Simon.
I was still talking to u when u got out of the car. Don’t do that again.
I’ll do what I want, I texted back. You’re not my dad!
I am just watching your back. Dancing like that at the talent show is a bad idea. Trust me. U will regret.
My fingers trembled as I typed: I’m not dropping out! And if u don’t like it or really think I’m a slut then
I stopped typing, my finger floating above my phone for a second. My mom is always telling me that I had a bad temper. And I could hear her then, as clear as a bell: You have to learn to control it, querida, or it will control you. Count to ten, and the anger will pass.
But, just as clearly, I heard another voice—Simon’s: It looked like you were giving a peek to every guy in Eddie’s backyard!
… maybe we should just break up, I finished typing.
I still didn’t stop to count to ten. I just dropped my finger onto the phone and
tapped send.
That night I barely slept. The next morning, my eyes were puffy and my throat felt dry and hoarse.
“What’s wrong?” my mother asked me at breakfast. “You look terrible.”
“Nothing,” I mumbled. “I’ve got a bad headache.”
Simon hadn’t replied to my text the night before. I didn’t know about that morning. I still hadn’t checked my phone.
“Here, Daisy.”
My mother handed me two aspirin for my headache. I swallowed them down with some water and then went back to my room to get ready for school. But first I had to find my phone.
It wasn’t on my nightstand or on my desk. I kicked at a tangle of dirty clothes on the floor to see if it was buried under there. But the only thing I spotted was an old pink sock that had been missing for weeks.
Finally I just got dressed. Then I started looking for my shoes. When I found them under the bed, I saw the phone too—sitting inside one of my purple Converse. No wonder I hadn’t been able to find it.
I looked down to see if there were any new messages. Six of them. My heart skipped a beat when I saw one was from Simon. He’d sent it at 3:32 A.M.
I tapped on the phone to open the message. And a shiver traveled right up my spine.
Consider us broken up then. But you’ll be sorry.
I walked to school with a queasy feeling in my stomach. By the time I reached the front doors, the bell was ringing. Then Nora appeared out of nowhere, rushing toward me with a weird look on her face.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“Um … ” She bit her lip. “Did you know Simon sent pictures of you to a bunch of people?”
My heart stopped. “What? What are you talking about?”
“He sent those photos of you in your red bikini to a bunch of people.” She lowered her voice. “Plus—”
I covered my face with a hand. “Oh no … Please don’t tell me … ”
“Yeah, he sent another one too. He must have been really pissed at you, Daisy.”
I felt my legs wobble.
Laurel saw us talking and came over with a worried look in her eyes. “Sorry, Daisy,” she murmured. “Simon’s a jerk.”
I swallowed hard. “Did you see the pictures too?”
“Pretty much everybody got them,” she told me. “I think he forwarded the shots to everyone in his contacts list.”
“Except for me,” I murmured, shaking my head.
Nora put a hand on my arm. “Are you okay?”
I nodded. But by then my whole body was numb.
“Can I see your phone?” I asked Laurel.
She held it out. Slowly, I took the phone and forced myself to look down. The first two pictures showed me in my red bikini. The next was the photo I had sent to Simon later—me without my top on.
I closed my eyes. “How could he do this to me?”
Laurel just kept patting my arm. “It’ll be okay, Daisy,” she said again and again.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. It wasn’t going to be okay. Not for a really, really long time.
“What happened after you left Eddie’s house?” Nora asked.
“We kept arguing. He was really angry about the way I was hooping.”
“He got to Eddie’s just as you started,” Laurel said. “He was standing on the deck the whole time. I’m sure he noticed the guys looking at you.”
“Oh, he noticed,” I replied. “And he didn’t like it one bit.” Tears stung my eyes. “He thinks I was acting like a slut!”
Nora hugged me while Laurel went on about how I was just hula-hooping. “So what if you looked sexy up there? You were just having fun!” A dark look crossed her face. “He’s totally full of himself. I think he’s jealous of anything you do that doesn’t involve him.”
“He thinks I should drop out. He said I’ll regret being in the show.”
“He doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Laurel murmured.
I walked woodenly into the building with my friends. How many kids had seen those photos? Had any of my teachers seen them? I knew I could get in big trouble. But I didn’t want to think about that yet.
Two guys from my history class passed me just then. I saw one nudge the other with his elbow. They both looked over at me and laughed.
My cheeks burned, and tears filled my eyes again. How am I going to get through the day? I wondered. How in the world could Simon do this to me?
Somehow I managed to make it through my morning classes. But my stomach was churning. My head throbbed. I barely looked at anyone or said anything. Mostly I just concentrated on not throwing up.
I had the same lunch period as Nora and Laurel, and I’d decided to try and find them. But when I stepped into the cafeteria, a group of girls looked up at me and started whispering together.
That was the last straw. I whirled around and rushed for the front doors.
I let myself into my family’s apartment through the back door and climbed into bed. My parents were downstairs, working. Lunchtime is their busiest time of the day. I knew they wouldn’t notice that I’d come home from school. Anyway, I could tell my mom later that I just wasn’t feeling well.
