The next day I found myself back in school. My mother had taken my temperature and, finding no fever, declared that I was fully recovered.
Words cannot express the dread I felt returning to campus. I knew that in the minor absence Simone and her evil posse would have taken every opportunity to spread more lies and vicious rumors about me. I walked into the school fully expecting some Carrie-esque embarrassment to occur.
To my surprise, it was relatively quiet – at first. Then it began to happen.
It happened slowly at first, but then more often. When the kids looked at me, they smiled, and then cocked their heads in a sad, almost pitying look. One girl saw me, squealed, and ran over to give me a huge hug. She squeezed me so hard I couldn’t breathe.
“Oh, hi Ronnie,” I managed to gasp. She pulled away and held my shoulders in her hands. She opened up her mouth to speak, but then closed it again. Once more, the head tilt, and then she said. “If you need anything, just let me know, okay?” With each emphasis she squeezed my shoulders harder and shook me a little.
“Um, sure,” I said, confused. “Okay.”
Once more she opened her mouth to say something, but once again she closed it into a sad, wistful smile.
Suddenly her eyes grew red and she choked back a sob. Covering her mouth with her hand, gave me another bone-crushing hug before she ran off. I watched her go, totally confused.
When I got to my locker, I was in for a shock. The entire locker, from top to bottom, was covered in flowers, hearts, cards, stuffed animals, and other tributary. It was strictly over the top. There were cards, there were teddy bears. There were teddy bears holding cards. I stood there, my mouth agape, as I started to read through the messages of well-wishing.
Get well soon! We love you! You’re a survivor, Shanon!
“It’s Shannon, you shmuck,” I muttered to myself. Even so, I didn’t have a clue what was going on. I had only been out of school for a day! As far as I knew, no one ever got this kind of attention for having a cold. I didn’t have the first clue as to how to even open my locker, when the bell rang.
Fuck, late again!
I raced down the hall to Mr. Rawlins’ classroom. I went through the door, fully expecting to rattle off yet another “I’m sorry,” when I stopped in my tracks.
The entire class stood at one end, looking at me, underneath a giant banner which read “Don’t Let The Vaginal Placebo Get You Down!” There were hearts and flowers drawn in colorful patterns all over the banner. Underneath, the students stood in a long line across the side of the room.
Simone, in the center (of course), made a show of taking a step towards me, beginning a slow clap. The rest of her friends joined in, and then the remainder of the class. Two other girls burst into tears. Mr. Rawlins sat at his desk, a deep, angry frown on his face as he watched Simone.
When the applause reached its climax, she whirled on her heel, her ponytail whipping about dramatically. “Shannon Rochet,” she said, pronouncing my name correctly, “is a survivor. She is a true role model for each of us.”
What the fuck is she going on about? I thought to myself. I was very uncomfortable, and didn’t have the first idea about what she was up to.
Simone started walking back and forth as if she were a general addressing her troops. “It would be easy to stay quiet about her condition and suffer all alone,” Simone continued, “but she needs to know that we stand behind her one-hundred percent!”
There were murmurs and nods of agreements. I looked from person to person and, with the exception of Simone’s coven, the look of genuine, earnest solidarity was on everyone’s faces.
“So even if Shannon’s body betrays her, even if her lady parts are poisonous -” she said the words in a loud whisper.
“Simone…” Mr. Rawlins warned, standing up.
Simone whirled around to face me once more, her back to the rest of the class. “- we will never let her forget that we are here for her.”
I stared at the words Vaginal Placebo on the banner. My stomach felt as if it dropped out of my body through the floor.
In one dizzying moment, I realized what she had done, the psychotic bitch. She had made it look as if she were trying to help me, pity me, play on people’s emotions for helping the “sick girl,” when in reality she had guaranteed that I would be ostracized for the remainder of my days at the school. Worse, I would never get a boy to talk to me, let alone ask me out on a date. No boy would go to the prom with me, no boy would kiss me.
The room erupted into applause, though a couple of the crying girls held on to each other in a tight embrace. Each and every boy in the room looked horribly uncomfortable. Simone, on the other hand, looked incredibly smug and pleased with herself.
“Okay, everyone,” Mr. Rawlins said. “I think we’ve put Ms. Rochet on the spot for long enough. Let’s all take our seats.”
Simone turned to him, her grin faltering. “Oh, not yet, Mr. Rawlins!” she said sweetly. “We all chipped in to got her a get-well present.”
The students parted like the Red Sea, revealing a giant box with colorful wrapping paper and a giant ribbon. It sat on the desk looking cheerful and ominous, like a birthday present from hell.
