Know Your Worth

25

I got confused between the words negligent and negligible when writing my essays for Economics, and Sam laughed like a maniac when she found out. We got shushed again by the librarian, and other people in the library gave us dirty looks. 

Simon had not contacted me at all. No texts or calls. 

The funny part was that I was okay with that. I had no itch to talk to him as well, and I didn't know if it was the pettiness or the uneasiness of his one bad deed. 

One part of me was all about forgetting about it because it happened one time, or at least that was what he said. It didn't define him. The other part wanted to poke and prod to have all the information to determine if he was worth staying with. 

Sam didn't know about it. I had wanted to confide in her initially, but then I chickened out. I planned to ask Damien about it instead. 

Since I had a working brain, I planned on asking him face-to-face instead of resorting to incriminating text messages. 

After two hours of forcing ourselves to retain some of the information we had memorised from our respective subjects, we decided to leave and go sit at some of the benches along the corridors. They were clean, thankfully and we decided to trash talk about the weird people that we met before university. 

"I studied in a Catholic school, it was an all-girls school so obviously, the sexuality education was useless because all they preached about was abstinence and about saving yourself for your husband. It was funny because there were quite a handful of lesbians in my school," Sam told me. 

"No way," I chortled

"No, really. So anyway, I had a burning question. I asked the teacher, Mrs Bailey if it was possible to still get an STD or an STI even after marriage, suppose the husband had slept around a lot, even if the girl was a virgin until marriage. Twelve-year-old me thought it was a legit question, and I still think it was, but she ended up scolding me to tears in front of the whole class, saying that I should have 'a healthy respect for the sanctity of the institution of marriage' and that I was a 'bad influence on my fellow peers' and that she was 'disappointed in my views'. What a catty bitch," she scoffed, rolling her eyes forcefully. 

I nearly spat out my water because I chose the wrong time to drink. I did end up choking and wheezing for breath, and that just made Sam laugh even harder. 

"Mrs Bailey sounds mental," I wheezed out.

"She was so weird and had a lot of internalised misogyny, and it didn't work out when she tried to girl power some things. Like she wanted us to be empowered women always striving for excellence, cue my school vision by the way, but it came across as disingenuous because she was sexist," she explained. 

"For me, I had this girl called Ada. She was hated by everyone. I didn't think it was possible, but it did happen. We were in the Environmental Club in middle school. I only went for the air conditioners, but long story short she wanted to be voted as the incoming president of the club. But she was unreceptive to any feedback about her work when it came to making posters maybe for Earth Day and was so unlikeable. She got along with nobody, threw a hissy fit, and would sulk, literally sulk at the back of the computer lab if she didn't get her way. It was as if she was trying to get everyone to despise her, and when someone else got voted as president, she nearly threw a chair at the poor girl and cussed everyone. She got suspended in the end," I supplied. 

"Damn, she sounds like a head case," Sam said. 

"You can say that again. She was, in the nicest way that I possibly can, a fucking, psycho, entitled bitch. She terrified me so much in middle school, and I didn't really interact with her per say," I said.