Wildfire
©Eric Thomas, 2013
The day after served as a particularly
awful one.
When Rachel showed up to class, late
thanks to her phone-come-alarm dying on her in the night, she knew something
was up.
Even appearing late, she had grown
accustomed to being studiously ignored by her classmates, and her teacher for
the most part as well.
When all eyes were locked on her as she
made her way to the back of the class, she knew something was off.
Even more bizarre was the fact that
three of the students were a full two rows further back than they usually
occupied, putting them right by her seat.
Ignoring them as best she could, she
booted her computer up and fell into her routine of pulsing music and drawing on
the digital tablet.
She’d managed, much to her pride, to
actually finish her current project after Ai’s initial distraction, and the two
that had followed throughout the evening.
With the assignment done, she had
debated showing up at all, since it wasn’t due for another week.
She felt the eyes on her throughout the
class, and the sensation began to grate on her nerves quickly.
Gritting her teeth, she raised her eyes
form the screen and met the first pair of eyes she found.
The woman was usually in the front, on
the other side of the room, and Rachel found it very suspicious to find her
sitting on the other side of her table.
The second their eyes met, the woman
blushed and locked her eyes onto her screen.
As she did, a group on the other side
of the aisle began whispering back and forth, with one of them gesturing to
her.
Memories began to surface fast, and
Rachel forced her eyes back down to her screen...
Rachel
walked into the school, humming softly to herself.
The
Djed had been particularly lively over the weekend, and Zoe had introduced her
to one of the band members that had played for the night.
It
had been one of her favorite bands, and she’d almost fainted at meeting the
guitarist.
Zoe
had found it all very entertaining, as had the guitarist, as she’d immediately
asked him to sign her shirt, which had happened to be of the very same band.
That
her girlfriend had suggested she wear it was, she was sure, no coincidence at
all.
Her
humming stopped though, when she found herself the center of attention the
further she walked into the halls.
She
heard her name in low, hushed conversations several times, and felt the weight
of a lot of hostile stares as she made her way to her locker.
She
studiously ignored them all as she walked, though a ball of dread was
undoubtedly forming as a hard ball in her stomach.
When
she got to her locker, she vaguely noticed that the slats were more colorful
than the dark interior should’ve been.
In
her daze, though, she didn’t think too much on it.
When
she opened the locker and the colorful notes spilled in a small wave to fall
around her feet, though, she knew something was off.
She
was a relatively anonymous student, and she tried to stay as far off the radar
as possible, in no small part thanks to her frequent visits to the Black Djed.
When
she’d started dating Zoe Agnes, it had been inevitable that she’d started
gravitating around her more in school, though.
Her
girlfriend was popular enough that her presence was noticed, and had gradually
caused a stir.
The
number of notes around her feet, though, was far more than the number of people
she’d met in the previous months, though.
Her
chest tightening, she dug her books out before crouching down to scoop the
notes up.
It
didn’t take more than three for her to notice a distinct pattern to what they
were about.
Several
of the authors had been creative, writing out full notes on what a freak she
was.
Others
were far too lazy to put that kind of energy into their hate, instead writing a
vile word or two.
Her
confusion grew with each note she read, until she found one in a familiar
handwriting.
“Saw
you and Zoe with the freaks. Spread the word. Have fun.”
Three
sentences, and it fell into place.
She
finished collecting the notes, and a façade of perfect calm overtook her
expression.
Several
students had gathered to watch her while she’d read them, so they could tell
the fakeness of her expression.
Anger
and humiliation burned in her eyes as she collected the papers into one hand
and casually tossed the ball of insults into a nearby trash bin.
Taking
a steadying breath, she pushed through the small throng of people and made her
way to her classroom.
The
urge to cry was strong, but the urge to give none of them the satisfaction of
witnessing that was stronger.
More
eyes were on her as she made her way into her homeroom.
She
found more notes waiting for her in her desk, and a few had been carved in.
While
the notes further angered her, the vandalism tempered the feeling enough for
some therapeutic sarcasm to slip through.
