Should Have Known Better

Should Have Known Better 10

            Juliet did her best to remember Jay’s advice and not snap at any of her fellow students at Ryford. The rumours didn’t let up, but they didn’t get any worse either. Juliet could ignore them, it wasn’t like they affected her very much. She didn’t really care what they said about her, but it also got exhausting to ignore it for some reason. She could feel people looking at her, whereas before they simply looked past her. Ryan, Cole, and the others had never understood why she hadn’t made friends at Ryford when she’d transferred schools. They had never understood that she liked the eight hours a day when no one bothered her. Juliet could talk, and laugh, and party with her friends all weekend and every afternoon, but it was nice to have school hours to think. She paid attention in the lessons, did her work, and had some peace and quiet, which was nice, especially after the constant noise at home since her parents’ separation and moving out with her mother.

            Except now she didn’t have the same peace and quiet. Now there were whispers and stares.

            “I heard she was the biggest slut in the city.”

            “I heard she was actually a prostitute, that she needed the money.”

            “That’s probably why she transferred here, she didn’t want everyone knowing anymore.”

            “You think she screwed her teachers at her old school?”

            “I heard the principal found out when he called for an escort.”

            Juliet audibly scoffed when she heard that one. She had been fifteen when she transferred to Ryford. Really, she had been working as an escort at the age of fifteen? What kind of lifetime movie of overcoming difficulty did they imagine her life was?

            “Jake said she wanted money to sleep with him.”

            “She probably has every STI known the man.”

            The day could not end quickly enough. By the time the final bell rang, all she wanted to do was forget about the day. Take a shower and then get into bed and watch a movie that she didn’t have to pay attention to and not think about anything at all. And never think about Jake Bayer ever again. Yes, she thought as she trudged up the front garden path, she just needed to sleep for about fourteen hours and things would be better.

            Juliet let herself in through the front door, but as soon as she stepped over the threshold her mother’s voice came charging toward her ears.

            “I said no, Tom!” her mother screeched. “God damn it!”

            Juliet stopped in her tracks. This was the last thing she needed today. Another scream and a string of profanities followed by a crash suggested that her mother had hurled the phone she had been shouting into across the room. They had bought a lot of telephones since the divorce.

            This time, however, the phone hadn’t seemed to break, because Juliet could hear her mother mutter to herself as dialed another number and started to screech into it again. “That bastard! You know what he just said to me?”

            Juliet sighed. She was probably talking to her divorce lawyer, a short, balding man who did nothing but encourage the animosity between the former couple. Like they needed any help with that. Her parents had fought often, but since the separation it seemed like they did nothing but. Her father had a job and still worked at least, but her mother’s sole occupation in life seemed to be to complain about her husband, scream at him over the phone, and plot how to get as much money from him in the divorce as possible. When she got into one of these tirades, she would probably be up until four in the morning calling and being called by Juliet’s father to call each other names.