This War Paint

Jane


“Will you just stop?” I seethed, fisting my hand as it lay clasped in his. He growled in annoyance and tightened his fingers, caving in what little shell I had made so he had a good grip on me again. He couldn’t give me a break for even a second.

It was lunchtime and I was sat at my old table with Lolly on my left, a jock on my right and David underneath me. He had his built arms on either side of my waist, sandwiching me in his lap so I couldn’t even dream of moving. There was bile in my throat which wouldn’t budge no matter how much I chewed on my bland cafeteria food. Every second with his jean-clad thighs brushing against my bare legs had me wanting to retch in front of the whole school. Had me wanting to scream and fight and cry, but that would blow our cover. Nobody in love acted that way.

It was a fucking good thing, then, that I wasn’t in love with him.

“You two are so cute together,” one of the cheerleaders further up the table crooned. A tiny, tanned arm of hers was balancing her blonde head up, giving her the wistful look of a girl seeing one of her dreams come true. I sincerely hoped it was just a look. This town would take on a whole new pathetic if this was what it wanted more than things that mattered – its King and Queen together at last.

Like a dangerous game, the mouse sat right in the middle of the cat’s lap.

“We know,” David smirked, running his lips up my ear, pressing me tighter to him when I flinched away.

God, I thought miserably, just make this end already.

Lolly beside me was toying with a long strand of her hair and deliberately not looking my way. She was mad. Of course she was mad; she was under the odd illusion that she loved David and, having her best friend draped in his arms, was probably hard to swallow. I hated that I wasn’t just hurting Fraser, or myself, but this ditzy girl too. My favourite ditzy girl.

“Hey.”

She remained focused on something across the cafeteria, even when I reached out to touch her bare shoulder from my elevated height.

“Lolly,” I said, louder this time, unable to take her blanking me. “Jennifer!”

“Hm?” She finally turned her pretty head to stare me down with betrayed green eyes.

“Do you want to do something this weekend, me and you? It feels like forever since we met up, just us,” I asked vulnerably. For the first time in too long, I realised I missed Lolly and her silly laugh and her wicked sense of humour. It was bad timing because I looked and felt like the worst friend in the universe, but I needed her.

I needed a friend to tell what was happening to. And to hug me in a way I knew didn’t mean anything but wasn’t forced either. I just needed Lolly to smile at me, rest her hand on my arm and say that everything was going to be okay.

I’d spent the whole day dodging dark corners, not allowing David to get me alone for even a split second. He knew what he would do, just as certain as I knew, because he’d failed twice and a boy like him didn’t fail a third time. I’d been paraded around the hallways and classroom like a doll propped up on nothing but somebody’s arm. I didn’t feel hollow, though, just like a stranger’s plaything with no say in the matter.

I was tired and beaten down and still on high alert.

And I was pleading with my best friend through whatever connection we were supposed to have, to agree and take me to the bathroom so I could cry into her shoulder for a while. Fraser’s eyes haunted me and his kiss was still on my lips. I sat on somebody else’s lap and thought of him, praying he would show up for the first time this lunch just to let me know that he was okay.

“Actually I already have plans this weekend. Sorry Jane.”

“It’s okay sweetheart,” David shifted his legs and shifted me with them “you can have me all to yourself instead.”

I fought down the urge to turn around, spit in his face and make a run for it. I wouldn’t make it to the other side without being brought down, anyway. He was on the football team and, if he squinted just the right way, I could be the enemy he had to tackle down.

“Great,” I sent the table my biggest, fakest smile, making sure the boy underneath me could feel the sarcasm.

In response, he merely crushed me a little tighter to his chest so his cologne made it a little harder to breathe. I was getting better at suppressing the images of him closing in on me in the middle of two bathroom stalls, the hands running the length of my arm hadn’t always been so gentle. Careful. Careful now, Jane. I couldn’t quite forget, though, as my body erupted in its millionth round of shivers.

“Tell me you love me, sweetheart,” he whispered coldly next to my ear. My hair fanned out, tickling my arm just where his hands now rested. They clenched slowly, giving me no choice, just a time limit. It was never a question.

“I love you.”

The table glanced up at me, probably wondering how anybody could say something so beautiful in a voice like that. I could have shouted something ugly with it instead, that would have made more sense, and David wasn’t a bit pleased. With an extra tight squeeze to my arms, he let me know just how upset he was.

“That’s good, Janie, because I love you too.”

He was a much better actor. And he had called me Janie. Nobody had called me that since I was in kindergarten and looked cute with my hair in Scrunchies.

I wondered what it would be like to give and receive those words from someone I meant them to. It’d be different from this, oh God I hoped it would be. Because with him it meant nothing, less than nothing, I was rolling in negative numbers. With someone I loved it should be freeing. I was just more incarcerated, in my little self inflicted prison.

“Kiss her, Arsmtrong,” one of the jocks nudged him from the side, jostling me with them. “I know you can’t follow those sentiments with anything but a big kiss.”