“Given her condition,” Simone said, turning back to me. “She’s going to need it.” Her tone had turned icy.
Mr Rawlins disagreed. “Regardless of her condition,” he said, “Ms. Rochet has taken up enough of my class time. I’m sure she appreciates the sentiment, however, and will be happy to open her gift on her own time. Isn’t that right, Ms. Rochet?”
I looked at him, stunned and mortified. I was in trouble? How was this my fault?
Simone broke into a grin once more. Then, remembering her act, she pouted and looked back at the other students. “Well, we can still give her a hug for support, right?”
Not waiting for an answer, she turned back to me once more and swept across the distance in three strides, holding me by the shoulders and giving me a massive embrace. I felt her fingernails dig so deep into my back that I wondered if she drew blood through the shirt.
“Take your medicine for your disease, you little cunt,” she snarled in my ear so that only I could hear.
Other students came up and gave me quick hugs, but I noticed that many of the boys tried to give me side-hugs, as if they wanted to keep their crotches away from mine as much as possible.
Jesus Christ, I thought. They actually they can catch something from me!
Of course, each of Simone’s minions had to add in their own attack as well. Obviously planned beforehand, one by one they came up to me, flung their arms around my neck, and pinched my skin on my collar with every pound of pressure they could squeeze between their expensive manicured nails.
I sat through Mr. Rawlins’ class dazed, rubbing my neck from time to time, and occasionally glancing at the box in the corner of the room. It was a huge box, and it seemed to mock me for the entire period. Once Simone caught me looking, however, and said something behind her hand to one of her friends, who giggled and shared the joke among the clique. I tried not to look at the present any more during the class, but as distracted as I was I couldn’t help myself.
The bell rang, and the students started gathering their things. “Well, we didn’t get to as much as we would have liked,” Mr. Rawlins said, “but assuming we don’t have another special moment for Ms. Rochet on Monday hopefully we can catch up. Speaking of which, Ms. Rochet – a moment if you please.”
What the hell? Is he still on my case?
Simone and friends sauntered out of the room, but not before Simone got in one last jab. “Don’t worry, Shannon,” she said. “Before you know it, you’ll rocket straight back to health.”
The cackling was audible for several minutes as they left the room and walked down the hall.
“Shannon,” Mr. Rawlins said from his desk. “Come over here.”
My legs felt wobbly, but I went over to his desk. “Look, I don’t know what’s going on between you and Simone,” he said, wearily. His voice sounded tired and sympathetic, not at all what I expected to hear from him. “But I do know that there is no such thing as ‘vaginal placebo.’ If any of the kids in this school had any brains they’d know what those terms actually meant.”
He looked at me earnestly, as if he could say what was really on his mind. “I don’t know what is in that box,” he said, glancing in its direction, “but I’m convinced you don’t want to know either. Take my advice: destroy the box and don’t look inside it, ever. There is no possible way that whatever is in there will be a good thing for you. Don’t let her fuck with you any more than she already has.”
I stood up a little straighter when I heard him swear. I mean, I had heard swearing since I was a kid, but never from Mr. Rawlins. Unlike most of the teachers, he had always kept a strict set of boundaries, and rarely let himself get familiar in his tone with students. This was obviously important.
“Th-thanks, Mr. Rawlins,” I stammered, looking at the wrapped present again.
He looked at me for a moment, deliberating on something. Finally, he said, “Listen, you can tell everyone that I’m being a huge jerk and blame you for disrupting the class. It’s okay, I can take the fall for this. I’ll keep the box here during the school day so that no one can bother you about what’s inside. Say I confiscated it.”
I nodded.
“Do you want me to get rid of it for you?” he asked.
I looked back at him. I could see that he was sincerely trying to help, or was he? I mean, it looked like he was, but everything was so confusing. Why would he be doing this if he was really trying to be a jerk, though? He was the only person who had really shown me any kindness and I needed to trust someone.
Eventually, though, I shook my head. “No,” I said, “I’ll do it.”
He looked at me for a long moment, and then he sighed. I could see he was disappointed in my answer. “Okay,” he said. “Come and get it at the end of the day. We’ll find something to carry all the rest of your collection from your locker and take it to your car at the same time.”
“Okay,” I said, and turned to go.
“Shannon,” he said, and I looked back at him. I felt like I wanted to cry, but didn’t know why. “I don’t know how or why you got into Simone’s crosshairs, but I can’t do anything until she actually does something that I can act on. Until that happens…”
He left the sentence unfinished. I nodded, and he was right. Simone had been very good at maintaining plausible deniability, which in a lot of ways made what she was doing even worse. Her bullying wasn’t just vicious, it was premeditated, and that kind of planning reveals a very sick and devious mind. Mr. Rawlins obviously knew this, but his hands were tied.
