by Naomi Martin
“Hey, there she is,” Blaze says.
Alec gives me a salacious grin and licks his lips suggestively. “Gotta say, she looks better live and in person.”
“What are you talking about?” I ask, the dark flutter inside of me growing stronger.
He and Blaze share a laugh and elbow each other in the ribs. Evan doesn’t say anything and looks decidedly uncomfortable as he moves a few feet away from all of us, his gaze cast to the ground.
“Did some digging around about you,” Blaze starts. “I know about your mom murdering your stepfather. I know she shot you too. Rough childhood, huh?”
My face burns with my shame and I lower my eyes, unable to even look at him. Everything I’ve wanted to hide, to move past, is suddenly being thrown into my face and I have to fight back the wave of nausea that’s washing over me.
“That’s a really sad story,” Alec chimes in, his voice filled with faux concern. “That mist have been really rough.”
Trying to fight back my tears, I feel something inside of me growing cold. Hard. I look at Evan, my eyes narrowing, my vision shimmering with tears.
“You knew about this,” I say – a statement, not a question.
Evan shuffles his feet and looks away, unable to face me and apparently, losing the power of speech.
“I know what your mom was into,” Blaze picks up. “Drugs – lots of drugs. I also know she was sellin’ that ass of hers to pay for the drugs.”
“You look a lot like her,” Alec grins. “I woulda paid for a piece of that.”
“What do you want?” I snap. “What’s the point of this bullshit other than you being a nosy fucking asshole?”
“My point is that given your experience with the darker, seedier side of life, you’re in a unique position to be of some use to me,” Blaze says.
I cut a look at Evan but he’s still refusing to look at me. He’s just standing there, shoulders slumped with his hands in his pockets, still looking down at the ground.
“What are you talking about?” I ask.
“The three of us have a business concern we’d like you to help us with.”
I look from Blaze to Evan and back again. Blaze is staring at me with a predatory gleam in his eye and Alec is mirroring his expression.
“What do you want from me?” I press.
“You’re going to make deliveries for us when we need you to,” Blaze informs me.
“I’m not going to do anything of the sort.”
He arches an eyebrow at me, that malicious grin on his face. “You will though,” he tells me. “Unless you want all those things you’ve taken such care to hide to be exposed for all the world to see.”
“How do you think all your new friends are going to react to finding out you’re trailer trash who got shot by their drug dealing whore of a mother?” Alec pipes up.
My stomach is churning and my heart is stuttering twin threads of fear and rage wrap themselves around me, squeezing me tight. I’ve only just gotten used to not being an outcast, not being looked down upon as poor white trash – thanks in large part to the three boys in front of me. And now they’re threatening to cast me back into that role again if I don’t do that they say. If I don’t do their bidding.
Still, the thought of getting caught delivering packages for them – getting arrested and thrown in prison for it – terrifies me less than the idea of having all my newfound friends turning their backs on me. Of becoming one of the ostracized freaks on campus, banished to the far reaches of the school and abandoned, written off as trash and a loser.
The more I try to outrun my past, the more I realize I’ll never be able to do it.
Blaze looks at me the way a cat looks at a mouse it’s toying with. He thinks he has me cornered and is just biding his time, circling me, just waiting to move in for the kill. But he doesn’t know who he’s messing with. I’m not just a meek mouse he can screw with. Enduring all I did growing up has tempered me and given me a core of steel. If my choices are to either be Blaze’s drug runner or have my past outed to the school, it’s not much of a choice at all.
“I’m not going to do it,” I tell him. “Tell anybody whatever the fuck you want, Blaze. I’m not going to be your errand girl.”
He purses his lips and nods. “I thought you might say that.”
Blaze pulls his phone out of his pocket again and turns it to the screen is facing me. For the first time since this shit started, Evan finally moves. He turns to Blaze, a look of worry on his face.
“Blaze, c’mon man, we don’t –”
“Shut the fuck up,” Blaze snaps. “Don’t be such a pussy.”
Turning back to me with a reptilian grin on his face, he pushes play on his phone and the first images are dark and filled with static, but it quickly resolves itself and I feel my stomach drop as my heart shatters into a million little pieces. I somehow manage to keep myself from throwing up – but just barely. I glare at Evan, rage flowing through my veins in equal proportion to the embarrassment and shame.
On the screen I’m watching Evan and I having sex in the pool house the night of the party. In the video, I watch as he flips me over onto my stomach and fucks me from behind. I couldn’t see it as it was happening but in the video, he turns to the camera and with a wild smile on his face, he gives an enthusiastic thumbs up.
I shake my head as I stare daggers through him. “You pig,” I hiss in a low voice. “You fucking pig.”
“Don’t blame him,” Blaze says in a bright, cheery tone. “You’re the one who couldn’t wait to drop her panties for him.”
“Fuck you,” I shout.
“Hey, based on what I saw in this video, I’m all for it,” Blaze teases.
“I call next,” Alec laughs.
