Page 67 of As You Walk On

“When do any of us ever talk about our lives outside of Brook-Oak? It’s only relationships or the occasional hookups.” There’s something accusing in her voice. Like she knows what parts of Aleah are only shown for the Brook-Oak crowd and what she’s keeping close to her chest.

I wonder if Aleah’s ever told Lexi—anyone—about life at home. Her dad or Uncle Mario. Her mom.

“Everyone’s different at school. Who’s interested in a girl secretly sitting at home on Friday nights reading teen rom-coms?” huffs Makayla.

“That’s low-key judgmental, don’t you think?” I say.

“It’s the truth.”

“Bullshit.” I shake my head. “You don’t know if anyone would like you any less if they knew you were into that. Also, is life that hard for you? Being at the top?”

“I thought you liked the attention,” Luca confesses, shrugging one shoulder.

“You meanthis?” Makayla thrusts her phone screen in our faces. “Getting this shit every day? That’s not attention. It’s fucking...”

Again, her voice dies, but in a broken whimper. A choked death that doesn’t require a follow-up. The words on the screen are enough.

Comments on her main Instagram page. DM after DM. Screenshots of text messages. A compilation of the foulest, grossest, most unrestrained sexual commentary I’ve ever seen. Most of it from a host of fuckboys—some recognizable from their bite-size profile pictures, others merely anonymous, probably fake accounts.

I try to swallow down the bile racing up my throat as I read.

It’s one thing to see these things play out on TV. I’ve never known anyone in real life dealing with it.

Watching Makayla’s breaths come fast and frustrated, her eyes on the brink of tears, shakes me.

“Why don’t you go private?” I ask around the nausea.

Aleahpfftsloudly. “Why should she have to?”

“For protection?” I offer, unsure if that’s the right word.

It’s clearly not. Aleah’s face darkens.

“Oh, that’s right! Girls should hide in order to be safe. Keep their lives private or suffer the consequences for being themselves.We should ‘protect’ ourselves.” Even her air quotes are threatening. “While boys get to, what? Exist unchecked? Free balling, no worries, mansplaining on level ten because the patriarchy is real, y’all! Fucking deal with it.”

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

“Itis,” Makayla argues.

“We have to hide for safety...” Aleah drags a finger between me and Luca. “Instead of boys like you speaking up when this shit happens. Stop co-signing your vile-as-fuck brethren with your silence.”

Luca and I don’t have the words to defend ourselves. But is that what I’m doing? Defending instead of listening?

I suck in my lower lip, nodding.

“It only took one boy to start all of this,” says Makayla. “Sam Bailey.”

I barely recognize the name. A faceless, trophy-winning, former jock at BOHS pops up in my head.

“Well, two boys,” Makayla amends. “Sam and Cole Nelson.”

It takes everything inside me not to react.

Cole. Jay’s SpeedEx buddy, Cole.

Makayla gives us the abridged version of where her—degrading, undeserved—nickname originated. Her sophomore year, at a similar party. She and Sam Bailey hooked up. Completely casual. Then Sam bragged to his best friend, Cole, wholikedMakayla. She knew but wasn’t interested. Naturally, that means Makayla broke some form of “bro code” by having sex with Sam. Cole and Sam started telling people Makayla had sex with both of them. She was “that girl at a party who liked to have fun.”

“Because being sexual or enjoying intimacy is wrong for anyone who’s not a cis man,” she says, sighing. “But for them, it’s cool. Acceptable. No slut-shaming involved.”

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