the murder of a reputation

CW: implied suicide, heavily referenced rape, mentioned sexual violence, bad mental health, physical harm/assault---

You are sitting on a bench. The metal is cold, seeping through your pants and into your skin.

Your breath comes out slow and measured, clouds of condensed air pouring from your mouth like smoke.

You aren’t wearing gloves, and the air bites at your fingers until they are bruised blue and purple. You don’t want to get up. Maybe if you stay here, you will die where no one can find you. If you’re dead, no one can tell you how awful you are. If you are dead, maybe they will forget.

You glance down at your watch. You’ve started leaving your phone at home, permanently off, just to avoid the texts, the calls, the threats, the hate. It now sits on your nightstand, collecting dust along with expired cough-drops and dried coffee stains. But, you think, not having a phone just means they can hurt me more in person.

What a bitter thought. You catalogue it along with all the other bitter thoughts, from I can’t believe she’s gone to I want to die.

Perhaps you should have brought your phone today, maybe as a brace, a shield. Perhaps it could prepare you. Too late now. Everything is too late now.

The watch tells you that you are late, whispers soft words in your ears before screaming YOU KILLED HER!

It could almost be music, if you listen close enough.

The snow has stopped falling. You need to get up. The teachers won’t care, they’ll look at you with pity and tell you they understand. Perhaps you shouldn’t go to school today at all.

You get up. Your bones creak from the cold and disuse, and your nose has gone numb under the layer of frost that has collected there.

You grab your bag and sling it across your shoulders, trying to will the stiffness of the fabric away.

Your walk to the school is silent. No cars rush by, no birds sing, and your best friend doesn’t giggle in your ear about having to go to school in the snow.

You miss her, you killed her.

You push the doors open and thank everything that you are late. The lady sitting in the office doesn’t give you a pass, just a sad smile and a wave. You and her have always been close. You used to think that maybe you wanted to be like her when you grew up, pressing buttons and writing notes and sticking the school together like glue.

It takes you three tries to open your locker, your hands still frozen to the bone. Maybe you have frostbite. Maybe you want frostbite. Maybe you should have stayed outside on that bench until you fell asleep.

(and died.)

The walk to your first class is silent too, no one in the halls to stare or laugh or spit at you. No friends to hug you and laugh with you and cry with you. No best friend to share gum and pencils and secrets with before class starts.

The door is closed when you arrive. Of course it is, you’re late. Now you have to knock.

Go on, knock. What are you so scared of?

No one comes to get the door, but people are staring at your through the rectangular window. Their eyes fill with disgust, practically turning green with hatred at you. Of course it’s you. They all hate you.

(they should hate you.)

Eventually, you knock again, and this time the teacher hears and opens the door.

You could have stayed home today, she says. You try to smile and walk past her to your seat.

She isn’t fooled.

Your hands are an ugly shade of red now, half-warmed and half-swollen in response to the change in temperature. You can feel everyone staring at them, at you.

Those are the hands, they seem to say. Those are the hands that tried to ruin his life. Those are the hands that killed her.

You pull out a pencil, you don’t remember where you got it. Maybe she had given it to you.

You wish the class went by faster, but it didn’t. People are staring at you as you leave, watching your back, whispering.

Let them, you want to say, because it simply does not matter anymore.

You walk back into the hallway and pretend not to feel the shoves and glares that make you want to lay down and cry.

You’ve already done enough crying, and you cannot show weakness. Not in front of them.

You should have waited in your last class to leave after everyone else, because now you are subject to their stares, their judgement. You keep going anyway.

When you get to your locker, it is covered in wet paint. It’s red, your least favorite color.

You look at the message. It reads slut, your least favorite word. People are pointing, staring, laughing. It’s no different than before.

Your hands are warm now, but you will never be rid of the coldness that lines your heart. You open your locker door. Your hand comes away red.

An apt metaphor, red hands for a killer. They caught you red-handed, haven’t they? You try to wipe the paint off, and it coats your jeans, dull red against denim blue.. So instead you walk away, your books held tight in scarlet-stained hands.

