Chapter 10

When we got home, Patty asked how we’d gotten along and I told her about the lawyer before we went upstairs.

I was surprised when Lana joined Beck and me and I asked if they were comfortable discussing their lists between the three of us. They nodded and we sat down to work. They each had a scribbler for this and wrote the first item on their lists down at the top of the first page. It read, “Believed a terrible rumor without giving Matt a chance to explain.”

I knew this one was going to be ugly. It was the transgression that all the rest stemmed from.

“Okay. This one is the big one. By itself, it’s not so terrible, but this one spilled over into creating the whole rest of those lists,” I said. “It’s gonna be tough to put a final accounting of the damage on that one and it’ll be painful to think it through,” I warned them, preparing them for it.

They nodded and I drew a deep breath and laid out the scenario for them, reversing the roles. “Okay, so I want you to put yourselves in my position. We were together and everything is great one day and then the next day I break up with you and tell you I don’t love you, don’t care about you and never want to see you again. I spend the next six weeks hurting you every way I can and you don’t even know why. I’ve told everyone at school so you can’t make any friends and still you don’t know why. You didn’t do anything that you can think of to ruin things and you can’t get anyone to talk. Then one day, it comes out and it was a lie that someone told me. We’re all devastated by it. You know that I turned on you over a lie that we disproved in less than a minute once we talked about it. I know that I betrayed you over something I could have talked to you about. I come to you and ask how to make that right. I convince you to tell me what I need to do to earn your forgiveness for that one thing. All the rest will come later and we’ll work to make them right, but now we’re working on this one betrayal and the broken trust and the fallout in a very general way. I’ve asked you to tell me what I can do to make this up to you. What do you tell me?”

I pointed to their scribblers. “That’s what you need to write. Either in point form or as an essay or write out the words as you’d speak them to me in a conversation.”

I hugged each of them and then said I was going to get something to drink while they started, but that I’d be back in case they needed to ask something.

“Should we pretend that you wore a collar for us when we answer?” Beck asked.

I thought about it and nodded. “And that there were three others that also walked away because of this lie. Their decisions aren’t yours to answer for, but they’re part of the overall picture.”

I left the room as they got started and went downstairs where Lilly was helping Patty make dinner.

“How are they doing?” Patty asked.

“Okay so far. We just started though. I gave them a little help on how to approach the exercise and they’re working on it now. It’s going to take some time though.” I glanced at what they were working on and arched an eyebrow. “Feeding an army or planning leftovers?” I asked, trying to keep the mood light while I got a glass of water.

“Tabby and Collie are coming over for dinner,” she said.

“They do that regularly?” I asked. I’d been out of the loop the past couple of months.

“About once or twice a week,” she said with a shrug. “Neither of them are great cooks, but they’re learning.”

I nodded and went back upstairs, uncertain how I felt about them at the moment. I hadn’t heard from them since Saturday. I wondered if I was going to be uncomfortable with them there and decided that I’d just beg off and go home to catch up on work if things got dicey.

Upstairs, I opened my laptop since the girls were still working furiously on their personal lists and started one of my lectures and then a second one. To my delight, I was able to make out both lectures without problem. I altered the size and started two more. Three was tricky and four was where things got garbled, so I pulled it back to three and let myself focus on the lectures. I actually felt like I’d found the perfect ratio and paused everything long enough to email Carl to let him know his solution was working for me. I could handle at least 6 more courses at this pace since I was able to sit three lectures at once.

Beck came over to me and told me that she had an answer. When she saw what I was doing, her eyes widened. “Are you watching all three at once?” she asked and I nodded.

“I do pretty much the same thing at school. I listen to this with one ear and the teacher with the other. Now I know I can listen to three things at once without much effort. Four is still too much though.”

I looked at her list and it was heavy on corporal punishment, humiliation and public displays of devotion. She’d answered it as a slave answering for a transgression.

“I think some of this might actually kill you,” I said, looking at the list of physical punishments. “I know I don’t have the strength to do all that.”

“Not at once,” Beck said quietly. “You said it would take time. After that, I think I’d be convinced to forgive. If someone goes through that, then they’ve spent a long time proving that they’re sorry and they’ll do whatever it takes to pay back what they did.”

I nodded and got that. Her list was:

-10,000 strokes with cane -10,000 lashes with whip -10,000 spankings with paddle -Wearing leash and collar and attached to me at all times -Declaring himself my property publicly -Service me sexually in any way at any time without receiving any relief in return -Service any others at my direction as I choose -Serve as Toilet Slave for me. -Submit to chastity piercings and devices -Submit to tattoo proving my ownership -Wear only sexually demeaning clothing (Sissy outfits, costumes)

I read it off and shook my head. “That’s a lot of punishment,” I allowed with a sigh. It did, indeed, declare the depths she was willing to go to in order to get me to understand her repentance.

“Do it,” she told me and she meant it. She wanted this chance to prove that she wanted to make this up to me more than anything.

