Running at buttcrack o’clock meant it was only Shadow and me on the track. Just as well. Whenever people recognized me, they either looked at me like I was trash, or averted their gaze, making sure I didn’t see the pity in their eyes. Loneliness was an old friend. So much so that, ironically, it became my company.
Shadow was beginning to pant loudly behind me, so I stopped, bending down and stretching my hamstrings, my fingers pressing my toes.
“Take your time, Old Sport.” I patted his head, waiting for the next song on my iPod to start.
“Jesse? Jesse Carter?” a woman chirped behind me. My heart slammed against my ribcage at the sudden noise. I whipped my head around, tearing the earbuds from my ears. Wren, a girl I went to school with, waved at me as she jogged toward my spot. She was wearing clubbing attire consisting of a little red dress that could barely cover a freckle, let alone the two silicone balloons she’d been gifted on her seventeenth birthday. She wore slippers and looked drunk, which made me wonder what idiot had let this twenty-year-old girl party at their bar until the middle of the night. I wheezed out the remainder of the oxygen. Wren lived in El Dorado. She’d probably been stumbling home, saw me, and decided to say hi. Why she decided that was beyond me.
“I knew it was you,” she gasped, aligning her drunken, loose body in front of my tense, anxious one. “Ohmigosh, I told them it was you.”
Them? Who were they? I was about to ask when Wren decided to abuse the nonexistent word ‘ohmigosh’ once again. “Ohmigosh, and I can’t believe your dog is still alive. He must be, like, twenty or something, right?”
The old Jesse would tell her not everyone was as young as her new tits and nose. The new Jesse avoided confrontation at almost any cost. Wren sized me up, raking her eyes over me, head-to-toe. Her gaze was like a bright projector aimed at a hibernating animal. I wanted to coil into myself and die.
She smirked. “You look hot, Jesse. Are you on the Dukan Diet or something?”
I rubbed Shadow behind the ears and resumed my jogging, hoping she’d get the hint and give up on the one-sided conversation. To my disappointment, she sprinted forward, catching my step.
“Don’t be a bitch. Share your secret.”
Get gang raped by your boyfriend and his friends. That would either make you lose your appetite completely or eat your feelings away.
“I’m not on any diet,” I finally gritted out.
“Well, you look great! I mean, you’ve always looked great. Obvs,” she abbreviated the word ‘obviously,’ because it was just too long for her holy mouth. For the first three years of high school, I’d been one of the popular girls. The designated queen bee. Devastating blue eyes and legs for miles. They called me Snow White: dark hair, fair skin, witch-bitch mother. It helped that I was born and raised in Anaheim. My mom was freshly wed to an oil tycoon, and everyone at All Saints High had thought I was ghetto. “Classy, but ghetto,” Emery corrected whenever someone asked me if I’d ever seen someone getting stabbed or shot. After The Incident, my status took a nosedive. In fact, by the end of senior year, I’d been outranked by pretty much everyone, including the toilet seats and peeling cafeteria tables of All Saints High. Wren and her friends were the first to cough the word ‘slut’ in the hallways, the first to whine about STDs when asked to take a seat next to me in chemistry or calc.
“That really means a lot,” I said sarcastically, refraining from asking her about her life. I didn’t want to know.
“I wish I had it in me to put so much effort into my body.” Wren sighed dramatically, barely keeping up with my pace. The sound of her after-party flip-flops slapping against the ground made me want to tear my hair from my skull. “But I’m just so busy with school, and friends, and my new boyfriend. You know I’m dating Justin Finn now, right?”
I didn’t know that. I’d pretty much stopped talking to the entire world after what happened. The only thing I remembered about Justin Finn was the way his brother Henry’s teeth had felt against my thigh when I’d finally come to, dizzy and nauseous, after they’d beaten me senseless. His laughter into my sex as he tasted me, defenseless, against my will. I remembered it so clearly, in fact, I could still feel him on my body, even after two years and countless showers. I bit my lip hard, stifling a scream.
They’re not here.
They can’t hurt you.
“What the hell are you doing here, Wren? It’s three in the morning.”
“Aw. She talks! Exciting.” She golf-clapped on another vicious smile. “So what have you been doing with your life?”