Chapter 6: Tuesday Afternoon at School

The next period was lunch, and as soon as I entered the commons, I spotted Jennifer. Just like yesterday, she was surrounded by a crowd, but unlike before, she appeared to be relishing the attention today. This was quite different from the previous day when she had resisted being a part of The Program with all her might. Her posture was different, too—chest out, head high, the gaze that swept the room was now a cool challenge instead of a hunted animal’s flicker. She was flanked by two guys—no, three—and one was actually feeding her bits of his sandwich, laying them gently on her tongue like some medieval handmaiden. I was so taken aback by the tableau, I forgot to slouch or glance down or do anything to shrink myself as I crossed the tile to where Becky was waiting, already peeling the red wax off her Babybel.

“I thought she was going to lose it,” Becky whispered, following my eyes to Jennifer.

“Either she’s heavily sedated, or...?” I left the question trailing.

“Or she’s decided to run the show now. Good for her, I guess.”

I unwrapped my own sandwich and tried not to look back. But I heard laughter—Jennifer’s, this time, loud and clear—a high, bright sound that seemed to ripple outward, refracting off the eyes of everyone in her immediate radius. It was not a laugh I remembered from her before, and that was saying something. Jennifer had always been brittle, even sour, in class, but this laugh was something new: like she’d found a frequency of power in the humiliation itself, was learning to twist it back toward the crowd until it hurt them just a little bit too.

“She’s faking it,” I said, though I wasn’t sure if I meant for my own benefit or Becky’s. “Nobody actually laughs like that.”

“She’s doing it better than anyone else,” Becky said. She took a careful bite of Babybel and considered me with a sidelong glance. “What about you, though? Are you okay?”

“Yeah. No,” I said, peeling at the crust of my sandwich. “It’s like—” but then I couldn’t finish. The memory of Wanda’s face earlier today, and the condom, and my own voice saying “It feels okay” while the whole class hovered around me like a pack of zoo tourists at feeding time—those memories pressed like a bruise. “I don’t know. I just want it over.”

I watched as Jennifer let a boy trace a slow circle on her thigh with his pinky. She arched an eyebrow at him and said something low, and he flushed, the color of his cheeks matching the strawberry yogurt he’d just opened. It seemed almost expert, the way she navigated it all, steering the attention until it became less a mob and more a court, with herself as the unwilling queen. There was something brazen about it, and watching her felt a little like seeing someone at the edge of a cliff—terrifying and impossible to turn away from.

“Do you think it’s easier for her?” I asked.

“Maybe if you’re used to people looking at you,” Becky said. “If you’ve always been the main character.”

I began thinking of ways to make it easier for myself, the way Jennifer was. I never liked the attention like she did, but now I wondered if there was something to the idea of acting as if you deserved it. Not out of arrogance, but survival. I pictured what it would look like if I tried it on—stand up straighter, act like I was supposed to be here, naked and unashamed, every inch of myself meant to be viewed and commented on by everyone in the room. The thought made me queasy.

Maybe that was why Jennifer could handle it: she’d already been burned by all the usual scorn, so this was just another kind of fire. Or maybe that was just what she wanted everyone to think. I wasn’t sure I could ever get there, to that place beyond embarrassment, at least not in a week.

Lunch dragged. Across the commons, Marty was making a show of aiming balled-up napkins at the trash can, missing every time, then pretending to be amazed by the power of physics. Every so often he caught me watching and gave an exaggerated wink, just to make sure I knew he was only ever barely joking. Behind me, I could hear the click and whine of a dozen phones—someone had started a group text that reproduced a blow-by-blow record of Program events, and there was no hope that any of us would be left out of it. I didn’t check my own phone, but Becky did, and she winced at every new ping.

“Don’t look,” she said, glancing at the screen. “It’s all about you anyway. They’ve even got a poll going.”

“What’s the question?” My mouth was dry, but I asked. I didn’t want to know, but I wanted to know.

“Who cries first, you or Wanda?”

I let out a little laugh—short and ugly and not at all like Jennifer’s. “Great.”

To my horror, Becky actually showed me the screen. The results ticked back and forth in real time, a digital horse race of votes, but I was in the lead by six percent, “Min. 80% chance by Thursday,” someone had commented helpfully underneath. The meme below was a baby otter with tears Photoshopped onto its face.

For a second, I was sure I was actually going to lose it right there at the table, but Becky just plucked my Gatorade off the tray and uncapped it for me, like that was enough to stop the dam. I took a long, slow drink, and the world steadied. At least a little.

I focused on Jennifer, who was now standing up, giving a toast with her milk carton. That was new. She didn’t just play along, she upped the ante, made the scene her own. “To dignity!” she called out, and half the table repeated it, some actually clapping. The other half rolled their eyes, but they still watched. I wondered if this was her brand of rebellion—not resistance, but exaggeration, taking the script and running it so over the top that no one else could ever get ahead of her. Maybe that was her armor.

Maybe it could be mine, too.

I didn’t feel the rest of lunch pass; my head was somewhere else, composing alternate-universe versions of myself who could stand up on a table and dare them to look, or just wave it all away with a joke that no one could top. I knew I couldn’t actually do it, but the thought softened the edges of the cafeteria just a bit, made the world feel less like a meat grinder and more like a really aggressive improv troupe—that if I could just find my line, maybe I’d get to the next scene in one piece.

