The Best Possible Answer(16)

“You know I’ll love you forever. And if I choose not to have babies, you can help me take care of my twenty-six cats.”

“I’m not scooping the crap of twenty-six cats out of your litter boxes.”

“That’s okay,” I said. “I’ll love you anyway. I’ll always love you, Sammie.”

And I always will.

She’s the only one who didn’t judge me when my ex-boyfriend spread that photo of me around school. Once upon a time, I had a decent supply of friends. Sammie had always been my true one and only, but we also were open to being social with the other kids in our class. Uni High is relatively small, so a scandal like the one I got myself into is big news.

The day I returned from winter break was bad. I walked into side eyes and murmurs and muffled laughter from the very same people who I’d previously called my friends. It was like there was this new invisible cloud around me, one that kept people from actually talking to me, but one that made them want to stare, as though I was an F-up, a sideshow freak. It was as though, by staring, they could make me do it again. They’d already seen a part of me—my body—in the picture, and I could feel their eyes, not looking at my face to see if I was still a person, but looking at my clothes, trying to see through them, trying to see me naked again.

I found notes in my locker, on my desk, in my bag, sometimes just words like “cyberslut” or “photo whore” or “sext skank.” But there were also those trying to be clever: “Congrats, you have won Uni’s Distinguished Award of Resident A+ Slut.”

Each one was a punch to my gut.

Each one was a reminder of how badly I’d messed up.

Sammie stayed by my side and told me to ignore them. “Don’t let them get to you. They want you to lose control. Just don’t let them.”

I tried, really hard, to focus on the lecture or on my homework or on the hallway floor or her hand tight around my elbow, but there was no ignoring the reality that I was a complete failure.

My dad had his one-way ticket to Singapore, and my mom wouldn’t talk to me about any of it—not his leaving, not the separation, not my new status as resident Uni “slut.” She’d just give me these sad, judgmental looks. It was bad enough I had to deal with the piercing stares at school, but I got to come home to more from my own mother.

During a wholly uncomfortable meeting with her, Ms. McKee, the principal, and Ms. Fuentes, the counselor, they said that I should report any bullying immediately, and they promised that they were there for me, whatever I needed. But then, at the end of the week, they held a special assembly with the entire school to discuss the realities of bullying and to teach lessons on compassion and kindness. They defined the differences between psychological bullying and physical bullying, giving lists of examples of each. They gave warnings about suspensions and expulsions. It was supposed to be this general assembly, not in relation to anyone in particular, they said, but then they spent all this time telling stories of kids who had killed themselves from the pressure of “cyberbullying and sexting incidents,” and, of course, everyone in the auditorium looked at me.

I tried to keep my head up high, like Sammie told me to. I tried not to slide down into my seat. I tried to hold back the tears. I felt her squeeze my hand, and so I chanted to myself: Do not lose control. Do not lose control. Do not lose control.

But the reality was, if there was anyone who didn’t know about the photo before, they certainly sought it out after the assembly. There was no way to erase all of the copies online. They had been shared and retweeted and retumbled and reblogged. They were there. For good.

That’s when I had the first Episode.

Ms. McKee and Ms. Fuentes had just opened the room to Q & A when some jackass freshman, Jared Wentz, two rows behind me, whispered my name, and without thinking, I turned around. He flashed his phone at me, and there it was: me, naked, in his creepy little hands. I turned back in my seat, my jaw clenched, my heart racing. I slid into my seat.

Sammie turned around and snapped at the kid: “Shut that off right now.” A bunch of kids laughed around us until a teacher came over and shushed them.

No one had any questions for Ms. McKee and Ms. Fuentes, so they ended the assembly and told us to go back to our regular schedule. Sammie had to go to math, while I had to go to physics, so she hugged me and whispered in my ear: “Don’t let them get to you. I’m sure they’ve all sent their own pics, but they were just lucky enough not to get caught.”

I let go of her and made my way toward lab, wishing she were next to me to defend me from all the vicious stares and murmurs. I chanted again: Do not lose control. Do not lose control. Do not lose control.

That’s when I heard it. Jared Wentz. He was following me now, calling out to me again, but this time, he was moaning my name.

“Viviaaaaaana.”

He was repeating my name, and then breathing heavily, in a sexual way, moaning and groaning and grunting at me.

“Viviaaaaaana.”

The kids around us laughed, which only served to encourage him.

“Viviaaaaaana.”

I vaguely remember stopping.

I vaguely remember trying to tell him to stop.

I vaguely remember the spinning hallway, the echoes of laughter, other kids joining in, moaning and groaning around me.

And then I remember—clearly—Sammie. She appeared as though from nowhere. She yelled at them, all of them, called them names, told them to get away from me.