I try to fight them off but can’t – the tears come streaming down my face. I’ve never felt like such a piece of trash before in all my life. The horrible teasing and bullying I endured at my last school was nothing compared to this. I just want the ground to open up beneath my feet and swallow me whole.
“So, about our business proposition –”
“I fucking hate you,” I sneer at Blaze.
“That’s irrelevant,” he says. “What I was going to say was that unless you want this video to get wide – and I do mean wide – distribution, you’re going to do as I say.”
“Evan,” I turn to him. “How could you –”
“Don’t blame him. This is your fault,” Blaze roars. “You’re as big of a whore as your mother. The only difference is, she was smart enough to get paid for it.”
My legs give out and I sink to my knees, burying my face in my hands and sob wildly.
“Tell you what,” Blaze says. “I’m gonna give you a couple of days to think about it.”
I hear them walking off, leaving me kneeling there, crying into my hands. My head is spinning wildly and the waves of nausea are rolling through me relentlessly. I feel like my whole world is crashing down in a fiery heap around me.
“I’ll be in touch,” Blaze’s chipper voice echoes back to me.
Chapter Six
“Where’s your aunt?”
“Out of town for work,” I reply.
“Where have you been? Are you okay?”
Jenna sits down in the recliner across from the couch where I’ve been sprawled out for the last few days feeling sorry for myself. Ever since I found out that Evan and Blaze made a sex tape of me, I crawled into a hole and haven’t come out. I haven’t gone back to school, have been ignoring all calls and texts, and have been hiding from the world.
I probably should have texted Jenna though, to let her know I was sick, just to avoid the situation I’m in right now. I didn’t think she’d actually come over to check up on me. None of my friends ever had so I never really considered it.
“I’ve been sick,” I tell her.
“You don’t look sick.”
“I am.”
I lay ba
ck on the couch and pull the blanket over my head, letting out a few fake coughs I hope will convince her of my illness. I hear her stand up and a moment later, the blanket is yanked off me. She perches on the edge of the couch next to me, staring into my eyes. I see the wheels in her head turning as she tries to figure out what’s going on with me.
“Talk to me, Harlow,” she prompts. “I can see you’re not sick. What’s going on with you?”
The fact that she didn’t burst in here screaming about seeing me getting fucked on film makes me let out a silent breath of relief. At least I have that going for me. For now anyway. I know I’m not going to be able to hide from Blaze forever and know he’s going to demand an answer – either I become his drug mule or the entire school knows I like having my hair pulled and ass smacked.
Despite my best efforts to remain calm and collected, to keep up the pretense of being sick, the tears start to roll down my cheeks. I feel my face burning and my stomach lurching again. I feel like I might throw up again – which might bolster my case for claiming illness.
But Jenna takes my hand and squeezes it tight. She looks into my eyes with the most sincere expression of compassion and concern I’ve ever seen on another person’s face before. She is genuinely worried about me. She’s my friend – the first real friend I’ve ever had. If anybody was going to understand and help me through this, it would be Jenna – right?
“I need to tell you something,” I say.
Sitting up, I wrap the blanket around me tighter, as if it’s a magic shield that can prevent all the ugliness of the world to get through to me. My insides are churning, my head is spinning, and the tears keep falling. I look at Jenna and she gives me a patient smile.
“You were right,” I whisper. “About Evan and Blaze. You were right about them. Go ahead and say you told me so.”
“I’m not going to say that,” her voice is gentle, which somehow makes my pain even worse. “What happened?”
A choked sob escapes me and Jenna pulls me into a tight embrace. I lay down with my head in her lap and as she strokes my hair, the tears continue to fall. Eventually, the tears dry up and I’m able to sit up on the couch again. I give her a weak smile, feeling foolish for being so emotional around her.
“Sorry,” I say, angrily scrubbing the tears from my cheeks.
“You have nothing to be sorry for.”
“I’m tougher than this,” I grumble. “I don’t give in to hysterics.”
“I know that. Which tells me that whatever happened, it had to be bad.”
Jenna gets up and disappears into the kitchen for a moment. I use the time to try and gather myself. When she returns, she hands me a bottle of water. I give her a grateful smile and twist the cap off, taking a long swallow. The cool liquid soothes my dry, scratchy throat. As if the water is restoring me like it would a dried-out plant, I feel some of my strength returning. Not all of it, but enough for now.
Putting the cap back on, I clutch the bottle to my chest and look at Jenna again. Taking a deep breath, I let it out slowly and then tell Jenna everything that happened from the moment I stepped foot into Blaze’s house to the scene out behind the gym. I tell her about my past – about my mother and how I came to be in Sapphire Bay. I don’t sugarcoat anything and Jenna just listens. She looks at me without judgment and with nothing but compassion in her eyes – a compassion I don’t feel like I deserve. Of course, she feels like a friend I don’t deserve.
