Physical (9 page)

“
Don’t even think about
trying to snitch. It’s not going to work,” Brittney told her
immediately.

Valentina just glared at her with a look of
fury.

“
Why are you doing this to
me?”

“
Why? Because you’re a
slut and you need to know it,” she announced to her in vicious
glee.

“
You don’t know anything
about me, Brittney.”

There was always a strange intensity between
the two of them every time they talked. It was like this powerful,
vibrating feeling of combativeness that was just demanding some
kind of conflict.

Brittney just sneered at her and then
reached into her bag to pull out her phone. She tapped on the
screen a few times and turned it toward Valentina. It was a video
of her and Tyler hooking up the previous night on the roof of the
club. It showed Tyler reaching up her skirt and his fingers moving
in and out of her. Her heart started racing and she frantically
thought back to everything else she had done with him.

It suddenly all made sense. She had heard
that she had a thing for Tyler but that he was not interested in
Brittney. This was all some wild plan of revenge or something.

“
This goes online
tonight,” Brittney told her. “Along with a link to the article in
The New York Times. Everyone will know who you really
are.”

“
Please, Brittney. Don’t.
They’ll kick me out,” Valentina pleaded, trying to rationalize with
her.

Brittney just rolled her eyes.

“
Not my problem. You
should have thought about that before last night,” she told her. “A
slut needs to know her place.”She took the phone and put it back
into her bag. “I’ll see you online,” she added with a laugh as she
went to walk away.

Valentina grabbed her by the arm to stop
her.

“
Please, Brittney. Don’t.
What do you want from me?” she begged.

Brittney turned back toward her, looking at
her up and down before she spoke.

“
Like I told you this
morning, you are the top slut. You and the rest of the girls on the
list are mine.”

“
I don’t understand,”
Valentina told her.

“
You do what I want, look
how I want you to look and be with who I tell you to be with,” she
told her, and then she raised her eyebrows to accentuate her
intentions.

Valentina wanted to slap her across the
face. There was no way she was going to do this. She couldn’t
possibly subject herself to such humiliation. There had to be a way
out of this. There had to be a way that she could turn the tables
and get her in trouble for blackmailing her. She needed to just
tell her step-mother what happened and see if she could help her.
Her step-mother was the one who got her into Ivy Glen in the first
place so maybe she could talk with the principal. In any event, she
needed to buy some time to figure out what to do.

“
Okay, okay, but please
don’t put the video online. I’ll do whatever you want,” she
pleaded.

Brittney eyed her suspiciously and then
reached up to take her chin in her hand. She turned her head to own
side and then to the other.

“
You have a cute face. I
haven’t quite figured out if it’s exotic or just strange
looking.”

Valentina didn’t know what to say.

“
Tomorrow night is the
initiation,” Brittney told her, suddenly changing the focus of the
conversation.

“
The
initiation?”

“
Yes. The initiation to
the slut list. You should be happy. It’s a very exclusive
list.”

“
But what are you going to
do?”

“
You’ll find out. I’ll
give you the address tomorrow.”

Brittney turned and started to walk
away.

“
So you’re not going to
put the video online, right?”

“
Not as long as you
behave,” she told her without turning around.

“
Behave?”Valentina
couldn’t believe she had used the same word as the principal. She
suddenly wondered if the two of them had talked about all of this.
The bell for the end of class rang and a wave of students filled
the halls.

Alexis decided she was going to stop by the
school to talk to Liam before she spoke with her step-daughter. She
wanted to get the whole story behind this slut list before she knew
what to tell Valentina. When she got to the school, there were a
number of news vans stationed outside along with various reporters
doing their broadcast on the steps of the main building. She
spotted Liam in front of one of the cameras, doing his best to
maintain a look of total composure.

She was astonished at how well he had aged
and how good he looked. He was always trying to act like one of the
popular kids, but he now had the appearance of a man cut straight
out of the pages of Esquire. He wore a classic camel-colored coat
over a blue-striped dress shirt and dark gray dress pants. It was
almost as if he was dressed for a photo shoot rather than an
emergency press conference. He still had that clean cut
baseball-player look and physique. She wasn’t at all surprised that
he ended up as the principal of the school. It let him control
things he was never able to control as a student.

She got out of her car and approached the
edge of the school to listen to the reporters question him.

“
How did you find out
about this slut list?”

“
Do you think this is an
attempt to bully sexually active teenagers?”

“
What does the list
signify?”

“
What are you going to do
to make parents feel safe when they send their teenage daughters to
school?”

Alexis hovered at the periphery of the
cluster of reporters and took in the whole chaotic scene set
against the pristine landscape of Ivy Glen. Just looking at the
idyllic brick building and the serene green landscape dotted with
maple trees made her realize how far she had come with Valentina.
When she married her father, Valentina was a rebellious,
out-of-control kid who was well on her way to becoming a public
high school drop-out. Alexis also saw it as her own opportunity to
turn her life around. Since she had graduated from Ivy Glen, she
had done little with her life, moving from one unfulfilling,
dead-end job to the next while she tried to get her bachelor’s
degree. When she meet Valentina’s father, she threw herself into
family life and did everything she could to give her step-daughter
what she never had. She had even convinced her old friend Liam to
accept her at the school and provide a partial scholarship for her.
Valentina, though, was eager to rebel against authority every
chance she got. It was only once she grew to like the art
department at Ivy Glen and found a small group of friends that she
was able to settle down, for the most part.

