Bad Rep (Bad Rep, #1)(102)

“Chicas!  How've you been?” she asked breathlessly once she had caught up with us.  Riley smiled at her and I noticed that their relationship had evolved from barely concealed loathing to polite civility.  It was damn near heartwarming.

“Good.  Same thing, different day,” Riley quipped, pushing through the glass door.  I held the door as Gracie followed close behind me.

“I hear ya.  Maysie, you need to come to the house this evening.  Olivia's called a last minute meeting.  Not sure what it's about, but I'm guessing it has to do with the Ball Blast in a few weeks,” she said, pulling off her puffy pink gloves.

“Great.  I'll be there with bells on,” I replied dryly.  Gracie squeezed my arm.

“Girl, you've got to let it go.  I haven't heard a negative thing about you in awhile.  I think everyone is moving on.  So I think you need to as well.  They're your sisters.  That matters, you know,” Gracie said convincingly.

Riley snorted, but otherwise kept her comments to herself.  “Yeah, maybe you're right,” I replied. And maybe she really was.  Who knows.  Perhaps I could survive this whole mess with my hide intact.

We each went to our mailboxes.  I hadn't checked mine in at least a month and it was crammed full of junk mail and flyers.  I tossed most of it into the trash.  I was looking through a Sorority Life magazine when I noticed a commotion in the corner by the community message board.

Gracie came up beside me, thumbing through her mail and looked up at me.  “What?” she asked when she noticed my attention was focused elsewhere.

“What's going on over there?” I asked, nodding my head in the direction of the crowd.  There was laughing and whispering.  Riley joined us.  “I want to see what has everyone so interested,” I said, moving toward the crowd.

Gracie and Riley followed me and we elbowed through the group.  I should have known something was up when everyone parted for me.  It was like one of those bad teenage dramas where people stop what they're doing just to look at you.  That should have been my clue.  The whispers were deafening, the laughter cruel.

But I didn't register it as directed at me until I got up to the big bulletin board covering the wall.  Normally it held flyers for campus wide activities, help wanted ads, notices of people looking for roommates.  Not today.

Today there was an eleven by fourteen picture that I recognized with mortified clarity.  “Oh, shit,”  Gracie gasped as she took in the photograph.

“What the f*ck is that?”  Riley asked in horrified outrage.  That was the sight of my reputation, my popularity, my self-esteem going down the f*cking toilet.

The picture was one I hadn't known existed.  But I would have recognized it anywhere.  It was from my pledging days at Chi Delta.  We had been made to dress in our bathing suits and go from fraternity house to fraternity house where we were “rated” by the brothers.  It was a horribly demeaning form of hazing.  I had hated every minute of it and that was the one time during my pledging experience when I really contemplated dropping out.

The other girls had been just as miserable as I had been.  Gracie had broken down in tears.  The sisters had taken us out and gotten us plastered afterward and the whole thing had been laughed off.  But it hadn't been funny.  And now, here was the painful reminder.  You could see how unhappy I was in the picture.

But the worst part was the black rings drawn on the photo over my body.  Circles around my thighs, my stomach, my upper arms.  Beside them were numbers.  They were the rankings I had been given that night by the fraternities.  Four on my thighs.  Three on my stomach, which had always had a little more flab than I was comfortable with.  Five on my arms.  My boobs had a big two written across them.

Someone had scrawled in big, black letters underneath it; Her face and body might suck, but we hear from the guys she's a solid ten in the sack. Give her a call and take her for a spin.  Everyone else has.

Then my cell phone number was written boldly at the bottom.  I choked on the tears in the back of my throat.  I shoved forward, making my way through the other students standing there, laughing at that horrible picture.  Laughing at my utter humiliation.

I ripped the picture down and tore it in half.  One of the girls who was standing close by sneered at me.  “Doesn't matter, I've seen at least six other posters around campus.” She laughed before taking off with her friends, looking at me and whispering.

“Oh my god!” I cried, running out of the mail room.

“Maysie!  Stop!” Gracie yelled from behind me but I kept running.  I didn't stop until I got to the quad.  Then I sank down to the ground and I couldn't stop the tears rolling down my face.

Riley and Gracie finally caught up with me and they went down to the ground beside me.  “Maysie.  That was awful!”  Gracie said in a horrified voice.  I couldn't look at her.  I was so ashamed and embarrassed.  Riley snapped in front of my face.

“Damn it, Mays.  Don't you dare curl up into a ball and take this!  Screw those jerks!  Who cares what they think?!  I say we go find the rest of those posters and then track down whoever did this and rip them a new *,” Riley growled.