Rock Bottom Girl

by Score, Lucy

  Jake

  I’d tried not to have any expectations about Jake. He was the bad boy, the rebel. Rumor had it, he’d been caught kissing a substitute teacher last year. And I was well aware of who and what I was. A mousy, socially awkward introvert. I was not the kind of girl that made a guy turn in his ‘playing the field’ card.

  We hadn’t talked more than a few flirty sentences since that night. Sure, we’d shared a few steamy glances across crowded cafeterias or hallways. And maybe I’d had a few fantasies about dancing in my pretty dress with Jake at Homecoming.

  But I hadn’t actually believed that he’d ask me.

  After I’d stopped jumping up and down and squealing, Vicky and I spent approximately seventeen hours dissecting the note word by word. Play it cool? Did that mean I didn’t approach him about the note? You and me. Homecoming? Was he asking me or just stating that we would both be in attendance?

  Vicky and I had decided to pretend like nothing had happened and let Jake approach me. The day after I found the note in my locker, he’d sent me a sexy head tilt and a wink in the cafeteria.

  It was proof enough for Vicky and me.

  I’d been “playing it cool” now for three days. Jake was clearly playing it cool too seeing as how he hadn’t even looked in my direction for days. But that was okay. In just over a week, I’d be dancing with the bad boy in front of our senior class. I couldn’t freaking wait.

  I slammed my locker door shut and jumped a mile when I realized Vicky was on the other side of it.

  “What?” I asked, taking one look at her horror-stricken face. “Cafeteria run out of French bread pizza again?”

  “Worse. Much worse,” she said and winced.

  This was serious.

  I stuffed my history textbook into my backpack. “Lay it on me.”

  “You know how Amie Jo’s dad is a gynecologist?”

  “Yeah. I guess.”

  “She’s telling everyone…” Vicky trailed off and looked over her shoulder to make sure no one was eavesdropping.

  “Telling everyone what?” I demanded impatiently.

  Vicky dropped her voice to a whisper. “That you’re pregnant.”

  “I’m pregnant?” I didn’t mean to shout it, but judging from the looks I got from my fellow hall-dwellers, I hadn’t whispered.

  Vicky nodded. “Amie Jo is telling everyone that you went to her dad for the blood test and that you don’t know who the father is.”

  I rolled my eyes. “That’s ridiculous and unimaginative.” Pregnancy rumors were the go-to mean girl prank from the unimaginative. “Who’s even going to believe her?”

  * * *

  Everyone, it turns out. Well, except my close friends and hopefully Jake.

  In less than two days, Amie Jo Armburger succeeded in spreading the rumor far and wide.

  So far, I’d been impregnated by a high school drop-out who worked at the Dollar Tree. Or maybe it was the sweaty eighth grader I’d seduced after school in my car.

  I ignored it when someone taped diapers to my locker. I paid no attention to the crying baby doll some joker shoved into my backpack in the cafeteria.

  But I started to worry when Coach Norman took me aside before our away game and told me he didn’t feel comfortable playing me without a doctor’s note about my “condition.” Vicky told him he was being a dumbass for believing a stupid rumor, but it didn’t do any good.

  I sat on the bench and stewed. My senior year was supposed to be the best yet. Steffi Lynn was long gone, having graduated and moved on to—and failed out of—cosmetology school.

  Yet here I was riding the bench until I was able to corroborate my non-pregnant condition to the coaching staff. All thanks to another Armburger Asshole. It couldn’t possibly get any worse.

  And then my parents sat me down for dinner.

  “So, snack cake,” my dad said, sounding as if he were being strangled. “Anything you want to tell us? Any news you have that won’t make us love you any less because we love you very much no matter what?”

  I suddenly wished Zinnia wasn’t off enjoying her freshman year at Dartmouth. I could use a big sister right about now.

  My mom, with tear-filled eyes, covered my hand with hers. “I’m happy to make you a doctor’s appointment if you want me to.”

  I decided that I would die of humiliation on this spot, in my kitchen, never having lived a full life.

