CH.3

TESSA

Maya isn't done. "You were never my friend. You were my personal ATM with abandonment issues. The sad, fat girl who'd do anything for scraps of attention. Did you really think I'd choose you over Derek? Look at us, then look at yourself."

Derek steps forward with a cruel smile. "And there's one more thing you should know, Tessa. This whole thing? It was a bet. I bet my friends that I could get you to steal at least thirty grand for me before graduation. Guess what? You hit sixty last week. I just won five hundred bucks off your desperation."

A bet. I wasn't even a person to them. I was a game. A source of entertainment and easy money.

The laughter reaches a crescendo, and someone starts a slow clap that spreads through the crowd. I'm surrounded by the sound of my own destruction, drowning in the cruelty of people I thought were my friends.

I can't breathe.

The air in the ballroom has turned thick and poisonous, each attempt to fill my lungs met with the suffocating weight of a hundred stares, a thousand whispered cruelties, a million pixels of recorded humiliation that will follow me forever.

My chest constricts as though invisible hands are squeezing the life from me, and black spots dance at the edges of my vision.

I can't think.

My mind fractures under the assault of Maya and Derek's betrayal and the crowd's savage delight.

Thoughts scatter and reform and shatter again, leaving me with nothing but white noise and the echo of laughter that sounds utterly hateful.

The careful walls I've built around my insecurities crumble to dust, leaving me exposed, raw and bleeding in front of everyone who's ever doubted my worth.

I can't exist in this space where my deepest shame has been stripped naked and paraded for everyone's entertainment. Where my most private fears have been weaponized and turned into public spectacle. Where the girl I thought I could become has been murdered in front of the girl I've always been… pathetic, desperate, delusional.

The marble floor beneath my feet feels unstable, as though the very foundation of reality is shifting.

I can't stay strong anymore.

The armor I've worn for three years, the pretense that I belong here, that I deserve Derek's attention, that Maya's friendship could somehow transform me into someone worthy, finally shatters completely. Every defense mechanism fails at once, leaving me as vulnerable as a newborn, as exposed as a nerve ending.

So I run.

I push through the crowd of my former peers, their laughter following me like a pack of hunting dogs.

Someone tries to grab my arm, whether to stop me or hurt me, I don't know, but I wrench free and keep running until I'm out the front doors and into the cool night air.

But I'm not fast enough. I'm never fast enough.

They catch me at the end of the circular driveway, just past the fountain where Maya and I used to make wishes as children.

Four girls I don't recognize tackle me to the ground behind the manicured hedges, away from the house lights and the party noise.

I hit the pavement hard, my custom gown tearing, my knees scraping against the rough concrete.

"Well, well," the leader says, straddling me while I try to crawl away.

She's built like a linebacker, all muscle and malicious intent. "If it isn't the famous Tessa Whyte. You're even more pathetic in person."

"Please," I gasp, trying to protect my face as they circle me like vultures. "I don't even know you. What do you want?"

"We're here to make sure you really understood tonight's lesson," another girl says, delivering a vicious kick to my ribs.

I scream in agony.

"We're here to give you some special messages," the leader continues, pulling out her phone.

The screen illuminates her face in the darkness, making her look like a demon. "Look at this pathetic whale." She clicks her tongue. "Tonight was just the beginning. By tomorrow, everyone in the state will know what a desperate, pathetic loser you really are."

A boot connects with my stomach, doubling me over.

I can taste blood now and my chest is starting to tighten with the familiar squeeze of an approaching asthma attack.

"You're going viral, fatty. The girl who thought she could buy love," another voice chimes in, punctuating each word with another kick.

The video. Of course there's a video. My humiliation will be preserved forever, shared and reshared until everyone in the world knows what a pathetic fool I am.

"Good luck getting accepted anywhere now, whale," the leader adds, checking her phone again.

I clutch my chest, gasping for breath while trying to avoid their attacks.

"My... inhaler..." I wheeze, trying to crawl toward my purse, which has been knocked several feet away. "Please... I can't... breathe..."

"Aww, the whale can't breathe?" The leader laughs, kicking my purse even further away. "That's what happens to girls who don't know their place."

The kicks come faster now, harder, more vicious. Each blow is punctuated by another message.

"You're disgusting!"

KICK.

"You're worthless!"

KICK.

"Your parents should disown you!"

KICK.

"You're gonna die alone and unloved!"

KICK.

"Just like you deserve!"

KICK.

I curl into a ball, trying to protect my vital organs, but there are too many of them and they're too strong.

Blood fills my mouth. My vision blurs, and my lungs are seizing up completely now.

Each breath is agony, each heartbeat a struggle against the darkness closing in.

The asthma attack is the worst I've ever had. My airways constrict until I'm drowning in my own body.

Black spots dance at the edges of my vision, and I wonder if this is it. If this is how I die – beaten and broken behind the house where I thought I had friends, destroyed by the people I trusted most.

Maybe it's better this way. Maybe Maya and Derek are right. Maybe the world would be better without the fat girl who's too stupid to see when she's being used, too desperate for love to recognize when she's being played.

"Look at her," one of them laughs. "She's turning blue. Think the whale's finally gonna beach herself?"

"Maya said to make sure she suffers," the leader says, delivering one final, devastating kick to my head. "Mission accomplished."

The world tilts sideways, and I taste despair. This is what I am: a broken thing on the pavement, gasping for air that won't come, destroyed by the people who were supposed to love me.

Then, suddenly, the world explodes in brilliant white light.

Headlights cut through the darkness with the wrath of God, and I hear the deep purr of an expensive engine.

The girls around me scream, their cruel laughter turning to panic in an instant.

"SHIT! Someone's coming!"

"RUN! FUCKING RUN!"

"LEAVE HER! GO GO GO!"

They scatter like roaches when the lights come on, leaving me alone on the cold pavement with my broken ribs and my failing lungs.

Through my blurred vision, I see a figure approaching. Tall, elegant, moving with the kind of lethal grace that comes from absolute power and zero doubt, until two black designer shoes stop directly in front of my broken form.

"My..." the word is barely audible through the blood and tears. "Inhaler..."

The figure kneels beside me, and I catch a glimpse of an expensive suit, a flash of platinum at the wrist, the subtle scent of cologne that costs more than most people's rent. But my vision is fading fast, the black spots multiplying until the world becomes a tunnel of light.

I feel strong hands lift me from the pavement with surprising gentleness, cradling me as though I'm something precious instead of the broken garbage Maya and Derek think I am.

I try to see my savior's face, but the darkness is closing in too fast.

My last coherent thought before consciousness leaves me is a desperate prayer to whoever might be listening: Please don't let Maya and Derek win. Please don't let this be how my story ends. Please let me live long enough to make them pay.

Then the world goes black, and I fall into an abyss where their laughter can't reach me, where their cruelty can't touch me, where something that feels impossibly like salvation waits in the darkness.

But salvation is dangerous for girls like me. Hope is what got me here in the first place.

And hope, I'm learning, can be the cruelest weapon of all.