The rest of the day went exactly as he had predicted. People came up to me and wanted to know what was in the box, and I told them the story that he cooked up for me. The anger towards Mr. Rawlins deflected any suspicion that I might be hiding anything, and I found out that Simone had kept everyone in the dark about the contents.
This meant that she had wanted it to be a big surprise to everyone, a giant reveal. Something that was going to be the final nail in my coffin of my senior year. Mr. Rawlins was right again: whatever was in that box was likely something that I did not want to see or even know about.
This, of course, meant that my curiosity began to eat away at my resolve to do what needed to be done. I kept wondering about the box, thinking about it. What could she have picked? What would she have found that would be so bad? Could she possibly know me so well that she found some terrible secret about me that I didn’t even know myself? Something that, if exposed to the world, would destroy me?
I don’t know at what point in the day I decided my fate, but I knew I wasn’t going to simply dump the box – unopened – into a dumpster somewhere. After all, if I did that and someone found it, opened it, wouldn’t I still be at risk too? My rationalizations got more and more far-fetched and my resolve dissolved away. As the end of the school day approached, I was nearly beside myself with panic and curiosity. I found myself looking at the clock every fifteen minutes, only to find that in reality only two or three minutes had actually ticked by. My concentration was shot.
I had no more classes with Simone, but one of her other minions, Heather, shared my last class period. Her concentration was no more on the schoolwork than mine was; she was entirely focused upon me. She knew what was in the box, she must have known. The entire period she had a look on her face that was a cross between contempt, anticipation, and malicious glee. I did my best to ignore her and pretend that I wasn’t bothered by her intense glare.
At long last the bell rang, and we all shuffled out of the classroom. As I left the room I could see the teacher, Mrs. Zampirelli, give me a wistful smile. I sighed inwardly to myself, imagining the pity the woman was trying to convey to me over a misunderstanding about my “affliction.”
God, I hate Simone!
As I turned down the hallway towards my locker, I could see Mr. Rawlins standing next to it with a large box, putting all the cards and stuffed animals inside. As I approached I could see the “gift” inside as well, slowly getting crowded by the random teddy bears, hearts, and other outpouring of sympathy that enshrined my locker.
“Ms. Rochet,” he said sternly as I approached. “You know this is a fire hazard, right?”
I swallowed. If I hadn’t had the conversation with him earlier, I would have sworn he was being his usual, unreasonable self. Even though I knew he was acting it up, I wasn’t entirely sure there wasn’t some genuine annoyance being projected towards me.
“You should have straightened this up earlier today,” he continued, placing the last of the items into the large cardboard box.
“I… I’m sorry?” I said, but it came out more as a question. Maybe he really is pissed at me, I thought.
“Sorry wouldn’t have helped you if there had been an emergency and people had to trip over your stuff to get out to safety,” he said harshly, and thrust the box into my hands. I wasn’t expecting it, and I nearly dropped it onto the floor. It was a lot heavier than it looked.
“I want it out of here right now, Ms. Rochet,” he said. I searched his face for any of the warmth from earlier, but it was nowhere to be found. I looked down at the box and nearly started to cry. I didn’t ask for any of this!
“Let’s go,” he said, and turned towards the school exit. I followed behind, struggling to keep ahold of the box and my bookbag, which had fallen down one shoulder into the crook of my arm, making it very difficult to balance.
Out of the corner of my eye I could see Simone and her groupies. Everyone except for Simone looked pleased with themselves, enjoying the raw treatment from Mr. Rawlins. Simone, however, was livid. A severe frown pulled her perfect pouty lips downward, and a dark crease across her forehead clouded her delicate features. She was getting robbed of her big performance, and she knew it. Despite Mr. Rawlins playing the “bad guy,” Simone was pissed at me.
Mr. Rawlins escorted me out to my car, not saying anything until we got to it. As I tried to get my keys out of my backpack, he sighed, exasperated. “Today, Ms. Rochet,” he said.
Two boys, pulling out their band instruments for after-school marching practice, gave Mr. Rawlins a disapproving look. “Man,” one said to the other in a hushed voice still loud enough to hear. “She’s, like, sick, you know?” The other boy merely nodded. They hustled away, not willing to stand up to my defense and risk Mr. Rawlins’ wrath.
Once they were out of earshot, Mr. Rawlins’ features softened. “Look, Shannon,” he said quietly. “I’ve done all I can do for now. Think about what I said, okay? Don’t open that box. Remember what happened to Pandora.”
