PICS and IT DIDN'T HAPPEN

20. The Column

I didn't know our school has a newspaper until now as I'm looking at it in my hand.

Someone had dropped a copy into my locker.

It's not that the newspaper's existence bothers me, but it does make my blood boil when I'm on the front cover with Raylan and it's the story about our "romance."

I was wrong. This is not a newspaper. This is a third rate gossip magazine.

Why would anyone write about me and Raylan? And why anything about me at all?

I would've just let this go as a prank, or something that's not worth my time - since I'm sure nobody reads this anyway - if it weren't for the fact that it is very detailed.

In fact the person who wrote this got all the facts right: About Raylan and I being neighbors, about us knowing each other since pre school, about us even sharing custody of three kittens! Not all of this is public knowledge.

They got everything right, with the most abhorrent conclusion - that Raylan and I are a secret thing.

How could this person know such details about us?

"You ready?" Tess asks.

I look up from the paper. "Let's do this," I say.

Becca, Tess and I start marching towards the school's newspaper club that we had painstakingly managed to locate over a lot of phone calls to the other kids we know. Most of them simply said, "We've a newspaper?"

We reach the club room.

Dingy, dusty and dull. Definitely looks like a place where an article like this might've birthed.

Surprisingly, there are a few students in here.

"Who is Pam Jinclan?" I ask.

A girl who stands out from the rest of them moves back on her seat and says, "That's me."

She stands out because she doesn't look like someone with literary inclinations. On the other hand, she looks like she's the one pieces get written about. Tall, pretty, and fashionable.

We go to her and I slam the newspaper onto the table. "What crap is this?"

"Oh yeah, you are Ellie. Raylan's girlf-"

"Finish that sentence and you won't get out of here alive," I warn.

She stops.

"This is all a lie. There's nothing between me and him. Write something like this again and you'll be in trouble," I say.

"You're telling me you don't keep the kittens you rescued from the school in his room, where you feed and play with them?" Pam says, smirking.

She clearly knows enough about me, so she must know the truth too that there's nothing but bad blood between me and Raylan.

This girl is messing with the wrong person. I'm the badass who blackmailed even Raylan.

I take out my phone and pull up a photo of me and Frank.

"Here's my boyfriend," I say, showing it to her. Now this is not an information she could've received from whoever told on me since only my friends know about this.

Pam looks at the phone, surprised.

"And here's what I'm going to do," I say, "I will post this all across social media, along with your article, and say you and the newspaper club are nothing but a bunch of liars who make up false stories. And it won't stop at that. I'll keep sending this to every place you will have a job interview in future saying the person who's looking to work for them is a fraud. How does that sound?"

"You're lying," she says.

"About what? Me having a boyfriend or me ruining your potential career in journalism? If it's first, I could just ask him to post a lovey-dovey video message for his girlfriend online, and if it's the second, you will know if I'm lying or not as soon as you publish another article like this on me."

Pam swallows. "Alright. Alright. I'm dropping this. I won't write anything about you, and I really didn't know you are seeing someone."

"It seems the person you talked to had incomplete information. So...," I move close to her and look down on her face threateningly, "Who was it?"

---

"You!" I say throwing the newspaper on the table in front of Raylan, "Why the fuck did you tell her all these things?!"

I can understand Raylan doing something to annoy me, but this involves him too. He wouldn't put himself in that position.

I continue, "Don't tell me she has something on you. Since when you became so blackmailable? I can't have a competition in this. Tell me what it is and I'll take care of it."

He groans and sits back on his chair. "She has nothing on me. I did it as a favor."

"If you want to get into her pants, why on earth lie you have something going on with someone else?"

"It's not like that. It was a favor for Derek. And I didn't tell her there's anything between us. She just made that up."

"Why did you let her? Why did Derek needed that?"

"I owe him for a few things. And that girl is his girlfriend."

I take the newspaper and hit Raylan with it. "You sold me for your friend's girlfriend?!"

"Stop it," Raylan says, putting his arm up to protect himself. "I'll tell her not to write anything again."

"Don't you dare," I say, pausing my assault, "Don't you dare go anywhere near her. I'd already threatened her of the consequences if she wrote something like this again."

"I'm not surprised," he says, smirking.

One more hit across his shoulder before I give up.

There was a time I wished Frank was in the same school as mine.

But man am I glad he's not.

For as long as Raylan, Tony and their friends are here, I'll never have a normal high school experience.

They are turning me into a gangster, threatening people left and right. All that's left is for me to get tattooed and shave my head.

Or maybe I've just already started losing my hair and will go bald soon anyway with all this stress.

I turn to leave when Raylan says, "You're not taking this babe?"

I turn back and see the paper in his hand.

"You might want to paste it up on your bedroom wall," he says, smiling.

Killing him is the only way.

I charge at him, but my friends grab me and start pulling me away while I continue to shout details of how he'll die in my hands.

End of chapter

A/N - Can't believe it's three weeks already since we started. But I'm just getting started ;) Catch you tomorrow!