[
Author's note: All named characters, specifically characters involved in sexual activity, in the story are over the age of 18
]
Prologue: Bullies
It's never a good sign when you walk up to a bunch of girls giggling their asses off in a huddle. It's an even worse sign when one of them spots you approaching and warns the others, sending them in a fit of even more intense, albeit hushed, giggles.
"Oh!" said one of the girls. "
Hiiiii,
Shannon!" Her sing-song voice exaggerated a friendliness that was nowhere near genuine.
Oh god, now what?
I thought. These girls had used me as a punching bag for the past three-and-a-half years. A familiar dread washed over me.
Simone, the leader of the wolfpack, took a step towards me and blocked my path. "
Someone
has been holding out on us," she cooed. She raised a hand to brush my hair from the front of my face, causing me to flinch. The rest of her cohort had a great laugh at my expense for that.
I blushed, and tried to sidestep her.
Just leave me alone!
I wanted to shout in frustration. I knew, however, that this would just prolong the torture, so I just kept it to myself.
I hugged by arms tight tight against my chest. "I don't know what you're talking about," I mumbled.
This just made the girls close in around me."I don't believe her," one of the other girls said to another. "How could she not know?"
Simone's eyes never left mine. The smile on her face was almost predatory. "Of course she knows, don't you sweetie?" her voice was cloying with sarcastic friendliness. "Little Miss Rocket knows all about it."
I frowned. "
Rochet
," I corrected instinctively, instantly regretting it. Never let them see they're getting to you. I expected Simone and her wanna-bes to come after me with another zippy insult, but instead her smile turned feral.
"Oh no it isn't," she hissed. "Now we know the truth." On the last word she slammed a box against my chest. I barely caught the box with a free hand as Simone and her crew cackled wildly and abandoned me in the middle of the hallway trying not to drop everything on the floor.
The bell rang.
Fuck!
I was already late for class.
I finally managed to turn the box around so that I could see what it was. The experience was surreal, as if my brain was working in a jumbled order. I knew it was an old VHS tape, something I think my parents would have watched years ago, but with lots of tiny thumbnail pictures all over it. I turned it around so I could see the front cover, and nearly dropped all of my books anyway.
There, on the cover, sporting an early 1990s moussed hairstyle and a chestful of hair, was my father. Naked. Lying back on a couch with his legs spread, a censorship bar covered an implied enormous penis.
The over-the-top banner shouted that it was "too much cock for any one woman!" and "Deep Throat Contest!" In big, bold letters, unmistakeable as it was unmissable, was the top billing: "Rod Rocket and His Incredible Missile!"
I wanted to die.
I could feel my face flush hot and red with embarrassment, and wanted to drop the cassette in disgust. If I did that, though, someone else might find the tape and as it was I had no idea how to do damage control. I immediately tossed the video cassette into my backpack, and hustled off to class. There was no time to put it into my locker. If there had been a discrete trash can somewhere I would have tossed it, but there just wasn't an opportunity to do so and not get caught.
"And where is... welcome to my class, Miss Rochet," came the sarcastic drawl of the teacher. "I'm glad to see we aren't hindering your busy schedule,
too much
?"
"Sorry, Mr. Rawlins," I muttered, and slinked to my desk. All I wanted was to was hide in the back of the room and hope that the earth would open up and swallow me whole. Unfortunately for me, Mr. Rawlins liked to "encourage class participation," so had the desks in the room arranged so that they faced each other in two rows on either side of space where he liked to walk. Just my luck, I had the misfortune of sitting right across from Simone. Of course.
I drew my hair down in front of my eyes and tried to pretend that if I didn't look at her or her clique, they would just leave me alone. It was a stupid fantasy, of course, as all it did was put an even larger target on me. Mr. Rawlins drawled on about the reading assignments, but neither Simone nor myself were listening. One of her psycho bitch friends caught Simone's attention, and made a gagging motion with her hand. Simone guffawed into her hand.
It was not a subtle gesture, and got Mr. Rawlins attention - just as it was designed to do.
"Yes, Simone?" Mr. Rawlins said, sighing. "Something to share with the class?"
"Well, Mr. Rawlins," Simone said too-sweetly. "You know me, I don't like to be a snitch." She looked straight at me, the evil smirk on her face giving me all the warning I was going to get of the trouble I was in.
This got his attention, and sent the hairs on the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end.
"What is it now, Simone?" Mr. Rawlins said, but I could tell that he actually had more than a sliver of interest and curiosity in what she had to say.
"Well, I think that everyone has the right to their own, private..." she leaned in conspiratorially, and placed her hand to her mouth as if she were whispering a secret into his ear, instead of broadcasting to the whole class, "
perversions
. But they should at least keep them out of a public school, where there are
minors
present." She swept her hand wide to the class at large to illustrate her point. In truth, we were all seniors about to graduate, but don't let facts get in the way of good showmanship.
"Is there a particular point to this speech, Simone?" Mr. Rawlins asked. "Or do you just like hearing the sound of your own voice?"
The rest of the class laughed. I didn't, afraid that I would just infuriate her and make her do something more rash than she was already about to do. Simone flushed, and I knew that my caution wasn't going to help me at all.
"Shannon's got a porno in her bag," Simone blurted out. On cue, her minions all gasped in union, raising their hands to their gaping mouths in mock horror. Their choreography was so in sync it would have been humorous, if it weren't just pure evil.
Why me?
I pleaded to myself.
Why do they always pick on me?
"We saw her showing it off in the hallway, didn't we?" Simone looked around to her cohorts, who all nodded emphatically. "It was
gross
."
All eyes turned to me. I blushed even harder and looked down at my desk.
Mr. Rawlins sighed, obviously not buying any of Simone's theatrics. Nevertheless, she had put him in a very unfortunate position. By publicly announcing that I had pornography on campus, she had put
him
at risk. If he didn't do anything about it there would be parent calls, maybe even journalists showing up. In this day and age, who knew?
Everyone in the room suddenly started talking excitingly. The boys had never paid much attention to me before - the skinny girl with no tits, why would they? - but suddenly I was feeling very uncomfortable with the looks they were giving me.
"That's enough, everyone!" Mr. Rawlins snapped, and the fracas quieted down to watch what he would do next.
He came over to my desk, and looked down at me. "Shannon," he said, frowning. "Let me see your bag."
I looked up at him, and then reached down and lifted my bag to hand to him. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, trying to prepare himself for what he would find. He opened up his eyes and the bag, and peered inside. Reaching in, he seemed to find something, and pulled it up far enough to look at it without taking it out of the bag.
"I've got to say," he began, looking at me. I said nothing, and kept a neutral look on my face. "There are a lot of people who would prefer that you not have this in school."
He turned and lifted the contents of the bag to the room. "But I don't think this qualifies as 'pornography', Miss Tiller," he said as he thrust my copy of
The Catcher in the Rye
into the air for everyone to see. "Granted, at one point in time it was banned for being pornographic, but I'm sure I've heard the same words come from
your
mouth once or twice, if I recall correctly."