Chapter Twenty-Three

Havermouth High School, Five Years Before

It was just before dawn when Rhett pulled up out front of Aislen’s house and turned down the stereo. He turned off the engine and got out the car, rounding the bonnet to open her door and leaning over her to release her seatbelt, nuzzling and kissing her cheek as he did so. He was effervescently happy, whilst she was stunned numb.

He retrieved her art supplies from the back and put his arm around her, walking her to the door, before capturing her face between his hands and kissing her enthusiastically. “One of us will pick you up Monday morning at eight, okay?” She could feel his overflowing joy through the contact, and the contrast to how she was feeling was painfully stark.

“Okay,” she repeated.

“Okay. Aislen…” He stroked her hair back from her face. She saw adult faces that she did not know, and their concerned disapproval. “Don’t worry. It will be alright. Just give us time… and it will work out, okay?”

“Okay.” Give them time… to do what? Give them time to… for her to get used to… whatever had happened that night? There hadn’t been any sleep involved, or at least very little. Even as she stood by the door, she could feel the slow seep of slime into her underwear. How many times had they come inside of her? She didn’t know. But she was relieved that she was on the pill.

“Aislen,” Rhett’s expression had lost its brightness, and his eyes were worried. “You don’t look right.”

She looked up at him, her chest tight, tears threatening to overflow. “I’m just tired,” she said, because all the questions that she wanted to ask seemed too needy and would lead to too long a discussion, one that they couldn’t hold on the doorstep, with her parents sleeping just a wall away.

“Okay,” his eyes, and his hand as he stroked her cheek, were gentle. “Get some sleep.”

“Yeah,” she nodded, and turned from him to the door. He stayed on the step until she closed the door behind her.

In her bedroom, she stripped out of her clothes and dressed in her pyjamas before laying down in her bed and pulling the covers up over her. In the safety of her bedclothes, she curled into a tight ball and pressed her face into her knees as she wept.

She had been used, she told herself. They had trapped her into a situation that they knew she wouldn’t be comfortable in – Rhett had seduced her into it, Cameron had used force when it was needed, and Heath had followed through with coercion in order to make her complicit. She felt… soiled. She felt dirty. She felt sore…

Rhett had been gentle, the first time, taking care, but he hadn’t hesitated to hurt her when it had suited him. He was just as bad, if not worse, than the other two, because he was more two faced, more manipulative for pretending that he wasn’t, for pretending that he was the one that she could trust.

Her heart ached as much as her cunt did from their use. His concern when he dropped her off hadn’t been concern for her, but concern about whether she would remain quiet and wouldn’t complain. She was a telepath, she knew that. He didn’t want her causing issues, because the Triquetra were already arguing with the pack… over her.

Rhett had been overjoyed, she told herself. He had been thrilled that the Triquetra had managed to establish a sexual relationship with her. That joy hadn’t been faked. He wanted her. Hell, she knew that Heath and Cameron wanted her, though the relationship with their want was far more complex and tangled…

Fuck, she thought, did it even matter why they were the way they were? Now that they’d had her, from their past behaviour, they would move on to their next target, and they would boast about their conquest, not caring that in doing so they made her life unbearable, that she would wear the shame of their actions for far longer than one night.

On Monday morning at eight, there was no sign of Rhett, or the rest of the Triquetra, and the sinking feeling in her stomach was so intense that she was nauseous with it. She caught the bus, and as she found her seat, many of the other students stared at her, with several giggling and whispering. A senior in the back of the bus let out a loud whistle and grunted as he made a lewd gesture, and the entire bus seemed to burst into laughter.

Amongst the laughter were the words: “Triquetra’s whore” – the words unspoken, but carried on the swell of mocking thoughts as she lost control of the bubbles.

Aislen cringed against the bus window battered by her so-called gift, by the thoughts that it exposed her to, and by the horror of her situation. Her worst fear had happened, and the Triquetra had spent Sunday spreading stories of how they had fucked her, no doubt with explicit detail. The cruelty of them was breathtaking.

Arriving at school was not a reprieve. As she walked through the school yard, heads turned, and fingers pointed. In the break between first and second class, she retreated to the nurse’s office with a migraine and lay in the dark with a cloth over her eyes weeping as she tried to repair the bubbles, so that she didn’t have to hear the horrid truth within her own skull as if they were her own thoughts.

