Page 20 of Girl Violence

This is so skanky.

Josette pushes her lips together, feeling them tremble. It was posted twenty minutes ago by a blank profile, and Vince is obviously looking at it.

Her messages start pinging, and she closes her phone immediately, throwing it away like it’s red hot. It slides across the carpet and goes under one of the shelves, but she doesn’t care. It can stay there.

Standing, she begins fixing the books on the shelf with the same precision as Vince, feeling his eyes on her.

“Josette?” Josette doesn’t look at him. Not until he grabs her shoulder and forces her to face him.

“Don’t.” She tries pulling away, but he keeps a grip on her. Without being able to help it, her bottom lip shakes as moisture collects behind her eyelids, threatening to embarrass her further by spilling down her face.

“Who posted the picture?” he asks quietly, but she refuses to look at him. She doesn’t know what she’s really feeling right now. A mixture of things. Anger. Hurt. But mostly, shame. She has family on Instagram, including her mum and dad. “Josette?”

“I don’t know.” The profile’s name is John Smith—a fake name for a fake profile. There was no profile picture or information other than where the person lives: Graycott. Josette puts her hand over her face and groans. Shit, this is bad. “That’s Tyler’s bed.”

Pushing her hair back from her face, she finally glances at Vince warily but is surprised to see the darkness in his eyes. “Then I think we better go and pay Tyler a little visit.”

Josette shakes her head. “I don’t need you fighting my battles for me.”

“I’m not.” But he is.

CHAPTERSEVEN

When Josette was nine, and Vince had just turned eleven, things changed between them. He was her favourite person, and he told her she was his. Josette doesn’t know why they worked or how. It wasn’t common for girls to be best friends with boys, especially with the slight age gap between them, which seems enormous when you’re a child, even though it’s only two years. With their parents being friends and neighbours, it just happened. Josette guesses they both didn’t have the most incredible families behind closed doors, and they found the happiness they should have had with them in each other.

Vince went to high school that year, leaving Josette in primary school. Since they got out earlier, she always used to run to Chestwood High after the day ended. She would wait at the gates for him so they could walk home together. But one day, his new friends asked him why she was always coming around. It wasn’t cool for him to hang with a kid—like they weren’t still kids themselves. They made fun of Josette, and Vince let them. She was so upset that she ran away, but he came after her.

“Why did you let them say mean things about me?” she sobbed, and he lifted his hand, wiping away her tears with his thumb.

He sighed. “Because not everyone will be nice to you, and you need to know that.”

He asked her not to meet him at school the next day, and she cried some more. She told her dad, who explained that older boys want to do older things like hang out with guys their own age and speak to girls.

After that, Josette experienced jealousy for the first time. She was worried that Vince would find a different girl to be best friends with. She was too young to understand, so she was convinced he was trying to find a girl his age to have what they did.

Despite missing him, she didn’t talk to him for a week, and when the weekend rolled around, he came over like he always did. Josette told her dad that she didn’t want to speak to him, but Vince went to her room anyway, demanding for her to tell him what was wrong. Eventually, she told him, and he shook his head.

“I asked you not to come to school because the older boys were looking at you, and I didn’t like it,” he said, wrapping his arms around her and giving her a hug. “Not because I was looking for another girl. They’re not like you.”

From then on, Josette made him promise to never replace her, and he didifshe promised the same when she went to Chestwood. They made lots of promises that day. Promises of being friends forever. Now they’re swimming in a sea of broken promises. Life happened. Josette moved on, not expecting him to appear again. When he did, instead of picking up those broken pieces, he’s been crushing them into the ground like he does his cigarettes. That’s what it feels like. This is only temporary, after all.He’sonly temporary.

So why he’s doing this for her, she has no idea.

Josette’s stomach swirls with sickness that Vince has seen that picture. She can’t believe Tyler would do this. Why now? Why upload a nude of her in his bed when it happened so long ago? What more does he want?

Josette thinks back to that night. It was the second time she and Tyler had sex. She had gone out of her way to look hot, wanting to make him jealous after catching him kissing another girl. She didn’t want him, but she was hurting and resentful.

All she had to do was dance with Ian and Tyler pulled her away. He didn’t let her go all night, and despite hating herself for it, she sat on his lap pathetically.

Vince was right. He made Josette feel special. She hadn’t meant to sleep with him again. She’d gotten drunk, and it just happened. She remembers lying beneath him, feeling like shit because he wouldn’t look her in the eye while doing it. It wasn’t what she wanted—but she just let it happen.

She fell asleep after, exhausted and sore, and when she woke up in the morning, he was gone and already moving on.

After their shift ended, Josette and Vince went to Tyler’s apartment he shared with some other guys. One of them told Vince he was at the bowl and slammed the door in their faces.

“I think we should dress up like we’re in The Matrix,” Josette says to Vince, trying to mask her nerves. “I think we’d make hot a Trinity and Neo.”

“Maybe for Halloween.” She turns in his direction, unsure why he’s doing this, but thankful he’s with her, and she doesn’t have to do this alone. Especially given how personal this is.

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