Confessions of A School Slut: A Story about Slut-Shaming ✓

Chapter Nineteen

"No, I'm not," he said and averted his eyes once again.

"Why don't you look at me and say that, then?" I challenged. He puckered his lips and shook his head. Before either of us could say anything else, he got called back to the counter.

"I'll be back in a minute. Just wait for me, okay?" With that, he rushed off to the counter, not giving any heed to what I had to say. What if I didn't want to wait for him? I was a hurricane and I didn't have the strength to stop and wait for him anymore. Not when he wanted to lie to me. 

So as soon as he went to the store room, I got up and left, leaving the food uneaten behind me.

I hailed a cab to drop me home. When I was inside, I shut myself inside my room. When anyone came to disturb me, I sent them away saying I wanted to study. If only they knew how much of it was I actually doing...

❤️❤️❤️ 

Days passed since that incident. Manas tried to talk to me but I didn't have the heart to do that anymore. If he couldn't tell me what was happening with him, then I couldn't discuss with him what was happening with me. Isha and Lia asked me multiple times to talk to him but I shook my head.

"He sent you, didn't he? Just tell him that he can either come clean or stay away." 

After a month, they stopped bothering me with it. 

A week later, we were about to have our finals. I wondered how Manas was doing. He was never a great student but I had helped him pull his scores up by a great deal. I wondered how he was handling it. I promised myself that if he would come and ask me for help, then I wouldn't tell him no. But he never did. Instead, he hung out with Sanya sometimes. That girl who gave my phone number to her brother's friend? Yeah, that bitch. I couldn't deal with that now.

So instead, I focused on my studies. Boards were important and scoring good in them was all that mattered. The year ahead was going to be tough and I didn't know how would it be. Most of us were going to a different school now. We wanted to take Commerce while Isha and Lia wanted Science. So Manas, Naman, Kush, Saina, Jai, me — basically almost all of us — were going to a different school. Our current school only had Science so Isha and Lia would be the only ones staying back. This would mean seeing them less, but I didn't know if I could deal with that. Going to a new school was bound to be hard. I had no idea how I would handle watching Manas hang out with Sanya instead. That would be... I don't even have a word for that. 

No, it didn't matter. A new school meant new people. I could befriend so many of them. It would be alright. It would all be alright. I had hope.

Only, I didn't.

After school ended, I was just on my way back to the bus when an eleventh grader stopped me. 

"Riddhika, are you free?" she asked. "I have something important to talk about."

"Important?" I raised my eyebrows. I didn't know this girl, except maybe her name. That too, I wasn't sure about. I barely interacted with seniors. All of the boys seemed to want the same thing, and all of the girls seemed to want to downgrade me. Not a happy sight. I stayed away most of the time.

"What is it?" I asked in return. She led me to a quiet corner in the building. My heart began to race. What was happening? Was she about to do the same thing that Aisha did? Tears I didn't know I had been holding back came to my eyes. I blinked them away and followed her with cautious steps. I wished I had brought Lia or Isha with me but they were already in their own buses. I could have brought Manas, had he bothered to hangout with me instead of with that stupid Sanya. They would have been a proof that nothing happened here, if in case it did.