by Meg Cabot
I laughed. And was surprised to hear myself doing so. I’d pretty much been convinced since last night that I’d never laugh again. Because who would be there to make me laugh, if no one was speaking to me?
I’d forgotten about my best friend, though…and in a way she, I knew, would never have forgotten about me.
“I’ll tell you everything,” I said, “at lunch. Not that there’s a lot. To tell, I mean.”
“Promise?”
“Promise,” I said. And slammed my locker closed.
“So,” Catherine said, as the first period bell rang. “See you at lunch.”
“See you then,” I said. Then added, to myself, If I make it that long.
Because I really wasn’t sure I would. Make it until lunch, I mean. I am used to people poking fun at me on account of my clothes and hair. I mean, you don’t go around dressed all in black in a sea of Izod and plaid without attracting comment, you know?
But this. This was different. People weren’t calling me a freak or asking me what time the rave was. They were just…ignoring me. Really. Looking right past me, as if I weren’t even there.
Only I knew they’d seen me, because the moment they thought I was out of earshot, I heard them whispering to their friends. Or, worse…laughing.
The teachers, at least, tried to make out like it was just another normal day at Adams Prep. They went on teaching as if completely unaware that the night before, one of their students had announced on television that she’d said yes to sex. In German, Frau Rider even called on me once…not that I’d raised my hand. Thankfully, I knew to say “Ist geblieben” to her “Bleiben bliebt, und denn, Sam?”
But still. It could have gotten ugly.
And then, at lunch, it did.
I was standing in the lunch line with Catherine, pointedly ignoring all the people walking past us with a smirk—or, worse, a fit of the giggles—when Kris Parks and her gang showed up.
“Right Wayers,” Catherine murmured, tugging on my sleeve. “Heading toward us. Four o’clock.”
I felt my back stiffen. Kris wouldn’t dare say anything to me. I mean, sure, girls like Debra, who are basically defenseless, she’ll rip into without a second thought.
But someone like me? No way. She wouldn’t dare.
She dared.
Oh, she dared, all right.
“Ssssslut,” Kris hissed as she and her fellow zealots passed by.
I had endured a lot already that day. The whispering. The snickers. The voices falling suddenly silent in the ladies’ room the minute I walked in.
I had taken a lot. I had taken more than a lot.
But this?
This was just one thing too much.
I stepped out of the lunch line, and directly into Kris’s path as she walked by.
“What did you just call me?” I asked her, my chin exactly level with hers.
There was no way Kris would ever say something like that, I knew, to my face. She was too big a coward. Not that I supposed she thought I’d hit her. I’ve never hit anyone in my life—well, except for Lucy, of course, when we were little. Oh, and that guy who’d been trying to shoot the president. But I hadn’t hit him so much as jumped on him.
Still, Kris couldn’t imagine I was going to hit her.
But she had to imagine I was going to do something to her.
If so, however, it apparently didn’t bother her enough to keep her from folding her arms across her chest and, leaning on one hip, saying, “I called you a slut. Which is what you are.”
Amazingly, loud as the Adams Prep cafeteria usually was, at that particular moment, you could have heard a pin drop. Just my luck that every single person in there chose that moment not to speak. Or rattle a fork. Or chew.
Or breathe.
That’s because—as I should have realized—every single person in there had noticed Kris and her posse coming toward me. Every single person in there knew there was about to be a smackdown. Every eye in the place was on me and Kris. Everyone in the vicinity had drawn in a breath when Kris called me a slut—“Oh, no, she di-n’t!”—and was waiting for my answer.
Except that I had none. I really and truly had none. I had expected Kris to back down. I hadn’t thought that, knowing she had such a large audience, she’d actually say it again.
I could feel heat rising up from my chest, along my neck, and into my cheeks, until I was sure that the blush suffusing (SAT word meaning “to fill or cover”) my face was visible all along my scalp as well. Kris Parks had called me a slut. TWICE. TO MY FACE.
I had to say something. I couldn’t just stand there in front of her. In front of everyone.