When I finish, she pulls me to her, wrapping me in a warm and comforting embrace. She just holds me, stroking my hair. And when she pulls back, I see that her cheeks are blotchy and her eyes are shimmering with tears. But I see something else in her face as well.
“You already knew,” I tell her. “About my past.”
She wipes away her own tears and nods. “I did. I remember reading the story online.”
“But you didn’t say anything,” I cock my head as I look at her.
“Because it didn’t matter. None of that was your fault,” she says. “And it doesn’t change the person you are right now – my best friend.”
This time it’s me who pulls her into a tight hug. I’ve never felt so grateful for somebody in my life before – outside of Daisy, of course. That Jenna cares about who I am rather than who I was, fills me with a deep and profound sense of gratitude and love that it’s overwhelming.
I finally let her go and she gives me a smile. She lets out a loud breath of her own and sits back on the couch, an inscrutable expression on her face. Jenna twirls her fingers around her hair and chews on her bottom lip. She has that look on her face she gets when she’s trying to figure something out. Finally, she sits up and looks over at me.
“This is the missing piece,” she says. “For my article.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve been trying to figure out how the drugs are being moved around Sapphire Bay – not just the school, but all over town as well,” she goes on. “It’s Blaze and his minions. Or at least, the girls he coerces into moving them for him.”
“Th – they’ve done this to others?”
She nods. “It’s been rumored they’ve done this before – filmed a girl having sex with one of them without the girl knowing. You’re definitely not the first. It’s never been proven, mind you. But the rumor is out there,” she tells me. “But what you just told me is the missing puzzle piece I’ve been looking for.”
As I turn it over in my head, the picture becomes clear. They film girls having sex with them to coerce them into being their drug mules – do what they say or the sex tape comes out, ruining lives and reputations. And since nobody is going to want that to happen and will go to extraordinary lengths to ensure those tapes never see the light of day, they’ll agree to pretty much anything Blaze and his asshole friends say.
“These bastards,” I whisper.
“That word is too kind for the kind of scum these pricks are.”
“Pretty sure we haven’t invented a word to describe the kind of scum they are.”
Jenna nods. “Agreed.”
We both sit in silence for a few minutes, both of us trying to figure a way to get me out of this mess. Finally, Jenna turns to me, a determined gleam in her eye.
“You just need to get leverage on them,” she states. “Then use that leverage to force them to give you the tape.”
“Leverage,” I say, my mind whirling with thoughts. “What kind of leverage could I get that would be bad enough to force them to give me the tape?”
She shakes her head. “Not sure yet. But it’s got to be damning,” she says and looks me square in the eye. “But you also need to really prepare yourself for the possibility that they might call your bluff and that video goes out, Harlow.”
My jaw clenches and my stomach lurches but I know she’s right. It’s a possibility. But then another thought, both disturbing and depressing, flashes through my mind.
“I honestly think there’s nothing I can do to get them to give me the video,” I say. “Or destroy every copy. I don’t trust that they would.”
Jenna nods as if she too had thought of that. “Then the best we’re going to be able to hope for is mutually assured destruction,” she states firmly. “If your tape goes out, so does theirs.”
I nod. “Mutually assured destruction.”
We both sit there staring at one another, racking our brains to figure out what sort of leverage I can find that will put me in a position to threaten them with mutually assured destruction.
Chapter Seven
With a churning stomach and a sense of dread consuming me, I returned to school the following day and was met with a wall of ice from the very people I thought were my friends. While nobody was throwing my sexual proclivities in my face, they weren’t as warm and welcoming as they had been before.
So Blaze had obviously not released the video but he’d obviously put out the word that I was persona non grata. Which is something else Jenna i
s apparently right about – Blaze has this school wrapped around his little finger. He can apparently make or break anybody with a single word and it makes me sick that I allowed myself to get caught up in the idea of being popular.
I’m better on my own. Alone. Or at least, with a small group of friends like Jenna. As I look at all of the unfriendly faces surrounding me in the corridor, hear my name among the whispered voices, I realize I’m not really wired for popularity – or all of the backstabbing and that goes along with it.
The final bell rings, releasing us for the day and I make my way through the throng of people crowing the halls. I keep my eyes straight forward, refusing to give into the temptation to defend myself to people I don’t know – and who will never know me.
I make my way to the parking lot and to the scooter Daisy bought for me to get around. She said we’d get a car later but for now, it would do. I just buckle my helmet when a hand clamps onto my shoulder, sending a jolt of fear surging through me. I turn and find Evan staring back at me, a grim expression on his face.
“You need to get out of here. Blaze is looking for you,” he says, his tone serious. “Said you haven’t returned any of his calls. You haven’t returned any of mine either.”
“Yeah, it’s funny how blackmailing me with a sex tape I didn’t know you were making kind of makes me want to avoid you assholes,” I snap.
He looks down at the ground, an abashed look on his face. “That’s probably fair.”
“That’s more than fair, you fucking prick,” I sneer. “You betrayed me. And for what? To make me run drugs for you?”
