Words? I hadn’t read any nasty words. I’d just been scanning in a panic, then relieved by how tame the photos were, compared to the eyeful they could have gotten.
I shouldn’t have read the text below. I should have stopped after one cruel nickname, but I didn’t.
Horrible internet comments.
About me.
One of the posts had a whole list of awful names for me, as well as a poll. People were voting on a nickname for me.
In third place was Porky Peaches.
Second-most popular was Peachalicious.
And leading the polls was… Peaches by the Pounds.
I’d been called names before, and while most of these were new ones, the feeling in my heart wasn’t a unique experience. I’d been to this heartbreak rodeo before.
I was used to some people being disgusted with me. I knew that if I wore a short skirt, some dipshit ugly asswad would sneer at me like I’d ruined their appetite with my dimpled thighs.
What I wasn’t accustomed to, as I’d never been linked to a popular movie star, was the raw anger.
As I read through the anonymous internet comments, a part of me died. Perhaps it was the last shreds of my youthful naivete. Or my faith in humanity. Either way, it died.
I fell back on the bed. If this had been a comedic moment in my always-wacky life, I would have tugged one of my pillows across my face and growled into it hysterically.
Instead, I stared at the ceiling and silently began to weep. Not just about this time, but every time people had been cruel. Despite the wet tears, my eyes felt hot and dry. When I caught my breath, the ragged sobs began.
~
Bless her heart, Shayla knew just what to do.
She didn’t argue with me about how bad I ought to be feeling, but she did take away my phone and laptop so I couldn’t jump further down the black hole of reading more posts and comments.
I cycled through the emotional stages rapidly, with the bargaining stage lasting only about an hour.
During the anger stage, we planned out revenge on Brooke Summer. Shayla had been seeing her dining at the restaurant she managed, and had already given her full-fat milk in her latte instead of skim a few times. And that was before the fake interview with me, just for being a c-word.
I started to feel better, and then got hit with another wave of what felt like… everything. It wasn’t fair. I pushed Shayla out of my bedroom, locked the door, and buried myself under my blankets. Barely able to breathe, I sobbed.
I’d come so far in the last few years, with my body image. I’d come to accept that I’d never have a thigh gap—that triangle of space between the upper legs that skinny girls have. I had a healthy body that functioned well, and took me places, and even gave me pleasure. I enjoyed my curves, and was only a little self-conscious about certain views while nude—something even my skinny girlfriends said they felt, too.
On bad days, I accepted myself; on good days, I even loved how I looked, and how I rocked certain outfits, like my red leather pencil skirt.
Now these strangers had taken this little bit of progress away from me. The hurt was fresh and raw, like no years had passed, and I was fifteen again, a victim of the disconnection between me and my body.
I stopped breathing, but the pain still found me.
~
Late Sunday afternoon, I emerged from my bedroom on shaky legs. After a longish hot shower (as long as our water tank would allow), I felt better. Not great, but better.
I joined Shayla downstairs, and we ordered pizza for dinner. We swivelled the couch in the front room around so we could watch the window for the delivery guy’s arrival.
“I’m going to phone Dalton,” I said. “Gimme my phone.”
It was fully charged, but Shayla took a minute to clear through the alerts from our friends about the crap they’d seen online. She stayed next to me as I called Dalton, insisting she wasn’t being nosy, but had to stay so I didn’t read horrible things.
I frowned at her as Dalton’s line rang and rang, then went to voicemail. I tried him three times, getting voicemail each time.
I left a message. “This is Peaches Monroe calling for Dalton Deangelo. I’m sorry I ran off yesterday. I didn’t mean to be so flakey, but… things got a little intense there. I don’t know how long you’re in town, but I do want to see you again. I… um… I like you. Bye.”
After I hung up, I stared into Shayla’s amber eyes for clues. Had I sounded desperate? Needy? Clingy? And all those horrible things people say about girls, just because we have feelings?
“He’ll call,” Shayla said.
“No, he won’t. He doesn’t want to be photographed with Miss Porky Poundcake.”
“I need to confess something.”
I crossed my arms and waited. Her tone frightened me.
She continued, “I was a little jealous of all the attention you were getting. Yesterday, when the news crew was on the front lawn, I knew they were there, and I answered the door like that on purpose. Dressed in almost nothing.”
She put her face in both hands.
“Why would you do that?”
“I’m a terrible person,” she sobbed between her fingers. “I put on makeup before I answered the door.”
I bit my lower lip, fighting back the urge to laugh.
“You put on makeup, but not pants?” I asked.
She nodded, her face still in her hands.
“You thought this was your chance to get fifteen minutes of fame?”
More nodding, still sobbing.
I patted her knee. “Hang in there. I’m sure if you keep doing stupid stuff, you’ll get your chance to have strangers vote on mean nicknames for you.”
She sniffed. “You think?”
“Oh, absolutely. These days, it’s basically inevitable. How about you volunteer to tutor at the high school and seduce a teenaged boy who’s just the other side of legal? That could be a good scandal.”
She dried her eyes and stared at me, blinking repeatedly as she tried to figure out if I was joking or not.
“Or maybe two boys,” I said.
“Brothers.” Her eyebrows gave away that she was kidding along with me.
“Definitely twins. Super hot.”
She made a gagging face. “Speaking of twins, remember how I made out with Golden’s brother, Garret?”
“Yes. You guys were in the bathroom all night at that party, and I had to pee super-bad. I hated you that night.”
“What I didn’t tell you is Garret had terrible back and chest acne. We had the light off in there, and he took his shirt off. I guess he thought I wouldn’t know, but I could feel it. I could feel all these gross cystic pustules under my hands.”