Fall break had been a long time coming for Dr. Missy Restrepo, after the most trying two weeks of her professional life. The total loss of her students’ respect, the dressing-down from the dean of her department over her wardrobe and the subsequent meeting in which he told her there’d been accusations she’d had inappropriate relations with a student… She’d denied it—after all, it would have been radically more inappropriate to refuse DJ Swanson his request. Still, they were investigating the matter, and she suspected it was a matter of time before she was called in again, this time to be fired.
She’d been looking forward to fall break as a chance to get away from campus, not have to parade around in those disgustingly slutty outfits she was now required to wear. Better still, her fiance Mark had come to visit from where he was doing his own adjunct professorship six hundred miles away. He’d gotten in that afternoon and they’d gone out to dinner at their favorite restaurant. She asked a lot of questions, too ashamed to talk about her own life.
Back home, however, he’d carried her directly into the bedroom, and even though she’d been careful to keep the lights out in the bedroom, Mark had seen the new tattoo.
“What the fuck is this?” he asked as he turned on the light on the night stand, perplexed by the intricate cursive scrawled across her lower back like a billboard.
Missy, on her hands and knees, looked back at him. “It’s nothing—just keep going, OK?”
He shook his head and pulled out of her with a wet plop. “Is this real?”
She sighed, having hoped she might somehow keep him from noticing, but on some level, glad she didn’t have to keep hiding it from him. “It’s real.”
“You always said you hated tattoos—I remember trying to convince you we should get matching ones, those little opposite half hearts, just on our ankles, and you acted like I was asking you to give me your ear, van Gogh style.” He dropped to his side, facing away from her, clearly wounded.
“No, I still hate tattoos—I just did it because of this twerpy little student of mine.” She put a hand on his shoulder consolingly, but he shrugged it off.
“You got it for one of your students?! You don’t even like these kids, Missy! You complain about them all the time!”
“It’s not like that—he just took me by the hand and dragged me into the parlor and told them what he wanted. There was nothing I could do!”
He rolled to face her, incredulous at how feeble her excuse sounded. “Nothing you could do? How about saying no! ‘No, I don’t want this horrible tat taking up half my lower back!’”
“No!” she cried. “I just… he’s a special case. I couldn’t say no—it’s just one of those things you have to deal with as a professor.”
“What?” he said, taking to his feet in anger. “I’m in the same business as you, and that’s definitely NOT something I have to deal with! Does this kid have dirt on you somehow? Is he part of this ethics inquiry thing you were so afraid to talk about?”
She hesitated, then nodded. How could she make him understand? She didn’t like being DJ’s plaything, of course, but what was the alternative? Letting everyone think she was completely prejudiced against him? It was unthinkable. “Yes,” she said softly. “He’s a big part of it.”
“Keep talking,” he said, folding his arms across his chest.
“Well, he came into class a couple weeks ago and… well, I guess he thought he’d gotten an unfair grade on a paper, and I guess I could have been more open-minded about his ideas, considering… and anyway, he got upset and decided to punish me by stripping me naked and fucking me from behind on my podium in front of the whole class, and then he took me for the tattoo, and then he made me change my wardrobe and dress like a big slut around campus, and I guess someone complained to the dean about it…”
He just stared, livid and horrified and disgusted. This was insane. “This little bastard… RAPED you in front of your class! And nobody stepped in to help? You didn’t go to the police?”
She responded in a small voice. “It wasn’t rape—I actually, um, begged him to. After he spanked me a little.” She blushed somehow even deeper.
“He… you…” He just stared, horrified that he could have ever imagined him spending the rest of his life with such a complete and utter slut.
“Please don’t be mad. I didn’t want this to happen. He was just upset, and I didn’t want to be intolerant,” she pleaded.
“We’re done,” he said. He threw his engagement ring at her and stormed out.
The following Monday at school was the most difficult of Taylor Strehan’s young life. She was used to being eyed and ogled, the center of male lust and female envy, but today, for the first time she could remember, she’d dressed specifically to avoid attention. Baggy jeans borrowed from her chubby sister (ugh, size 6), a comfy hoodie she usually only wore for bon fires or other outdoor fall occasions.
If anything, the conspicuous shift in her wardrobe only made things worse.
Word was all over school of what had happened in the locker room during the game, and at the party after. One didn’t get to be as popular as Taylor Strehan without making one’s share of enemies, though, and the girls she’d stepped on to ascend were only too happy to share all the details they knew, and others, not just details but photographic evidence. Whispers and giggles followed in her wake. She only caught snippets here and there.
“…heard she had an orgy with…”
“…totally lezzed out with Kylee and Evelyn and…”
“…was bare-ass naked at that party…”
“…no, she had on a leash, lead around like a…”
And so on. She put in her headphones to block it out. Some of the cat calls still intruded on her consciousness, though.
By the time first period was over, someone had written “bitch in heat” on her locker and drawn a picture of what was clearly her, taking a dump on a lawn at the end of a rope in a stick-figure’s hand. She reported it to the nearest teacher; from the look on the elderly journalism teacher’s face, she had already heard the rumors that precipitated the vandalism, and gave Taylor a commensurately disapproving frown.
And so the day went, an endless barrage of stares, whispers, jeers, and taunts. At lunch, she cut right to the front of the line (ignoring Derek Wildermuth as he called out “weird seeing you way up front, Taylor—I heard you preferred it from the back” to the raucous laughs of his idiot friends). She sat at her usual table, but none of her friends joined her. She caught them pointing and laughing—deliberately, as they saw her returning eye contact. Rather than keep sitting alone, she saw a group of other girls who she was sure had been having similar days—girls she’d seen in various states of undress at Lauren’s party, along with poor dim-witted Kylee. (Evelyn was with her usual crowd of sluts; apparently for her, there was no such thing as bad publicity.)
No one at her new table spoke, but they all seemed comforted to have someone else in their shoes.
After what felt like an eternity, the end of the school day came. When she closed her locker, she saw Lauren standing there, giving her the smuggest look she’d ever seen on a bitch’s face. “What the fuck do you want?” she demanded.
“Wow, can’t a girl just want a little quality time with her dog?” Lauren replied, smirking.
Taylor hissed back at her. “Fuck you, cunt—you fucked him just as hard and twice as eager as I did.”
“Really? ’Cause that’s not what my video shows,” Lauren said in mockingly feigned confusion. “Anyway, go talk to Miss Nguyen before you head out, K?”