Like Wildfire

Chapter 7

"I was not born under a rhyming planet."

                                                                        -Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing

Trissa

"Hope, please don't do this! Everything will settle down soon. Please don't leave."

"I have to, Trissa." Hope tore around her bedroom, throwing clothes in the suitcase that lay open on her bed. "I can't stay here."

"Hope, it wasn't you in that video! You shouldn't have to run away!"

"Everyone at school thinks it's me! They all watched Cam call me a slut and cast me off!"

Cast me off? Seriously? What century is this? Trissa knew an eye roll right now would be counter-productive. "Hope, that's not exactly how it happened."

"Close enough." She finished packing and zipped the suitcase. "I need to get away for a while. Aunt Laura said I could stay with her for a few weeks."

"But Lubbock is so far away!"

"Exactly." Hope disappeared into the bathroom, returning a moment later with her toiletry bag. "Nobody knows me. Nobody will look at me like I'm the town tramp."

Trissa didn't like it and thought Hope was being slightly over-dramatic, but she did understand. In a town as small as Messina, you couldn't do anything without everyone talking about it. The sexting scandal was the hot topic right now, eclipsing even the mayor's prize poodle getting knocked up by the sheriff's pitbull. The resulting furor over the illicit canine romance had been ugly and people were forced to choose sides, but everyone wanted one of the puppies. Only the mayor's staunchest supporters were allowed the privilege of paying $800 for one of them. Scandal puppies were apparently a hot commodity, but this new gossip pushed the old one aside completely. "I'm going to miss you." Trissa choked the words out as her eyes filled.

Hope sat beside her on the bed and hugged her close. "I'll miss you, too, Trissa. But I have to go. At least for a while. Please tell me you understand."

"Yeah, I understand. But it sucks!" She sniffed and wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her sweatshirt.

"It definitely sucks!" Hope chuckled ruefully.

"I'm going to figure this out. I'm going to find out who did this and you're going to come home." Trissa stood and walked to the window, gazing out into the gathering twilight. "Have you talked to Cam?"

"He hasn't called. Jerk," Hope muttered.

rissa privately agreed, but knew that delicacy and diplomacy were the right course for the moment. "Cut him some slack, Hope. He is reacting out of fear. He thinks he's lost you. Love can blind even the smartest people to the facts." And Lord knows Cam isn't the smartest person by any measure, she thought to herself, again choosing to diplomatically keep her statements in her own head.

"I also noticed how I'm the one getting branded a slut, and no one is rushing to say the same of whoever the guy in the video is! Yeah, sure, they're curious to find out who it is, since Cam made it clear with his very public meltdown it wasn't him; but they only want to find out who it is so they can congratulate him!"

"People are so primeval. It's like we've never left the 18th century. " Trissa felt bitterness stabbing inside her. This was precisely the type of reality that could ignite a fury in her.

"Why is it that I get called a whore, and he gets called 'lucky'?"

"It's just one more example of a goddamn double-standard."