The Backup Girlfriend (Grove Valley High #2) - Emma Doherty Page 0,20
my eyes burn.
When you’re obsessed with the ex who dumped you and figure out you’re too dumb to graduate high school.
I want to burst into tears.
She’s telling everyone my private, embarrassing, humiliating news.
And that’s not even the worse of it, because when I click to open the link, I see the video is of me in the bathroom on Saturday night. Sasha is blocking the view of me for the most part, but for one moment she turns around and you can see me, crying my eyes out, half naked, looking just about as pathetic as it’s possible for a person to look.
I look back up, and Sarah’s at the end of the hall, a cruel smile on her face.
She’s just sent that to everyone.
That nasty bitch.
I hate her in this moment. I hate her, and she’s supposed to be my friend. I hate her because I’m at the end of high school and I don’t even have a friend who cares enough about me not to try to humiliate me in front of everyone so she can belittle me and take my spot, as some sort of revenge for the way we’ve always treated each other.
The worst thing about this is that Sarah probably thinks she’s justified because of the way I’ve treated her over the years. Because I knew her boyfriend from sophomore year was cheating on her and didn’t tell her, because I bitched at her about anything and everything, because I took her for granted and was a shitty friend to her when she probably needed me.
She definitely thinks I can take it and I deserve it, but right now, I really can’t take it.
And no matter what I’ve done to her, I’ve never purposely been cruel, and I don’t deserve this.
I take a step after them, knowing I should follow them into the cafeteria, walk over to my usual table, and let them know they don’t bother me, knock Sarah off her high horse and remind her exactly who she’s dealing with, but in this moment, as I remember Chase’s face at the party and then how uncomfortable Aaron looked as he unhooked my arms from around his neck, how straight-up horrified Brendon was when I was hitting on him…
I know Sarah’s right.
I am dumb and stupid and pathetic and a loser.
I take a step back, dangerously close to my tears spilling down my cheeks, but one thing I know for absolute certain is that I can’t cry in front of them.
Not just Sarah and the girls she’s with, or the junior girls I know are still watching me.
Them. All of them.
I need to get out of here. I turn on my heel and walk down the hallway with my gaze straight ahead, take a swift right into a stairwell, and cut out through the exit, walking quickly across the path to the outside gym, which I know from experience is never locked. I step through a side door, ignoring the entrance to the gym and instead walking into the female bathrooms at the end of the hall.
This is the quietest bathroom in school.
I know because this is the bathroom I used to hide out in during those first months of high school when I had no one to talk to.
It’s old, with peeling paint and old-fashioned sinks—apparently the school’s renovation budget doesn’t stretch to this bathroom—and with it being so far from the cafeteria and the rest of the school, it’s relatively deserted at all times.
This is where I’d come when I wanted to disappear, when nobody talked to me and I had no friends. There was no way I was confident enough to sit in the cafeteria by myself, no way I’d dare approach another group to ask if I could join them, and no way I’d even sit in the library doing work. My paranoid self thought people would just assume I was sitting there because I had no other friends, and it didn’t even occur to me to just try talking to people. I was way too self-conscious to do that, and looking at it now, three and a half years later, that’s exactly what I’m doing again.
I guess I’m back to where I started.
I almost laugh out loud at that. I’m back exactly where I started, no high school diploma and no friends.
I lock myself in a stall then lean against the door, and only then do I let the tears fall.