by Tiffany Sala
“Sounds like you’re hoping for a whole lot more than a flash.” Aileen wrapped her arms around herself, maybe because it made her feel protected from me, but if that was the case she was way off base with it. I kept picturing myself striding through that distance that was still between us and unwrapping those arms from around her like a piece of clothing, then digging my fingers into that little shirt and yanking it to shreds. Tearing away anything that still stood between me and her bare skin, and knowing.
“My dear, did it occur to you that maybe I take my tawdry glimpses seriously? For some of us, a bit of pleasing the eyes is all that’s needed.”
Her shrug squeezed the tits of our present negotiation together, flashing me a glimpse of cleavage over the little dip in her shirt collar. “Well, you are part of the Internet generation.”
And the thing with the Internet was, you got to see everything. The instant you wanted it, clicked on it, there it was: spread across your screen in HQ, usually for free. If not free, you could have it for a crazy reasonable price. Tits and pussy, like pretty much everything else in the world, could be had for the right price even if you weren’t that well off.
I wasn’t sure what about Aileen could be had for a price. Not the stupid patent. A look at her body… maybe?
I stepped a little closer, so I could speak more quietly. Give myself scope for some dynamic range. “All right—what’s your sugar?”
“What?” She sounded annoyed because she didn’t understand.
“Your terms. How has this got to work to make it happen?”
Her hands fell to her sides, her eyes were rolling a little. “I—I—I don’t, I guess I need to know you are absolutely going to leave me alone after this. Just stay away from me entirely.”
An interesting response. “I could draw up a document if you like. I, Axel Jordan Bennett, swear to leave Aileen Jayne Anderson alone entirely, including potential interactions with her father or her father’s intellectual property, so long as I can get a good long look at her tits.”
She looked a little bit horrified and a little bit intrigued. “You would actually… write a document like that?”
“Well you probably won’t want it to get signed by a witness, so it won’t be worth much, but it’s something you can throw up to me if I do cancel on you. Call me a cheat, a criminal, if you have to.”
There was a strange intimacy in the way she was looking up at me now, a lack of fear even though I was close enough to see a little way down her school shirt and we were discussing her being even further exposed to me. “All the things you’re out to call me and my dad, you mean to say?”
It amazed me, how quick she was. I had to break up this sparring party before I started to enjoy it too much. Before I really did sell myself short.
There was a group walking near us on their way back to class. I raised my voice to capture their attention. “So Aileen and I have just made the best damn trade of my life: she’s going to let me see her tits in person if I promise to stay away from her from then on. Now who’s a lucky fucking bastard, huh?”
I got some awkward turned heads and a few of them practically running away, but they’d all been looking at that photo. This probably just looked like some extra-weird courtship shenanigans. There were a few grins and thumbs-up, and not just from the guys either.
Aileen’s jaw had dropped. “You—you never intended to deal with me in good faith here, did you?”
What to say to her? “I think that’s what I’d say about you, and you do tend to get what you give when it comes to business.”
Aileen’s lips quivered, and then she fled. The bell rang, and I made a point of following her almost exactly, though slowly, on my way back to class. She was going to think twice before she screwed me around like this again, that much was certain.
Chapter Eight
As much as anything I was frustrated that it was his brutal turnaround that had almost made me burst into tears—in front of him, as well.
I didn’t understand it at all, but when he’d started talking about looking at my body like that, my head had started spinning on its axis and I’d…
Not decided to go along with it, but I couldn’t help playing with the idea. There was something about the thought of having a guy that eager to see me, to know what I was really like underneath all that stuff I had to do every morning to convince myself I thought fashion and beauty were all rubbish, that…
Well, it had completely erased any common sense from my mind for a while. And I had a feeling he knew that was what would happen. He’d—what was that thing Mr. Henderson talked about in our computing class? Social engineering. He’d done some social engineering on me, and I’d acted exactly how I was supposed to act according to his plans.
I hated it more than what he’d done with my photos. At least I’d had no part in that happening to begin with, it was just an unpleasant surprise. This time, he had taken my own feelings, had made them into exactly the shape he wanted, and then turned them on me like a weapon.
I was on the right path to becoming exactly what Callie and Tamara had become… which was just fine for them, but I wanted better. I needed more in my life than to be some handsome bastard’s toy.
Mrs. Hitchens called me in again over lunch to talk about the new photo that had surfaced. Yes, I said, I knew who was responsible for that, and I would be very interested in pursuing consequences through the school, so long as it went no further. Then Ms. Miller got me alone and tried to get at my feelings, which were mostly ‘uncomfortable that she was so interested in my feelings’. She was eager to validate my desire to avoid dealing with this through the police—she understood how that could be confronting, that I might be grilled unfairly or not believed.
I would have hoped the police wouldn’t believe me, because I was lying my face off about some of the details. If Axel wanted everyone to believe I’d sent him pornographic photos, then good for him. I’d wear that reality. But I was going to make sure it really stuck to him. I was going to send him off from school in total disrepute for what he’d done.
