Ainsley had always thought that if she were bullied, it’d happen nemesis-style, more like her problems with Ranger. You know, one big, bad enemy who she’d rubbed the wrong way with a flippant comment about their physical appearance. Someone she’d tripped by accident in the hall or whose french fries she dumped in the cafeteria while showing off her dance moves. She never expected it to be such a group effort, to be so virulently singled out by so many people. To be whispered about and dragged through the mud so publicly, yet so anonymously. It was like trying to fight a ghost; she’d reported the first few posts to the school, but after the bullies started using fake profiles, there was nothing to do but block them and move on with her life. Which wasn’t easy when the messages they sent kept coming . . . “So pathetic.” “If I were you, I’d kill myself.” “That guy? Your boyfriend? What were you thinking?” Notes stuffed in the crack of her locker, videos of her running from the field posted for all to see, taunting emails sent from throwaway accounts. That word, throwaway; it made it all sound more innocent than it was. Because while they might have thrown those words out, laughing, when they landed, they scalded her. Being an object of mockery changed her. And there was just so much of it. They’d piled on her, relieved that it wasn’t them who’d made the mistake, happy to have someone else look like a fool.
She closed the window without sending him anything; he could google it if he wanted to see. Kyle would come back around. Probably. Ainsley put her head down on her desk, trying to let the cold of the classroom seep deeper into her. Maybe she wouldn’t feel so much then. Just go numb to all of it. She’d never found a way to dull the pain, actually. She’d tried drinking briefly, but she hated vomiting and seemed to have a very low tolerance . . . another short-girl problem, maybe. With a sigh, she stood and ambled down the hall to pick up her kids at the doors to the playground. They seemed more subdued than usual, and she wondered if they’d caught her gloomy mood. She’d never understood why people bothered to try to hide things like that from kids; they weren’t stupid. In fact, sometimes, they were more in tune with the world around them, and that included people. Then again, sometimes they just wanted to color Frozen pictures without being interrupted.
Annabeth slipped a hand into hers and smiled up at her. Ainsley smiled back.
But inside? Inside, she was broken thinking about how she’d rejected Kyle because of her own insecurities. Hadn’t she put him through the same kind of rejection she’d felt, all those years ago?
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
MUCH TO AINSLEY’S DELIGHT, Bilqiis and Fawzia agreed to come to the fall festival in Timber Falls. And the atmosphere did not disappoint: all of downtown had orange and purple lights leading to the high school gym, and outside, the weather was nice enough to have booths and stalls set up for all kinds of activities: apple bobbing, popcorn, a pie contest, and even a dunk tank despite the chill in the air. Ainsley was torn away as soon as she arrived, her help needed with several booths that hadn’t been set up yet, so she encouraged them to wander around and take it all in, shoving a few tickets in their hands. She was bent over, trying to get an extension cord connected, when she heard Ranger’s voice.
“What are you hiding under that head covering, anyway? Why don’t you take it off for us?” She looked up in time to see Bilqiis dodge his hand as he reached for her scarf, and Ainsley could see that her fingers were shaking hard as she touched it to make sure it hadn’t shifted. Ranger’s back was to her. It wasn’t a fair fight in any way if she started when his back was turned, and her dad had taught her to always start a fight to someone’s face; you could do more damage and have less liability.
“Hey! Toilet paper brain!” Okay, maybe the kids’ insults were rubbing off on her a tiny bit. “Why don’t you leave her alone? There’s lots of candy around for good boys and girls. If you walk away now, you can have some, too.” This was not active bystander behavior, she thought as he turned to her, his gaze livid. He kept himself between her and Bilqiis, and it was really messed up how badly Ainsley just wanted to knock him down to get to her. But he was basically a less handsome Mr. Clean, so she thought she’d better not try.
“Stay out of this, Buchanan.”
“Can’t. Sorry. I was in it the moment you started to pick on my friend. It’s a solidarity thing. You understand.” With the hand still at her side, she motioned for Bilqiis to take off, but her friend hesitated. Go. Go, Bilqiis. Slip away while his back is turned.
“It’s just hair. Does she not realize that hair isn’t private?” he sneered.
“First of all, you don’t need to talk about her like she isn’t here. And secondly, I know you’ve got hair in places I don’t want to see, so maybe we just can just agree that some hair is private.” Behind him, she saw Bilqiis laugh a little, then push back her shoulders and tap Ranger on the shoulder.
He turned back to Bilqiis slowly. “What?”
“I am not hiding anything. In fact, I am putting on display the beautiful culture that I come from. I am showing you that being a Muslim does not mean I am a terrorist, that most Muslim people are peaceful. I am showing you what it means to be a woman in a different way. If it makes you uncomfortable, I am sorry, but it is my right. It is my right.”
Fawzia’s eyes were huge as she listened to her mother’s speech, and Ainsley wondered what was happening in her head. Would she understand later on what her mother had done? Would she look back and draw strength from this moment when she was grown? Bilqiis took her daughter’s hand and dragged her toward the kettle corn, Fawzia still looking at Ranger and Ainsley in slack-jawed wonder. Ranger seemed pretty shocked himself, and with Bilqiis now at a safe distance, he rounded on Ainsley.
“Of course you’d take their side.” With two giant steps, they were nose to nose, and Ainsley’s heart was beating so hard, she could hear it in her own ears. Many people have a little voice in their heads that in this situation would tell them to run or retreat. Ainsley did not have that voice.
“Get out of my face, Zane. I’m warning you.” She must have looked like a hobbit to him: a foot shorter, staring up at him with ire in her gaze. “My dad’s a cop. He made me take self-defense classes from the time I could talk.”
“And yet you’ve been mouthing off ever since.” He pushed on her shoulder, and it took her a second to regain her balance. Sweat broke out on her forehead despite the cool fall weather. “Always putting your nose where it doesn’t belong. Maybe I should do something about it.”
She pushed on his chest with both hands as hard as she could, and only managed to send him one step backward. “You’re welcome to that opinion. Just stay away from me and my friend, and we won’t have a problem.”
His nostrils flared, his shoulders came up, and he took another step as if to push her back, but she was ready for him this time. She lifted her running shoe and brought it down hard on the bridge of his foot. Ranger let out a string of curses and doubled over. That move did really hurt: she knew because she’d tried it on her brother, Travis, once, and he couldn’t wear tennis shoes for a week because of the bruising. Had to wear flip-flops in forty-degree weather. Served him right for stealing her authentic Lord of the Rings elven pin off her backpack.