As I lay there, thoughts kept spinning through my brain. How could I fix this? Was there anything I could do?
At the beginning of the school year we’d had an assembly about cyberbullying. A dad whose daughter had committed suicide had talked to us about all the ways kids get harassed online. Then a police officer got up and told us what to do if we became victims.
But I had barely listened to a word the men were saying. Instead, I’d been laughing with Simon the whole time. We’d made fun of the policeman’s weird-looking mustache and Mrs. Núñez’s short pink skirt. We’d doodled dumb cartoons all over my English notebook. Simon and I weren’t dating then, but we were on our way, flirting with each other all the time.
I could kind of remember the cop saying that we should talk to an adult if we felt bullied. He’d talked about sexting, and I was pretty sure he’d told us never to forward any “lewd” pictures of anybody. The best thing to do was delete them right away.
So maybe some kids deleted the photos, I tried to tell myself.
But I knew there would be plenty of kids who had kept them. In fact, they’d probably send them to even more people.
Besides, I kept thinking, my situation didn’t really count as cyberbullying, did it? Simon was my boyfriend. So wasn’t this just called “a nasty breakup”?
The door to my room creaked open. Our orange cat, Pedro, padded in and meowed when he saw me. Then he hopped up on my bed and curled up beside me.
I wish I were a cat, I thought. Cats didn’t have boyfriends, and they didn’t have cell phones.
I closed my eyes, but the images from Laurel’s phone were haunting me.
What if my parents find out about this? I wondered. If Dad discovers that I sent naked photos to a boy, he’ll totally freak out. He’ll ground me until I’m twenty-one!
Waves of anger washed over me.
I sat up and grabbed my phone. Then I pounded out an angry text message to Simon: What the hell???
It felt kind of good. I typed out another one.
Can’t believe u did that 2 me!!!
And then a third one.
I hope u r satisfied. U just ruined my life.
After that, Pedro and I napped for the rest of the afternoon.
When I got up later, there were three worried-sounding messages on my phone from Nora, and another, just as worried, from Laurel. But everyone else at Southside—including Simon—was avoiding me that day.
“Mi’ija? Sweetheart?” my mother said as she walked upstairs. “Papa and I need you and Raymond to work in the bodega tonight. We have a church dinner. Is that okay? Do you feel okay?”
“Sure,” I said, avoiding her gaze. “No problem, Mom. I’ll work tonight.” I was actually glad to have something to do. I couldn’t focus on homework. And after sleeping all afternoon, I didn’t feel tired. I just had a headache.
All night long the bodega stayed busy. Raymond and I had just finished clearing out a big crowd when a neighbor, Mrs. Hernandez, came in. She ordered five sandwiches for her family.
“It’s too hot to cook today, Daisy,” she said in Spanish. “I’ll come back for the sandwiches in a little while.”
Raymond and I made the sandwiches together. He sliced the rolls and spread mayonnaise on the bread while I piled peppers and lunchmeat on top. I was wrapping everything in white paper when the bell over the door jangled again.
My body went stiff as Deonte and Mason walked in. Behind the counter, I kept my head down, pretending not to see Simon’s friends as they headed over to the case filled with cold drinks. They grabbed sodas and then walked over to the racks of snacks near the cash register.
A minute later Mrs. Hernandez came back into the bodega. “Hola! I’m back!” she called out to me. “Is everything ready, Daisy?”
Oh no.
Deonte and Mason’s heads swiveled toward my end of the counter. Slowly, I put Mrs. Hernandez’s sandwiches in a bag, not looking at the boys. But I could feel their eyes on me as I walked over to the register and took Mrs. Hernandez’s money.
A few minutes after she left, Deonte and Mason were ready to pay too. Raymond was in the back, so I had no choice. I had to ring them up.
“Hey, Daisy,” Deonte mumbled.
“Hey.” I didn’t look at them.
“What’s up?” Mason handed me a five-dollar bill.
“Nothing.” I thrust the change into his hand and then pushed the register drawer shut. “See you around.”
Deonte started for the door, but Mason stood waiting for a second. A smile curled at the edges of his mouth.
“You looked pretty hot in that red bikini, Daisy. But you know what? You look even hotter with it off.”
He let out a weird-sounding laugh, and I spun away from the counter. The bell jangled loudly as the boys left. My face burned with embarrassment. I grabbed a cutting board and a few onions and got busy chopping.
Raymond had come out of the back room. I could tell he was about to say something to me when a few more customers drifted in.
Chop, chop, chop.
I pushed the knife hard through the white onion, slicing it into thin strips like my mother had taught me to. Tears streamed down my face.
Raymond took care of the customers. Then he came back over to me and stood there. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing!” I snapped. “It’s the onions! They’re making my eyes sting!”
“That kid—what’s his name, Mason? I heard him say something to you.”
“He was talking about something that happened at school today. He likes some stupid girl.”
I kept my head down, hacking furiously at the onion as tears kept burning my eyes. Sometime later, a big group of kids and parents came in from a baseball game. Raymond walked back to the register to ring up their ice cream and drinks.
I dumped the sliced onions into a stainless steel bin, then walked to the back of the store to wash my hands and put cold water on my stinging eyes.