“That’s
going to be really confusing to whatever person sits there later,” she quipped,
raising a brow at a group of gawking students.
One
of the women nearby snickered at that, pointing to the boy next to her.
“That’s
what I said! It’s not like you sit there all day.”
The
boy glared at her, his face reddening.
“Doesn’t
matter. It’s clear. We don’t want fags around here,” he sneered, turning his
glare to Rachel.
The
blonde felt her heart skip a beat, but she again fought the rising tears down.
“I’m
bi, dumbass,” she quipped. “You might want to ditch whatever you used to do
that, because I’m pretty sure that money will matter a lot more than your
reason for damaging it.”
His
face further reddened in anger at that.
“Think
they’ll listen to you tellin’ em’ it was me?” he sneered.
“Well,
I didn’t do it, and they’ll figure out pretty quickly that, since I just got
here, it had to be someone in this room. People cowardly enough to leave
anonymous notes on my desk aren’t going to take the hit for you.”
Several
amused expressions turned angry at that, but Rachel was glad to take her anger
out on someone, especially a deserving target.
“Enough
of us say it was you, and they’ll think it was you somehow,” he retorted,
though he was a lot less confident then.
“Maybe
true. Of course, there’s nothing on me that could cut into wood and I would
have no reason to insult myself or anyone in that seat throughout the day,
which might be a bit of a kink in that plan… There’re cameras in the classrooms
that will show you doing it, too, so there’s also that,” she said with a
gesture to the red, blinking light on the roof.
His
eyes went up to it, and Rachel felt some of her anger vanish at the chalky cast
to his complexion that formed.
“Same
for everyone who put these lovely notes on my desk, too,” she added while
gesturing to the pile of paper.
More
of their faces took on the same color, and Rachel took a vacant seat in
satisfaction when many of them turned around and refused to look back at her
again.
Looking
around the room, she found about a quarter of the room to have that reaction.
With
her heart slowly returning to its normal pace, and her mind returning from the
overwhelming emotions, she began to think on the situation.
Of
the thirty-two students, twelve seemed to be in the group of people that had
given her the notes.
Ten
more seemed utterly uninterested in all of the drama.
There
were six students in the remainder that were clearly amused by it all, some by
her sarcasm and some with pointed laughs at the note-writers and the student
who’d carved her desk.
The
last four were sending her sympathetic looks that made her well aware of this
not being the end of her day by a long shot.
If
it was any kind of reflection on the students who were aware of Rachel and
Zoe’s night out, she thought, about a third would be hateful asses while the
rest would pretty much leave her alone.
Thinking
of the numbers calmed her further, and she released a relieved sigh when class
started and her teacher didn’t make any mention of her seat change, or her
actual seat.
Her
calm vanished, though, when her thoughts turned Zoe’s direction.
Her
girlfriend knew a lot more people in the school than herself.
Even
if the numbers were still the same for Zoe, that meant a lot more harassment
for her.
As
soon as class let out, she sped off to track her down.
It
was in Zoe’s third usual hangout that she found the girl.
She’d
never seen Zoe as angry as she was then.
Her
glare was focused on a group of boys, who were smirking at one of their
friends.
The
boy in question had a bright handprint on his cheek and was glaring harshly at
Zoe.
“What
I do is my own damn business. Who I
spend my time with is my own business. I would think, given this news, you’d be
less inclined to bother me, not
more.”
With
a huff, she turned on her heels and stalked away from the group.
While
his friends laughed, the one that had apparently insulted Zoe glared at her
retreating back and muttered to himself.
Rachel
wasn’t sure what he said, but it gave her a bad feeling nonetheless.
She
wanted to go to Zoe’s side, but several thoughts stopped her.
Zoe
had gone to the Djed when she hadn’t been planning to because she’d insisted on
going to see the band.
It
wasn’t a leap to think that it was mostly her fault for any harassment Zoe received.
Further,
if Zoe thought the same way, then going to her could cause things to get even
worse.
Especially
if she was seen going to her-
Rachel harshly jerked her head to snap
herself out of the train of thoughts, focusing instead on the eerily similar
present.
