I make it through another week of constant bombardment, but on Thursday morning, Max greets me outside my dorm. We’ve started meeting up to walk to classes together, so it’s not strange to see her here.
What is surprising is the look on her face. She looks furious, her weight shifting from side to side in agitation as she stares down at her school-issued tablet. She glances up as I walk out of the building, her hazel eyes flashing.
“Have you seen this?” she demands.
I shrug. “Depends on what ‘this’ is.”
Her lips press into a line as she hands over her tablet. I take it and glance down at the screen, which is alight with vibrant colors and gaudy text. It’s a website of some sort, one that I sure as fuck have never seen before.
But the images plastered all over it are familiar.
They’re of me.
All of me.
Shots of me coming out of the showers in the gym, shots of my tits, of my ass—shots that have been edited to make it look like my cleavage or my thighs are dripping in cum.
My grip on the tablet tightens, a wave of anger threatening to destroy the carefully constructed numbness I hold in my chest.
It doesn’t fucking matter.
I look up at Max, who’s seething silently as she watches me.
“Someone has way too much time on their hands,” I say, forcing my tone to stay bland. “It’s just a bunch of fucking pictures. So what?”
“It’s not just pictures.” She shakes her head. “And it’s not just one person.”
She takes the tablet back and presses the screen a few times, then holds it up so I can look at it again.
I see what she means immediately. Unlike the scrolling gallery of the main page, this is a submissions page, calling for all Hawthorne students to upload photos and videos of me, showing as much skin as possible. The person who snags the picture or video with the most skin exposed will win a ten thousand dollar cash prize from the contests sponsors.
And who might the brilliant sponsors of this wonderful little contest be?
The motherfucking Sinners of Hawthorne University.
I stare down at the tablet, my gaze locked on the little emblem in the corner bearing the word Sinners.
“You okay?” Max murmurs, but her voice sounds like it’s coming from far away.
Fuck. I don’t know.
Am I okay?
It doesn’t fucking matter.
It doesn’t fucking matter.
It doesn’t fucking matter.
But it does.
It does, because no matter how little sense Gray’s reaction to Caitlin’s video made, I at least didn’t expect him to turn around and actively encourage others to pull the same shit she did.
I was careful not to let myself believe he was protecting me when he smashed her phone… but maybe a part of me thought he was anyway.
And now I’m staring at tangible evidence to the contrary. He didn’t give a shit that Caitlin uploaded a video of me naked in the locker room onto social media. He was probably just pissed that she got the idea first. That she stole his damn thunder.
“How did you even find this?” I ask Max, pulling my gaze from the submission page to look at her. I never answered her question, but I still don’t have an answer to give, so I just ignore it.