Physical (8 page)

When she entered the class, the eyes
cascaded toward her once again and she rapidly slipped into her
seat, opening her book to pretend to read. She couldn’t believe
this was happening. She still had the list in her hand and she
stealthily took it out to read it. She placed it on the fold of her
book and opened it. At the top of the paper was written, “The Slut
List,” underlined in thick black pen. She read the list of
names:

Valentina Sintora

Lucy Chow

Torie Monroe

Rachel Schultz

Lakeesha White

Maria Mendoza

Liliana Ortega

Sara Worthington

She tried to figure out if there was any
rhyme or reason to the list. She knew many of the girls on the list
in a casual way but not all of them. A few of the girls on it did
have a reputation for liking to sleep around but some of the others
didn’t. Half of them were some kind of ethnic minority, including
Lucy Chow and the two Mexican girls. There were rumors that both of
Maria and Liliana’s parents were illegal immigrants. She was
surprised to see Sara Worthington’s name on it as she thought she
and Brittney were good friends.

She folded the list back up and slipped it
into the back of the book. The teacher started the class and she
just tried to spend the next hour tuning out the entire world
around her. It seemed like an eternity before the bell rang for the
break. She grabbed her books and raced out into the hall. All eyes
turned toward her once again, so she dashed out the front of the
building, turned the corner and huddled down between two cars to
hide.

She didn’t know what she was going to do.
She already had a dozen truancies and her step-mother would kill
her if she got another. Her mind raced with the possibilities of
what this slut list thing really meant. She wondered if Brittney
was just making up rumors about her or if she had talked to guys
with who she had been. She had never really done anything too crazy
with any of the guys at the school, though. She certainly wasn’t a
prude as she saw no reason to restrain herself with someone if she
felt the urge to play and experiment, but she was by no means some
out-of-control slut. This had to be just Brittney’s twisted way to
control girls who she thought didn’t fit into her snotty, elitist
realm of coolness.

The warning bell for class rang and she
decided to just head back into the school to deal with whatever was
to happen. When she strolled through the front doors, the looks
fell on her once again. Valentina noticed right away, though, that
everyone had their cell phones out, furiously reading away at the
screens and pointing at what was on them.

“
I can’t believe it,” one
of them exclaimed. “The school is in the New York
Times!”

When she heard her say it, Valentina just
snatched the girl’s phone out of her hand to look at what she was
talking about. The headline read: “Slut List Scandal Rocks Local
High School.”She couldn’t believe it. How did they find out about
it so quickly? She scanned through the article. Her name wasn’t
mentioned nor any of the other girls’ names. Someone’s parent had
apparently complained to the school about the list.

“
Valentina?”

She looked up to see the principal’s
face.

“
Can you come to my
office, please?”he asked her in a low, firm voice.

Alexis Sintora was sitting at her desk
working when she read the headline that came up with the other news
links on her computer screen: “Local High School in Trouble Over
‘Slut List’ Scandal”. She froze in place, her mouth dropped and a
million fears catapulted through her mind. She was terrified to
click on the link. She didn’t know why but she was already sensing
that it was going to be just the beginning of a long ordeal.

Her hand shook as she moved the mouse to the
headline, clicked it and started reading. Her eyes raced to find
the name of the high school…Ivy Glen Academy. Her heart skipped a
beat. It was what she thought it was. There was a photo of the
principal, Liam Rockman, at the top of the article. She had gone to
high school there with him and immediately recognized the strong
curves of his face, his thick brown hair and his muscular neck. She
quickly read through the remainder of the article to find the
salient points of the scandal.

The list was discovered by one of the
students at the school. On it, there were the names of eight senior
girls who school officials say were being ostracized for supposedly
promiscuous behavior…It is not yet known who produced the list but
local parents whose daughters attend the school are outraged…The
principal has promised to find the culprits to determine if it is
just a one-time prank or there are other issues to address.

Alexis raced through the article again to
try to find the names of the girls on the list. She knew that they
would never print them but she just wanted to make sure. There was
no mention of her step-daughter. She sighed in relief but she had a
feeling that Valentina was caught up in this somehow. She had
already been in trouble numerous times this year. She was going to
kill her if she ended up on such a list.

She thought about leaving work early to pick
up Valentina but she had already used up all her vacation time and
couldn’t really afford it. The family was barely getting by as it
was. The scholarship at Ivy Glen covered part of her
step-daughter’s tuition but there was still all the cost for
textbooks, the fees for extracurricular activities and the monthly
deduction for her college fund. She would just have to wait until
she got home to ask her about the list and hope that it had nothing
to do with her.

Valentina had no idea what was going to
happen when she stepped inside the principal’s office. She knew it
was about the list but she didn’t know if she was in trouble
herself or not. She took a seat in the cold leather chair and
waited for the principal. She normally didn’t mind being sent to
his office. He was the type of principal who you could just talk to
like a normal person and he was clued in to the lives of the
students. Plus, he was just really attractive for a high school
principal, she thought. He reminded her of one of those tough movie
actors who always walked into the room with a suave confidence like
he could handle anything. When Principal Rockman got upset, though,
he seemed to change into another person and would sternly remind
students who was in charge.

Valentina heard him tell his secretary not
to interrupt him as he entered the room, closed the thick wood door
and took a seat opposite her. He picked up a small piece of
crumbled paper from his desk. She saw right away that it was
another copy of the list.

