Page 9 of The Wrong Side of Kai
Chyna doesn’t answer. Instead, she grabs my shoulders and stares straight into my eyes, her expression almost wild with concern.
What the hell’s going on?
“Do you want to skip classes? I’ll ditch with you. Let’s get out of Westerville. We’ll head into Columbus and. . .” She pauses to shake her head. “Or let’s hit up Cleveland. Anywhere that’s not here. Sound good?”
“Chyna, slow down,” I say. I’m confused. Is she upset about something? Why is she so desperate to leave? “Why do you want to skip class?”
Chyna’s face floods with horror. “Oh my God.” She drops her hands from my shoulders and her body seems to deflate. Her voice is almost a whisper as she says, “You haven’t seen it yet.”
“Seen what?” My heart rockets back and forth in my chest while my words feel like sandpaper in my throat. An immense feeling of dread slices through me as pieces of this morning’s puzzle start to slot together. “Chyna? What haven’t I seen yet?”
“Shit,” Chyna groans, collapsing back against a sink. She presses her hands to her face so that she doesn’t have to look at me. “I thought you’d be the first person it got sent to. . . I’m sorry. I really don’t want to show you this, but. . .” She straightens up from the sink and pulls out her phone, scrolling for a few seconds before she hands it over to me. “I’m sorry,” she says again. “I’ll slash Harrison’s truck tires for you.”
I stare at Chyna for a moment, her phone in my hands. I have no idea what I’m about to see, but a wave of sickness is building in the pit of my stomach and my hands are trembling. My heart feels as though it’s been squeezed to a pulp.
It’s a video.
I swallow and tap the screen, pressing play, and all the air is sucked straight out of my lungs.
It’s a video ofme.
A video of me at Maddie Romy’s party on Saturday. It feels as though I’ve been sucker-punched right in the gut.
In the video, I’m upstairs in that bedroom, sitting on Harrison Boyd’s lap. I smile at the camera, straight into the lens like a total sucker.
I feel the color drain from my face as the scene unfolds in front of me. I’m staring at Vanessa Murphy as though she’s some stranger. She climbs off Harrison’s lap and gets to her feet. She dances to the low background music, her hands in her hair, as she slowly peels off her clothes. The video loses focus as she slinks her way back to Harrison.
“You don’t want to watch the rest,” Chyna says, snatching her phone back. I’m relieved. She’s right: Idon’twant to watch the rest. I already know what happened that night. “Trust me,” she adds. “It doesn’t last much longer, and you can’t really see much, but—”
My mind goes dark with fury. “He fucking leaked a video of mestripping?” I nearly tear the damn sink off the wall, and I slam my hand down against the smudged and cracked mirror above it. Just how long was Harrison recording for? My body ignites with so much rage that I’m convinced I’m about to burst into flames right here in this bathroom. Heat radiates from my core like an erupting volcano.
How could Harrison do this to me? Is he seriously that pissed about me ending things that he’s set on ruining my life? I know how these things go. They do ruin your life. When Kristen Rogers’s nude selfies were leaked around school a few months ago, it was all anyone talked about for days. Me included. Because if it’s not you in the firing line then these kinds of things are easy entertainment. . . People might gossip about my sex life, but I’ve never been that unfortunate girl who’s texted private photos to the wrong guy. I used to roll my eyes at how stupid those girls were, but now. . . now I’m one of them, and it’s definitely not funny. It’s horrifying.
It’s clear now why everyone was acting so weird out in the hallway. It’s because they allknow. They’ve all seen it; I can guarantee that. Stuff like this spreads like wildfire. And all around Westerville, and probably all over Ohio too. Maybe even further, but I make my brain shut down at that.
“Chynaaaa,” I wail, throwing my hands back into my hair. I blow out fast breaths of air, trying to calm myself down from the sheer dread coursing through me. There’s nothing she can say to fix any of this. The video is out there. I need to find a way to hold my head up high as I walk out of this bathroom while knowing that every damn student in this school has now seen my naked body.
But that’s nowhere near the worst part.
The worst part is that Harrison has absolutely no right to share such an intimate video, and yet hehasshared it. All around school. To my closest friends. To people who barely even know me. Toeveryone. Whatever trust we had between us has been shattered into a million pieces. I didn’t want a relationship with him, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t care about him. But he clearly doesn’t care about me, and if he could do something like this, then he must havenever evercared about me at all, not even from the beginning. Because if he had a single shred of respect for me, then he would never share what we both knew were private moments.
It’s the worst betrayal possible.
My palms are clammy as I run them over my jeans, blinking down at a dirty patch on the floor. My breaths are labored and rapid, my heart is palpitating and suddenly I feel lightheaded, the entire room blurring around me. Am I actually going into cardiac arrest?
Chyna puts a hand on my shoulder to steady me. “He’s such an asshole,” she says, putting her phone away. She gives me a small, sympathetic smile. “But for the record, I think you look hot as hell in the video.”
It’s beyond inappropriate, but I love her for it. This is why we’re best friends. No judgment. Ever.
My mouth mirrors hers, though inside I feel like I’m crumbling. It takes all of my energy not to faint on the bathroom floor. “If there’s anything worse than having your sex tape leaked, surely it’s having abadsex tape leaked. So hey, it could be worse, right?” I say, trying my hardest to display a cool exterior, but inside I am rocked by the shock. I don’t believe my own words – this is as bad as it gets.
My eyes are damp with tears that threaten to fall, but I’m fighting to hold myself together. I’m flooded with so many different emotions, but the only one I can focus on is fury. I’m going to hunt Harrison down, I think, realizing I know exactly where he is. “He’s in my Bio class,” I blurt, and before Chyna can speak, I’m bursting through the bathroom door and into the empty hallways.
That feeling of betrayal is pulsing through me, fueling my steps.
It’s always alright for the guy, I think as I race down the hall. Sure, Harrison is in the video too, but no one cares about him. No, they’re all judging me. Judging me for hooking up with him at that party. Judging me for being easy. Not like they didn’t already think that, anyway. But now they have proof. They have something to use against me. Something they can use to break Vanessa Murphy, which I’m sure is what a lot of people have been waiting for all these years. I’m perfectly aware that the girls in this school, even the ones I’m friends with, secretly judge me for the attention I get from guys. I’ve never dwelled on it too much, but I guess it’s because of their own insecurities, their jealousies and fears. Who knows? I don’t want to hurt anyone, but I’m not playing those games. And the guys. . . well, some of them don’t like the fact that I would never look twice in their direction, while others don’t like the fact that I’ve ended the flings I’ve had with them. I’ve always got what I want, and that’s rubbed people up the wrong way. Now it’s payback – for them at least. Now they can gang up against me, glad it’s time for things to not go my way.
I’m walking faster and faster. I need to have this out with him.
