Page 57 of The Facade

I frowned and inched closer to the door so I could see through the window. It was darker inside than it was outside, thanks to the exterior lights, so I hoped they couldn’t see me.

“So did you kiss her?” a guy wearing a Thor costume asked.

“Yep,” Ben said, raising his fist to bump knuckles with his friend. “For being one of the hardest girls to date at our school, she kissed me easily enough.”

And with those words, my temples started pounding and I immediately felt sick.

Because he was talking aboutme.

He was laughing about kissing me with his friends.

“Did you make it to second base?” another friend in a zombie costume asked. “Third base?”

What?

Did they really think I’d do any of that with a guy I barely knew?

Even though they were only talking about it and I’d barely kissed the guy, I suddenly felt so violated.

So used because it had all been just some sort of sick game Ben and his friends were playing.

To think I’d actually believed him when he told me he liked me.

I was so stupid.

So naive and desperate for a guy I barely knew to like me that I believed everything he’d said just because it was what I wanted to hear.

I was going to throw up.

“First base was more than enough for me.” Ben chuckled. “There’s definitely a reason why she doesn’t date much.”

My face burned.

I needed to get out of here. I needed to get away from the school and put as much distance between me and these guys as possible. But before I could slip away, the guy dressed like Thor asked, “So how many girls do you have left on your list?”

There’s a list?

Were there other girls who were going to be lied to and made fun of behind their backs?

How many other girls had he done this to?

Even though I wanted to run away, I knew I couldn’t just leave now.

“I think I just have Addison Michaels and the new twin, Elyse, and I’ll have made it through the initial list.”

Elyse was on his list, too?

No wonder he’d always seemed happy to see her.

Well, he wouldn’t have a chance to play with her heart like he’d done with mine. As soon as I got out of here, I was going to tell everyone about his stupid dare and he would regret ever messing with me.

“I have English with Addison, so I’m sure I’ll have her checked off the list in no time,” Ben said. “And then I’ll get Elyse last since she’s hot, and I wouldn’t mind dragging that out for a while.”

“She is hot,” Zombie guy, who I now recognized as Casey Elliot from my biology class said. “Her sister, too.”

Though I knew I shouldn’t take anything they were saying seriously, my cheeks burned with shame. I couldn’t help but compare what they were saying about my friends to what they had said about me. Ava and Elyse were hot and actually interesting enough for Ben to really want a hookup.

They were the super skinny supermodels, and I was just chopped liver and a notch in the belt, not pretty enough to ever actually interest Ben.

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