Mom came down with my brother. “I’m taking Kamila to school today,” she said sternly.
After looking at me for a second, Julian murmured, “OK then. I had just thought I would.” He didn’t know what else to say.
“Mom, let Julian take me, OK?” I asked. “I need to handle this stuff myself.”
“Kamila,” she objected, “I don’t like this one bit.”
“Are you just going to let her disobey you like that?” my grandmother asked.
“What do you want me to do, Mother? Force her into the car?” I could see Mom was frustrated, but I could also tell I had won. “Either way, Kamila, I am going to talk to the principal, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.”
I asked Julian to wait, and I went upstairs for my coat and bag.
“Let’s go,” I said, rushing past my family and slamming the door behind me.
Julian and I looked at each other for a few seconds. “I’m sorry,” we both blurted out at the same time, breaking into smiles. So we’d had a fight the day before everything went to shit. It had been stupid—there had been no need for it. I’d started to realize Julian was one of those people who couldn’t help saying hurtful things when he was angry. I wasn’t that way, but I could forgive it, especially when he’d tried so hard to be there for me.
“Come on,” he said, pulling me in for a comforting hug. We got in the car. “How are you?” he asked.
“Bad,” I admitted, feeling the warmth from the hot coffee spread through my body. Outside, it was freezing cold.
“Your mother’s right, Kami,” Julian said after a moment of silence. “You should talk to the principal. You need to turn Danny in. What he did…”
“I don’t know… I just want to put all this behind me. He knows we know it’s him now—he’ll have to stop. But I’ll tell you one thing: If my brother shows up at home with so much as a scratch on his face, I’ll kill Danny Walker. I swear to you, Julian, I will.”
“Kamila, he uploaded a video of you naked onto the internet…”
Those words cut like a knife. I think a part of my brain had tried to make me believe it hadn’t really happened. Because if I thought about it, it made me want to vomit.
“I can’t talk about that right now, Julian. I need time to absorb it. To really grasp that he was capable of doing that.”
Five minutes later, we were in the parking lot at school. Right away, I noticed people turning toward me. I could feel the weightof their stares. They weren’t looking atme, they were seeing that naked body they’d viewed online.
I didn’t see him coming. I didn’t see him because he came out of nowhere. But then, there he was, grabbing my hands—touching me!
“Please, Kami. You’ve got to believe me. It wasn’t me!”
“Get outta here!” Julian shouted, pushing him away, before I could even react.
Danny tripped and almost fell backward. He looked horrible. The beating Thiago had given him had left him looking disfigured. Both his eyes were black and swollen, and his lip was split. “I need to talk to her!” Danny insisted, looking at me with pleading eyes. I’d never seen him so desperate. “I would never do anything like that! How could you even think that?”
“Don’t come near me,” I said, feeling the hatred inside me grow.
But did I truly hate him? Could I?
“Kamila, your mother called the cops on me! Fucking A, you’re going to ruin my future!”
“Hey!” someone yelled behind me, and I heard the slamming of two car doors.
“Get the fuck away from her!” Taylor shouted. Thiago didn’t say a word. But his eyes clouded over.
Shit. This was going to end badly. Really badly.
Danny raised his hands in surrender and started walking backward. “Kamila, you know me. You know I wouldn’t do something like that.” He looked me straight in the eye.
“That’s the sad thing,” I said, tears in my eyes. “It turns out you would.”
The principal appeared. “What’s going on out here?” he demanded.
