Trigger warning: hints of pedophilia809Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaObTZLgdIV
809Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbKjHmLZaRO
809Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsgmAmbZOWA
Christy rubbed Carter’s back as he bent over the toilet. She had no clue how to cure food poisoning, but with her legs buckling under her until her ass hit the tile floor, her best bet was for him to let it all out. As the saying went, better out than in.
She took another swig of vodka, or tequila, or rum, or whatever the fuck was in the brown glass bottle next to the toilet. Getting drunk was always fun, but she forgot exactly how much fun. She was definitely more batshit-crazy drunk than high as a kite.
The bathroom was spinning even faster, so she stood up and stumbled out of there. But then Carter’s bedroom was spinning at the same rate. She found the bed and collapsed on top of it, hugging the bottle of liquor to her chest and closing her eyes. At least the spinning finally stopped.
In the bathroom, Carter groaned. “Fucking nasty.” He took a few deep breaths, then said, “You said she put you in juvie, right?”
“Mm.”
“What did she do?”
She sighed. “I’ll tell you later,” she mumbled as she felt the drowsiness take over.
“She musta been a horrible bitch back then…”
As she watched the clock next to the classroom door tick, she rehearsed the delivery of her question in her head. Brandon always told her that she had a body girls would die for, and that it would be a shame if she kept it hidden from men and boys all the time. According to him, they paid attention to girls that bat their eyelashes, showed a lot of skin, and flirted with sex innuendos. Boys and men wanted the simple things.
And Mr. Buschini didn’t seem to be any different.
Right when the second hand hit the number twelve, the bell rang. The kids packed up and made their way out of class as fast as they could. It was the end of the school day, so Mr. Buschini didn’t have any more classes and usually stayed in his room for an extra hour.
Christy took her time packing up, wishing the group of white girls in the corner of the room would leave already. They were talking about watching the new Twilight movie on Friday and whether they were Team Edward or Team Jacob. Christy rolled her eyes every time she heard about that overrated, sparkly-vampire series.
“Sorry, ladies,” Mr. Buschini said. “I have to leave in a few minutes.”
“Oh, okay,” a blonde said and led the other girls out of the classroom.
A few minutes was enough for Christy. She left her backpack in her seat and strolled to the front of the classroom. He looked up as she approached him. “May I help you, Christy?”
“Well, I got my report card in the mail yesterday, and I think you should check my grade again.”
“Are you sure?” He rolled his chair back and opened a drawer. “I double-checked everyone’s grades.”
Pouting, she walked around the desk and stood next to him. “Check again.”
He pulled out a folder containing all of his classes’ grades. As he looked through the last names near the bottom of the pile, Christy laid a hand on top of the papers. He looked up at her as she bat her eyelashes and gave a bright smile. “If you bump my grade up, I’ll do anything you want.”
His eyebrows knit together. “Like what?”
Her hand planted on one armrest as she made sure he saw her cleavage. She eyed his crotch for several seconds, then looked back up at him. “My mouth, on that. It can be between us.”
“For a letter grade?” he asked, his voice rising.
“Well, yeah…”
He stood up and grabbed her wrist, dragging her out of the classroom and down the hallway. A few students stopped talking to each other and stared at the pair, and her face grew extremely hot. How could she be so stupid? Of course he’d be the type to tell on her.
They entered the administration office area with Miss Rodman standing up from the receptionist’s desk.
“I need to see Mr. Moore,” Mr. Buschini growled.
“Him? No!” Christy exclaimed as her face grew even hotter. It was already awkward between them when Mom had dumped him and he had to stay away from Christy and her family from then on. They were just friends now, but she had to admit he still held a special place in her heart as her first love.
“You can go in,” Miss Rodman replied. “He’s not seeing anyone right now.” Her stare burned the back of Christy’s head as Mr. Buschini barged into Brandon’s office. The door slammed against the wall, making Christy cringe and Brandon jump in his seat.
Mr. Buschini raised her wrist. “Christy Vargas here asked for a grade bump through...through sexual exploits!”
“I didn’t!” she lied. “I wasn’t trying anything. He just thought I was--”
He turned to her with a glare. “It was quite obvious to me what you were trying to do!”
She didn’t say anything, instead realizing this was a dead-end for her.
