Naked (22 page)

Chapter Thirty-Five

T
he next morning, I decide it’s time to go back to school. I can’t keep running. I’ve got to face the truth. Face the hate.

Sarah stays in town overnight, and my mom’s fine with her driving me to school the next day.

I’m scared of seeing Jackson again. The way he looked at me yesterday… What if he never forgives me?

If I thought the rumors and looks and whispers were bad before, they were nothing compared to this. It always felt like every set of eyes turned toward me before, that the world stopped. But it was just a feeling.

Now it actually does.

They all stop, literally, and watch me pass through the hallway. Even the teachers look at me with worried expressions.

News is out. I’m the town whore. Maybe I should take a bow.

Every class is torture. I can’t even focus on learning, because all I can hear are the rumors.

“That’s the whore. Yeah, I’m not even kidding, she really was.”

It makes me want to scream out, tell them it’s true and to grow up and get their own lives. Maybe I should make an announcement.

Hello, everyone. It’s me, Anna. You know, the whore? Yeah, it’s true. Get over it now, please? I’d love to move on now, thanks…

Then lunch comes. I consider skipping it altogether, but somehow over the last few days, my appetite has come back. I get my lunch and find a table toward the back that’s mostly empty.

But then a tray clinks down in front of me and I look up to see Alex.

“Mind?” she asks.

I smile back. It’s small and sad, but it’s real. So I guess that’s pretty good.

It’s quiet for a moment, awkward. I wish she’d ask me something ridiculous, like which was better on a soft pretzel, mustard or cheese? She doesn’t. Instead she looks right to the elephant in the room. “So. Homecoming.”

I blink and watch as she shoves a huge piece of cookie into her mouth.

“Yeah. That was fun, huh?”

She looks around for a second, checking out all the eyes watching us.

“I did want to ask, how did everything go, you know, with Brandon?”

Her eyes grow wide. “That part actually was awesome. First Mr. Shelf slammed him into a locker when he tried to hit Marissa after she told him what we’d done. He flipped out, royally. We found out later that his dad flew home early from his business trip and yanked Brandon out of school. Word is his parents are sending him to military school. Good-bye football scholarship. Good-bye dreams of fame and sports stardom.”

“Military school?” I think of the janitor. I think of Luis. I think of my father. “They didn’t arrest him?”

Alex shakes her head, and now a flash of anger crosses her face. “No. They should. But at least he didn’t totally get away with it.”

“Well, that’s good, I guess. Too bad I had to go and ruin our celebration, huh?”

“You ruined it? By what, just being you?”

I shrug. “Yeah, kinda.”

“You’re the only reason it happened in the first place. Marissa would still be pinned under that dick if you hadn’t put it all together. You’re a hell of a lot stronger than you think, Anna.”

I take a deep breath. “I don’t feel very strong.”

Alex nudges my shoe with hers and smiles. “Life’s job is to sit around and wait for the best opportunity to kick us in the balls. Our job is to get up and kick back. You helped Marissa do that. Now it’s your turn.”

My lips actually curl into an almost kind of smile. Life advice from Alex is much better than I expected.

Jen walks up and sits next to me without a word. I was her friend when no one else was; guess she’s returning the favor. It does feel good to not be so alone. But the stares, the whispers, still close in on me.

“Besides, the only people who care about that shit don’t matter,” Alex says, winking at Jen.

I look to the empty seat at my right.

“He’ll come around,” Jen says.

My stomach twists. No one else speaks for a while. We munch on our food and listen to voices ringing around us. I don’t hear anyone talking about me right now—there are too many voices for that—but I’m sure they are.

The question is, how in the world am I supposed to stand up for myself like Alex said? The janitor’s gone, but the real enemy, the one that’s haunted me every step of the way, still lives inside me. And it always will until I find the courage to face my fear.

I jump when a third tray clinks down. I look up to see Jackson. I smile at him, but he doesn’t smile back. He just looks at me, like he’s still trying to make sense of our conversation yesterday. Of all of this.

Well, that makes two of us.

A passing senior coughs out “whore” as he passes us, and I freeze. Seriously? We’re back to that?

Jackson’s out of his seat and about to go after the guy, but I take his arm, and my touch seems to shock him out of it. He still looks pissed, though.

