My parents kicked me out over the summer and Vincent’s family took me in. Adulthood hit me like a ton of bricks and suddenly I was free. Free to act, talk, and dress however I damn well pleased. Free to love who I wanted, free to have sex how I wanted.

I was free to stand up for myself.

I had to be clever. I had to play to my own strengths. I couldn’t best these assholes physically, most of them anyway. But blackmail became my favorite pastime. I learned how to gain access to social media accounts, collecting private information as if it was a sport. It helped that Vincent supplied most of the jocks who bullied me with their party drugs. He got his money, and I got life-ruining information I could hold over their heads.

But there was one person I was particularly looking forward to getting back at — Jessica Martin.

I probably took a little too much joy in planning how it would go down, but really, there wasn’t much to plan. I considered getting her account passwords; a quick phishing email from a spoofed address would do the trick. I imagined going through her DMs, finding the nudes she sent to her boyfriend, threatening to leak them. I imagined it…but I didn’t do it. I couldn’t. It felt too personal, like something I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself for doing. I wanted to get back at her, but I couldn’t bring myself to do something that could very well ruin her.

I couldn’t bring myself to hurt her.

So I was going to keep it simple. If she wanted to use me to cheat, she was going to pay me one way or another.

I waited until after cheer practice, when she was the last one to file into the showers after nearly everyone else had gone home. I had to give her props — she worked hard when she wanted to. She hadn’t become cheerleading captain without reason. She’d practice for hours, long after everyone else was done. The weather was cold, but she was red-faced and sweating when she finally trudged into the showers.

I followed.

“Don’t take the shower at the end, it’s mine!” she called. The door swung shut behind me, a row of lockers separating me from the shower stalls on the other side. My heart was pounding with every step. The girls’ locker room smelled different than the boys’. Not necessarily better, but different.

She froze when I came around the lockers. She was bent over her gym bag, wearing her uniform, a change of clothes clutched in her arm.

“Uh, hello?” She straightened up, staring at me. “You can’t be in here.”

“I don’t see anyone else around to get offended about it,” I said. “I figured you’d want our conversation to be private.”