Slipping her headphones down, she
locked eyes with the woman across from herself once again.
“Is there something I can help you
with?”
The woman blushed again and dropped any
façade of not staring.
“Is it true?”
“Is what
true?” Rachel demanded.
The similarities struck her, and she
knew before the woman responded that she wasn’t going to like the answer.
“That you, uh, l-like women?”
“That’s true enough,” Rachel sighed in
resignation.
The woman seemed surprised, as if she’d
assumed it was just a false rumor.
The way she kept staring suggested it
wasn’t over with yet, though.
“Oh… And does that mean the other bit’s
true, too?”
“And what’s the other bit?”
“That you’re all kinky and stuff. With
your roommate.”
Rachel felt her heart skip a painful,
unpleasant beat.
“Whoa. Where’d Ai come into this?”
The woman shrugged in response, still
staring intently at her.
“All I know is that there’s a chainmail
going around with some letter and drawn pictures of you. Someone put your
actual names on it, though… I thought it was a prank til’ a second ago.”
Rachel’s eyes narrowed at that, her
mind immediately returning to Annabelle and her threat.
If the mentioned drawings were the ones
she’d posed for at Ai’s request, then her classmates, and a lot of other people
she probably didn’t even know, knew in great detail how she looked naked.
She remembered the feelings of going
through the same thing before, but someone had gone out of their way to be
cruel that time around.
Her face burned scarlet, and she
realized that at that moment, she would gladly have laid Annabelle flat on her
ass if she had the luck to see her.
The violent urge shocked her, and with
it her mind slowly calmed down.
Focusing on the woman, she let out a
deep sigh.
“I have no idea what kind of stuff was
in this email, but you can ignore it. I'm bisexual, but it sounds
like someone was making crap up to mess with me, or with Aiko.”
“That a fact?” the woman retorted with
a smirk.
Her levity vanished under Rachel’s
harsh glare.
“Yeah. We’re in a class all about
making images for things that don’t exist as they’re presented. You should know
better than to trust anything you see in some email.”
Her words seemed to strike a chord with
the students listening, since they all looked properly chastised.
“Were the drawings fake, too?” a man
asked with a tone of disappointment.
“They were drawn. How should I know?”
Rachel responded.
The quickly piling up lies tasted
bitter on her tongue, but she ignored the guilty sensation.
She didn’t particularly care what kind
of stupidity went on regarding herself, but admitting anything meant
implicating Aiko, which was unacceptable to the blonde.
Fortunately, a thought seemed to occur
to the woman that made her much more concerned and sympathetic to Rachel.
“If they weren’t a girlfriend’s, you’ve got someone seriously creepy trying
to mess with you, Blondie.”
“Something like that,” Rachel muttered. “Anyway,
you can all go back to pretending I don’t exist now, yeah? No more mysteries to
solve here,” she continued with a vague hand gesture towards herself.
And, thankfully, they did just that, at
least everyone but the woman, who remained in her seat…
When Ai walked into the locker room,
she felt a strange, inexplicable tension in the air.
Deciding to ignore it as something
imagined, she began to change.
Only when she was halfway through
slipping into her cheerleading uniform did she notice that the women in the
same aisle as her had moved to the opposite side of the lockers from her.
It would have likely seemed odd even in
normal circumstances.
What made it worrying was the fact that
of the three women, two had wrapped a towel around themselves and were changing
while seeming to use it as a shield of some kind.
The third woman just glared at the
others and gave a huff of irritation before she herself finished changing.
Something about how the two were
occasionally glaring at Ai and blushing made a ball of tension form in the pit
of her stomach.
Shaking it off, she finished hastily
and headed out to the gym.
She found more of the same reaction
with her other squad mates when she joined them.
One of them in particular glared at her
from the moment she stepped through the doors, and Ai felt her blood pressure
spiking as she met the stare.
“Something I can help you with?”
“Fuck no, I don’t want any kind of help from someone like you,” the woman
spat.
Ai blinked in surprise at that, though
the dread grew stronger in her gut.