Eventually, the media began to disperse and
Liam thanked them before he slipped back through the front doors of
the school. She marched up the stairs past the reporters. One of
them glanced at her, eyeing her to see if she might have any
connection to the story. She suddenly got the feeling that these
reporters were like a grown-up version of the high school kids who
were always looking to judge everyone at the drop of the slightest
word of gossip.

When she got to Liam’s office, she saw that
the door was open and that he was alone. When he heard her
footsteps, he looked up to see her peering through the door. Their
eyes locked for a moment and a thousand memories flooded through
Alexis’ head. It seemed like just yesterday that she had a crush on
him even though so many years had passed.

“
I was just about to call
you,” he told her.

“
Call me? Why’s that?” she
exclaimed.

“
Well, I’m sure you have
heard the news by now.”

She just glared at him in disbelief.

“
So Valentina is on the
list then?”

“
Yes, she is on it. In
fact, she is at the top of it,” he informed her.

“
On the top? Liam, this is
insane. I thought these lists were something buried in the
past.”

“
The past? Why would you
think that? Just because you were on the slut list 20 years
ago?”

She couldn’t believe he had brought that up.
Even now, she felt a feeling of dirty shame from hearing her name
associated with it.

“
Because it’s archaic to
shun girls because of their sexual behavior,” Alexis
exclaimed.

Liam laughed at her words and shook his
head.

“
Not at all. In fact, off
the record, the school has taken an entirely different view of the
whole situation.”

“
What do you mean?” she
asked him.

Liam stood up and walked over to a row of
black file cabinets. He took out a set of keys, inserted it into
the bottom cabinet and pulled it open. He removed a thick folder,
walked back to his desk and dropped it in front of Alexis.

“
That is a collection of
slut lists from the last 25 years.”

She looked up at him in astonishment.

“
Are you kidding me? So my
name is…”

“
Yes. On your permanent
record.”

“
So why don’t you destroy
them?” she asked him.

“
Because you never know
when you might need them again. Once you are on the slut list, you
are always on the slut list,” he casually informed her.

Her mouth dropped open. Alexis couldn’t
believe what he was insinuating.

“
Every year, the slut list
comes out. So I’ve learned to embrace the list as just part of the
job.”

“
Part of the
job?”

“
Yes, Alexis. It’s just a
fact of teenage life. There’s always going to be slutty girls or
girls who get called sluts. It’s just part of the high school
ritual. So I’ve learned to contain the situation.”

“
Contain it?
How?”

Liam peered past Alexis to make sure there
was no one else listening.

“
Well, I sign off on it
before it comes out. I make sure that none of the girls on it have
parents who are on the school board. I also make sure they have
turned 18. Keeps things clean.”

“
Keeps things clean? Liam,
you can’t be serious? Do you really think you are going to get away
with this?”

“
Get away with it? The
list comes out whether I like it or not. I usually just go through
the routine of pretending to be outraged and then give a couple of
the girls a week of detention.”

“
So what happened this
year? Things don’t look too clean with all the media
attention.”

Liam shook his head in acknowledgment.

“
Yes, I know. Nothing I
could do about that. There’s a power struggle at the school board
and they want Sara Worthington’s mother off the board.”

“
So she’s on the
list?”

“
Yeap.”

Alexis sat back in her chair, trying to get
her mind wrapped around the whole situation.

“
And what exactly did my
step-daughter do to get on the list?”

“
Well, as you know she’s
been in trouble before, but last night she made the mistake of
being with the wrong guy at the wrong time.”

“
What do you
mean?”

“
Tyler Rothschild. His
family is good friends with the Van Slausons. Mrs. Van Slauson
called me this morning to complain about Valentina.”

Alexis was furious. She had warned Valentina
about getting mixed up with those kinds of people.

“
What did she do with him
exactly?” she hesitantly asked.

“
Not sure, but she was
drunk. Apparently, there is a video of the whole thing.”

“
A video? Oh my God,” she
exclaimed. “Where is it at?”

“
Brittney Van Slauson has
it. She’ll keep it private so long as Valentina
behaves.”

“
Behaves?”

“
Does what she is told to
do,” he clarified. “Accepts her place at the top of the slut
list.”

“
I want my daughter’s name
off the list, Liam.”

“
It’s too late. The list
has already gone out. In fact, I need you to make sure she does
what she is told. She has responsibilities as being the top
slut.”

“
Liam, there is no way!
I’ll go to the police with this.”

“
No, you won’t. There’s
nothing illegal being done here. It all happens off school grounds.
In fact, I’d like you to help.”

“
Help? What do you
mean?”

“
Meet with the other
parents. Make sure they understand it is in their best interest to
keep quiet about the list. You have the experience to know how to
make parents understand.”

“
What? Are you serious?
How would it be in their best interest?”

“
Well, most of them are on
scholarship here. Without the scholarships, they would have to drop
out.”

Alexis suddenly understood.

“
So, you are telling me
Valentina will lose her scholarship if she doesn’t
comply?”

“
Well, I can’t say that
formally. You know that. But let’s just say it would be in her best
interest to just accept her place on the list.”

Alexis was furious. She couldn’t believe
that her step-daughter was being blackmailed like this. Yet, even
more than that, she was furious with Valentina for even getting
into this position. She knew better than to be getting drunk and
being with someone like Tyler Rothschild. She had slaved away for
the last three years to pay for her step-daughter to attend an
elite school like Ivy Glen. She had already frittered away her own
life making bad choices. The last thing she was going to do was to
let her step-daughter do the same thing. On top of that, the idea
of her own history on the slut list being brought back into the
public eye did not sit well with her. She was not going to be the
victim this time. She thought about the whole situation and what
her options were.