“Oh you know that, do you?” I asked heatedly, hating the way David’s eyes flashed at me and his lips dipped closer. I wasn’t prepared to let him kiss me again, I was sure just a single touch of him anywhere more would result in me throwing up everywhere. And on him.

Actually, that wouldn’t be so bad.

But from the darkening rings around his eyes and the way he was so quick to crush my fist in his, I wouldn’t put it past the boy to hurt me for it. There’s a thin line between him and I alone in a bathroom stall with his arms outstretched and my back against the wall, and us in front of the whole school with his nostrils flaring and my hands quaking. He didn’t care if he hurt me either way. All he wanted was to win. Either way, I had lost long ago.

The jock just shrugged as if he couldn’t comprehend my words. He probably couldn’t. Most of the boys David surrounded himself with were born followers with little to show for themselves but a copy of someone else.

“Oh Janie, don’t be shy about it now, you’re a very good kisser,” David nipped my ear, harder than necessary. I sat still, a statue, staring desperately at the door to the cafeteria, waiting for Fraser. He must be coming... he was never this late for lunch... unless he was outside in the sunshine. He was probably avoiding me because, God only knew, how ugly me and David together must have been for him.

But all I wanted right then, as David was trailing a burning hot line with his lips across my face, was to see Fraser. He would shoot me a strained smile which would be just about enough. He would tackle David off of me so I wouldn’t have to sit with him clinging so tightly to me ever again.

He tried to rape me, Fraser, he almost succeeded twice. Take me away. Save me now. I don’t want to do this, be this, anymore.

I tried the words out in my head but they didn’t quite fit together properly. Fraser deserved so much more than me and my broken nightmares and my ties with this town. By now, he was probably sated from the slut he had taken away, a little girl who would run away with him before he even had to ask. I couldn’t pretend I wasn’t jealous so I didn’t even bother. I wanted to be the same. Short and moveable, pretty but not beautiful, free and unattached to let Fraser fill me up with this love.

Love was a funny word, wasn’t it? Just minutes ago I had said it to David and now I was thinking it about someone completely different. It was this difference which made me like him so much in the first place, and now I was scared of just where this like overlapped. How far it went.

David’s lips were hovering over my mouth, his hands had turned me around completely, and I closed my eyes shut tight. His warm breath smelt like honey and venom, something deadly buried behind something beautiful. And he was. Beautiful, that is. All I could remember was being terrified of him, though, and how hard I had considered fighting for myself against him. His beauty was like a sharp, rousing slap because someone like him should have been grotesque.

The kiss I was dreading never came. There was a shout across the room and suddenly my body was falling to the floor, my hip scraping against the chair as my legs folded like jelly. I sat there for a second, realising how much better it was on the dirty floor than on his dirty lap, before I opened my eyes. Then I thought that everyone had gone mad.

People were running, some laughing, others shrieking at each other. My entire table was empty and I just caught sight of David’s broad back disappearing out the main entrance over legs running with the speed of the desperate. Something had happened, something so exciting and terrible that the entire student body was shoving each other to get outside. To the entrance of the school, that’s where they were headed; it was shouted above heads and whispered in ears.

“What’s happening?”

“Man, David’s going to be so pissed off.”

“Fuck that, I’d be pissed off too.”

“I don’t get it. I can’t see a thing.”

“Who did it?”

“Who do you think?”

“I still don’t understand.”

The calls of everyone meshed together after a couple of seconds, and by the time I began to understand, I was alone in the cafeteria. I didn’t care all that much anyway, whatever it was it was a blessing. I didn’t have to feel David’s grimy arms wrapping me up tight in a way I only wanted one person to hold me. No more kisses from that brute. I could breathe fresh, clean air for the first time since being snatched from James’ car.

I didn’t even realise there was blood until I felt two hands clasp my face, turning me to face them, their fingers tracing the warm liquid. I thought it was tears at first but then I couldn’t cry from anywhere but my eyes. I was still in a daze, and apparently I wasn’t alone at all.

From my ear, where David had bitten down too hard, there must have been a cut. It trickled in anything but a straight line and into my hairline. Red on red. I could feel his fingers trailing up. Calloused fingers. They were different from David’s which were baby smooth. Subconsciously, I leaned into these fingers.

“Where does it hurt? Are you alright, Jane?”

Not Janie. I was Jane. That was my name.

“I’m so sorry.”

He shook his head strongly, denying my words with a passion I had almost forgotten. Nobody possessed it like he did, not in this whole world could anybody feel so intense about someone else. I wondered if I could learn this from him.

“No, I am sorry. Listen to me. Now, just listen to me.”

I was surprised my voice was coming out at all. All morning I had been strangely silent, beaten down without any physical blow. And here was Fraser, pulling back only slightly to see the blood on his fingertips for himself.

“It’s all a farce, Fraser, David means nothing to me. You. You mean something to me.”