“Christina, can you step out for a moment?” Brandon asked with his palms together as if he were praying.
She looked at Mr. Buschini, then Brandon, and then strode out of there. Sitting in one of the chairs outside, she folded her arms. At least Brandon personally knew her. He wouldn’t be too harsh on her, would he?
“What did you do?” Miss Rodman asked.
Christy huffed. “It’s none of your business.”
“It looks like it was really bad. Maybe to the point of suspension?”
Christy hesitated, before shaking her head.
“Expulsion?”
Christy nodded, her eyes staying away from the receptionist.
She gasped. “What on Earth did you do?”
“None of your business,” she repeated.
Miss Rodman seemed to decide to let it go as she looked at her computer screen and typed a few times. Christy pulled at the loose threads sticking out of her jeans. It was just Brandon. He knew her and her family’s situation. Her dad especially wouldn’t approve, and he absolutely hated Brandon after finding his tie in his bedroom, followed by Mom dumping Brandon.
The door next to her finally opened, and Mr. Buschini shot her a dirty look as he walked out of there. She figured Brandon needed to see her next, so she slipped into the office and closed the door.
“Sit, please,” he said.
She did, and then blurted out, “I don’t want Mom to know I’m flunking most of my classes, okay? Just give me a break.”
“I don’t know, Christy. Your record at this point doesn’t look so good.”
She paused and started sweating. She hadn’t been in trouble before. He didn’t know about Mr. Keane, did he? “What do you mean?”
“A little birdie told me about the drugs you’re buying under this school’s roof.”
Selah Wynters first popped up in her head, and Christy stood up. Selah was the only person that ever caught her. “That bitch,” she whispered. “I told her not to tell!”
“Sit back down, Vargas!” he yelled. “By the way, I have the authority to get you expelled.”
She sat back down, trying to hold back a sob. “You wouldn’t.”
He stood up with his palms on the desk. “I would. You have two offenses. One, for buying marijuana from Mr. Keane using sexual favors, and two, for asking Mr. Buschini for a grade bump, using sexual favors.”
“Please,” she begged. “I can’t get in trouble. There’s enough shit going on at home. You know that.”
“You should’ve thought that when you became a whore for your teachers.”
Her face was wet with tears, but backing down wasn’t an option. “How could you? After what we did together?”
His fist slammed the desk. “We had nothing.” Sitting down again, he leaned back in his seat. “You’re ridiculously annoying compared to the others.”
“Others?”
“The other girls kept quiet about their problems. They had a lot of baggage like you, living in such dysfunctional homes. It’s why they cling to me so fast, when I undress them, touch their pussies, show them how hard I get when I see them and not their mothers.”
Christy gripped the armrests tight and tried to control her fast breathing. To him she was just the next little girl to violate. “I never meant anything to you?”
He laughed. “Your youth and your body? Yes. But I moved on.
“You fucked me up,” she murmured, realizing as she talked. “You’re a freak! A pervert!”
“Shut the fuck up!” he barked. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“You were my first.” She stared at his short black hair, brown eyes, and pale face. He looked like any normal man she would pass by in the street, but with the misfortune of knowing who he really was--a creepy pervert--she saw his features as some sick disguise. “You could get arrested, you know.” She slowly smiled. “Just wait till I tell the cops.”
“You shouldn’t,” he said through gritted teeth. “Or else I’ll get you expelled.”
She gaped. “What the fuck, man?”
“It’s a fair deal.”
She didn’t know what to say and just shook her head.
“Look, I’ll let you off the hook from your offenses if you don’t tattle on me. That means don’t tell your parents either.”
“Ugh!” She stood up and backed away from him. “You’re a fucking psycho!”
“So I guess we have a deal?”
But she turned away and left the office, ignoring Miss Rodman’s quizzical look and some administrators’ confused exclaims when she pushed past them. She kept walking down the hallway and turned left, and when she found a bathroom, she entered without hesitation. The handicap stall was open, so she went in and locked the door. She sat on the toilet, hugged her knees, and finally started crying.
Brandon was the man who treated her like she meant the world to him, who taught her the sweetest pleasures, who taught her tricks that got men on their knees, who acted as both her father and her first love. He had taken the place of her dad, who often left home with the possibility of never coming back, and who, when he did come home, was becoming more of a violent stranger than a caring father.
