Page 261 of Filthy Elites

I wish I could just come home after school, maybe take a nap. I wish I could curl up on the couch with Mom and watch a movie, have no worries for at least a few hours.

I’m overwhelmed and feel like crying when I head out to my car, but I have to shake it off.

Since I’m not riding to school with Dare anymore and I don’t have my own reserved parking up front, I end up parked at the back of the lot, hustling my ass off to get to homeroom.

The teacher shoots me a dirty look when I run in late, making apologies as I head to my desk. My tummy rumbles as I fall into my seat and drop my things so loudly, everyone in the quiet room stares.

Behind me, I hear someone whisper, “How tragic.”

I look back at one of the rich girls Anae is friends with, her perfectly blended and glossed lips pouty as she feigns sympathy—whether at my raggedy appearance this morning, or my audible hunger, I’m not sure.

I shoot her a dirty look right back. Ordinarily, I would just ignore something like that, but I’m caught off guard by it. I don’t know why this random girl is being mean to me. Sure, she’s Anae’s friend, but she wasn’t there that day at the shop, and last I heard, Anae hadn’t put any kind of social hit out on me.

Whatever. I don’t care.

I turn back to face the front and try to get my things unpacked as quietly as I can. There was no time to stop at my locker, so my backpack is so freaking heavy.

It feels like people are staring when I walk out of class. I keep my head down, confused, as I hurry to my next class.

Peoplekeepstaring.

Since that’s highly unusual, it freaks me out a little.

Then, on my way to English class, I hear someone laugh and say, “Isn’t that the girl from the video?”

The girl she’s talking to chuckles and says, “Yeah. That sound was perfect.”

“I love when they’re top notch,” the girl says, tossing her blonde hair and smirking at me as she walks past.

Video? Sound?

I stop outside English class when I feel my phone vibrate.

My heart practically stops when I see a link and a screenshot from Anae’s phone number.

The screenshot shows a story someone posted on social media. It’s an old, dorky picture of me from environment club—back when I had time to be in school clubs—added to a background with text that reads, “Doing her part for the environment by giving up showering apparently.”

My stomach pitches as I swipe it away and click the link.

Clearly, it’s the video those girls were talking about. It was shot by the girl in class who called me tragic. She must have taken the video after I turned around. I’m hunched over, digging through my backpack, face flushed and hair a little frizzy. She added stench lines and animated flies buzzing around to indicate I stink, and then turned the camera around to show her face “prettily” cringing and lip syncing “ew” to the tone of a late night show host’s bit on SNL.

Generally, I am not a person who cares what people think about me, but I came into today already feeling raw as hell, and now to see someone purposely humiliating me for no apparent reason…

My eyes burn with tears that threaten to fall, but I don’t let them.

I tell myself it doesn’t matter, that they don’t matter, and the enjoyment Anae clearly got out of sharing those with me certainly doesn’t matter, but deep down, all I can think about is that Dare has probably seen them, and I wonder if he laughed at me too, even if just because his friends were.

Tears blur my vision. On impulse, I turn away from the door and head back to my locker.

Fuck it. I’m blowing off English class today.

Since English is the only class I have before lunch, and I’m certainly not going to show my face in the cafeteria, I head out to the quad and find a comfy spot beneath a shade tree.

I tell myself this is a good plan because now I can get a head start on my weekend homework. Given my lack of sleep last night, I doubt I would have been able to stay up late and do it tonight. That means I would have had to do it sometime this weekend, which I hate doing. Doing it this way frees up more time to spend with Mom.

It also means I’m so hungry my stomach feels like it’s caving in on itself. I have a couple of sticks of gum in my backpack, so I chew those while I work just to get a little sugar in my system, but it’s hard to concentrate when I’m so hungry.

Ignoring the hunger, I try to push through.

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