Next up was Spanish again, and I dreaded it with a physical ache. Ms. Diaz barely looked up as we filed in, but Alejandro gave me a little salute from his seat, as if we were fellow soldiers in some doomed war. I took my seat, half-expecting Juan to start something. He was grinning, as usual, like he was always in on a joke two steps before everyone else. But, surprisingly, nothing happened at first. For almost a minute, Ms. Diaz reviewed conjugations while I sat quietly, doing my best to become furniture.

I almost relaxed. Until Ms. Diaz asked, “¿Quién puede darme un ejemplo de una frase usando el verbo ‘gustar’?” Juan’s hand shot up.

“Me gustan cuando Stephanie está en la clase,” he said loudly.

“That’s not even the right form,” I said, before I could stop myself.

He grinned wider. “Then why don’t you correct me, Steph?”

Ms. Diaz gave him a look but moved on. I tried to focus on the worksheet in front of me, but my Spanish knowledge was suddenly vaporized by the memory of yesterday’s blowjob. I could still taste it, like a ghost at the back of my throat: latex and salt, the afterburn of shame. I gripped my pencil hard, like maybe I could squeeze the memory out along with the words.

Juan was relentless, though. He kept sneaking glances, making little kissing faces when Ms. Diaz wasn’t looking. After her lesson she let us pair up for conversational drills, and I was paired, predictably, with Alejandro.

I could feel a simmering expectation in the room. Even without a prompt, everyone seemed to be waiting to see what we’d do.

Alejandro slouched in his chair, arms crossed, his mouth twisting into a wry smile. “You don’t need to do anything,” he said in a low voice. “I mean, not unless you want to.” His tone was kind, almost apologetic, and it caught me off guard.

I looked at him, wondering if I was supposed to thank him, or just appreciate the mercy in silence like a normal human. But “thank you” came out of my mouth, small and frail. I felt his eyes flick to me, then away, then back again. “No, really. I get it. They expect you to...” He left the rest unsaid, but his eyes darted toward Juan, whose head was practically on a swivel, waiting for anything to happen.

We did the drill: exchanging scripted lines, asking and answering each other’s favorite colors, bands, movies. I tried to focus on my answers, but Alejandro made each question just a little off-script, the way he deadpanned “Me gusta el helado de Steph” and didn’t even smile. The back of my neck tingled with the tension—not just anticipation of what he might say, but the sense that he was waiting for me to take something back, to volley the weirdness right back over the net.

So I did. “Me gusta el helado de Alejandro,” I said. “Especialmente los que tienen doble chocolate.” The words tumbled out before I could think about how they’d sound, or who would hear. It was supposed to shut him up, but I saw the corners of Alejandro’s mouth turn upward for the first time all semester, a real smile. It surprised him as much as it did me, and for a second, I thought, maybe this was how Jennifer managed it—by saying the thing everyone else was afraid to.

Juan, who was definitely eavesdropping, snorted before shouting, “Ooooh, romance!” and immediately tried to capture the moment on his phone. I looked away, mortified, but Alejandro only shrugged, like nothing could touch him.

“You handled that well,” he said, once the noise died down.

“You think?” I asked, voice tight.

“At least you didn’t start crying,” he said, low so only I could hear. “That’s what they want, you know.” There was no malice in it; it sounded almost like advice.

I sucked in a breath. “Why do you care?”

He didn’t answer right away. He squinted at the worksheet, then said, “My brother did this last year. He said if you act like you’re in on the joke, they eventually get bored.” His pencil traced lazy circles on the margin. “He also said it’s bullshit and it never gets easier, just ... more predictable.”

I thought about that as we finished the drill. I kept waiting for the next humiliation, but it didn’t come. Not during that hour, anyway. When the bell rang, I almost lingered, just to put off whatever was waiting in the hall.

But I had to go. My skin crawled with the nerve of being in public, of not having anything—clothes, dignity, even a defense mechanism—to stand behind. I walked the corridor with my arms unconsciously crossed, trying to hide and failing. Someone smacked my ass as I passed, followed by a volley of snickers. I turned to see it was Melanie, queen of the mean-girls, flanked by her retinue. She didn’t even bother to hide the smile, or the phone-camera pointed at me.

I kept going, face burning, but I caught the sound of them playing the video—a slow-motion replay of Wanda’s voice breaking as I entered her yesterday, then a loop of my own moan at the end. “She sounds like a fucking dog whistle,” Melanie’s friend cackled. It was stupid, but I wanted to turn around and scream at them, or else collapse right there on the floor and evaporate into the linoleum.

I didn’t do either. I got to my next class PE with Mr. Greene. I was dreading this class more than anything, more than even the slow humiliation of Mr. Mason’s condom demonstration, because in gym the pretense was dropped: this was bodies first, everything else second, and there was nowhere to hide, not even behind a worksheet or a desk. The locker room was a miasma of Axe Body Spray and fresh-sweat, and every boy in my class seemed to be waiting for me, a clump of grins knotted by the door. The girl’s locker room had never prepared me for this: the constant policed violence of eye contact (too much was a dare, too little a weakness), the absolute lack of privacy, the way everyone already knew exactly what you had or didn’t have, what you were pretending.