I want to take a moment to apologize for any errors remaining in the text. Unfortunately I'm unable to find an editor who will agree to edit a story of this length without compensation, so I'm forced to do it myself. I like to think I'm decently skilled at it, but familiarity means almost everyone will miss errors in something they wrote themselves. Hopefully there aren't so many that it renders the story unreadable.
Also a content warning; from here on there are scenes of slightly more intense violence than has been present in previous chapters.
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Nineteen
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Robin
The week had been relatively normal, at least compared to the past several. First of all, no one I knew had gotten arrested (well...Conrad Volkipsey but he was the "obvious" drug peddler at school who got arrested every other month for something).
Second, nothing outlandish had happened related to me or Rhia. Rhia and I had sort of unofficially established our own "harems"; Rhia had Kathleen and Talia (or Doctor Lee), while I had Heather and Skylar.
And, of course, nobody had died. I had to really consider how fucked up my life had become that "nobody died" had become a benchmark for how things were going.
Of course, things weren't rosy by any stretch.
Doctor Lee stopped by the house regularly in the guise of becoming our friend. Despite Rhia making it plain she wouldn't care, I didn't feel right trying to have sex with her. She was attractive enough, and simply watching her walk across the room now was enough to get me hard and wet, but it still felt weird. Doubly so because Skylar had been with me two more times and each time asked to make sure I was okay with her going to Rhia too. I know she'd begged off being with Rhia while my mom was home (her somewhat aggressive reminders to everyone that she was okay getting it on with anyone, anytime, in any combination was a bit much for Kathleen and Talia to take), but I had been driving home from school on Thursday and yesterday and had seen her car headed the other way. She could have been going anywhere, but unless she was headed to the next town over there wasn't anything in that part of town except my house.
It didn't bother me, but it actually upset me that it didn't bother me.
Despite how much of a joke it was to everyone, I'd always respected Jemma for her virginity stance. Sure, she screwed around with the twins and Alexa, but even then it was obvious to me that she had feelings for Alexa.
It was what had actually triggered my own fantasy.
I only partially stayed a virgin (and, let's be real, avoided dating altogether) because of my dedication to schoolwork and activities. If I was honest, I bought in fully to the idea that boys only wanted one thing from girls. I certainly had enough evidence for confirmation bias to back up that view. When I was feeling honest or hard on myself, I still went back and forth with myself on whether I'd agreed to date Brad because I actually felt something for him and wanted to give it a try, or if it was just because it would get everyone off my back about dating while literally ensuring I wouldn't have to worry about him getting into my pants.
And if it was the latter, I was willing to say God or Fate had a severe case of irony.
All of which led to my current frustration. Being crude about it, I needed to fuck, and I needed to fuck a lot. It wasn't practical for me to find multiple girls that would fall in love with me. You could find stories about guys or (very rarely) girls with harems of women that were all in love with them and didn't claw each other's eyes out in fits of jealousy, but they were all fantasy.
But...was one too much to ask?
Skylar had always been a slut. She wore the label proudly and boasted about hitting a body count of 100 in just her freshman year at college. She was just enjoying the new experience. Heather was a friend with benefits if anything. She enjoyed the sex, but she'd admitted to me at one point that part of the reason she was able to let herself go was that she knew there was no obligation; I wasn't after her or her parents' money, I wasn't trying to get her on my side for a case. I just needed to fuck. That lack of attachment (plus whatever was in my cum and precum) let her just slide into a guiltless frenzy of sex.
Katrina was a sticky problem, literally and figuratively. I think everyone except Jemma assumed I'd stopped going to see her since Skylar was available. In reality, I'd seen her three days out of the last five we were in school. She kept begging for my cum, and she offered me ridiculous promises to cum inside her. After last time she'd threatened to start charging me again if I didn't finish in her.
I felt like I was leading her on, somehow, but that didn't make any sense to me. Then again, she'd probably drank a gallon of my cum at this point and even though I had "P in V" sex with her, I never finished that way. Skylar had hunted me down and dragged me into a bathroom stall at the mall after just one encounter; I half expected Katrina to be full-on stalking me by now, but I never saw her outside of school. She didn't even approach me during school. Maybe because I fucked her to orgasm?
I would ask Rhia about it, but even talking to Brad and all of us for weeks she still didn't grasp our concept of relationships. She would probably just be confused about why I hadn't cum in her, not seeing a problem with any of the changes that had happened. Including mine.
Bitterness was possibly another reason we didn't get along much anymore.
I checked my watch and hurried down the hall to catch Jemma exiting her class. The overt stuff like what the "Jewel Twins" had done to Jemma's locker had calmed down after Beckenridge tried to suspend Jemma for being a "disruptive influence" and Heather had come down on him like the wrath of God. Jemma got to stay in school, the twins and their cronies got a talking-to courtesy of Principal Andrews, and Jemma's locker actually worked now, though she didn't leave anything in it.