I had a new worry, one I’d been too upset to think about earlier. Raymond was friends with Joseph March, Simon’s older brother.
What if my brother had seen the photos too?
The next day I woke up with a bad cold, so it was no problem to convince my mother that I had to stay home from school. All day long I tried to tell myself that everybody would forget about the photos. That soon the whole thing would blow over.
But I knew I was just kidding myself.
On Wednesday I wanted to stay home again, but I forced myself to go to school. Sooner or later I have to go back, I thought. Might as well get it over with.
I loaded up my backpack with tissues and cough drops. I got through my first few classes by acting really sick and talking to only a few people.
When I walked into chem that afternoon, Mrs. Kim beamed at me. “Daisy Garcia, you angel!”
“Angel?” I echoed. A few kids snickered as I started to cough.
“Yes, you’re an angel!” Mrs. Kim repeated. “This morning Mrs. Frank shared more of your plans for the talent show with me. When I told my husband about everything you kids are doing for us … ” She got a little choked up. “He was stunned. He couldn’t believe it. You don’t even know him!”
“We know you, though, Mrs. Kim,” I said.
“The talent show is going to be fun, Mrs. Kim,” Nora chimed in. “It’s not a big deal.”
“It’s a lot of work,” Mrs. Kim said. “And it’s such a caring thing to do. So it’s a big deal to us. Thank you so much.”
For the first time in two days, I actually smiled.
Soon Mrs. Kim began the lesson—a review of the periodic table. When she turned her back to write on the whiteboard, Nora leaned over and whispered, “Mrs. Kim is so excited.”
“Yeah, she’s adorable.”
“We’re going to meet again after school today, right?” Nora went on. “What should we do—rehearse and then figure out an order for all the acts?”
I shook my head at her. “I’m dropping out,” I mouthed.
Nora’s eyes went wide behind her brown glasses. “Daisy!” she hissed. “You can’t do that to me!”
“You’ll be fine,” I told her. But before I could say anything more, Mrs. Kim turned around and started talking again.
“Come on, Daisy. You can’t drop out of the talent show,” Nora moaned. “I need your help. And we need your act.
“The show is still two weeks away,” she went on. “Nobody will still be thinking about those pictures by then.”
I just gave her a look.
“Okay,” she admitted. “But most people at the show will just be thinking about Mr. Kim and getting him a new wheelchair.”
“I can’t do it. I just can’t stand the thought of everyone staring at me.”
“But you love to be onstage,” she argued. “You love being in the spotlight.”
“I used to,” I corrected her. “Not anymore.”
“But Daisy … ” She looked as defeated as I felt. “You can’t let Simon drive you underground. If you hide for the rest of your life, then he wins.”
I pulled out a tissue and blew my stuffed-up nose. “Maybe I can do some stuff behind the scenes, like be the poster person or the ticket-seller or something.”
“The posters are hung up already,” she reminded me. “And Mrs. Frank and Laurel are in charge of tickets.”
I shrugged. “Oh well. Just an idea.”
“We need your act.” She sighed. “And the whole thing was your idea … But I guess I should just let you do what you need to do.”
I nodded. “Yes. You should.”
A few minutes later, she left for the auditorium and I headed for my locker. The building was almost empty. My footsteps echoed down the long hallway.
I turned down the corridor where my locker was. Standing in the middle of the hall was Simon.
Keep walking
, I told myself, forcing my legs to continue moving. Stopped in front of my locker, I didn’t bother to look at him—I just dropped my backpack on the floor and started spinning the lock.
“Hey,” he said, leaning against the wall. “How’s it going?”
Ah-choo! I sneezed, rummaging through my locker.
“Fine. Give me the silent treatment. I don’t care.”
“What do you want, Simon?” I snapped.
He shrugged.
I looked at him, my voice shaking with rage. “I can’t believe what you did with those pictures.”
“You were the one who broke up with me.”
“I said maybe we should break up!” I reminded him. Then I lowered my voice. “That photo was for you—not the entire school!”
“You didn’t mind modeling your red bikini for everyone at the pool party!” he shot back. “And you look so good in the topless photo. I just wanted to share it with everyone.”
Sparks flared in front of my eyes. Hot, angry sparks.
Count to ten, querida. Control your anger, or it will control you.
I made myself speak calmly. “I used to think you were a nice person. But now I think you’re just a creep. Please get away from me, okay?”
“Sure. But if you change your mind and want to hang out sometime, just shoot me a text.” He smirked. “If you’re not too busy practicing your hula act.”
I slammed my locker door closed, then swiped at my runny nose with a tissue, hoping Simon didn’t think I was crying.
“I’m not performing in the talent show,” I said.
“Oh. Hmm.” He seemed surprised. “Well, that’s probably a good idea. Lots of people will be taking pictures that night. And the last thing you need floating around right now are more embarrassing photos.”
I kept to myself for the next few days. Mostly I helped my parents in the bodega and studied a lot.
I stayed off Facebook, and I barely looked at my phone or used the computer. The one afternoon I did go online, it was so I could research jobs in Florida—far, far away from Houston and Southside High.
Overexposed Page 3
