Page 3 of The Fool

“Right, then,” Emma finally says to me before grabbing a hold of my hand, “time to get this party started. Dean, come back in a couple of hours, and I’ll have her ready for you.”

She blows him a kiss as he walks over to peck me on the cheek.

“Can’t wait,” he says with a suggestive waggle of his eyebrows.

This was the beginning of the end; the moment I began to realize that being just me was never going to be enough.

_____

Bea

“Is this really necessary?” I huff at the mirror as Emma vigorously straightens my hair; I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s slowly killing off my hair follicles.

“I’ve seen your profile and yes, it is necessary,” she sighs. “After all, you can’t expect to hold on to a major catch like Dean and not put some effort into it.”

“Hey, I do,” I argue, “I spend every weekend with him, and last month, I paid for us to go paintballing. I then acted the submissive girlfriend in front of the guys who, once upon a time, I would have been laughing and joking with. Guys who I could beat any one of them when challenged to an arm wrestle…well, before they developed muscles, that is. I kept a smile up all evening and even engaged in useless chit-chat with their sinfully boring girlfriends. I put on such a show, even Dean thought I liked them. Not to mention I gave him my…”

I fall silent and look away embarrassed, feeling annoyed that I let my verbal diarrhea run away with me.

“Virginity?” She smirks at me through the mirror. “And how long did you make him wait for that one? Two years, was it?” She almost laughs but the look I give instantly stops her. “Do you know how much shit he got for that? It was all over his profile page last year. Even the kids in my year were jibing him for not popping your cherry sooner. One person even suggested that maybe you were a guy, especially with the way you dress and all.”

“Seriously?!” I cry with outrage. “How the hell did people know? Surely that’s between Dean and me.”

“God, don’t you ever look on there?” she says in an almost disgusted tone of voice. “People just know, especially when you’re in high school. I lost mine ages ago.”

With those words, I spin the chair around and drop my mouth open in shock, looking akin to a gaping fish out of water. I didn’t even know she had a boyfriend.

“Emma,” I finally manage to say, though still sounding utterly flabbergasted, “why didn’t you tell me? Who with?”

For a moment or two, I think she’s going to break down in tears, she looks that sad, but then she shakes it off and grins back at me with one of her online fake smiles.

“Oh, some guy I went on a date with a few times; a college guy,” she announces like it’s something to be proud of. “Losing your virginity isn’t a big deal anymore. Men expect you to go that bit further, you know? Look at Love Island; you need to be beach body ready and looking like a porn star twenty-four-seven.”

“I’m going to ignore that whole pile of S-H-I-T you just said and focus on the important bit here,” I reply, suddenly standing up to match my baby sister’s stance. As her big sister and best friend, I have to show her that I’m here for her, that I will protect her if she needs me to. “What happened? After you slept with the college guy?”

“Well, he had to go back to college,” she shrugs like it’s no big deal. “I wasn’t expecting a marriage proposal or anything.”

She can’t fool me though, I can see the tears threatening to fall, as well as behind the mask she’s trying to wear, so I take her into my arms and let her give me the truth. With relief, she takes it and eventually sobs against my shoulder for what feels like a long time. Closing my eyes to her muffled cries, I weep with her.

“It’s fine, I’m fine,” she eventually says with plenty of sniffing, desperately wiping underneath her eyes so her mascara won’t run.

“Listen, Emma,” I begin, feeling frustrated at her trying to brush over her pain, like it’s an everyday occurrence to lose your virginity to a complete stranger who blanks you afterward. I grip both of her shoulders with a look of authority before telling her that it is not ‘fine’ at all. “Promise me, you will save the next time for someone you really care about, and who really cares about you. He took advantage of an underage girl, that is not ‘fine’.”

“Oh, Bea,” she smiles, “you are so blissfully naïve to the real world.”

I look at her with a furrowed brow, only now realizing this is truly what she believes. This is how she has been schooled to think, through peer pressure and the damn media blasting out mindless crap twenty-four-seven. She’s a smart girl with amazing grades, but when it comes down to it, she believes in all this reality TV, social media, barbie doll beauty bullshit. How has it come to this?

I couldn’t sleep that night; I was too busy worrying about Emma and how everything is beginning to affect her. My little sister, my best friend, lost to what society expects teenage girls to aspire to. She was like me before the hormones hit, so how did we end up so different? How can I help her if I don’t understand any of it? How can I keep hermyEmma without losing myself in the process?

I never expected to find the answers to those questions; not in one sleepless night anyway.

I never expected to have her betray me in the worst possible way, shortly before Nathaniel Carter’s party.

I never expected a lot of things to happen that night or the days that were to follow.

I never expected my heart to stop beating. But it did. In more ways than one.

Chapter 2

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