#4 Truth and Nothing But (8 page)

“I just don't think it would be wise for us to be enemies,” Trevy said coldly, like there was a double meaning with what she was saying.

“Can we just take it one day at a time?” I asked her.

She went from a frown to a smile. I didn't know how to take that. Was she faking or what?

Trevy said, “Okay, sounds good. You better hurry and get dressed. The bell is going to ring any minute, and nobody wants to miss what's next.”

“What's next?” Yuri asked her.

“I think we're having a fire drill.”

“How would you know that?” Yuri asked.

“Mr. Hobby just keeps talking to me now. Wonder why, Sloan, huh?”

I knew why. Because she sucked up to him and told him that Reese and I were hot on his tail. My sister walked Trevy out. I didn't have a lot of time to get dressed. Since I had to share a bathroom with my two sisters, I was accustomed to moving quickly. I opened up my locker, and within minutes I was dressed.

Before the bell rung, the fire alarm went off just like Trevy had predicted. We were all outside in a minute, and we were out there for a long time too. With as long as it was taking, we didn't know if this was an actual fire or a drill.

Then people starting looking at me. First, I thought I was being paranoid. But when I looked to the left, I got stares, and when I looked to the right, I got smiles. Once we were told we could go back in, Shelby, Ansli, and Slade came running up to me.

“Oh my gosh, Sloan! Why would you take that?” Shelby yelled as she shook me hard.

I stared at her, confused. Shelby didn't let up.

Shelby said, “Don't play. I know you just thought you sent it to that guy, but guys are trifling.”

“What are you talking about?” Yuri asked her.

“Yeah, what are you talking about?” I repeated.

“Just show her!” Ansli said, shaking her head in disgust.

“I don't even know how to,” Shelby said.

“You better show her. It's going around,” Slade uttered.

Shelby started twiddling with her phone. I grabbed it, and I was appalled to see myself leaning up against the bathroom shower with my head back, a smile on my face, and nothing on my body.

“What, who, huh? How did you get this? Who else has this?” I stuttered.

Yuri leaned in, and as soon as she saw it, I closed the thing, automatically embarrassed. Even though my sisters had seen me bare before, never had it been on a phone and never had it looked like I was posing for
Playboy
or something. What in the world was going on? How did Shelby have this on her phone? Is that why people were looking at me all crazy? Oh my gosh! My eyes started watering up. People were laughing and pointing. Mercifully, the all-clear bell rang. Ansli and Shelby put their arms around me, and we went into the girls' bathroom.

“What happened? Why would you take a selfie like this? And why'd you send it to that boy?” Shelby asked me.

“I didn't take this! How could I? And I didn't send it to anybody! What is going on?” I cried out.

“Well it's been forwarded from Reese's phone to a whole bunch of people.”

When she told me that, I just broke down crying. I didn't take a picture of myself nude, and I didn't send it to him. Even if I did, I could not believe he had the gall to send it out to other people. Just when I let my guard down a little bit and trusted him with my heart, he stomped on my sacrifice.

CHAPTER FIVE

SPEECHLESS

My mouth hung open. I couldn't take my eyes off of my own body plastered on the cell phone for the world to see. It was like I was in a trance. I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream, but I was frozen. How did this happen? Clearly, I could see myself in the shower, leaning back and smiling like I was posing. But I did not take a selfie. Though I remember dozing off, dreaming about Reese and imagining us together, I didn't have my phone in the shower, so I could not have done this.

“We're talking to you, Sloan!” Shelby said after shaking me a bit.

Ansli grabbed my hand to wake me out of my haze and tried to get me to focus. “How did this happen, Sloan?”

“I don't know? Yuri and I just left gym,” I said, trying to get my thoughts together. I was starting to choke up.

“Yeah, I don't know either,” Yuri said, completely dumbfounded as well.

“Well, I got two problems,” Slade said. “One, I can't believe you would take this, but guys can make us do dumb junk. I'm sure you meant it for his eyes only. My second problem is why would he send it out to other people?”

My sister had a great point about Reese selling me out. However, it was hard to focus on that when I was still stuck on how the gross picture got taken and sent to him from my phone. Why was this happening?

“Guys, I didn't take this picture,” I tried explaining to my sisters with the utmost sincerity in my eyes.

They couldn't even look at me. I could see the doubt on their faces. Realizing they didn't believe me, I knew I had a big problem. I stared at Yuri. Surely she still had my back.

“If she said she didn't do it, she didn't do it,” Yuri explained very unconvincingly to the other three.

“That's all well and good, Yuri, but where was your phone, Sloan?” Shelby asked.

Slade piped in, “Yeah, if you didn't take it in the shower with you, where would it have been, Sis?”

Tired of the interrogation, I yelled, “Locked in the locker!”

Shelby shrugged her shoulders. “Doesn't add up. Are you sure you locked it up?”

“Yes, I am,” I uttered, insulted.

“And you have a lock on your phone too, right?” Yuri asked, trying to help me out.

Throwing my hands in the air, I said, “Exactly.”

“So if someone would have gotten into the locker, they couldn't have taken a picture on your phone because they don't have a code, right?” Shelby questioned.

Reluctantly, I uttered, “Yeah, right.”

Shelby continued, “So then that's why it seems you took the picture, Sloan.”

I screamed, “I didn't!”

“Shoot, forget who took the dang photo. We know who sent it to the world. So let's go find him and get some answers… I can't believe he sent my sister's picture to all his horny buddies,” Slade said.