  “Mom!” I stood up so abruptly, my chair tipped over behind me. I felt the need to stand for this proclamation. “I’m not pregnant! I swear!”

  My parents sagged back into their chairs and blew out sighs of relief. “Oh, thank God. I’m too young to be a Pop-Pop,” my dad squeaked.

  “I’m too young to be some poor kid’s mother,” I complained.

  “Sweetie, I hate to do this,” my mom said with a wince. “But I feel like we need to have the c-o-n-d-o-m talk again. Just to put my mind at rest.”

  “Mother! I understand and have practiced safe sex. I am currently single and have no plans to start having sex with random strangers.”

  “Ned, do we have any bananas?”

  * * *

  Marley,

  I decided to take Amie Jo to Homecoming instead. She’s obviously more my type. Good luck with everything.

  Jake

  * * *

  In school the next day, I marched past my locker—today they’d covered it in cutouts of unfortunate-looking babies with unibrows and giant adult-sized noses. I yanked off the ugliest baby and steamed down the hall.

  Amie Jo was going to hell. Or at least she was damning herself to have terribly unattractive children when the time came for the gates of hell to open and allow a demon spawn to be created.

  She’d cost me a game and a date with the boy I really, really liked. I’d underestimated her deviousness.

  I found her, blonde and perky and evil, hanging out in a circle of minions checking their mascara in compacts and probably plotting how to destroy other classmates’ lives.

  “Amie Jo.” I slapped the ugly baby picture against her shoulder. “This needs to stop.”

  “Well, bless your heart. You probably shouldn’t upset yourself. It’s not good for the baby,” she said in a stage whisper. She fluttered her thick, dark eyelashes. Her foundation cracked a little under her eyes.

  “I’m not pregnant, and you know it.”

  “But it’s what everyone else believes that counts,” she reminded me brightly. “As far as Culpepper is concerned, you’re a pregnant whore.”

  I wished I had no concern about consequences. That I could just break her stupid little perfect nose and make her feel an ounce of the pain she doled out for others on a daily basis.

  But I had a healthy fear of authority. And my parents couldn’t afford to buy me out of trouble.

  “Why are you even doing this? What have I ever done to you?” I demanded.

  She took a step into my space, her pretty face twisting into an ugly mask of hate. “You exist. You think that you deserve to date someone like Travis? You think that someone like Jake would be into you? You need to stay where you belong. At the bottom of the food chain with the rest of the losers in this town.”

  Her cronies giggled nervously behind her.

  “Why?” I insisted again. I told myself the answer just might set me free. That kicking her in the shins and unleashing a gallon of sardines in her cute little convertible wouldn’t solve anything.

  “Because you’re nothing. You’ll never be anything. Just like the rest of these pathetic losers in this school. They at least know their place. You need to remember yours.”

  “If you don’t stop torturing me, I’m going to tell someone.”

  She let out a peal of laughter. “Who? That garden gnome, Mr. Fester? My dad basically owns him.”

  “Your dad is a gynecologist. He doesn’t own people.” The Armburgers had money. More money than the Ciceros and most other people in town. They had ‘get whatever you want at the Gap and not just for
back-to-school’ money. But not ‘own people’ money.

  “Why don’t you do us all a favor and just stop existing. No one likes you. No one wants you around. You’re a waste of DNA.”

  I flicked her off and, with a snarl, turned around and marched away, reminding myself of how much I didn’t want to get suspended my senior year. Dear God, I wasn’t so sure that I’d survive the rest of the school year. Not without a meltdown.

  But this time, I wasn’t going down without a fight.

  Victoriously, I pulled out Vicky’s little pocket voice recorder and hit Stop. Her parents got it for her when she started working on the school newspaper. And I was going to use it to bring down the high school nobility.

  “Did you get it?” Vicky hissed, appearing in the hall next to me. She danced from foot to foot while I tore the rest of the sad babies off my locker.

  “Oh, I got it. Now I just need to figure out what to do with it.”

  “Make it diabolical,” Vicky encouraged.

  57

  Marley

  October

  “You want me to ride what?” I squeaked.