I was sucking in my breath to say something—I don’t even know what—when Catherine, next to me, went, “For your information, Kris, it was all a misunderstanding. Sam has never—”
But even as the words were coming out of her mouth, I knew—I just knew—that the truth didn’t matter. Whether I’d ever had sex or not was so not the point.
And it was time to let Kris know it.
So I went, completely interrupting Catherine, “What gives you the right to call people names, Kris?”
Which is possibly one of the lamer comebacks in history. But hey, it was all I had.
“I’ll tell you what gives me the right,” Kris said, making sure she was projecting (SAT word meaning “to throw or cast forward”) her voice strongly enough so that the entire caf could hear her. “You went on national television and not only made a mockery of the president and the American family, but you also made a laughingstock of this school. This may come as a surprise to you, but there are people here who don’t want to be associated with a school that allows people like you to attend it. How is it going to look now on our college applications when admissions officers see that we attended Adams Prep? What do you think they’re going to associate our school with from now on? High academic achievement? Superior sports performance? No. They’re going to see the name Adams Prep and go, ‘Oh, that’s the school that skank Sam Madison went to.’ If you had any respect for us or this school, you would drop out now, and let the rest of us try to salvage what reputation we can for this place.”
I stared at her, hoping she wouldn’t notice the tears that filled my eyes. Which were, I told myself, tears of anger.
“Is that true?” I asked. Not Kris. But the rest of the cafeteria. I turned and looked out at all of the faces staring back at me. They all looked carefully blank.
Was this what the first lady had been talking about last night? Was this teen apathy at work?
“Is this really how you all feel?” I demanded of those blank faces. “That I’ve ruined the school’s reputation? Or is that just how KRIS PARKS feels?” I whipped my head around to glare at Kris. “Because if you ask me, Adams Prep’s reputation was never that great to begin with. Oh, sure, everyone thinks it’s a great school. I mean, it’s one of the best ranked schools in D.C., right? But that’s the problem. Adams Prep ISN’T a great school. Maybe academically it is. But it’s filled with people who mock you if you wear anything that isn’t J. Crew or Abercrombie. People who don’t hesitate to call you a slut to your face, whether you are one, or not.”
I turned to face the rest of the cafeteria, my voice having risen to an almost hysterical pitch. But I didn’t care.
I just didn’t care anymore.
“Is this really how you all feel?” I demanded. “That I should drop out? Do you really all agree with KRIS?”
For a second there was silence. No one moved. No one said anything.
No one except Kris, I mean. She tossed her head, and, looking out across the sea of faces, asked, “Well?”
Kris, you could tell, was enjoying herself. She’s always liked being the center of attention, but she doesn’t have the talent it takes to get roles in any of the school’s plays or musicals. Calling someone a slut in front of the entire school is the only way she can think of to get the kind of attention she craves…well, that, and lording it over
everyone on the student council.
When no one replied, Kris looked back at me and said, “Well, the masses have spoken. Or, NOT spoken, as the case may be. What are you doing, just standing there? Get out. Sluts aren’t wanted here.”
“Then I guess you’d better find another school to go to, too, shouldn’t you, Kris?”
That wasn’t me. I wasn’t the one who’d said that. I wish I was the one who’d said that.
But it was someone else. Someone who wasn’t me or Catherine, who, by the way, was still standing there, openmouthed, in the lunch line, her dark eyes as wide and horror-filled as my own.
No. The person who’d said that, about Kris finding another school to go to as well? That was none other than my sister Lucy, who’d scooted her chair back from the lunch table where she’d been sitting with her friends. Now she came sauntering toward Kris, a slight smile on her pretty face.
Though what Lucy could possibly have found to smile about, considering the situation, I couldn’t imagine.
Neither, apparently, could Kris.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Lucy,” Kris said to my sister in a voice that was considerably less snotty than the one she’d used when talking to me. Also, much higher-pitched. “This doesn’t concern you, anyway. Everyone likes you, Lucy. This is about your sister.”
“But that’s just the problem, Kris,” Lucy said. “Anything that concerns my sister IS about me.”