“The hell does that mean? Look, I’m not in the mood for this, so why don’t you all
tell me why I’m getting stared at like I have a new damn head,” she groused.
“We want you off the team. None of us
want you lookin’ up our skirts,” the woman retorted with several agreeing nods
accompanying the statement.
Ai raised a brow in question at that,
though she was starting to figure out the basics of the situation.
“The hell?”
“Now that we know you get off on that
shit, it’d feel really creepy,” another of them supplied with just as vehement
a glare in her eyes.
“Ooookay… I reiterate, the hell?” Ai demanded with her own gaze
narrowing.
One of the women shook her head before
making her way over to Ai, her phone in hand.
Flipping it open, she pressed several
keys before turning the phone to Ai’s gaze.
Her heart skipped a beat at the sight
of a photo of her letter.
The woman pressed her thumb onto the
screen and slipped up, and Ai watched as several of her illustrations of Rachel
scrolled through her gaze.
She’d been caught up in the moment for
each and every one of them, and had been more than happy to reward Rachel for her
help posing for them.
They’d all been very thoroughly
enjoyable for both women.
Now, though, the sight of them caused
her chest to squeeze as she cursed her stupidity.
Outwardly, though, she seemed calm, if
very pale, to the other cheerleaders.
Lifting her gaze, she met the woman’s
own.
“And this is…?”
“We all got this email. And I’ve seen
your handwriting, Ai, and that letter’s definitely it,” the woman explained.
She, though, didn’t have the glare of
many of the others, her expression far softer.
She slipped further down the email, and
showed Ai the last part of the email.
Beneath all of the photos was a single
sentence, and it made her vision turn red.
“Taken
from the notebook of Aiko Kai,” the note read.
It had to have been when she’d left her
book unattended.
She hadn’t brought her supplies for
Rachel’s gift anywhere near the campus since then, and neither she nor the
blonde would send them out.
Rachel…
Her eyes widened as her mind wandered
to her lover, wondering if she was going through anything similar.
“You said we all got that? How many people is we?” she demanded.
“Word spreads fast,” one of the glaring
women answered. “The contact list this morning was, like, twenty when I got it.”
Several of her squad mates didn’t seem
to find it nearly as amusing as the others, with a few even glaring on Ai’s
behalf at the smirking ones.
Others were staring at her with
disgust, and it was they that caused Ai to straighten to her full height and
take a calming breath.
In the background of it all stood
Annabelle, giggling to herself as she watched the Asian grow angrier than she’d
honestly thought was possible.
Ai’s chastisement of the women stopped
short when she noticed the redhead’s mirth.
The mystery solved itself in her head,
and she turned her gaze fully to her.
A shudder ran through Annabelle’s spine
at the feel of eyes on her, and she reluctantly met Ai’s gaze.
She briefly wondered, while staring
into the burning, amber-colored eyes, if this sensation was anything like what
others had described feeling when she glared at them.
If it was, she suddenly sympathized
with the victims of her ire previously.
When Annabelle’s eyes flinched away, Ai
nodded to herself before spinning around.
“Fine. A lot of you seem to have some
issue. Either that I like women, or that I like my roommate, I don’t know and
really, I don’t care. I’ll take the rest of the day off. No problem. In the
mean time, you all need to get the fuck over it, because I’m not quitting
because of bigots.”
With that, she stormed off without
another glance back.
And she didn’t spare another glance
back towards the campus, nor the many staring eyes, the entire way home…
When Ai stomped through the door, she
found Rachel sitting on the couch.
The blonde was sitting with her head on
her knees and her arms wrapped around her ankles.
Ai quietly slipped the door closed and
slid to a seat next to her, not saying anything.
The blonde was known to take the
somewhat bizarre position whenever she was deep in thought.
She’d once explained that it was a defense
mechanism so that her brother would leave her alone whenever she wanted to
figure things out growing up.
Ai stayed motionless at her side for
what seemed like an eternity before the blonde’s face slowly peeked up from her
knees.
Her expression wasn’t one that Ai hoped
to see again for a long time after the day ended…
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