  Bill Beerman batted his blond lashes at me. “A donkey.”

  “You want me to ride a donkey?” I knew things had been going too well. We were into October. The leaves were changing, the air was crisp, my team had won more games than they’d lost, and I’d lost count of the orgasms Jake had so generously bestowed upon me.

  “It’s a tradition.” Bill warmed up to make his case for why I should consider sitting astride a beast of burden in the high school gymnasium where I had finally become a respected member of the faculty.

  Respected members of the faculty did not participate in the Donkey Basketball game. At the very most, they wore matching t-shirts and collected donations from the crowd during the annual Donkey Basketball game.

  I remembered well, laughing my ass off at our young chemistry teacher when she had to shovel up the steaming heap of donkey shit her ride gifted to her.

  “I don’t think my insurance covers donkey-related injuries.”

  “You wear helmets,” he said as if that made it better instead of significantly worse. “Jake’s doing it, and we thought it would be really funny to put you on opposite teams.”

  “Hilarious,” I scoffed. “There is absolutely no way I’m riding a donkey.”

  * * *

  Donkey Ote—a clever take on everyone’s favorite windmill-slaying Man of La Mancha—had a bristly coat that made my skin itch. What we lacked in common with body hair, we made up for in sheer reluctance.

  “I don’t want to do this any more than you do,” I promised him. He shoved his nose into the hood of my sweatshirt and snorted.

  Oh, shit. Did donkeys bite?

  A grating peal of laughter stabbed into my eardrums.

  Amie Jo, in white stilettos and bubble gum pink skinny pants, pointed and giggled at me and my donkey.

  “Don’t listen to her, Ote,” I whispered, ruffling the coarse tuft of hair between his ears. “She’s just jealous she doesn’t get to play.”

  “You look positively ridiculous,” she said as if I were unaware of this fact.

  “Yeah, well. It’s for a good cause,” I said.

  Every year, the Donkey Basketball game raised funds for the local food bank. Ninety percent of the funds that fed families for Thanksgiving came from this damn game. And one of those families on the list was Libby’s foster family. Thank you very much, Jake, for finding that tidbit of information and emotionally blackmailing me into participating.

  I might not have cash to donate to the cause. But my dignity? That I was willing to part with.

  “That’s a sizeable ass you’ve got there, Marley,” Amie Jo said, batting her long purple-tinted lashes. She cracked herself up and doubled over again.

  “You ready to be defeated, Mars?” Jake asked, smugly escorting his significantly larger steed up next to mine in the hallway. He ignored Amie Jo’s giggle fit and gave me a kiss.

  His donkey leaned in and grabbed the hood of my sweatshirt.

  “Gah!” I choked.

  “Knock it off, Bertha!” Jake wrestled his mutant donkey away. Bertha took part of my hood with her.

  Donkey Ote eyed me.

  “Oh, I’m the dumbass?” I asked. The donkey tossed his head in an emphatic “yes.”

  “Look at you two bonding,” Bill said, appearing cheerfully with a helmet and a clipboard. He reached out to pet Donkey Ote, but my donkey did this weird thing where his jaw opened, sending his upper teeth in one direction and his lower teeth in another. The noise was like a banshee scream.

  Amie Jo was in hysterics again. At least until Bertha lunged in her direction, big yellow teeth snapping.

  She shrieked and threw herself at Jake. “Save me!” Jake wrestled woman and donkey until there was a loud, flatulent fermp followed by a louder splat splat splat.

  “Oh, shit.”

  It was my turn to laugh as Bertha let loose a half ton of donkey shit on the linoleum floor.

  Amie Jo lost her grip on Jake. Her arms fluttered helplessly, and I watched in horror as her heels lost their traction on the edge of the shit pile. She slipped and skated, her pale blue eyes wider than dinner plates.

  I reached for her from Donkey Ote’s back, trying to catch a fluttering hand, but gravity and karma were faster.

  Amie Jo’s feet slipped out from under her, and we watched as she landed in slow motion with another resounding splat. Right on her ass. In the middle of the steaming pile of donkey shit.