“You forgot crawling over crushed glass and flame-branding,” I said dryly. “Or were you saving those for later?” I gave her a small smirk to let her know I was kidding.

She blushed. “I guess I put it more in terms of how I’d make it up to you than the other way around,” she admitted.

“That’s okay,” I assured her. “Right now you’ll both have difficulty in thinking harsh thoughts about me. You’ve been doing that for weeks and want to stop thinking that way.”

“So you agree?” she asked hopefully, glancing at the page.

“I don’t disagree,” I said. “There are some things on there that I would never do regardless of the circumstances.”

“Like what?” she asked, looking over the list with me.

I put an X beside being leashed to me at all times, being forced to have sex with other people, Toilet Slave (I wasn’t sure I even wanted to know where she came up with that) and wearing demeaning clothing.

“Those are things that I could never use as a punishment,” I said. “If I was angry enough or hurt enough to do those, then there’s no forgiving whatever caused it.” I tapped the line about declaring herself property. “I also think that’s a bad idea, given the rumors that are floating around school about both of you. As much as I want to end the rumor about me, I want to put that one down too. Anything that makes people think about it is off the list as far as I’m concerned. I can’t stop you from doing it on your own and it wouldn’t make me angry, but I wouldn’t encourage it.”

She nodded. “So if I told everyone at school that I’d made myself your slave to make up for what I did to you, you’d be okay with it?” she clarified.

I shrugged. “I’d prefer you didn’t because I want your reputations restored, but it’s your choice if you want to tell people how you intend to work toward making it up to me.”

She nodded and seemed pleased. I felt like I needed to throw the brakes on for a second. “That doesn’t mean go ahead,” I warned her. “Like the first list, I want you to go through the rest of the items and figure out how big the mountain is before we agree on how best to move forward. Just because it goes on the list doesn’t mean that we’re doing it. When we look at it all added up, we’ll probably decide that it would take years to do it all and I don’t have any intention of drawing this out for that long, if at all. Mostly I wanted this for similar reasons that I wanted the original list done. It gives you a complete picture of what’s happened and how hard it is to fix what’s broken. Not impossible. Once we know what we have to work with, then we can figure out what makes sense. I told you before that I have no interest in humiliating you. I still don’t. Putting you in demeaning costumes and parading you around on a leash is not happening.”

Lana had been listening to us thoughtfully and shrugged. “I don’t see why you should worry about our reputations. We can’t exactly say they’re a lie like you can. Telling everyone you own us isn’t so bad compared to that.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” I said. “We still haven’t talked about that yet and until I hear the whole story from you, I consider those rumors to be be just that. I don’t know anything and until I do, they’re no better than lies.”

She bit her lip and got her list of things she did to hurt me. She went through it and showed me the list of names of people she had sex with. I knew that there were people. I knew there were a lot, but it was more than I expected. There were 19 boys and 22 girls. I saw some names I expected like Marlene, the Waterman brothers and a few of their friends, but some of them were people I’d been friends with.

I handed her back the list and sighed. “Is your list all the same names Beck?” I asked quietly.

“Mine’s longer,” she said miserably and got it for me. All the baseball team was on it, but otherwise it was the same.

“How?” I asked.

“There was a party at Marlene’s house. Her parents went out. There was a lot of sex going on. Everyone was with everyone,” Lana told me miserably. “That was where the rumors started. Someone talked. There’s a lot of girls that were there that are having it rough.”

I nodded. “I understand,” I said softly. “We’ll talk about it in more detail when we go over that part of your lists if you want. Thank you for telling me about it.”

They could tell that the reality had overwhelmed me. “I told you that you’d hate us,” Lana reminded me sadly.

“I don’t hate you, girls,” I said truthfully. I was crying but not tears of hate.

“Yes you do!” Lana said, starting to lose it.

“I’m upset, but it’s ... You could have gotten AIDS, just to hurt me. I’d rather you’d just come next door and lit me on fire than do that to yourselves. I’m terrified for you. Until we get your test results back, there’s still a chance you’re sick. Seeing all these names ... Every one of them is a chance that you could have been infected. Just to hurt me.”

We were still crying in one large hug when Patty came to get us for supper. Her eyes flicked to the lists still in my hand and she just told us it was ready before closing the door and going back down stairs.

We cleaned up and washed our faces before joining everyone at the table. Dinner was tense, given that we were obviously upset. Collie and Tabby were quiet and I wasn’t sure if they were aware of what had happened, but they were shooting glances at me throughout the meal.

Patty and Lilly got up to get dessert and I caught them looking again. I sighed and leaned back. “Charlotte did this last night,” I said, knowing they were staring at the bruises. “She’s suffered a breakdown and needed to be hospitalized. It was what I’d hoped to avoid when I talked about leaving on Saturday. Now I guess it’s too late.”

