Best Friend's Boyfriend: The Sequel

Chapter 1

The first period bell rang and I looked at the five guys, seeing if they had just witnessed Cody ignore me so blatantly. Duke and Graham quickly exchanged looks and dodged off to class. Mattie's girlfriend walked up to him, grabbed his hand, and scanned me up and down with judging eyes before she pulled him off. Carter ran his hand through his hair, laughed awkwardly and fake coughed, saying, "We're not friends," before going on his way.

"Do you want me to walk you to class?" Jace asked, his blue eyes full of concern. I shook my head. I didn't want to bring Jace down with me. He didn't deserve that.

"I'll be okay," I said, pursing my lips into a forced smile as I did my best to hold back tears.

"Slut!" Brett Newman, a guy on the football team, 'coughed' as he walked by. His friends high-fived him and laughed.

"It was Cody Hayes, what do you expect?" a blonde girl he was walking with asked.

"It was Brooke Cooper, what do you expect?" Brett shot right back.

"Whoa man, what is that supposed to mean?" Jace took a step forward. I held my arm out in front of him before he did anything stupid. Brett was already gone by the time Jace finished his sentence, but it wasn't long until Sierra Nash, the captain of the soccer team made a comment.

"Is this another one of your best friend's boyfriends?" she asked, a satisfied smile on her face.

I bit the inside of my cheek, wishing I was anywhere but here. When I looked up, Faith White, a girl in the crowd Kelli and I used to run around with stood with Calvin Vince, her boyfriend of three years. I offered a smile, and she offered me her middle finger, telling me, "What you did to Kel is so fucked up."

I looked at Calvin, silently begging him to defend me, but I should have known he wouldn't. Instead, Faith flipped out, telling me not to even look at her boyfriend because she knew what I was thinking.

"Brooke, I can walk you to class. It's honestly fine," Jace insisted. "Or I can take you to guidance office if you want to report all this—"

"You should get to class," I cut him off. "I wouldn't want you to be late on your first day." He nodded, understanding I wouldn't let him help me, and went his way.

I was one of the last people to enter my first period English class. Normally in a class where I didn't have any friends, I could just sit down next to some girl and start a conversation about her outfit or ask if she watches Gossip Girl, or I could take the open seat next to a cute guy and start flirting with him. But I quickly realized all the girls hated me and all the guys thought I was a slut. So I took a seat in the back of the room and put my head down, praying I would draw any more attention. I could have sworn I heard a girl say, "I'm pretty sure that's her," but I was hoping I was just paranoid.

Our English teacher didn't even bother taking roll or forcing us to do those awkward first day icebreakers. The first thing she did was jump right into a discussion about the book we were supposed to read over the summer—which just so happened to be the greatest story of the most infamous whore of all time, The Scarlet Letter. God, get me out of here.

Most kids contributed very little to this class discussion, probably because they hadn't bothered reading it. But there was one girl, absolutely gorgeous with her long black hair and crystal blue eyes who led most of the conversation. She was so intelligible, offering extensive insight to the book. Most kids weren't even paying attention to her, but I was. Mostly because I knew she stopped talking about the book long ago—she was now talking about me.

"Although relevant to the time period, Hester was completely slut-shamed for what she did," the girl said. People only started listening when they heard the word 'slut.' Perfect. "Should she have cheated on her husband? No. Yes, he was in another country, and yes, he was completely wrong for her, but she was still married and cheating on him for any reason is not okay. But what's worse? Reverend Dimmesdale knew she was married, knew the sin he would be committing, knew the hell he'd be putting poor Hester through should people find out what they did, which, everyone found out, and yet he still slept with her."

I knew she wasn't comparing me to Hester, the clear victim of the situation. I was Reverend Dimmesdale, the one who knew it was wrong but did it anyway. I stared this girl down, silently challenging her to keep going. She completely embraced this challenge.

"But my bottom line is, you can't always blame the person who did wrong and made a mess of things. It's so easy to, but as the reader, we tend to only focus on one clear victim in a situation like that, which would be Hester. I think Dimmesdale is the victim, too," she said. Oh. I really couldn't tell anymore if she had been blatantly talking about me, or if I was just so paranoid that I assumed she was.

She continued, "I think we should feel bad for him that he got himself into a bad situation and although he put himself into it, he couldn't have thought everyone would find out, or else he wouldn't have done it. Nobody puts themselves in a situation where they know they'll eventually get ridiculed. I guess I'm just trying to say that nobody understands the situation unless you're in it, and the ones who are in it don't realize what the consequences are because they're stuck in such a...haze."

I glared at her. So she had been talking about me. She could have chosen another word. She chose 'haze' because she knew I'd immediately think of Cody Hayes. The class immediately thought of it too, shooting me looks and creating hushed whispers and laughs.

I couldn't sit here and take it anymore. Before I knew it, I was out the door and locked in a bathroom stall, crying my eyes out.