“He can’t talk to you like that,” he says without looking at me.

I shrug. “He’s just telling the truth.”

Jackson glances at the rest of the group, not like he’s looking to them for backup, more like he’s making sure he has everyone’s attention. Then he looks back at me.

“You’re not a whore,” he says. “I don’t care what the janitor said.”

He doesn’t get it. But it’s nice of him to stick up for me.

“Let him go,” I say. “People can say whatever they want.”

Jackson sits back down, and everyone at the table falls back into that thick silence.

“So are we going to ignore this the rest of our lives?” Alex says just before shoving a piece of a Fudge Round into her face. “I mean, that’s okay if we are. I just want to be clear.”

I actually smirk. Leave it to Alex to be the blunt one.

“Ask, if you want to know,” I say in a flat voice.

Jackson meets my eyes. He knows some of the truth. But he doesn’t know it all.

“The prostitute thing,” Alex says. “You did really do it, right? ’Cause we heard the guy that attacked you, and it—” She stops, like she ran out of words or something.

I nod, but then I shrug. “It’s complicated.”

Jackson wants the truth, right? I guess it’s time he got a bigger piece. That they all got a bigger piece. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that eventually the truth will come out. Hiding it just delays the inevitable.

“I don’t understand what the big deal is,” Alex says. “Isn’t it just sex? What’s wrong with you making a little money?”

“It’s not just sex,” I say.

An odd look crosses both of their faces. Jackson is still as stone. Did they expect me to defend it? Maybe. It’s not like I’ve been afraid to call myself a whore. I guess they thought I was proud or something.

When they say nothing, I continue.

“When you’re a prostitute, it’s not like you get to choose who you do it with. Imagine being forced to do it”—I rack my brain for the most disgusting person in school—“with Mr. Pickering,” I say. He’s an old, fat math teacher I’ve seen walking the halls. “Then Mr. Schueller.” Our science teacher. “Then Mrs. Timmins.” Our creepy gym teacher. “All in one night.”

“Ew.”

“Sex isn’t simple. Not when you’re a prostitute,” I say, no longer looking at them. I stare out into the sea of teenage heads around me. “Even if you did it with just attractive men, you lose everything you are. You have no choices, and everyone sees you as sex, nothing more.”

Apparently I’m on a roll. The words just fall out of my mouth, things I didn’t even know I was thinking. They all stare like I’ve just grown another head and they want to study it.

“You become nothing. Because that’s the thing about sex—it’s part of you. Giving it away for the wrong reasons, against your will…it changes you. Not always for the better. Every time you do that, you lose a part of yourself until…you have nothing left.”

No one speaks, and I look down at my hands. They’re shaking, just a little.

“I have nothing left,” I whisper.

They still don’t speak. Jackson looks at me, but I can’t read him anymore. I can’t tell if he’s furious at finding out the whole truth. I can’t tell if he pities me. I can’t tell if he hates me.

I take a bite of my gooey mac and cheese and then take a sip of juice.

“Then why would you do it?” Jen asks quietly.

Jen. After what Brandon did to her, she’s probably the one who knows what I went through. But it’s hard to tell how much she understands when I barely get it myself, and I’m the one who lived it.

How do I explain that I didn’t choose it? That I didn’t know how to say no? That I did it for Luis when I won’t talk about him?

Does Luis even understand what he did to me?

I open my mouth to speak, but I don’t know what else to say. And honestly, do I want to stick around and see them realize they shouldn’t be friends with me? They will. Now that they have a taste of who I really am.

“I have to go,” I blurt out, and then I walk out alone. I go outside to the picnic area, and thankfully since it’s about thirty degrees, no one else is out here.

“Hey.”

I whip around to see Jackson, his arms crossed.

“You okay?” he asks.

“Not really, no. How about you?”

He shrugs. “Not really.”

He takes a step forward, then seems to understand that I’m about to say something and need a minute to get up the nerve.

Finally, I ask, “Do you hate me?”

He sits down next to me. “Of course I don’t hate you.”

“Even after I lied to you? Ever after you heard the kind of things I did?”

He joins me, shivering, but sits there with me. “I wish you’d told me the truth. Wish you’d trusted me with it.”