They nodded and I decided that things weren’t going to get back on track with me here. I got to my feet. “I’m gonna go,” I said. “At least you can talk over coffee.”

I went upstairs and got my backpack and laptop before returning to put on my shoes and jacket. I said goodbye and then went home to an empty house. It felt good to be alone. I got myself a couple of cookies and sat down at the kitchen table with my laptop to finish my lectures. I was catching up on the stuff I’d missed out on since Friday afternoon between the weekend fiasco and last night. Being able to handle three lectures at once was going to make life easier. I had 8 hours of lectures to catch up on once I’d finished the three classes I’d started with Lana and Beck. I could be caught up before bed if I pushed.

I took a break instead and opened Skype to talk to Emma. She grinned at me when she opened the video chat and asked how I was. I told her that I was trying to help Lana and Beck with their lists and that it was kind of like grinding rock salt into my wounds.

“That bad?” she asked. “Finding out new things or just rehashing the bad?”

“I got the complete list of who they had sex with to hurt me,” I said darkly.

She winced. “I can only imagine that upset you. Was it the number or the specifics?”

“Both,” I said softly. “Beck made sure I’m not going back to the baseball league we were in last summer, but then I was planning on being in Malibu anyway.”

“The whole team or someone specific?” she asked delicately.

“The whole team,” I said tiredly. “Ninety names between the two of them. They said there was a party that was actually an orgy. They risked getting pregnant or getting AIDS to get back at me. It’s so much hate!” I ran my hands through my hair. “How do I even process that? It’s ... I’ve had sex with five people. Five. And they’re all next door. You and I haven’t even made love yet. I can’t even imagine doing that to myself for the sake of hurting someone who’s out of my life.”

“You’ve never been a teen-aged girl,” she laughed and then turned serious. “When two girls fight, they want to hurt each other as bad as possible. Normally one of those two girls goes out and fucks someone the other girl loves. Her boyfriend is the usual victim, but I’ve seen a brother and even a father end up dragged into it. Right now in Malibu, there’s a girl I went to high school with who has her worst enemy as a step-mom.”

That got me to laugh. “Okay, that’s terrible,” I admitted.

“It is,” she agreed with a giggle. “The point is though that you need to understand, girls use sex as a weapon, a tool, a crutch, a status symbol and anything else they can think of. The girls thought that doing that would hurt you because it would have hurt them if you’d done it. It might have actually hurt them worse that you didn’t, but they won’t realize that unless you point it out to them. It’s not their fault really. Society puts so much emphasis on their value as a sex symbol that we’re all programmed to think of it that way. Sort of like how guys want to hit things when they get mad. It’s a programmed response to act out violently to establish your masculinity. Women fuck to establish their femininity.”

“I love it when you talk dirty,” I teased her with a grin.

“Save it for Saturday,” she shot back.

I chuckled and promised her the time of her life.

“I probably shouldn’t have told you that about their antics,” I admitted. “It just hit me pretty hard and I needed to talk it out.”

“Don’t worry. My lips are sealed,” she promised. “Like I said, I’ve seen things like that before.”

I nodded. “Well, I appreciate it. In other news, I’m going to take more courses next semester. I found out I can listen to up to three lectures at a time. I can handle the readings and I think I can finish all three degrees at once now.”

“That’s amazing!” she gaped. “You can just listen to the audio one on top of another and not lose track of it?”

“Yeah. At four, it turns into a nightmare, but three is only a little bit of a challenge.”

“Wow. You are amazing!”

“Epic,” I corrected her with a grin. “Epic. So have you gotten a lot of attention for the ring yet?”

“Everyone knows. It was all over the dorm before I got back Friday night. The rumor is that the reason the cops were here is either to ask you to consult on some case, like some TV detective or because you’re a suspect in something. They’re not sure what, but it’s usually international and exciting.”

“Nice. So I’m either a Bond villain or a consultant for the police? I can’t be the villain. I ended up with the girl. I have to be the super-spy.”

She laughed. “Maybe we’ll do that next Halloween. By then you should have enough girls that we can manage the whole historical women of James Bond.”

“Nah. We’d spend half the night explaining it,” I said. “I still haven’t heard what everyone’s costumes are going to be this Halloween,” I pointed out.

“You’ll find out Saturday, Buster. Mark and Char already know that you’re not getting told until it’s time to go.”

We chatted some more and then I told her I had to call Dr. Spencer about things. We said “I love you,” and then ended the call.

I pulled out my phone and called her after-hours line while I lined up my next trio of lectures.

“Hi,” I said when she answered. “I talked to the lawyer and he agreed that I need to resolve the lawsuit before I can apply for emancipation. I also mentioned to Carl that I could apply if there was suitable housing available since that would make my costs negligible.”

“Did your lawyer give you any advice about the suit?” she asked.

“Just that he’d apply more pressure and that Charlotte’s condition helps our position, demonstrating that there’s been considerable stress on our family because of the incident and the lingering affects.”