Frankly My Dear, All's Fair in Love and War

20: I Can't.

SHORT RECAP:

Cassie was a fat, awkward girl not keen of socializing.

One day, Desmond, the 'king' of the school, toyed with her heart and then left after making out with her.

Heartbroken, Cassie seek revenge. She found fellow Desmond haters. One of them being his own girlfriend, Tyra.

Tyra helped Cassie 'upgrade' herself. And she also got a fake boyfriend, Tristan, Desmond's half brother.

Tristan and Cassie hit off. They became friends. On the other hand, Desmond wanted Cassie's attention once more.

One day, Cassie was feeling bold and she wanted to make a statement and she tapped Desmond's ass in public. It was supposed to be clandestine but someone took a photo of it and shared it to the whole student body.

Cassie's job right now is to do damage control.

——

Of course, a bad day would only get worse. Right after lunchtime, Tyra cornered Cassie in the girl's restroom. She didn't even try to make it subtle, like she had always done before. Tyra just straight up grabbed Cassie's elbow and dragged her into the toilet. There were a couple of sophomores inside, freshening up. Tyra gives a half-smile that looked more like a threat than a smile. They all scrammed.

Cassie made a mental note on how Tyra put on that kind of face. The face that still managed to be pretty and elegant and yet still terrifying. Maybe it was the slight tip up on her chin. Maybe it was the way her eyes always seemed to be looking down on people.

"I don't like that picture," Tyra didn't say hello or prefaced the talk with any context.

If it were with any other person, Cassie would have asked what they were talking about. Slow the train down, try to defuse the situation. But Tyra was too smart for that kind of tricks, and there was also the situation in which Tyra had already suspected Cassie as a sly, devious fox.

"I tried to talk her to take it down." Cassie said.

"Well?"

She shrugged. It was hard to make it look casual. "She wouldn't do it."

"Tracy Jones is a scholarship student whose father works here as a security guard. She hasn't changed her uniform, which is secondhand, since the first time she arrived here, and nobody in this school are going to have her back." She pauses, and that made the next words she said all the more terrifying. "So what's stopping you?"

Cassie looked at Tyra right in the eyes. "She didn't want to do it."

"What's stopping you?"

"She said-"

"Cassie," Tyra's face was so close to her now that Cassie could count all the pores around her nose, which was not a lot, but still amounted to something. She could feel bullets of sweat forming all around her armpit. "What the fuck does she have on you?"

Cassie didn't want to talk about this.

She didn't, but in the end, she knew that Tyra wouldn't let her go. Would do everything within her power (and that we're talking, a lot of power) to get her to speak. Would jeopardize everything they had done so that nobody stood in her way. Yes, of course Tyra cared about taking down Desmond. But she cared about her reputation more.

And photos of another girl touching Desmond's butt wasn't exactly right up her alley.

"I know her father," Cassie said. "I will talk to him. The photo will go down today."