In Her Shoes

Chapter 19: TBH

So in the end, there turned out to be a pretty good sized amount of people with personal vendettas against the Jocks. We even had two more guys. That was all the good news. The people Jenni and rounded up were Maria, Carrie, Denise, Shelley, a few others and the guys.

The bad news was besides the two guys (obviously) and Anna and Jenni, I dated all of them.

Yay. Awkward, much?

Even though this was my plan I was not enjoying where this was all going.

All us girls and guys (I still mentally counted myself in the guy category) ate lunch together and discussed the reasons we had to get back at the cheerleaders and football players. Denise had said that Meaghan spread rumors around school that she was pregnant, somehow word got out to her parents. They still look at her with suspicion whenever she goes out.

The Jocks had said that Shelley was a lesbian because she dated one of the football players and never "put out" for him. Plus she never really dressed up or wore make-up. People still called her a dyke in the hallway.

Carrie had apparently been set up in a Maria-like situation, except the cheers had told her one of the guys from football whom she had a crush on wanted to meet her in the restroom. The boys restroom. She went timidly and the Cheers ended up locking her in and she got in trouble by the principle.

There were more, and as I sat listening to their stories one-by-one their faces suddenly all clicked back to my memory, and I felt my soul slink out of my body and hide beneath the table.

I was there; for most of these. If I wasn't the direct cause I was the encourager. Everything went through me and even if I didn't feel like doing myself someone would remind about it and when I'd give them the "okay" they'd do it.

I was joking about locking Carrie in the bathroom!! Carrie is so sweet and innocent I jokingly said it'd be funny to see if locking her in the boys bathroom would traumatize her and maker her a bad girl. I remembered when Shenise, Emina, Ronny and Aaron came up to me and said they were going to test it. I laughed and said "go for it; let me know how it turns out." But it was a joke! A FUCKING JOKE!!!

But according to Carrie's threatening tears and tale of how degrading it was when her parents thought she was sleeping around, she didn't think it was very funny.

Shit.

But maybe I knew. I did know how much power I had over people. Shit, I could wear a dress to school and the next day every guy would be trying to sport one. But the things I did were never meant to hurt anybody! They were funny! Well..to me...

Suddenly I felt a light hand on my knee, giving me a reassuring, friendly pat. I looked down and followed the owner and was surprised when the arm led up to Aiden. He looked at me once and smiled encouragingly, forgivingly almost, then replaced it back on top of Jenni's as he listened to the next jock horror story.

Ok. Eventually we would have a talk. Whether he knew my secret or not, he was damn sure acting like it. But just in case he didn't, and he was just being typical, kind-hearted Aiden, l had to be careful of what I said. I worked that out in my head as the last of the stories rounded up.

So by the end of lunch, and after all the stories, we had agreed upon three things:

1) We all had a personal reason to get back

2) Since they seemed so oblivious to the way they hurt people, we would try to let them know how it feels so they know why its wrong; and

3) Whatever we did would inflict no physical pain or murder attempts.

After all the sob stories we became like a little family. We had all bonded sharing our most vulnerable sides to each other first. It was an instant connection. I looked around at the small group of misfits with awesome personalities and wondered why I never noticed them before.

'Because you were sitting so high up on your throne you never bothered to look down at all the 'common people' ' a small voice inside of me answered. I recognized the voice, it was the voice that always whispered that I shouldn't take that sixth shot, or maybe I could spare one minute of my oh-so valuable time to text her back like I promised; but it was so used to me shooing it away like a pesky mosquito it seemed to stop trying. I was surprised to hear it speak so loudly again.

"I know," I answered aloud.

"What was that?" Jenni asked mid-conversation.

"Um; I know right?" I said hoping to play it off although I had no idea what she was talking about.

Lucky for me it worked. "Yeah exactly! Because...."

I wasn't really listening to anything else. It was time for stage four of the plan; the part I was dreading the most:

Girls night.

Woopty-fucking-doo.