All she wanted was love and attention from men like Brandon. But really, they were all dumbass perverts.
Brandon betrayed her just like that. It was as though he took off his mask to reveal a terrifying monster, and she actually fell for it. She believed him when he said she could get any man she wanted because she was that gorgeous. She believed him when he said she could have any man wrapped around her finger. She believed him when he said only men treated her right instead of guys her age. She believed him when he called her his “young vixen” who was like no other girl he’d ever met.
But she was just some toy he played with until he got sick of her and threw her away. And he was gonna use other girls the exact same way.
But not on her watch.
The courtroom grew quiet as Mr. Kramer stood up. “Paige Connelly.”
Christy turned her angry gaze to the pale, red-haired girl walking up to the witness stand. As Paige laid her hand on the Bible, Christy leaned forward with her eyes never leaving the redhead. She was her only hope, yet also the sorely needed reminder of why trusting people was a setup for betrayal.
Mr. Kramer walked around the table and strolled toward Paige who was sitting down. “Good afternoon, Paige. I’m going to ask you several questions that I hope you’ll answer to the best of your ability.” After she reluctantly nodded, he continued, “On Thursday night, what were you doing before Christina rang the doorbell?”
“I…”
She glanced at Christy, who was giving her the scariest glare she could muster. She better tell all of them exactly what Brandon was doing to her in her own bedroom. Her sobs during the phone call could attest to that.
“I was sleeping. In my room.”
Hearing that felt like putting the final nail in the coffin. Christy’s stomach dropped as her breathing quickened and her heart beat faster. Betrayal really was a bitch.
Mr. Kramer seemed to take a moment to think. “Christina alleged that you had called her just minutes before she arrived. You were crying and she couldn’t tell what was wrong, so she assumed you were in trouble. Do you attest to that?”
Paige seemed to hesitate, and this time she didn’t look at Christy once. Right in front of everyone was a backstabbing bitch trying to think of some pathetic lie, just to get Christy, who used to be her friend, in juvie. Paige said, “I never called her.”
Christy stood up. “You fucking liar! You called me and cried about God knows what! Why can’t you just tell the fucking truth?”
“Sit down,” Mr. Kramer hissed.
As the courtroom erupted in murmurs, the judge banged the gavel and rolled his eyes. “Yes, sit down, Christina.” The fact that the judge was white and male made her even more pissed at the world.
“I got this,” Mr. Kramer whispered, and she huffed as she sat down. As if he could help her at this point. He continued, “Let’s go back to two days earlier. Did you meet Christy at all?”
Paige finally looked at Christy. She seemed as though she was going to answer truthfully, with her blue-green eyes looking sad and thoughtful.
Then she said, “No, I only heard about her.”
Christy didn’t want to be there anymore, not when only bullshit was said to fit Brandon’s narrative about a troubled, slutty teen with daddy issues.
“What did you hear?” Mr. Kramer went on.
“That she...um….bought drugs from that drug-dealer Mr. Keane. And those other things Mr. Moore said earlier.”
Mr. Kramer looked down, and in that moment Christy could just feel him giving up. Paige was the fucking key to this whole case, and he was giving up already? So much for saying he “got this.”
And just like Christy predicted, Kramer told Paige to go back to her old seat. Christy stopped paying attention from that point on, feeling like she truly lost all hope. Dad was definitely going to have a mental breakdown, Mom would go into another one of her depressive states, Mark would choke in more weed with Ava and her possé, and Christy herself would get some outstanding sentence in juvie, or worse, prison. She had all of these scenarios planned out in her head the moment she got arrested Thursday night in Paige’s house.
The one thing she couldn’t get was why Paige took Brandon’s side all of a sudden. There was no doubt that that night he had done something to her to make her cry that hard, and to convince her that he was right in doing what he did to her.
Christy had told her again and again that Brandon’s actions were not normal. They were disgusting, perverted, and all-around evil. He was a disguised incubus preying on little girls. And then she and Paige had all these plans to finally get him caught. For a while, Christy actually believed in Paige’s ability to fend for herself.
But why, then, did she decide to help a pedophile that she knew was violating her?
