Yeah. They want to keep an eye on her.” She frowned. “She might go to another hospital after she's physically okay. They aren't exactly going to send her home to do it again.”

“Yeah.” I hadn't even thought of that. “Can she have visitors where she is now?”

“I think so. My mom was going to find out, because I want to see her.” Brittany gave me a weird look. “You want to visit her? You don't even talk to her.”

“I tried,” I said. “She didn't want to talk to me.”

“She's pissed at you for getting her to report what happened.” Brittany shrugged. “She was the one who decided to tell about it. And half the time she said she hated you, and the other half she kept asking why you wouldn't talk to her. She's messed up.”

“Yeah.” Someone had to be pretty damn messed up to try to kill themselves. But I didn't think I meant messed up quite the same way Brittany did. “Okay, well, if people can visit her, will you tell me, please?”

“Chastaine.” El-Al tugged my arm. “The bell's going to ring soon.”

“Chill.” I yanked my arm away from her. Mr. Lawrence could wait until I had an answer from Brittany.

“Yeah, I'll let you know,” Brittany said.

“Thanks.” I spun around and walked to the office without bothering to see whether El-Al was behind me.

She was, and she went into Mr. Lawrence's tiny closet of an office with me. Mr. Lawrence didn't look too pleased about that, but all he said was, “Have a seat, girls. Eleanor, thank you for bringing Chastaine in. This will be easier than having to call her down with all the morning chaos.”

“You could have called me down from class.” I sat on the most uncomfortable chair in existence and clamped my knees together. I was wearing a minidress I'd gotten from the same store as the ten-dollar skirts, and of course it rode up when I sat down.

“I needed to see you before you went to your locker.” He tapped a pencil against his desk. “Chastaine, have you been experiencing the same harassment Maryellen's note said she has?”

“Duh.” That probably wasn't the best response to a school administrator. “Sorry. Yes. Since November. Here at school, online, and on the phone until I changed my number.”

“Do you think the way you dress is wise?”

I gritted my teeth together as my temper rose. No way was I about to call this guy a frigging moron for blaming me or my clothes for anything. No way would I grab that pencil out of his wormy little hand and jam it into his neck.

The fact that I was even thinking about that scared me enough to take a deep breath and try to stay calm. “I think I'm not violating dress code, so it's not really any of your business.”

“When young women dress in a certain way, it can give the wrong impression.” He twisted his mouth like he'd just swallowed a heaping helping of raw lemon juice.

My effort to keep my temper went right out the tiny little window. “When people form an impression of someone based on how they're dressed, the only one who has a problem is the one being a judgmental prick.”

El-Al gasped, and Mr. Lawrence's mouth dropped open. I had to mentally rewind and replay what I'd said to realize what they were reacting to. As soon as I did, I braced myself to get kicked out for the day or something. Using a word like “prick” in front of the vice principal was much, much worse than just saying “duh.”

Mr. Lawrence shook his head. “Ms. Rollo, watch your language.”

“Sorry.” I wasn't, but saying it didn't hurt anything.

“We unfortunately don't live in a world where people don't judge one another for some reason or other.” He started tapping his pencil again. “Some of you girls dress in ways that are not exactly appropriate or, for want of a better word, safe. I don't mean it's acceptable for people to treat you badly. Only that from what I've heard, some of the harassment has been based on your clothing.”

“Here we go again.” I barely managed not to drop an F-bomb. “Just like Evan wouldn't have gotten beaten into a frig—freaking pulp if he didn't wear nail polish, right? If it's so bad to dress this way, put it in the dress code. If it isn't against the dress code, I'm not doing anything wrong. And outside school, you don't get a say in what I wear. My parents are the only ones who have a right to complain, and that's only until I turn eighteen.”

“I don't want to get into a debate with you about clothes,” Mr. Lawrence said.

I thought about asking why he'd brought it up if he wasn't looking for a debate, but I kept my mouth shut. I was probably already on the edge of being kicked out. Suspensions didn't count as excused absences, as far as I knew.

“I wanted to see you before you went to your locker,” he said. “There was an incident.”

“Incident?” I glanced at El-Al, who shrugged.

“Your locker and Maryellen's were vandalized sometime between the end of the day yesterday and this morning.” Mr. Lawrence took a long breath. “A very unpleasant word was painted across your locker door. The same word was on hers, but of course she won't be here to see it. We're trying to find out who did it, but I wanted you to be prepared. We haven't opened your locker, so I can't guarantee some of the paint—it looked like spray paint—didn't get inside. If any of your books were damaged, the school will replace them. You won't be held responsible for the cost.”

“Good to know.” My parents and I would have fought it if the school tried to make us pay for books someone else had ruined. Assuming anything in the locker was ruined, which I wouldn't know until I got out of the damn office.

The bell rang. Now I would barely have time to get to my locker before first block. If I was late, it wouldn't be my fault, but that didn't mean it wouldn't count against me. “Can we go?” I asked. “Class. Books. You know?”