For the rest of that school day I just had to bear with the muttering and snickering. Mrs. Hitchens had said I could go home, but I didn’t want to alert Dad that something was up yet. I’d asked her not to call him, and she’d been hesitant to go along with that as if not respecting my wishes would improve my current situation, but because I was eighteen I was able to make a compelling case for being technically independent of the guy who paid my school fees. That photo was going to be around forever so I’d have to talk to him about it, but I didn’t need anyone at my school getting involved in the when or how.
I was gritting my teeth and concentrating so hard on everything happening in class I didn’t actually take in a thing, but I got it over with and managed to meet up with Callie and Tamara out the front of the school for a war council of sorts. Unfortunately, our council somehow also involved Lucas and Steven, which I knew from the start was going to make for a bigger fight.
It was a fight I was up to, though. “I need the two of you to stand up for me when I say Axel spread those photos.”
Tamara already had her hands fisted on her hips. “I thought you said you never gave him any photos.”
“Wait, she didn’t?” said Steven.
“I didn’t, but it doesn’t seem to matter right now. And if Axel wants to go with a doctored version of the truth, I’m happy to roll with that as far as needed to get him the punishment he deserves. I just need someone to back me up, because you know nobody’s going to believe Axel did anything wrong, as popular as he is.”
“You’re popular too,” Callie pointed out, a little sulky.
“Well that’s true…” I thought about how many people had been willing to approach me today and say they were sorry about what had happened, offer their support. They weren’t even willing to not look. “It’s different for me though, isn’t it? A popular guy is on track to become the prime minister. A popular girl is probably up t
o something.”
Lucas grimaced. “Let’s not get too far into the bra-burning here.”
“Yes, let’s not. Waste of time getting you and Steve riled up. Are you girls with me?”
Callie looked straight at Lucas, which was when I realised I was probably fucked.
“Callie doesn’t know anything you don’t,” Lucas said. “I know that because I don’t know anything about this you don’t.”
“For fuck’s sake, Callie, do you speak for yourself any more or do you have to have Lucas around to tell you what sort of person you are?”
Callie was packing fists now too. “Lucas is right though, I don’t know anything that proves Axel is guilty. Just what you’ve told me. Are we expected to lie?”
“I won’t be lying for you,” said Tamara really fast, glancing at Steven like she thought there might be trouble if she didn’t.
I couldn’t believe the two of them. They absolutely knew Axel was guilty of this. They’d already been nearly split up because of it, and now they were back on track they were going to use everything they’d learned to turn on me?
Now Callie and Tamara were shooting one another looks. This was definitely something they were doing consciously, a decision to fall on the side of their new group rather than me. And when I’d given up a lot to stick by them over the few years we’d known one another, had been proud of that because it always seemed like the right thing to do, that was the biggest slap in the face I could imagine.
My friends weren’t who I always thought they were. But that was not the sort of thing that should have been a surprise to me. “So what you’re saying is you’re going to let me stand on my own when I try to stick up for myself.”
Callie squirmed. “I just don’t think any of us really understand what’s going on here, Aileen. You’re having a stupid fight over… something your dad invented years ago that actually belongs to Axel? I didn’t think your dad really did much of anything.”
Tripped up by my own need to hide so much. “It doesn’t belong to Axel, it…” I shook my head. Why should I have to explain this anyway? “You’ve made your decision about which way you’re going to fall on this, I’m surprised there’s any way you can twist your brains into supporting someone who would make such appalling pictures of another person public, but that’s going to be on your conscience, not mine.”
I stalked off back to my locker to grab my bag out before the bus arrived, ignoring the few weak calls after me. I’d been planning to just put all of this out of my mind for the rest of the day so I could have a nice evening with Dad and figure out what to do about the problem another time, but it ended up being sort of hard to ignore the cartoon woman someone had drawn in thick black marker on my locker door. She had a pea-sized head, gigantic boobs with nipples that would have signalled the need for a trip to the doctor to me, and the rest of her was an elongated, hairy vulva.
There was no way any of that was just sanding off easily. I found a marker in my own bag and graded the drawing a D-minus. I thought I was being generous, too.
“Aileen?”
I whirled around at Mr. Henderson’s voice, even though there was no way for me to hide the fact that I’d been vandalising my own locker at this point.
“It’s okay,” said Mr. Henderson, “we already saw that.” Matt was standing beside him. “I assume you have also seen those two images being circulated.”
“Matt, Mr. Henderson…” I took a moment to try to figure out how to say it in a diplomatic way, then I realised we were all way beyond diplomacy here. “I know you’re probably both trying to help, but you are in the half of the human race I least want to be discussing this with.”
“We know it’s fake, Aileen,” said Matt.
Well that immediately made things very different.
“I, uh, when you zoom in on the parts where there have been additions, it’s quite obvious.” Matt had turned so red he might easily have been about to burst into flame.
“Well, um, I never thought I’d have to say this, but thank you for performing the service of zooming in sufficiently on my fake boobs.” I knew there was a surprisingly accurate drawing of the other prominently-displayed part in that photo right next to my head—and I said ‘surprisingly’ because I would bet on the artist not knowing that part wasn’t actually called vagina—but I was happy to pretend that wasn’t there if nobody else brought it up. It was awkward enough talking about the boobs.