“
Do you want to tell me
what this is all about?”he asked her in a firm, abrupt
tone.

She didn’t know what to say. She had been in
trouble before but this was not anything that she had done. She was
the victim here.

“
I don’t know. Some girls
were passing it around,” Valentina told him.

“
Which girls?” he asked
her immediately.

She glanced around his office, trying to buy
some time to figure out if she should just give him the name. She
wondered not only if Brittney would get into trouble but if she
would come after her for snitching.

“
Valentina, just tell me
now. Lying about it is only going to get you in more trouble,” he
told her as he folded his thick arms and leaned back in his
chair.

“
Brittney Van Slauson. She
gave it to me,” Valentina blurted out.

The stern expression on the principal’s face
changed to one of mild shock.

“
Brittney Van Slauson? Are
you sure about that?”

“
Yes, she gave it to me
this morning. She’s the one who wrote it,” Valentina pleaded to
him.

The principal nodded up and down
casually.

“
And why would Brittney
write your name on such a list?”he asked her.

“
Because she doesn’t like
me. She and all her friends,” Valentina professed to
him.

The principal sat back and listened to her
as she went on to tell him about how “the goodies” had always
disliked her and tried to torment her, telling him that it just
wasn’t fair. He let her finish speaking and then reached to his
right to pull open up a drawer. He took out a file, opened it up
and began reading. Valentina noticed that it was her school
record.

“
You’ve been in trouble
before, Valentina, isn’t that right?”

She couldn’t believe it. The principal was
trying to put this back on her.

“
Yes, but this isn’t my
fault. I didn’t do anything,” she pleaded.

“
I didn’t say that. I just
want to be sure that I have all the facts. Brittney is a straight-A
student with an impeccable record here. If I am going to accuse her
of this, I want to make sure that I have the truth.”

“
That is the truth!” she
shouted.

“
Lower your voice,” he
told her.

“
I’m sorry but I’m telling
you the truth.”

“
And you’re not just
trying to put this on Brittney to cover your own
actions?”

“
My actions? What do you
mean?”

“
Well, I have already
spoken to Brittney this morning.”

“
And what did she
say?”

“
She said that she had
nothing to do with the list. She said she heard a number of senior
guys made up the list.”

Valentina couldn’t believe what he was
telling her.

“
She’s lying. What
guys?”

“
Well, that’s why I
brought you in here. I thought you could tell me. You have been
written up before regarding your inappropriate
behavior.”

She suddenly felt like she was going to
faint. She had been caught kissing guys a few times at school
functions and once got caught ditching with a couple guys but the
school certainly didn’t know anything beyond that. Almost every
girl there had done something like that.

“
I just wanted to remind
you that you are on scholarship here,” he began to lecture her. “We
abide by a strict moral code. It is not our place to invade the
private lives of our students but if anything is done on school
grounds, well then, it becomes our problem.”

“
I didn’t do anything,”
Valentina pleaded. She wanted to cry. Her mind was racing with
thoughts of everything that she had ever done with other boys at
the school and wondering if someone actually did see something. She
thought back to the previous night when she was with Tyler. She was
so drunk she really probably wouldn’t have noticed if someone had
seen them.

“
I didn’t say you did. I
just want you to be sure that you are confident that it is the best
choice to accuse Brittney. This is no longer just a private school
issue. The press has gotten a hold of this and parents are going to
start asking questions.”

Valentina had no idea what to say. She
certainly didn’t want this to escalate to the point of being the
online poster girl of high school sluttiness. She suddenly wondered
if Tyler or one of his friends had made up the list, but she just
didn’t think any guy would bother doing such a thing.

“
I’m just telling you that
she was the one who gave me the list. That’s all,” she told the
principal.

He nodded again, thinking to himself of how
to handle the situation.

“
Well, my advice to you
Valentina, from here on out, is to behave.”

“
Behave?” she responded, a
bit confused.

“
Yes, I don’t want to hear
anything about this list again. I can’t have parents going to the
press with this and creating such a scandal.
Understand?”

“
Not really. It wasn’t my
parents who called the press was it?”

“
No, it was the parents of
another girl on the list, but I will be having a talk with your
step-mother just to make sure she knows about the list.”

“
But why?” Valentina
objected. “I didn’t do anything. You should talk to Brittney’s
parents or the parents of whoever made the list.”

“
Brittney is not on the
list. You are,” he told her sternly. “I am only concerned with the
people who might think of complaining about this. It’s not my place
to get involved in internal feuds between you girls. Is that
clear?”

Valentina started to object again. It was
completely unfair that she should be the one who had to keep quiet
about this. She figured she would just wait and talk to her
step-mother about it to explain what happened.

“
Yes, it’s clear,”she told
the principal as she rolled her eyes.

“
Good. You have done very
well here at Ivy Glen. I’d like to see you leave here with an
upstanding record.”

Valentina just stared back at him, not
saying anything. The principal rose from his chair to escort her
out. When he opened the door, two of the other girls on the list,
Lucy and Sara, were sitting there. Their eyes met for a moment in
mutual fear and understanding. Valentina got a hall pass from the
principal’s secretary and then headed toward her next class.

She paced slowly down the empty hallway, not
really wanting to go back to class at all. She stopped at her
locker and took an extra long time to open it. She rummaged through
her things and took out her math book. When she slammed the locker
door shut, she nearly had a heart attack. Brittney was standing
right next to her. She hadn’t even heard her walk up.