As she said this, Lucy walked over to me and flung an arm around my neck. I suppose she meant the gesture to be chummy, but the truth is, she was actually strangling me a little, she was holding on so tight.
“And, by the way,” Lucy added, “you’re a liar, Kris.”
Kris glanced over her shoulder at her gang, who all looked confusedly back at her as if to say, We don’t know what she’s talking about, either.
“Um,” Kris said. “Excuse me, Lucy? I think we were all watching last night when your sister informed the entire world that she just said yes to sex.”
“I didn’t mean you were lying about that,” Lucy said. “I mean wasn’t that you I saw in the school parking lot last night in the back of Random Alvarez’s limo?”
Kris stiffened as if Lucy had hit her.
And I guess, in a way, Lucy had.
“I…” Kris looked nervously back toward her gang. But they were blinking back at her, as if to say, Wait…WHAT did she say? Now THIS is dishy.
Kris turned quickly back to Lucy. “No. I mean, yes…I mean, I was in his limo. But we weren’t DOING anything. I mean, he just wanted to show me this demo he’d cut. He asked me to watch his demo—”
“And I guess,” Lucy said, “you just said yes.”
“Yes,” Kris said. Then, she started shaking her head, realizing what she’d just said. “I mean, no. I mean—”
Suddenly, it was Kris who was blushing all the way to her hairline.
“That’s not what I meant,” Kris said, too fast. “It’s not. It was perfectly innocent.” She looked back at her fellow Right Wayers. “Random and I just talked. He really likes me. He’s probably going to take me to the Video Music Awards…in New York City….”
But no one believed her. You could tell no one believed her, not even her fellow Right Wayers. Because everyone had seen how she’d been flirting with him. Random, I mean.
“The thing is, Kris,” Lucy said, still keeping her supposedly affectionate chokehold on me, “you have to be careful who you call a slut. Because the truth is, there are a lot more of us than there are of”—she looked pointedly at Kris’s gang, and not at Kris—“you guys.”
Kris stammered, “B-but…I didn’t mean you, Luce. I would never…I mean, no one would ever call YOU a slut.”
“Let’s get something straight, Kris,” Lucy said. “If you’re gonna call my sister a slut, then you’d better be prepared to call me one, too. Because if Sam’s a slut, Kris? Then…so…am…I.”
There was a collective intake of breath at this, as if everyone in the cafeteria suddenly gasped at the same time. My eyes, meanwhile, had filled with tears all over again. I couldn’t believe it. Lucy was putting her reputation on the line for me. ME.
It was the nicest thing she’d ever done for me. It was the nicest thing anyone had ever done for me.
Until somewhere in the cafeteria, a chair was knocked over. Then a booming male voice called out, “So am I.”
And, to my total astonishment, Harold Minsky strode up to us, his shoulders thrown back beneath his Hawaiian shirt.
Lucy’s expression melted into one of utter devotion—tinged with astonishment—as she gazed up at her tutor, standing so tall and geeky beside her.
“If they’re sluts,” Harold said defiantly, pointing at Lucy and me, “then I’m a slut, too.”
“Oh, Harold,” Lucy said, in a voice I had never heard her use before—certainly never with Jack.
Harold’s face was turning as red as the flowers on his shirt. But he didn’t back down.
“Slut solidarity,” he said with a nod to us.
Which was when Catherine suddenly stepped out of the lunch line, and, coming up behind Lucy, Harold, and me, went, “ME, TOO,” in the loudest voice I’d ever heard her use.
Oh my God! I craned my neck to try to see Catherine’s face, but it was hard, considering Lucy’s stranglehold on me. What was going on here?
“Cath,” I whispered, “you aren’t a slut. Stay out of this.”
But Catherine just said, loudly enough for everyone in the cafeteria to hear, “If Sam and Lucy Madison are sluts, then so am I.”
People buzzed at this. Catherine, a slut? Her parents didn’t even allow her to wear pants to school.
