Worth the Trouble ✓

15 | be a man

I'M NOT AFRAID OF ANYONE.

I talk back and stick my chin up to authority figures of any kind. There's nothing—detentions, principal's meetings, suspensions, whatever—they can do to scare me.

But when Brittany fucking Stanson walks past me in the hallway, cold eyes sliding over my face like I'm merely another locker, my heart seizes in my chest. I keep my expression carefully blank until she passes. Then I slip down the stairwell and to my class without a backward glance.

My mind is whirling through the hour, focusing on everything but science.

Brittany didn't react when she saw me around the corner. I must have looked like any random straggler, several paces away from where she and Suki spoke, scrolling on my phone. Does her inert gaze imply that she doesn't know who I am? Or did Suki tell one person—Brittany fucking Stanson—about her supposedly completely secret boyfriend?

God. I need to talk to Suki.

After school lets out, I make my way to the library. Suki is already there, her textbook cracked open and a pleasant smile on her lips. I place my hand on her book and slide it away from her, causing her eyes to spear mine with mock-frustration.

"You told Brittany."

"Who—" The mock-frustration collapses into shock as understanding dawns on her. "How did you know?"

"I'm not going to tell you," I grit out.

Suki flinches, her eyes widening with hurt.

"Yeah. Hurts, right? Keeping secrets? You've been keeping secrets from me since school began. Since we started dating, actually. So I don't owe you any honesty till I get some in return."

Suki's shock melts into a guarded wall. "I told Brittany."

I don't know if she's good enough to fake her expressions like that, innocent eyes one moment and dark, hooded ones the next. But she at least admits it, repeating my words lethargically.

I slide into the seat next to her, sitting sideways so that I can examine her face without craning my neck. "What exactly did you tell her?"

"Only true things. That I'm pregnant. That the father is not going to be involved. She doesn't know who he is, however. She doesn't care and she never asked."

"Why her? Of all fucking people." I thought Suki was clever. Clever people don't trust Brittany fucking Stanson. "Do you know what a terrible person she is—"

Suki interrupts with a voice so tremulous, I shut up instantly to catch it. "I didn't choose her. She was just... there."

"Come again?"

She takes a breath and averts her gaze. "The day of the ultrasound. She was sitting in the waiting room of the clinic when I arrived. She was there for a birth control prescription, and we already knew each other."

I didn't know that.

"We had a class together last year, and she goes to my church, and she's Jap-American like me. Our families have known each other for ages. I needed someone who got me."

Who got me. Suki sounds like a regular angsty teenager right now. No-one gets her except for one person in the whole school, who will inevitably lead to her downfall. Hallmark movie, my ass.

It rankles that the person she chose is not me.

"She doesn't get you. She's using you. The essay thing? She's milking your desperation for profit."

Suki swallows stubbornly, dragging her textbook back in front of her. "She's not."

"Who knows what she's going to do with this knowledge? She's blackmailed and bullied half the sophomores in the school, and all of the freshmen."