Beckenridge probably should have gotten fired, but he was one of the OG good-ol'-boys of Cumberway; half the school board were drinking buddies with him, and the rest benefitted from his years playing pro football when he'd given generously to local businesses his friends started up.
Unfortunately, as Jemma's psychologist had mentioned once, children are all sociopaths, and teenagers were barely removed from that. Jemma still got people trying to shove, bump, and otherwise abuse her as she moved through the halls. She said she could handle it and I believed her, but the amount of bullshit she had to deal with dropped when I was around. I think it had helped when some skank tried bumping into me instead of Jemma and ended up on her ass.
I didn't know and I was afraid to ask why I was stronger. I thought it might just have to do with my size. Fat people are stronger than thin people who don't work out, just because they need all the extra muscle to move themselves around. It's not healthy muscle, and a weightlifter of equivalent weight will still be stronger, but it's just a matter of physics. I would never weigh 120 again unless I was sick; at a full 6 feet of height it wouldn't be healthy.
Still, I did seem abnormally strong. I'd guessed Rhia's strength came because she'd grown up in a higher gravity, and I was still nowhere near as strong as her. But I was definitely still stronger than average. Maybe my muscles got denser or something?
"Hey!" I called out to Jemma as she headed for the stairwell.
"You don't have to walk me to every class, you know," she said, but she smiled warmly at me.
"It's not a big deal. None of my teachers care if I show up late," I said.
"Because they're worried you'll start teaching the class for them," Jemma joked.
"I would never do that...well...maybe with Kelridge. The woman is so old school and there are better ways to teach-whoa!"
My time playing video games had improved my hand-eye coordination and reflexes. It wouldn't have mattered a few weeks ago, but with my post-Rhia-sex body, I was bigger and had more muscles. So when I saw someone moving fast at Jemma I yanked her out of the way.
That meant the girl who tried to bump into her suddenly had nothing to stop her momentum. Which was in the direction of the stairwell. She sidestepped to try to regain her balance, but her foot went over the stair's edge. Then so did she.
Her leg hit one of the stairs with a loud cracking pop that didn't sound natural, and a second later her scream echoed through the concrete corridor. More shouts joined it as students dodged the falling girl, before several people grouped up halfway down braced themselves and stopped her tumble. It was only when she pulled herself to the wall as she tried to cradle her leg that I recognized Ruby.
The crowd multiplied in seconds. Jemma and I couldn't have left even if we wanted to. Teachers plowed their way through to get control and, of course, Beckenridge stormed up the stairs. He look one look at Ruby in pain and the pair of us standing at the top of the stairs and glared, his look one of anger but a tinge of triumph.
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Principal Andrews's office was a touch crowded but it could have been worse. A whole cadre of Ruby's friends led by her sister had tried to be present as "character witnesses" but the principal had told them to wait outside "until we need you" with heavy undertones of "you aren't fooling anyone."
In the room were myself, Jemma, and Heather. Kathleen had offered to come but I told her Heather could handle it, and Jemma agreed. With none of us working except her and Rhia, finances were still tight and Kathleen was already in "time off debt" because of the few days she'd needed to take off right after she started.
Sitting on the other side of the room was Mrs. Hammersly, and I immediately understood what Jemma meant about her. She had a nice body partially hidden by a pantsuit, but she'd let the blouse remain partially unbuttoned so her cleavage was visible. Her hair was done up in a style I associated with the 1950s, the top curled to form "corners" on the sides of her head, with the rest hanging loose down either side, not quite reaching her shoulders, and her makeup was done in a way you didn't even notice unless you looked. But she looked like a mannequin, or a robot. I made eye contact with her once and had to choke down a gasp or maybe a scream. I didn't know how to describe it except that she seemed...empty.
Beckenridge leaned against the wall next to Principal Andrews's desk, but slightly closer to Mrs. Hammersly. He was also failing to be subtle about staring at the woman's cleavage. Principal Andrews was in a deep green skirtsuit, though you couldn't tell with her behind the desk, and was doing a much better job at being impartial.
"Mrs. Hammersly, how is your daughter?"
"She has a transverse fracture of her patella, likely from making hard contact with the edge of a stair. The doctors have her in the hospital pending surgery in a couple of days. They are tentatively estimating recovery to take five months, but given Ruby's temperament she's unlikely to follow recommendations about lack of activity and movement, so I suspect it to take seven," Mrs. Hammersly said.
Everyone needed a moment to process the fact that she'd rattled all of that off in a neutral tone and didn't seem bothered at all. If I'd shattered my knee I think Kathleen would at least have been in shock, if not angry and screaming.