Page 126 of Remember Us This Way

Tarni scoffs, and her hand snakes out, smacking my elbow off the table and causing my head to fall away, leaving me scrambling to catch myself. “I’m fucking talking to you, bitch.”

Hope launches herself right over the table, anger flashing in her bright blue eyes as she drops right down between me and Tarni, ruthlessly shoving her away from me. “Touch her again, bitch,” she spits, mimicking Tarni’s tone. “And I’ll fucking end you.”

“Holy shit,” Tarni booms, flicking her gaze between me and Hope. “I fucking knew it. You two are riding the fucking pussy train together, aren’t you. It all makes sense now. Tell me, is it just the innocent scissoring shit, or are you hard-core? I bet you take strap-ons to a whole new level.”

The whole cafeteria booms with laughter, but Hope isn’t having it. “I told you to fuck off,” she says. “I’m not going to ask again.”

I put my hand up to Hope’s arm. “She’s not worth it.”

Tarni scoffs, pushing around Hope. “Oh, I’m not worth it?” she spits. “Look in the fucking mirror.”

With that, she reaches forward and grips the back of my wig, yanking hard and tearing it right off my head. My hands whip up to my head, trying to catch it and save myself the humiliation, but she’s too fast, and the wig quickly drops to the ground.

My eyes widen in horror, feeling disgustingly exposed as Tarni sucks in a loud breath. “HOLY FUCK,” she booms, the whole cafeteria pointing and staring right at me, their laughter already drowning me. “SHE’S BALD.”

My heart races, and panic grips me around the throat, squeezing tight as my gaze darts around the room, feeling smaller by the second. My chest heaves, and as their taunting laughs get louder, I find it almost impossible to breathe.

Scrambling up from the table, I run. My feet carry me through the humiliation, and just as I reach the cafeteria doors, I glance back to find Hope taking Tarni to the ground with her fists swinging. Tarni’s terrified squeal is the last thing I hear before I race out of the cafeteria and down the hall, my feet barely able to hold me up.

People stare at me, their brows furrowed as the sobbing bald girl races through the school. I stop at my locker to grab my things, stumbling with each step, but I push through it, the humiliation and devastation more than I can handle.

With all my things in hand, I keep running, straight through the front doors of East View High and down toward the student parking lot as the exhaustion quickly catches up to me. I was late, so my Range Rover is toward the back of the lot, and as I weave through the endless number of cars, falling against them as my knees start to give out, the dizziness reaches an all-time high.

I hurry to my car, desperately needing to block out the horror of the cafeteria, and just as my hand touches the back end, the dizziness claims me. The last thing I see is Principal Daniels racing toward me as my world fades to darkness.

51

Noah

My pen taps against the desk as I stare down at my exam papers. There’s still forty-three minutes remaining, and truth be told, all I’ve managed to write is my fucking name at the top. It’s Zoey’s eighteenth birthday, very possibly her last birthday ever, and I’m sitting here instead of being with her.

If I’d somehow found a way to be with her today, I’m sure she would have been happy to pass on her ridiculous need to go to school. I understand her reasonings for wanting to go, but she’s too fucking stubborn to know when to call it quits. She’s not strong enough to endure a whole day at school. She needs to be in her bed resting, but she’s determined to see it through and prove to herself that she can.

Fuck, she makes me so angry sometimes. I don’t even care that I’ve been acting like a little bitch by blowing up her phone today. I need to know she’s alright.

My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I shoot my gaze across the room to my professor, making sure he’s still fully engrossed in the papers on his desk before slipping my phone out of my pocket, expecting a text from Zoey. Only it’s Hope’s name that flashes across the screen.

What the fuck?

I quickly unlock my phone and open the new text.

Hope: You need to get home. Now.

I’m out of my fucking chair so fast my exam papers fly off my desk, and I quickly scramble to pick them up before racing to the front of the room. I drop the papers on my professor’s desk, barely sparing him a glance before racing for the door with my phone already at my ear.

It rings twice before Hope picks up. “You on your way?” she demands, sheer panic in her tone.

“Yeah,” I grunt, hurrying across campus toward my car. “What the fuck happened?”

“Tarni,” she spits. “She was already too exhausted to be there, I was trying to talk her into going home, but Tarni—that fucking bitch—she had other plans. She humiliated her in front of the whole fucking school, tore her wig off, and laughed about her being bald to the point they were all laughing at her.”

“FUCK!”

“She’s in the hospital now. I’m on my way.”

“Wait. WHAT?” I demand, my eyes going wide. “How the fuck did she end up in the hospital? What happened?”

“Oh,” Hope says, realizing she jumped too far ahead in her recap. “She took off. She got all her shit and ran to her car, but it was too much, especially after how exhausted she already was. Apparently, she collapsed in the student parking lot, and if Principal Daniels hadn’t waited so long to tell me, I’d already fucking be there by now.”

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