I shake my head. “I couldn’t, Jackson. I was so scared. How could I tell someone like you all the horrible things I’ve done?”

“Someone like me?”

“So good. You’re too good for me.”

He laughs. “That’s definitely not true.”

“If I told you that I was a prostitute…you would have run away from me.”

“Don’t think that. I mean, sure, it’s crazy to even consider, but…I would have still been your friend. Or whatever we are.”

“But I lied to you. And after everything you said about your mom…” I look down at the wooden table, handwritten notes scrawled all over it.

“Anna, I hate myself because I never got the chance to help my mom. She wouldn’t let me. And I hate that you wouldn’t let me help you. But I would never hate her no matter how many lies she told…and I will never hate you.” He straightens his shoulders. “I’m just glad I followed you outside at the dance. If I hadn’t…I don’t want to think what he would have done to you.”

After a moment, I ask, “You don’t think I deserved it?”

“Are you serious?” I don’t move, don’t look. He puts his hand on mine. “Anna.” When I look up, he’s waiting for me to meet his eyes, so intense he actually looks angry. “No one deserves that.”

Strangely enough, I believe him. Maybe that makes me stupid, or naive, but maybe that’s okay for once. He chose to believe in me. Maybe now I need to believe in him.

“Telling the truth is harder than it sounds,” I say, and I hope it doesn’t sound like an excuse. I know I was wrong but I’m just not sure what I could have done any differently.

“I wanted to sleep with her,” he says.

“Liz?”

He nods. “I just wasn’t ready. And I guess I didn’t mean enough to her to wait until I was ready, too.”

I put my hand in his, intertwining my fingers in his gently. I’ve always wondered what really happened. The full story. But he held it back until now. I don’t know what I did to deserve his trust, but maybe that’s not the point. Maybe we can trust each other because we choose to be worthy of each other right now. One step at a time.

“If I tell you the truth now, will you hate me? Do you even want to hear it?”

He shakes his head. “I’ll never hate you. And I won’t lie, I’m scared. But yeah, I want to hear it, because otherwise, I’ll always wonder. I’ll never understand unless you tell me, and neither will they.” He points into the lunchroom, where—I have to laugh seeing their faces up against the window—Alex, Jen, and Marissa are looking out at us.

The bell rings, but Jackson doesn’t move, and neither do I.

“They want me to testify,” I whisper.

He takes a deep breath. “Against that man?”

“No. I mean, yes.” Here it comes. The big one. “But someone else, too.”

“Who?”

“A man I lived with… He was my boyfriend.” I swallow. “He was my pimp.” The word feels so disgusting coming from my mouth. I hate it. I hate myself.

But I don’t see hate in Jackson’s expression, and there’s some comfort in knowing that as much as the lies hurt him—maybe
because
they hurt him—he’s ready for the truth, whatever it is.

He squeezes my hand. “And you don’t want to testify against him?”

“I don’t know. I mean, it’s complicated. He helped me. I know he hurt me, but if not for him, I’d probably have been dead. How can I do that to him?”

Jackson winces, but he’s calm. “You wouldn’t be doing anything to him. That’s not how court cases work.”

“What do you mean?”

“They’ll decide if he broke the law. They’ll decide if he’s supposed to go to jail. Not you. All they want is for you to tell the truth. I know it’s scary, but it’ll hang over your head forever if you don’t.”

“But won’t it hang over my head forever if I do?”

He shakes his head slowly. “The truth is the only thing that sets you free. There are repercussions, sure, but you won’t be trapped anymore. You’ll be free.”

I blink. Freedom. That’s what I’ve always wanted. But will testifying against Luis really free me? I think about what it would be like to see him again. To face him.

I’m scared. Terrified. But I realize it’s something I have to do. I’ll never get the closure I need without it. I’ll never be free of Luis.

After we head back into school, I tell Jackson I’ll talk to him later. Then I pull out my phone and dial Sarah’s number.

“Anna?”

She must hear me breathing, because she waits for me to speak.

“I’ll speak…at Luis’s trial.”

“Oh, Anna. That’s terrific. But I want you to know, if you’re not comfortable with this, you don’t have to. We’ll figure something else out.”