Chapter 13

When Flynn staggered through the front doors of his dormitory into the large common room, he was greeted with smirks and giggles from the other boys. They were sitting around in singles and groups on the couches and overstuffed chairs. That was normal. The way they were focused on him was not. At first, he had the horrifying thought they knew what he’d just done with Mitch in the basement. But instead, they were laughing at old news. They had their phones out and were watching videos of his parade across campus from that morning. Flynn ducked his head and hurried by, not looking at their faces.

He was thankful they didn’t know about his most recent disgrace, but he doubted the basement rendezvous would remain secret for long. If Mitch followed through with his threat to make Flynn regularly service the entire football team, word was going to leak out all over the school. That kind of juicy scandal could never stay hidden for long. Flynn had heard rumors of other boys, younger ones, who’d been coerced into servicing upperclassmen. But Flynn was a senior, just like every member of the team. That made it even more shameful.

And he’d never heard of a boy being used regularly by the entire football squad. That was on a scale quite beyond the norm.

There was also Mitch’s threat of making and selling videos of their encounters. Flynn felt sick. Mitch had seemed too excited by the idea to not follow through.

Flynn’s senior year of high school was going to be pure hell. The more he thought about it, the worse it got. He wouldn’t just be passed around by the football team even more than their football. Other boys, once they knew he was being used, would feel free to make use of him, too. They’d sense a weakness and exploit it. What could he do about it? He wasn’t a fighter. Even a slightly athletic freshman could probably overpower him. He couldn’t complain to the Headmistress. He doubted he’d find any sympathy there. He was screwed. Literally.

This was all by design. It had to be. Stepdad had given special instructions for his special stepson, the special student. If Flynn had only submitted to Stepdad’s new role as his parent from the beginning, he wouldn’t now be forced into submitting to everyone at Bramstock Prep. At least Stepdad had only engaged in spankings and psychological/emotional abuse. He’d never actually molested him.

One boy in the common room was enjoying the videos quite a bit more than the others. His laughter was louder, his knee-slapping almost theatrical. His name was Nathan. Flynn groaned.

He noticed when Nathan broke off from the group and started following him down the hall and up the long, curving staircase to the floors with the bedrooms.

When the boy continued stalking him into the hallway leading to his room, Flynn turned and said, “What?”

The day had been long and horrible. He wasn’t in the mood to deal with Nathan. He and Nathan had history, and it was way worse than the tedious historical lectures in Mr. Havstock’s class.

The other boy stopped and held his hands up, saying, “Easy, boy. I just wanted to tell you something.”

Flynn said, “Well, I don’t want to hear it. I know you don’t like me, and I can’t really blame you. But I’ve had the worst day of my life and I just want to go to bed.”

Nathan said, “Ok. I can understand that. But I’m going to tell you what I have to say anyway. It was me.”

Flynn went cold inside. He somehow knew the answer, but asked the question anyway.

“What was you?”

Nathan said, “I stole your underwear. Then I called in a tip on a burner phone. I told them you were running around without any underwear and bragging that the idiot professors would never catch you. I also said you called the Headmistress a dried up old bitch. That didn’t have anything to do with your underwear. I just threw it in there for funsies.”

Flynn felt a growing, burning rage kindle inside him. He still hadn’t recovered from the humiliation of his encounter with Mitch, not to mention all the other indignities of the day. Nathan had picked the wrong moment to make his confession. Flynn advanced on him with clenched fists, fully prepared to beat Nathan to death. Maybe there was a fighter in him after all.

Nathan backed up and said, “Wait. I should let you know ... I have a bodyguard.”

Trent, a boy on the wrestling team, stepped out of a shadowed doorway. Trent was big. And mean. He didn’t have as much of either trait as Mitch, but he came close.

Nathan said, “I won’t tell you what I had to do to secure his services ... talk about degrading. But Trent here is a man of his word, unlike some people. He’ll do what he agreed to do, which is protect me. I’ll really need him after I tell you the next naughty thing I did.”

Flynn sagged as the anger left him. It had taken all his energy and he was exhausted. He really needed to go to bed.

“What did you do, Nathan?”

Nathan smiled and said, “I was very industrious. I managed to get copies of all those videos of you from today. You know the ones ... the ones with you crying and stumbling along with your pants down and your dick and balls in full view. AND your butt. We can’t forget your butt. Anyway, I used the nifty video editing app on my phone and made a compilation of all the best shots. I gave it a title ... The Walk of Shame. Then I uploaded it to everyone in the contact list I stole when I hacked into your phone a couple of days ago.”

Flynn, his voice breaking, said, “Everyone?”

Nathan said, “Yeppers. All your friends and family. And ‘family’ includes your mommy and stepdad and sisters. Then there’s all the aunts and uncles and cousins. Grandmas and grandpas. There’s everyone you knew from your previous school. Actually, the list includes everyone you didn’t know there, too. You had the official list with all the school-based emails. That’s every student and every teacher and administrator. They’re all going to know you way better than when you went to school there. There’s also a couple of comic book shops. And your dentist. And...”