How It Ends by Catherine Lo (classic novels to read .txt) 📗

Just one more refresh, I promise myself. Then I’ll go to bed. There are more than a hundred responses to Courtney’s original status now. Imagine that. Over a hundred comments about how ugly and slutty and fat I am.

I break my promise and refresh the screen for another half hour before finally turning off the computer and crawling into bed.

I burrow under the covers and try to wrap my mind around what just happened. It’s bad enough that people I thought were my friends are saying horrible things about me, but almost worse that people I don’t even know have mean things to say. Why would someone who has never even talked to me take time out of their day to rip me apart online?

More than one hundred comments, and not one person defended me.

Just as I’m finally drifting off to sleep, my cell phone dings. I almost ignore it, desperate for the nothingness of sleep. Curiosity gets the better of me, though, and I lean over to find a text from a number I don’t recognize. I slide my thumb across the screen to unlock the phone, and there it is. Fucking bitch. My eyes snap open and I stare at the screen, wondering who sent it and how they got my number. I’m about to respond when another text comes in from another unknown number: Ugly slut! Everyone hates you.

Text after text arrives. I stop reading them. I just let the number of messages climb higher and higher. Tears stream down my cheeks as the phone vibrates in my hand over and over. My mind is screaming at me to shut it off and put it away, but I can’t. I lie there noting each message that comes in. Counting them without really counting. Accepting them like blows.

When the texts finally stop, I sit staring at my phone for a few minutes, and then I do something that I’m quite sure proves there’s something seriously wrong with me. I read them. Each and every one. Even though I know I should just delete them unread, some sick and demented part of me wants to know. So I read every hateful message.

When I’m done, I lie awake while the words float around in my brain. Three o’clock melts into four, and four o’clock turns to five, and I still haven’t slept at all. Every time I close my eyes, I see the words. Slut. Bitch. Loser. Fat. Stupid. Worthless. I hear angry, hate-filled voices hissing at me in the dark. Voices of people who used to be my friends.

Why?

I’m still the same girl who sat with them all at lunch last week. I’m still the girl Scott said he loved. How can I walk through one day and into the next and suddenly be so hated, when I haven’t changed at all? How can someone be considered pretty and popular one day and be a stupid, fat slut the next? Was there something in me that they’ve only just noticed?

I think of Madge and the way she looks at me—like something stuck to the bottom of her shoe. Has everyone seen that part of me now? Are they mad because I had them all fooled and now they’ve seen the truth? Do I deserve this?

I’ve spent hours thinking about myself and what I’ve done. It’s true that I wasn’t as careful as I should have been about sex. I didn’t make Scott wear a condom, and I wasn’t on birth control. Is that totally fucked up? Is that why everyone thinks I’m a freak? It’s a lie what Scott said—I wasn’t trying to trap him into anything, and I didn’t set out to get pregnant. I never thought of him as needing to be trapped.

Why is everyone so mad that I had sex with Scott? I can’t figure out why that makes me this horrid slut when all my friends are having sex too. Larissa can bat her eyelashes and play the innocent all she wants, but everyone knows she’s been sleeping with Jon since practically the day they started going out. Why aren’t people writing on her locker and sending her ugly texts? Where did I go wrong?

The sun is starting to come up. I don’t want to go to school today. I won’t go. Tomorrow I’ll hold my head high and pretend I’m okay. But not today.

Jessie

It’s been a whole week, and Annie still hasn’t come back to school.

This is not my fault. So why does my stomach churn every time I think about my message to Scott? I keep going back and rereading it until the pressure in my chest is unbearable.

I only meant to nudge him. He was going to find out at some point anyway. Annie said herself that she was going to tell him and that they’d make decisions about what to do together.

And it’s not my fault that everyone at school found out. That was one hundred percent Scott, the disgusting jerk. I can’t believe he turned out to be this person. I’d never have said anything if I’d known. He was supposed to be the quintessential hero, not a villain in disguise. What kind of guy drags a girl’s name through the dirt and then walks around school like he’s the victim?

Annie hasn’t responded to any of my messages, and her phone has been off all week. I keep hoping and praying that she’ll come back to school and everything will be okay. She’ll be tough and angry and sarcastic and funny, and she’ll bounce right back because she’s Annie and because Scott and Courtney and everyone else pale in comparison to her.

But day after day I wait by her locker to find no sign of her, and her desk sits empty in history class.

I can’t believe she’s still hiding out at home. She’s not allowed to be this fragile. She’s Annie.

Annie

Please God, tell me I’m imagining things.

I swear Madge is checking out