Mr. Lawrence hesitated, probably trying to decide whether to get on my case for being disrespectful, then nodded. “I just wanted you to be aware of what's written on your locker. It will be painted over by lunch, but I don't believe it's been done yet. If anyone says anything to you, any harassment or bullying behavior, tell us immediately. We weren't aware this was going on. If we had been….”

He trailed off, but it was pretty easy to fill in the end of his sentence. If school staff had been aware of what people were saying to Maryellen and me, they might have done something about it, and Maryellen might not have taken drastic action.

Then again, the school didn't have a very awesome history of dealing with bullies. They were doing a little better now, but it had taken Evan getting beaten up for them to do anything. Someone somewhere along the line had held the administrators responsible for Jim and Ray assaulting Evan, because Evan had reported them a bunch of times for hassling him at school and no one had done much of anything besides telling Evan to dress less feminine and handing out detentions to the other guys.

Bullying was against the law in our state, but it only worked if cases were reported and the school decided to deal with them.

“Sure,” I said. “I'll come down and tell you if anyone gets out of line with me, so you can sit there and tell me it's my fault for dressing provocatively. That's what your little sidetrack about my clothes was, right? Whatever I get is my fault because of how I dress?”

“That is not what I said.” His face reddened, and he narrowed his eyes. “No one deserves to be bullied or harassed. Or anything else. Regardless of clothing or behavior.”

“Thanks. Good to know you're politically correct.” I stood, and my chair toppled over. “I'm going to class now.”

I didn't bother waiting for him to answer, and he didn't try to stop me. I rushed out of the office, breathing hard because that was the only way to keep from crying. El-Al hurried to catch up with me, and we walked up the hall together. She didn't say a word, just stayed with me.

It felt good to know one of my friends was a friend again.

A custodian was in front of my locker with a bucket of blue paint and a brush. He looked up when I stopped beside him. “Yeah?”

“My locker.” I nodded at the one he was trying to paint. He hadn't completely covered the word “slut” yet. “I need my books.”

“Oh.” He stepped back and stood there while I opened the door.

Fortunately, other than a few dots of paint on a couple of books, nothing inside the locker was damaged. I got the books I needed, put my backpack and other stuff into the locker, and headed to first block with El-Al.

“I didn't know what happened,” she said as we headed for the stairs. Our lockers were on the second floor. Class was on the first.

“I figured you would have told me if you did,” I said.

“It sucks. You shouldn't be treated like that.” She shook her head. “As if half the people here aren't sleeping with someone. And you're getting shit on for something that wasn't even your choice.”

“I don't want to talk about it.” If she brought up the whole thing, I wouldn't be able to keep myself together. I had to get through the day.

“Sorry.”

We walked into anatomy, the first class we had that day. I took my seat beside Holly, where I'd been sitting since my nonfriends had decided I wasn't worth working with. She smiled at me and mouthed, “Okay?”

The teacher was giving lab instructions, so I couldn't answer. I shook my head and pointed at the clock on the wall to let Holly know I would explain later. I wasn't even close to okay. No matter how hard I tried to convince myself I didn't give a crap what other people said, seeing that word sprayed on my locker hit me hard.

It was the same word I'd heard in the halls and seen online aimed at me for a few years now. Usually it didn't bother me. As far as I was concerned, a slut was simply a female who enjoyed sex and wasn't ashamed of it. A lot of people considered that a bad thing, but they weren't necessarily right.

It had taken on a whole other meaning since November, though. Now it didn't mean I slept with guys and had fun with them. Now it meant I deserved to be forced to do something I didn't want to do.

And having it sprayed on my locker for everyone to see meant someone wanted to make sure people knew what kind of person I was and how they should treat me.

All I could do was hope they found out who'd done it and suspended them or something. Even though they would probably get suspended for vandalism, not for what they'd said, it would be better than them getting away with it.

When class ended, I picked up my stuff and started to leave. El-Al walked out of the room with Gina. Neither of them looked at me.

Holly got in front of me. “Talk to me. We have a few minutes before second block.”

I figured I might as well just blurt it out. “Someone painted ‘slut' on my locker. Lawrence dragged me into the office this morning to tell me about it and tell me to report if anyone says or does anything to me. Of course, he didn't bother saying any of that until after he lectured me about dressing more appropriately.”

“What a jackass.” Evan had joined us, along with Guillermo. “That's his thing. If you don't dress the way he thinks you should, that makes it okay for people to be assholistic.”

“You look fine,” Holly said. “I love that dress on you. If people can't deal with it, they don't have to look at you. You aren't violating dress code.”

“Exactly.” I felt kind of warm and squishy about her compliment. In a good way, but still weird.

“It completely sucks,” Guillermo said. “You don't deserve any of this. I can't believe people think what happened to you was okay on any level. Sometimes I just want to smash people's heads together until they get a clue.”

Guillermo was a football player, and he wasn't exactly tiny. If he smashed anyone's heads together, they would probably end up permanently embedded in each other. I had to laugh a little at the mental picture. “Thanks, Guillermo. I'm glad some people have my back, at least.”

“You know we do.” Holly put her arm around my shoulders. “Don't let them get to you. Including jackass Lawrence. But even if you don't think they'll do anything, definitely report anyone who gives you a hard time.”