That night in bed, Ashton couldn't sleep for obvious reasons. But then, the most glaringly obvious law popped into his mind.
They couldn't send that video out, Ashton was underage and it was illegal.
The fact still didn't calm his nerves, though. He was freaking out and hating himself because he couldn't believe he acted like that. How could he have been such a little slut?
Ashton got no sleep that night. At 6:50 am he got up and got dressed.
A little while later, Ashton got on the bus and went to school. He met Calum at their usual spot and yawned his way through a conversation.
He saw a group of kids laughing and one glanced over at him. That scared the shit out of him. But it seemed to be a false alarm because it only happened that one time.
Ashton was really freaking himself out.
"Are you okay?" Calum asked. That's when Ashton realized he had never even told Calum what was going on. He totally should do that because Calum is his best friend and he would help calm him down. Plus, keeping everything bottled up was killing him.
"Can I tell you something?" Ashton asked. Calum nodded.
"I know who gave me the bruises on my back," Ashton was interrupted by Calum gasping and saying, "Who?"
"It was Jasper, Dyl-" Ashton was cut off again by Calum ranting about how surprised he was. He ignored the boy and continued naming everyone in the video, "And Dylan, and Josh, and Matthew, and Marcus."
Calum's mouth dropped open, "Ash-! That's five people! How did you know?"
Ashton took a deep breath and said, "They took a video."
"They what?" Calum was flabbergasted.
"Yesterday at lunch when Jasper pulled me into the bathroom, he showed me it," Ashton wanted to tell Calum about what happened afterwards but he didn't know if he could say it out loud. It all made him feel so stupid.
"What the hell? What kind of jerk would do that? What a fucking asshole!" Calum seethed.
"It's okay. They can't do anything with it anyway, I'm underage. They'd get arrested and be sex offenders and ruin their lives forever," Ashton explained.
"But how do you know that they know that? They could still send it out, they'll still get the consequences, but then everyone will have seen it."
"C'mon, Calum," Ashton said with a nervous laugh, "At least once a year we get a talk on sending nudes and what not. It's had to have occurred to them at some point."
"Yeah, I guess," Calum said, unconvinced.
"Whatever. The bell's about to ring, let's go," Ashton sighed, pulling Calum down to their class.