absolutely fucking covered in it.
I carefully limp my way out the door, waiting until I’m off my stoop before shaking the glitter off. It barely works, of course. Even when I pull off my shirt and drag it down my face and arms, it’s still stuck to me.
I have to choose between taking a second shower and making it to the dining hall in time for lunch. It’s not really much of a choice, but I still spend a solid moment debating inside my head. It really says something that lumbering into the dining hall covered in silver sparkles is the least worst part of my day. Even putting the hood of my sweater up to hide my glitter-dusted hair does nothing to disguise the fact that I’m covered in the shit. I get my lunch to go, but not before the kitchen staff and half the students notice.
“Love the look, Mr. Wilcox,” one particularly brave sophomore calls out as I pass by.
My shoulders tense and it takes everything I have, everything, not to unleash the pent up rage of the day on him, but I don’t. I keep walking, focused on what I have to do next. I can’t get my car back if I’m locked in a jail cell for assaulting a fifteen-year-old.
By the time the school day ends, I’m ready to jump off a fucking bridge.
One upside to losing my phone is that I have to use the office line to continue my quest to contact my dad.
For once, it doesn’t go instantly to voicemail.
“Hello?” he answers, sounding wary.
This would be the perfect time to have a calm and mature discussion with my father about consequences and penalties and how I’ve learned my lesson. He’ll want to hear that I’m going to be better, and that I understand the position I’ve put him in, and that I’m ready to step up and be the Wilcox he raised me to be.
I take in a deep breath. “You took my fucking car?! How the fuck am I supposed to get to my PO? My job? Do you fucking realize what you’ve—”
Click.
I slam the phone down hard enough to hear a crack, and then I rest there, forehead propped on the heels of my palms. I don’t know how much time passes. I just stew in my own head for a bit, wondering how I’m supposed to make this work when everyone is so hell-bent on me failing.
I don’t even look up when the door to the office opens.
“Okay,” Georgia says, sounding out of breath as the door clicks shut behind her. “We have an hour before dinner starts and I just saw Jamison leaving campus with his little sister, so we won’t have to worry about him needing the office.” Jamison is the swim captain who shares my office. From the little sliver of space between my arms, I see her reach beneath her skirt and shimmy her panties down her legs. “I’m thinking we can start with some light oral and then a quick and dirty fuck, and be out of here in time for dinner, then class after that—”
“Class is cancelled tonight,” I mutter.
“Oh. Really?” There’s a pause, and then an excited, “Then our night’s free! We can go back to your place and—”
“No.” My teeth grind. “I don’t feel like fucking right now.”
She sucks a click with her teeth, pulling her underwear back up. “Like I said, that’s not how this arrangement works. You’re the one who said you always wanted it, because—and I quote—‘I’m a guy’.”
I finally look up at her, exploding, “I have no car, no phone, and a dozen different assholes breathing down my goddamn neck, so being your sentient dildo is pretty fucking far down the list of my priorities right now!”
Her head snaps back in surprise, eyes roaming over my face. “Oh. Shit.” Her lips pull back in a cringe, voice small when she guesses, “Glitter bomb?”
Before I can answer, the door bursts open, and Micha skitters through, flapping a paper. “No time to explain! You have to sign this.” He slaps it onto the desk—a class dismissal form from the front office. I get this hot spike of useless anxiety that he could have just walked in me with my face planted between Georgia’s thighs, but it’s brief. Mostly I’m honed in on his nail polish, all purple and full of glitter.
Glitter.
Micha, standing beside me earlier on the pool deck, watching me check my phone.
Micha, the day that my clothes