Breanna
KEEPING IN MIND the most frequently used letters in the alphabet, I’m toiling my way through the Caesar encryption method. It’s a simple method. One I don’t expect to work because that would be too easy, but it’s what my English teacher used on Friday.
The library’s busy; at least it is toward the front. Because of that, I selected a table in the back. Joshua had practice before school, so I’ve been here for the past hour jotting down possible solutions and crossing them out just as quickly. It’s frustrating and exhilarating, and if this is what being employed with the CIA is like, I want in.
There’s a low buzz of conversation. Occasionally some girl laughs too loudly for too long, but a shush from the librarian silences her. There are footsteps on the carpet and a pause behind me. A flutter in my stomach wishes it’s Razor, but then the overpowering smell of too much aftershave squashes that hope.
The chair across from me is drawn back and Kyle drops into it. I’ve been going to school with Kyle since kindergarten. He ate worms. I strung clover together to craft necklaces. We belonged to two different worlds then and nothing since then has changed, yet here he is talking to me again.
“I’m not writing your papers. I will help you, but I’m not writing them.”
He scratches behind his ear and the action reminds me of a dog. Strands of his black hair now stick out. He rests his elbows on the table, then rests back in his seat, then forward again. A strange unsettling forms in my bloodstream. Whatever is about to happen will be bad.
Time to bolt. I turn off my phone, put it in my purse and scoot out of my chair as I sweep up my notes.
“You’re going to write my papers,” he says.
I stand and shove my wrong answers into my backpack. Mimicking my younger siblings, I ignore his existence.
“Did you know I have over six hundred Bragger followers? Thanks to football camp, I’m hitting close to seven hundred and I like to post stuff. Stuff some people may not want seen.”
“So?” I empathize with those antelopes on the National Geographic specials that glance up from the watering hole and come face-to-face with a tiger. Like them, I’m terrified into immobilization.
Kyle rubs his eyes with his thumb and forefinger and I shift my weight from one foot to the other. If I run, maybe whatever it is he’s planning will fizzle, but something warns me that no matter how fast I sprint, he’ll be able to catch up.
“You’re wanting to go to college, right? Knowing you, you’re going to some Ivy League school, am I wrong?”
He’s not. Not at all. I hunger to go far from here. To go where there will be other people like me. Someplace where I won’t be the one who is odd, but the one who belongs.
“Coach had a meeting with us a few months back on how we have to watch what we do online. How guys who have great track records on the field lose chances at scholarships because of their behavior off the field and online.”
The entire left side of my body goes numb, and I randomly wonder if I’m experiencing a stroke. Kyle’s right. Universities do research people online. They do care about our personal lives when it pertains to coveted spots or scholarships—especially with the schools I’m interested in attending.
The wooden chair cracks under his weight and he yanks his cell out of his pocket. “Have you seen this site before?”
Snowflake Sluts. Every girl I know hates that site. The first few times it sprang up on Bragger, someone told the school’s administration and it was taken down, but like a bad pimple, it pops back up. No one reports it anymore, since the next picture in line is of the girl who snitched.
“I know the guys who run it.”
My eyes dart to his. Guys? There’s more than one sick, twisted pig at this school?
Kyle moves his fingers across the screen, then slides his cell over the table to me.
Bile claws up my throat and a sweat breaks out along my hairline. I collapse into the seat. It’s a horror show. One I crave desperately to flee, but can’t.
It’s a Bragger message on Kyle’s account and I don’t miss how it hasn’t yet been sent into the universe. The picture is of me and Razor and beyond us is a sign for Shamrock’s. I’m on the bed of the truck and Razor is leaning into me, settled between my legs. His head and lips extremely close to mine. My skirt is pulled dangerously up my thigh, exposing areas that no one should ever see, and Razor’s hands appear to be touching my skin.
The picture is damning enough, but it’s the words above it that causes my head to throb: #snowflakesluts #bikerwhore
“I won’t send the picture from my account. It’ll be sent from Snowflake Sluts’. I’m sure you noticed it has a nice following.”
It does. Too many people. Way more than the population of our school, or town, or even county. This has a reach that could devastate futures. Specifically, my future.
“I’ve got more,” Kyle says. “Of you drinking, but I figure this one would get more attention.”
More...of me drinking. I’m sure the college scholarship and admission committees would love to see one of their prospective students participating in underage drinking at a bar and then appear to be about to have sex in a parking lot in a bed of a truck with a member of a notorious biker gang.
“I’m sorry,” Kyle says. “But failing isn’t an option. It doesn’t have to be like this. I can still give you whatever you want. You can forget you saw this picture, and when the year is done, I’ll delete it and the others I took. This can be a great year for the two of us. I pass and get a scholarship out of Snowflake. You can become the most popular girl at school.”