I placed the box in the trunk and slammed the lid shut. “I know,” I muttered, but I didn’t even convince myself, let alone Mr. Rawlins. His jaw set, disappointed, but then he found another tack.
“You’ve got to have some self-discipline, Shannon,” he said, almost pleading with me. “You’re, what, seventeen now?”
“Eighteen,” I answered, too quickly. I don’t know why I chose that moment to plant my flag for defiance, but it just came across as petulant. “I’m eighteen,” I repeated, a little less forcefully.
“Eighteen,” he repeated. “Think about it. You’re an adult. You only have three more months before graduation, and then you’re off to college. You never have to see any of these people ever again. You can start right now to live that life.”
He looked at the closed trunk. “If you open that,” he said, “You’ll be stuck here, with them. Maybe even for longer than you realize.”
I looked at him blankly. He stood up straight, and looked me straight in the eye. “If you open that box,” he said, sounding like his normal authoritarian self, “they’ll own you Shannon. They’ll own you, and there will be nothing you will ever be able to do about it.”
With that, he turned and walked back into the school.
Less than an hour later, I sat on my bedroom floor, staring at the present. Mr. Rawlins’ words haunted me, terrified me.
If you open that box, they will own you.
The gift sat in front of me, innocuous-looking and quiet. I imagined that inside was a bomb, and if I opened it up then it would explode and I would die. Trying to imagine myself blown apart by Simone’s terrorist bomb seemed like a good deterrent to get me not to open the box, but it really wasn’t working.
I sat on the floor, cross-legged, wearing nothing but a t-shirt and panties. Originally I had intended to watch another section of the video as a means of distracting me about the events of the day, a bit of escapism that would also gain the added benefit of an orgasm. Unfortunately for me, I had gotten as far as disrobing when the box full of, well, shit sitting in the middle of my room distracted me from my moment of self-molestation.
After emptying out the box, I sat amidst the debris, my curiosity forcing me to pour through every “get well” card and note. Not all the messages were sympathetic, of course. Occasionally I came across overt and crass comments like, “Hope your pussy gets better soon!” and, “Hope you got to use it before you lost it!” Those messages were unsigned, of course, but it was easy to see that the girls were just as nasty as the boys: the handwriting in the second message had little hearts over each ‘i’.
The whole thing just made me so incredibly frustrated that I wanted to scream and have a temper tantrum. I just wanted to be left alone! What had I done to deserve any of this? I felt flustered as the whirlwind of emotions swept about me. I was scared beyond words. My hands were shaking, and I didn’t know why.
I grew angry, now. I was angry at Simone, angry at Heather, angry at Mr. Rawlins. My entire life felt hopelessly out of control. I couldn’t see how opening the box would have such incredibly dire consequences as he predicted. Why did everything have to be so dramatic?
The box sat, refusing to give away any secrets. The more it did nothing, the more it simply existed, the angrier I grew at Mr. Rawlins. How dare he try to scare me like that? How dare he think he knows me?
What does he know? I challenged. He doesn’t know the future. He doesn’t know what’s going to happen!
I fumed.
No one owns me! I thought, angrily. Whatever is in that box, it doesn’t mean that suddenly Simone is going to take over my life. She doesn’t have that kind of power over me, no matter what’s in there!
I seethed.
Whatever’s in that box, whatever she thinks she has over me, she’s wrong. She thinks she can intimidate me like that, make me cower in my room and run and hide from whatever she has to dish out.
I was livid.
Nothing that she does can hurt me unless I let her, I thought defiantly. I felt my resolve growing. She would love for me to simply throw the box away, absolutely love to think that she bullied me into being too scared to open it.
I set my jaw.
That’s it! I’ll show her!
I scrambled forward toward the present, the last bit of Mr. Rawlins’ warning echoing somewhere in the back of my feeble teenage brain, racing through the wrapping paper faster than my hesitation could take hold and stop me. I shredded the colorful giftwrap until it fell away from the contents of the box.
At that moment I knew I had made a terrible mistake. I realized, to my horror, that Mr. Rawlins wasn’t overstating the problem for my benefit, he was understating it. As I looked upon the gift that Simone had so carefully chosen for my wanton emotional destruction, the perfect terror she had calculated, I realized that Mr. Rawlins was horribly, terribly correct.
Just like Pandora, I had unleashed an evil into my life that could never be undone. Simone owned me from that moment. I wanted to die.
Sitting in front of me, with gaudy and dated graphics on the packaging, was a silicone, recreated dildo of my father’s massive cock.