Ansli added, “That was so unfortunate. Now everyone around here is all excited, forwarding it from here to there to the next person. I thought this guy liked you. How could he do this?”

Slade huffed as we started walking to our next period, “Where is he? Do you know his schedule, Sloan? Talk to us.”

I couldn't recall my whole name much less what class Reese was in at that very moment. Plus, the next class hadn't started because the fire drill had thrown the day's schedule off. As fate would have it, Reese was walking toward me all fast and in a hurry like he needed to explain something.

Yuri spotted him too and said, “That's him right there!”

I looked at her and leaned in, “You could have just told me that? Did you have to get our sisters involved?”

“We're involved!” Slade said in a brash tone, overhearing us. “Yeah, we do need to talk to him, Sis, because whatever part of this little prank he thinks is cute, is not.”

“Sloan, Sloan, can I talk to you for a second?” Reese said with urgency.

“Urgh no! You're going to talk to all of us!” Slade insisted.

“Yeah!” Shelby cut in. “How could you do that to my sister?”

“People are coming up to me, asking the exact same thing!” he said to them. “But can I talk to Sloan?”

“I don't have anything to say to you,” I cut in and said. “How could you do this to me?”

“I can't even believe you sent me the picture!” Reese declared in an appalled voice.

“So because she sent you the picture, that gave you the okay to send it out to everybody in America?” Slade asked him.

“Oh my gosh, this is going to ruin daddy's reputation, and he's not even mayor yet,” I said, turning away and wishing I could hide under the school building.

Slade popped me in the head, “It's messing up your reputation. Focus on that right now, girl.”

Looking at Slade like she was crazy, I gasped, “I get that; that's not what I'm saying at all.”

“Hey, y'all listen, I didn't even do this,” Reese said.

“You didn't do what? Cause my sister embarrassment like you have?” Shelby asked.

“Yes, darn right. I'm saying I didn't forward this.” He stepped to me and said, “I can't explain how this got out. Think about it though. I wouldn't want any of these guys around here looking at you like that. I'm surprised that you would send it to me even.”

“I didn't send it to you,” I quickly let him know.

“Yeah, you did. It came to my phone from your number,” he said.

I shouted back, “No, I didn't!”

“I don't know what world the two of you guys are living in,” Shelby said. “Or you might just think I'm stupid.”

Slade snatched the phone from my hand and said, “We aren't stupid. The evidence is here. Y'all might want to play all innocent and act like you don't know how this happened, but the proof says how it happened. Sloan, you clearly wanted to entice this guy, and Ryan, Roger, Reese, or whatever your name is… you thought you were all that for a girl to send you such a picture, so you showed the world. Quit insulting our intelligence, and own up to this debacle.”

I couldn't speak for Reese, but I was telling the truth about me. It did seem awfully suspicious that he was saying the same exact thing that I was. I got that my sisters thought we were guilty. What other explanation was there for how all this happened. Reese had to have sent it out to his boys who forwarded it out to others. The look on his face showed me he felt bad, and if he felt bad, was that an admission to guilt?

“Talk to me, please,” he pleaded.

I was so frustrated. I just threw up my hands and said, “I ain't got nothing to say.”

I walked away, feeling worse than I ever had. I was a disgrace to my family. Shoot, I was a disgrace to myself.

Not even fifteen minutes later, I was sitting in the office. I had gone to my class, and my teacher wouldn't even let me in. She told me I was being summoned to the office. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out I was in trouble for sexting. At some point you get tired of trying to explain your way through the madness, and you just accept whatever fate was coming your way.

The door to the office opened, and Reese walked in. He was told to have a seat as well. He sat down at the empty seat next to me.

I turned away and said, “Please sit over there.”

He complied. I didn't want to talk to him. I didn't want to hear his lies because the more I thought about it, what guy wouldn't want to brag that a girl thought so much of him that she'd be willing to send him her assets? If that guy had any sense, he'd share the photo so his stock would go up.

I guess that's just what got me about Reese. I didn't think he cared about trying to please guys and be popular. I thought he was his own man, not caring what peers he impressed. I guess I was wrong.

Dr. Garner came out of his office and called for me to follow him. He said hello, but he wasn't even looking at me. When we got to the office, he couldn't even look my way. Clearly, he was embarrassed about what he'd just seen. The picture had gotten all the way to the principal in less than an hour. I was so in trouble. There was no way I was going to be able to explain this to my dad. Ironically, out of all of my sisters, I knew my father would think I would be the least likely to mess up in this way.

“Sloan, I, I, I, I just can't believe what I'm seeing here,” Dr. Garner said, stuttering “But you know we can't have this, and as much as it pains me, I called your parents. You're going to be suspended.”

“You haven't even asked my side of the story, sir,” I uttered, needing to speak out now.

“When I have evidence like this, young lady, that's sent from your phone, unfortunately this unflattering selfie, as you young people call it, is all the proof I need. This has got to die down around here. I've got to set some ground rules so that everyone understands forwarding this type of material is criminal. I'm sure you saw Reese out front. As a young man who's a leader in this school, working with my parent group and my teachers to make sure that this school has everything it needs, I'm disappointed in him too. You wait here for your mom. I'm going to talk to him separately. While I don't condone you taking this kind of picture and sending it to him, I certainly have an issue with him sending it to others as well. I'll be back in just a second.”