“Some people, you could take ninety-nine steps toward them and still never reach them.”
She wasn't wrong. So I stopped walking toward Andrew.
I turned off my phone and lay in bed,
listening to the fireworks outside rage on for a full three hours before they finally died.
The next morning, someone grabbed me by the collar and hauled me out of bed.
I had rarely seen Andrew wear an expression like that.
Both eyes bloodshot, fury and disappointment burning beneath them.
“I never thought you'd stoop to something that disgusting to try and destroy Vivienne.”
His phone screen was shoved so close it nearly touched my nose.
Someone had distributed flyers around school, printed with photos of Vivienne and a man whose face was hidden walking into a hotel.
On the forums, wave after wave of anonymous accounts mocked Vivienne, calling her cheap and shameless.
Andrew shouted at me.
“Vivienne cried all night. She's in the hospital! If something happens to her, can you afford to pay for that?!”
A crowd had gathered outside the door, their eyes crawling over me like snakes, like stinging ants.
“So you think it was me?”
Andrew didn't even hesitate.
“If not you, then who?”
My nails dug through the bedsheet until I felt the sting of torn skin.
That was when Vivienne appeared in the doorway with a group of people behind her.
“Andrew, don't waste your breath on her. All she knows how to do is play the victim!”
She looked as if she'd swallowed every injustice in the world, dabbing endlessly at the tears pooling in the corners of her eyes.
“Trash her stuff. Let's see if she admits it then!”
Dread shot through me. I tried to stand, but Andrew pinned me down.
“I said it wasn't me!”
Several people barged in carrying cans of paint and started splashing it across everything in the room.
The fumes hit so hard my eyes watered instantly.
Something flickered behind Andrew's eyes. Pain, maybe.
“The innocent have nothing to hide. If it turns out it wasn't you, I'll make Vivienne apologize.”
Right then, a bodyguard dragged in someone wearing a face mask.
The second that person saw me, they burst into tears.
“Lady, when you paid me to spread those rumors, you didn't say I'd get beaten up!”
“I don't want the money anymore. Just tell them to let me go!”
They held up their phone, showing a screenshot of a payment transfer.
My eyes went wide.
“I don't even know you!”
Andrew cut me off, impatient.
“Enough. Stop making excuses.”
He turned to Vivienne, his voice softening like consolation.
“Today, you can do whatever you want to make yourself feel better.”
Vivienne's gaze drifted to the nightstand, landing on the photo frame lying facedown.
She picked it up with two fingers, then flicked open a lighter.
My voice cracked into something I didn't recognize.
“Don't burn it!!”
It was the last photograph of my parents. The only one left after they died.
I could no longer remember what their voices sounded like. Without that photo, there would be nothing left of them at all.
Vivienne scoffed.
“Scared now? Should've thought about that before.”
‘Click.’ A small, clean sound. The flame caught the edge of the photo and swallowed it whole, curling it into ash in seconds.
“No!!” I lunged forward.
“Joy! A photo can be restored, but spreading rumors like that is going too far! How can you still not see you're wrong?!”
Andrew barely held me down, the veins in his arms bulging as he locked my wrists.
Wrong? I was wrong, all right.
That year, I never should have spoken to the boy on the other side of the wall.
We were never from the same world.
I stared at the ash on the floor without blinking,
didn't even feel it when Vivienne tilted my face up.
She picked up a paint brush and dragged a big, slow X across my face, laughing so hard she could barely stand.
“That's what you get for messing with me.”
“Come on, Andrew. Take her out and show everyone what happens to people who cross me.”
Every last ounce of strength had drained from my body. They dragged me into a car and drove all the way to the school auditorium.
