“Not like Kelly.”
“Man,” Tariq scoffs. “He just wanted to stay out of juvie. He doesn’t care about me.” He wears a disgusted grimace, and the hand that massages my hip grows rougher. “He doesn’t care how generous I am, how willing I’ve been to share what’s mine. All I asked is that he handle my things respectfully, and he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t help pawing her right in front of me.”
It’s quiet except for the sound of Tariq roughly kneading my body. He’s reliving the night of the fight, and I wait for him to speak again.
“And he had the nerve to hit me back. After everything I’ve given him. He knew the rules.”
My side will look like Kelly’s soon, the way Tariq is handling me.
“So he was the other guy,” I say, leaving my tongue between my teeth teasingly. I could tell Tariq I’ve seen what he’s done, that the bull’s-eye he made on Kelly’s body allowed me to do damage of my own, but I won’t.
“Well,” he says, smiling through a shrug. “Dad said it was time for boxing lessons, since Kelly wants to hit back.”
“Who needs a punching bag when you’ve got a whipping boy,” I say, and then I attach a smile to it.
“That’s right, whipping girl,” he whispers as he leans close enough for his hair to brush my forehead.
Now I know. I am the whipping girl. That’s what someone thinks. That’s what they have made of me.
What’s the point if she never sees what she’s done?
A whipping girl’s abuse must be witnessed by the chosen child.
That’s why. Why Cherish had to dress my wound. Why Cherish had to wash my hair. Why Cherish had to clean up my vomit.
We didn’t do the kinds of things she and Kelly did . . .
I told Jerry that. That’s why my wound at all.
Not because I offended his daughter. Because of what I told him his daughter had done.
I am Cherish’s whipping girl. That’s why they want me here. That’s why they lied to my parents, why their help to my parents came too late.
I was willing to stay. When my parents left the state, when my dad began his new job—that better opportunity that happened to come from far away—I was going to bury my heels in the ground and stay with the Whitmans. I was going to choose the world that Jerry and Brianne made.
They only want one.
My fingers tighten, sink into Tariq’s shoulders and back, because Kelly isn’t on the ground between us anymore. He’s standing behind Tariq.
He wasn’t right because he understands Cherish and me. Kelly isn’t smart or clever—or he wasn’t before he set the trap for Tariq tonight. He has been privy to privileged information. He knows there is such a thing as a whipping boy.
Nichole Turner was right, too.
She knew I wasn’t in control and she left me with them.
She left me with the Whitmans because she knows her daughter. She has warred with me long enough to know how this will end. She left me here so that I would end it.
She tried to warn Brianne, and then she warned me.
Brianne and Jerry Whitman were in control, all this time, not me.
The sky continues to tear above the gazebo, and from inside the dark, I hear the fire approach.
She should have told them that it would’ve been wiser to play this whipping-girl game with an opponent who is weakened by defeat. She could have told them that I wouldn’t be.
She could’ve told them that I would be unleashed.
“It isn’t fair,” I say, eyes anchored on the inferno that will soon spill out over the sky, onto the version of the Whitmans’ property that awaited me after yesterday’s events.
“What?” Tariq asks against my neck, where his lips are still caressing, his tongue still sometimes gliding over me before his mouth closes around my skin. “What isn’t fair, Fair?”
He’s amused himself, but I don’t have to play along. He’s too distracted by his own pursuit.
“You and I.” I draw my fingernails across his shoulder blades, elongate my neck so that there’s more to taste. “We didn’t even properly kiss. You were so chaste with me—even when Kelly and Cherish were doing whatever.”
There’s an unmistakable pause in his fondling, and then he starts to draw back.
If he looks suspicious of me, I’ll press into sulking, lose interest in his touch because of my personal displeasure with what happened between our friends.
If he’s anything else, I’ll proceed.
His eyes reflect all the light they’ve trapped inside, and his hair interrupts his mischievous gaze.
“That isn’t fair,” he says. “I wish I’d known you better; I would’ve done everything to you.”
“I don’t need everything, now that you belong to Cherish,” I tell him. “Just the kiss I’m owed.”
He’s doing me a favor. I can tell by the way his lids sink to the middle of his beautiful eyes before he lets his head droop toward me. He’s leading with his forehead again, making me wait. Expecting that I am impatient for his lips to return to me. He’s taking pleasure in teasing me, so I raise my chin, search his lips with my eyes. He turns his face slightly, so that his mouth is just out of reach, and I let my brow buckle.
Tariq Campbell is a monster. Whatever he was playing at during our stilted, tedious courtship, the game has changed. The fact that I’m a whipping girl has restored the power to which he is accustomed. This clandestine order his father partakes in is not a casual worldview. Tariq’s metamorphosis is too startling for that. His previous performance is too impressive. He is a boy taught from a young age the necessity of it—of maintaining the mask. Of perfecting so mild and ordinary a character that no one would think it robust enough to hide anything beneath.
He is the one uncoiled before me. When his tongue glides across my lips before parting them for entry, it is because this is a safe place to reveal himself.
I am not a threat.
I am the Farrah who’s lost my place. The Farrah sick with dysphoria, whose reality and world no longer look the same.
I am the Farrah who finally knows; I am Cherish Whitman’s whipping girl.
This is my first kiss. The soft but sensual probing Tariq’s tongue is performing in my mouth is the first of its kind, so I close my eyes.
It feels pink. Sickly sweet. Tame, given the way his hands were roaming and kneading before. As though he knows he is my first and part of the favor he is showing me is delicate restraint.
But this Tariq is a threat.