Maybe you will leave early. Maybe, instead of going home and crying some more, you’ll go and sit on your bench. Maybe you’ll go and sit on her grave, waiting for the snow to bury you six feet down, right beside her. Maybe if you die, you’ll get to catch a glimpse of her face before you are thrown into hell.

The next person that runs into you, a forceful shove that you want to shrug off and ignore, is Kadence. His girlfriend. Her lips are the same shade as your hands, a bloody crimson that marrs her face like an open wound.

“Watch it, slut,” she says, and now you know why your locker is painted. You know what she is thinking. You almost ruined his life. You almost cost him everything. In your head, your teeth are bared, and the floor is covered with her blood.

You want to scream at her; How can you stay with him! How can you smile and laugh while knowing he hurt someone! What if he hurts you next!

She wants you to say sorry. But you don’t apologize, you don’t have to. You shouldn’t have to. With the amount of harm you have caused to the world, you have done nothing to Kadence, and therefore don’t have to say a single word, good or bad.

You start to walk away, and everyone is staring at you. You look down at the floor, trying to spot each speck of dust while you walk on the cracked tiles. Now it is your turn to run into something, into someone. You look up and your vision becomes Kadence’s lipstick and locker paint, blood-red and smeared across your eyes.

His face is there, staring at you and coated with that godawful red.

(deep down, you know you shouldn’t do this.)

“Heya sweetheart, what’s got your feathers in a bunch?” He always used to call her sweetheart, even while dating Kadence. It always made her so uncomfortable, and you would flip him off and drag her away. Your stomach ties itself into a knot, and your chest starts to freeze.

She told you what happened after, how she couldn’t hear the word sweetheart without throwing up.

And yet here he is, talking to you. Mocking you.

“Nothing.” You answer. “Just thinking about how I should have tried harder to ruin your life.”

People are watching. Someone is recording. You can’t bring yourself to care.

He shrugs, “That isn’t going to change it.” His face is so ugly. You can’t understand why people like him. Maybe he’s only ugly to you, or maybe you’re the only one can see what’s behind those predatory eyes.

“Change what?” You ask, like when you played truth or dare with everyone in middle school. You should have realized back then. Your hands slowly curl themselves into fists to match the pit of cold fury in your ribcage.

He leans down, like you are a child and need to be spoken to like one. When he opens his mouth, he whispers, and your blood runs cold.

“The fact that I raped her.”

You punch him. Your fist is like ice, brittle bones cracking as soon as you make contact with his jaw, but he yells, and you smile.

The pencil that she had given you is now in your hands, and you don’t quite know when it got there. People are clamoring, and he is starting to stand up.

You take the pencil, freshly sharpened, and drive it down into his face. Someone screams, and you aren’t quite sure if it’s him, the crowd, or you.

(you don’t really care right now, honestly.)

You pull the pencil out and watch the blood spurt from his cheek, a clean round hole oozing that cherry lipstick. You do it again, and this time you know for sure that he is the one screaming. Your face is frozen, stuck in a hysteric grin while your chest is numb with a biting cold.

Someone takes you away from his writhing body, and you grip the pencil tight. Your hands are warm still, covered in not only paint but fresh, hot blood. Its warmth makes you smile.

—

The police read your story. Not the statement you gave after the fight (assault), but the story that started it all. You were so proud of it then. Now it makes your stomach turn and face turn stony.

“You understand what is happening, correct? This isn’t just getting kicked out of a school’s newspaper club, this is expulsion. This is jail.”

That’s what they say to you, over and over again.

But the truth is, you do understand. You have understood, ever since you sat down on that bench and started thinking. You are no longer cold, just numb, just empty.

The officer leaves the room, and you look down at the table. Your hands are laying on the metal, scrubbed of blood but still stained with paint. Your article is lying in front of you, and you read the title one last time:

Expel him: Popular senior Brody Thomson rapes junior Emily Soles.

How naive. Maybe in the next life, Emily will forgive you. Maybe in the next life, Emily won’t kill herself. Maybe in the next life, you can spit on Brody’s disfigured face while he bleeds.

Maybe in the next life, you can sit on that snowy bench and think of anything other than revenge and guilt and how to murder a social status like they murdered mine.