Kris knew she was in trouble now. I could tell by the way her gaze was darting from us and back to all the people in the rest of the caf, who were still watching, as transfixed as if Simon Cowell and Paula Abdul were going at it right in front of them.
“Um,” Kris said. “Listen. I—”
But her voice was drowned out as all over the cafeteria, chair legs scraped the floor. Suddenly, the students of John Adams Preparatory Academy were all standing up…
And declaring themselves sluts.
“I’m a slut, too,” cried Mackenzie Craig, bespectacled president of the Chess Club…who had never even been out on a date.
“I’m a slut,” shouted Tom Edelbaum, who’d played the lead in the Drama Club’s version of Godspell.
“I’m the biggest slut of all,” said Jeff Rothberg, Debra Mullins’s boyfriend, his fists balled at his sides, as if he were willing to fight anybody who’d dare dispute his slutty status.
“We’re all sluts,” the entire Adams Prep track team jumped up gleefully to announce.
Soon every single person in the cafeteria—with the exception of Kris and her fellow members of Right Way—was on his or her feet, declaring, “I’m a slut!”
It was a beautiful thing.
By the time Principal Jamieson got down there, we were all chanting it: “I’m a slut. I’m a slut. I’m a slut. I’m a slut.”
It took the football coach to get everyone to quiet down. Principal Jamieson had to get him to blow on his athletic whistle—the one he’d taken the ball out of—long and hard, since no one had responded to the principal’s shouted requests that we Please settle down. Please, people, just settle down!
No one could keep chanting through the piercing shriek of Coach Long’s whistle, though. We had to clap our hands over our ears, it was so loud.
All too soon, slut solidarity was over.
“What,” Principal Jamieson asked, when the chanting had stopped, and everyone had turned back to their food, almost as if nothing had happened, “is going on here?”
“She called my sister a slut,” Lucy said, pointing at Kris.
“I…I didn’t!” Kris’s blue eyes were wide. “I mean, I did, but…I mean, she deserves it! After what she did last night—”
“She calls me a slut every chance she get
s,” Debra Mullins volunteered from the back of the room. “And I didn’t do anything last night.”
“Isn’t it a violation of the John Adams Preparatory Academy’s student conduct code to make pejorative remarks concerning someone’s sexual orientation and/or alleged activities, Principal Jamieson?” Harold Minsky asked.
Principal Jamieson looked at Kris and her little group. “Indeed,” he said sternly. “It is.”
“Dr. Jamieson,” Kris said faintly, “this was all just a big misunderstanding. I can explain—”
“I look forward to hearing your explanation,” Principal Jamieson said. “In my office. Right now.”
Looking chagrined (SAT word meaning “feeling uneasy or shamefaced”), Kris followed Principal Jamieson from the cafeteria.
I noticed that her little group of followers stayed behind, almost looking as if they were trying to appear not to know her.
So much for the part on Kris’s college admissions apps about her leadership abilities.
Watching her leave, I felt like crying. Not because Kris Parks had been so mean to me, trying to humiliate me in front of the entire school—like I hadn’t adequately proved I was capable of doing that all on my own, without anybody else’s help.
No, I felt like crying because I realized how lucky I am. I mean, to have a sister like Lucy, and a friend like Catherine…not to mention so many people I hadn’t even known were my friends, like Harold Minsky. I stood there beside them, my eyes filled with tears, going, “You guys. You guys, that was just so…so sweet of you. I mean, to say that you’re sluts…just for me.”
“Aw,” Catherine said, patting my hand. “I’d call myself a slut for you any time, Sam. You know that.”
Lucy and Harold weren’t paying the slightest bit of attention to my heartfelt thank you, however. Instead, Lucy had taken Harold’s arm, and was going, “Thanks for saying you were a slut for me, Harold.”
Harold’s face turned even redder than the flowers on his shirt as he replied, “Well, you know. I just can’t stand idly by while a social injustice is being committed. I didn’t know before that you…well, that you were such an insurgent.” (SAT word meaning “rising in opposition to civil or political authority, or against an established government.”) “I always thought you were a bit of a…well, a follower. I guess I really underestimated you.”