  Jake had tears of laughter streaming down his face as he offered her a hand. He couldn’t talk, could only shudder in silent hysterics.

  Bill fluttered around apologizing and offering to get paper towels. I doubted that there were enough paper towels in all of Culpepper to clean up this disaster.

  And in the middle of it all, Amie Jo screamed bloody murder.

  The screams and the laughter started to draw a crowd. Which led to more laughter and more screaming. Amie Jo’s cheeks burned hot with humiliation. I handed Donkey Ote’s bridle off to the woodshop teacher and hauled Amie Jo to her feet. Something Jake was incapable of since he was currently trying not to piss his pants.

  Bill had scampered off in search of one of the shit shovels.

  “Come on,” I said, herding her down the hall, careful not to touch her. “Let’s go to the locker room.”

  “I wanna go home!” Amie Jo wailed.

  “You can’t get in your car like this,” I told her, guiding her into the locker room. She drove an Escalade worth more than my sister’s husband’s medical school student loans. Donkey shit would probably total the car.

  Fat tears trickled down her cheeks, sluicing through her thick makeup.

  I turned on the water in one of the individual shower stalls and pushed her toward it. “Go, shower. I’ll bring you a bag for your clothes and something to change into.”

  Amie Jo was still sucking in angry, shaky breaths but didn’t argue. She simply snapped the curtain closed.

  I dug out a plastic grocery bag from my office and delved into my emergency clothes. Yoga pants and an oversized hoodie. I found a left Puma sneaker and a right flip-flop in the lost and found box and a couple of scratchy sweat towels. Returning with my arms full, I dumped everything in the dressing area of the shower stall.

  Ducking my head back out in the hall, I saw that cleanup was beginning on the Shit Heard Round the World. The shop teacher was patting Donkey Ote’s nose with his good five-fingered hand. It looked like it was all under control. I turned to head back into the locker room when someone calling my name stopped me.

  Travis. I wondered when I’d stop reacting to him with visceral guilt.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey.” He really was pretty. I wondered what a nice guy like him was doing with a hell beast like Amie Jo.

  “Uh, is Amie Jo okay?” he asked.

  “Oh, yeah. She’s in the shower. But I think she’s going to ne
ed new shoes.”

  “She’s got her driving Uggs in the car. I’ll grab them,” he volunteered.

  “Cool,” I nodded. Driving Uggs. Eye roll.

  “Yeah,” he said, running a hand through his thick hair. “Hey, it’s nice to have you back in town.”

  I bobbed my head in what I hoped was an appropriate response. “It’s nice to be back.”

  “Well, I guess I’ll…” He pointed his thumb over his shoulder toward the parking lot.

  “Yeah.”

  He walked away, and I watched him go. His butt was nice. Not as muscley and firm as Jake’s but still appreciable. I’d rather stare at his butt than have another conversation with him though. My guilt over the breakup and ensuing broken leg still weighed on me.

  Travis and I hadn’t spoken much after I broke up with him. Really only to confirm that he was not the fake father to my fake baby. After Homecoming, well, he’d understandably avoided me. By January he’d been dating Amie Jo. We moved in different circles, and I’d hurt him. Mentally and physically. I didn’t know if he hated me or if he was grateful that I’d ended things when I did so he hadn’t been saddled with me. There were a lot of things I didn’t know. But one thing I did know was that between the teenage and adult versions of Travis and Jake, only one of them consistently tied me up in knots.

  And I’d be walking away from him in a few short weeks.

  “Mars?”

  I jumped, turning away from Travis’s retreating butt. Jake was eyeing me, his hand firmly grasping Bertha’s bridle.

  “Everything all right?” he asked. Bertha crossed her eyes at me.

  I nodded. “Yep. Great. I, uh, gotta check on She Who Shall Not Be Named.”

  Amie Jo was out of the shower and done crying when I returned.

  I was annoyed by how cute and approachable she looked with wet hair and my clothes. Why couldn’t mean people be ugly on the outside, too?