There had been a football game on Sunday, and the Triquetra had gone there, although it wasn’t their team playing, meeting up with many of the footballers and cheerleaders from the barbeque. Aislen had been mentioned, along with speculation as to whether Rhett had managed to fuck her.

Cameron and Heath had laughed: “Rhett is part of the Triquetra, what belongs to one, belongs to all, and she fucking loved it.”

The conversation had passed through the football team, through the cheerleading squad, and far beyond by the time the school bell rang the next morning.

Just before recess, she decided to go home. As she was crossing the school yard, she heard her name called, and Rhett ran up behind her.

“I’m sorry,” he said, catching her by the elbow, sending the events of his morning through her mind: his parents keeping him back to talk to him sternly about the human girl, getting to her house too late, trying to find her at her locker before the bell went… “I was late,” he apologised.

“Doesn’t matter,” she tugged her arm away wanting to free herself of his thoughts. She continued to walk away.

“Aislen! What the fuck?” He exploded into anger as he pursued her. “I was late. I am sorry. My parents…”

“I know,” she interrupted, unable to take any more, tears threatening. “Your parents wanted to talk to you, you tried my house, but I had left, and you couldn’t find me at the lockers. I know.”

“Then why are you being a bitch?” He demanded, catching her arms, and holding her tight. “Why are you being a bitch to me?”

“Why is it that a man can screw a hundred girls, and he’s a stud? But a girl screws three, and she’s a slut? A whore? The town bike? Why is having sex something a man gets to be proud of, but a woman is shamed?”

“Aislen,” his face fell, and his dismay flooded through her. “It wasn’t like that…” In his head, she saw the conversation between Heath and Cameron and the footballers. He had been there, he had stood next to them as they had condemned her into slut-hood, and he had done nothing.

“Maybe not for you,” she tugged back from his hold. “But you are a man. You achieved something on Saturday night, but I lost something… And I’m not talking about my virginity. Everyone knows, Rhett, that I fucked the three of you. Everyone knows. The entire school, teachers and all. Soon the entire town will know, including my parents…”

“Fuck,” he pulled her against him and put his arms around her, his chin resting on her head. His thoughts flickered as he searched frantically for an answer to the problem. “Alright, I get why you’re angry.”

The recess bell went, and she stiffened, not wanting to be there when the students were released to their own devices for fifteen minutes.

Rhett tightened his grip on her and drew in a deep breath. “You can’t run away from it. Come on,” he kept his arms around her shoulders.

“Rhett…” she protested.

“Nah, come on,” he encouraged.

Even he noticed the stares as they made their way through the school to the grassy slope that the Triquetra, the jocks, and the cheerleaders preferred. Cameron and Heath were already there, their laughter spilling out as Rhett and Aislen approached. She saw them look at her and then say something to the group around them, and they all laughed.

“Sit,” Rhett took her to his favourite spot and sat down, bringing her down with him.

“That looked painful,” Heath drawled. “Remembering your weekend every time you sit down, Aislen?"

Her heart raced within her, and she swallowed back bile. "Fuck off.”

“Suck off did you say?” Cameron sneered leaning back onto his elbows. “You liked that too, didn’t you?”

“Where is your mother this week, Cameron?” The words jumped out of her mouth before she could think them through and she regretted them instantly as his face wiped of expression, the colour running from his skin, and then returning as hectic blush points. During their sex over the course of Saturday night, she had seen, with her gift, that his mother was going to a retreat for depression again.

Heath reached out and put his hand of Cameron’s shoulder. “Precisely why we keep her mouth full of cock,” he snapped. “Because she’s a fucking cunt when she can talk.”

“That was… cruel, Aislen,” Rhett muttered with disapproval. “I don’t know how you know these things, but it’s wrong to use them to hurt people.”

“You’re telling me off for hurting them?” She was wounded. “When they said to me what they did?”

“They’re just… you know, Heath and Cameron,” he shrugged. “But you… That’s not you.”

She hunched into herself her heart aching under the weight of humiliation. “I need to go to the bathroom,” she said. “I’ll meet you at class.”

“Aislen…” He knew she was upset, and he was half-irritated, half-pleading with her, but she strode away hurriedly, seeking the shelter of the girl’s bathroom and a closed cubicle to cry in. The bell went, and she stayed pressed against the cubicle wall as the bathroom emptied around her.

Only then did she begin to cry.