“I didn’t need to zoom in to know it was fake,” said Mr. Henderson.
“Well, thanks again.” I waggled my marker at him. “I’ll give you an A-double-plus and ask absolutely no questions about why you’re good at that particular thing.”
“I’d like you to join us in my office for a moment, Aileen.” Mr. Henderson was looking from left to right with an air of this not being something he was supposed to be offering as part of his teacherly duty. “You know the College is going to be unable to adequately help you with this situation. The Bennett family are respected benefactors to this school.”
My jaw was on the concrete. I had expected disbelief. But this… “You can not be suggesting what I think…”
Matt shrugged at me. “It’s unfortunately how it will work,” said Mr. Henderson. “The school board has a very strong incentive to keep Axel Bennett happy. Obviously they will take on your complaint if you make one, but I would expect you to be pressured to accept a mediation setup. Something that enables him to say he’s made reparations while not forcing him to admit guilt or face any profound consequences at all.”
The only consequence I had ever wanted in the first place was for Axel to get the hint and leave me alone, but the deeper I went into this, the less that was true. Or, at least, I was starting to realise that once you tangled with someone like Axel, you couldn’t just disengage by going through the reverse process. The only way out was through, and you had to get a little dirty.
Perhaps that was what had happened to my poor friends. They’d gotten caught up in the webs of these handsome menaces, and they’d seen the way out but gotten hopelessly tangled along the way.
Mr. Henderson’s foot was tapping on the concrete of the alcove. “Anything more we say about this should happen behind closed doors.”
“I can’t right now.” It just figured I would be offered exactly the help I needed and my life would be too complicated to receive it. “I’ve got to be able to get the bus home, if I miss this one—”
“I can take you home,” Mr. Henderson said. “Or… Matt?”
“Yeah, I could do it,” Matt said. Mr. Henderson blew out a sigh. I resisted joking about the potentially awkward situation he’d nearly gotten himself into there. It was hard to keep my sudden rush of elation in check now that someone was actually on my side.
I pushed through my uneasiness at getting into Matt’s shiny expensive car by continuing to talk. “Is it just me who is starting to feel like this is not even real life any more?”
Matt concentrated on twiddling about a hundred knobs on his dash to get the air conditioning running to his specifications. “That’s what it’s always like with Ax. Drama, drama, drama.”
“I didn’t realise you were friends.”
That turned Matt to me for a second before he started the car. “I would have thought you’d assume enemies from that intro.”
“Nah, I get it. Best friends, right? From years back?”
“You’ve had one,” he said, really bleakly the way you’d expect someone to if they were talking about a romantic relationship that ruined them.
I shook my head. “I’ve observed a lot of them close up though.” Everything about this situation—the low-level misery, the single-minded and petty dedication to retaliation—reminded me of what I’d been seeing with Callie and Tamara of late.
“We started out going to school together,” Matt said. “In primary school. We were really tight back then. Paired up for projects all the time, got one another into all sorts of crazy detention-making schemes.
But we almost never got detention even when we deserved it, because we were such smart little bastards. Teachers can’t wrap their heads around punishing their most-loved kids. If you’re destined for great things you’re not going to need discipline, right?”
I was surprised he sounded so bitter about it. I’d noticed that little feature of gifted-dom and I’d always envied it. I was pretty smart but it had taken me years to learn to keep my mouth in check about things less personal than my dad. Maybe needing to keep one big secret had made me weak when it came to restraining myself anywhere else. At my old school I’d spoken my mind about religion, about the curriculum, about politics… and it had meant my teachers were always on the alert for what I might do next. “I guess you didn’t need that discipline, but Axel probably did.”
Matt shrugged, his eyes on the road. “I wouldn’t have thought he did, in the old days. His parents divorced in our last year of primary school and then he went to a different high school to me, and we didn’t see one another so much for a while. I think his family had money issues. His dad moved into my family’s street just before we both started going to Burgundy, and he’s around most of the time as far as I can tell. We don’t go to one another’s places quite as much as we used to when we were kids. He’s happy to drop me an IM even if we’re just a hundred metres down the street from one another.”
Divorced parents: I had never expected to find something Axel and I had in common. It probably wasn’t the same, really. I’d grown up with the concept of divorced parents being such a part of my life it hadn’t been a part of my life. I didn’t even know what it felt like to have a mother and father who could stand to be in the same room as one another. It had to be very different to think you had that proper family and then for it to suddenly not be true. As for money issues… I knew how a breakup could cause those all right. I didn’t remember how it happened with Elizabeth and Dad, but Dad and Marcia’s breakup had been devastating for us.
I wasn’t going to let myself get caught up in those thoughts to the point where I felt sorry for him, though. So he’d lost some things in his life that probably meant a lot to him. I’d lost things too, but I was mature enough to understand that it didn’t mean anyone owed me something, or I was entitled to take things from other people to compensate.
