Flawed (Flawed, #1)(62)

Logan is quiet. My head pounds from where it hit the car, and it feels sticky. I’m hot under the bag, and as the sweat trickles, it stings my head. I think I must be cut. They want to humiliate me? My heart races.

“I can’t breathe,” I say, and it comes out a sob, a terrorized mumble beneath the sackcloth. The sweat tastes salty on my lips. My stomach aches from the punch or kick or whatever part of Logan’s body he used to knock the wind out of me.

They tell me to shut up, but the sack is loosened around my neck, and I can see down to my lap. The air rushes in, and I gulp it down, trying to calm myself. They won’t kill me; they can’t kill me. It will be something else, but what? I see that my dress has risen, revealing my full thighs, and I want to pull it down, but I can’t, my hands are tied behind me. This alone is humiliation enough for me. I don’t know if they’re looking at me right now, making faces, laughing, judging, who knows.

We drive for I don’t know how long. My head is racing with what-if scenarios. Whatever they do to me, I just hope they do it so I can be home by eleven. That is my main concern right now. The car stops at a gas station, and Colleen and Gavin get out. I’m terrified at what Natasha and Logan will do to me, but they just talk about some other students at school, a bitchfest that I can’t bear to listen to. I can smell smoke; they’re both smoking, and it drifts up the sack into my airspace. I cough.

“Bothering you, Flawed?” Logan says, close to my ear.

He holds the cigarette under the opening in my sack, and the smoke drifts up. I move my head to get it away. He laughs. Then he taps his ash on my thigh. It has cooled by the time it hits my skin, so doesn’t hurt, but the sight of it fills me with fear.

“This remind you of anything?” He brings the hot cigarette close to my thighs, and I’m taken back to the Branding Chamber.

It comes close to my skin, and tears are running down my face. I’m grateful when the doors open and Gavin and Colleen return.

“What did you do?” Colleen asks firmly.

“Honestly, you’re going to find yourself out on your ass if you don’t stop being such a killjoy,” he says. “It’s just ash. You get my beer?”

They busy themselves passing around drinks. I hear can rings open, the sounds of glugging. Logan is flying through them quicker than any of them.

I hear a burp close to my ear, and Gavin laughs. “Gross, man.”

“Let’s drive,” Natasha says, starting up the engine.

And that’s what we do. I sit in the middle of them all, the car filled with smoke and alcohol, music blaring so loud they can barely keep up a conversation. We go round and round roundabouts, we drive and drive for what feels like hours. I think they’re trying to put me off the scent as to where we are, but little do they know I lost direction as soon as I got in the car. I wasn’t clever enough to try to figure out where we were going. As I listen to them all, talking like I’m not here, I think back to how I felt a few hours ago, with my mom getting dressed, excited about the party, about my new beginnings. Now, as I see ash fall onto my thighs from Logan’s cigarette, some of it too hot, some of it cooled, I feel at an all-time low.

I don’t know what they have in store for me. If humiliation is their aim, then they have already succeeded. If there is more to come, if this is simply the precursor, then I know I won’t last one minute more. My legs tremble. I wish I’d worn more sensible shoes, sneakers so I could run, and not these strappy heels I can barely balance in.

I can’t help it, but I start to cry.

“Hold on,” Logan says, stalling the conversation. “Turn the music down.”

I go silent quickly.

“Are you crying in there, Flawed?”

He listens. I can feel his breath on my shoulder and neck.

They all start laughing.

“You didn’t actually think I’d invite you to my birthday, did you?” he asks, the coldness coming from him. “I mean, I can’t believe you fell for it. I’m nineteen, Flawed. I thought Pia almost ruined it for us when she printed that story about you partying, but she didn’t name me; and if you ever tell anyone about tonight, they won’t believe you. My dad’s a priest; my mom is, too. They’re talking about making her archbishop one day, maybe the first woman in this country. We’re a respectable family,” he says.

“Well, two of them are,” Gavin says, and he and Natasha laugh.

“Maybe we should just call you Jesus from now on,” Natasha says, and they laugh again.

I feel Logan stiffen beside me, and I dread to think what consequence his humiliation will bear on me. Colleen, beside me, is quiet the whole way. I’m grateful for her presence, which is more sensible than the others, but she is working her way through the cans. I know from the amount of times I’ve heard the can ring pulled. Liquid courage. But for what? That’s my concern. And not for one moment because she persuaded him not to put me in the trunk does it mean that I don’t hold her accountable for everything that is happening right now. I think about my handbag and wonder if they have it.

“Here, have a drink, Flawed,” Logan says, and I see the can of beer appear under the hood.

“She’s not allowed to drink alcohol,” Colleen says sharply.

“And Gavin’s parents would prefer he doesn’t sleep with boys, but he still does,” Logan says, and receives something from Gavin in return for the comment that sends the can spilling down my top and legs.