CHAPTER 52

Fuck. That was it. The moment of, without a doubt, losing Nicole. This was it. This was rock bottom. She just lied to the whole council if it meant protecting Phil instead of me. She made her choice.

"So you and Phil are a thing?" The nerdy-looking guy near the back asked Nicole.

"Fuckin' A we are, Jeff." Nicole beamed back at him. Jeff held up his hand for a fist bump and she enthusiastically returned it. Afterwards, sadly, the attention in the room returned to me.

"So what do we do with this fuckin' liar?" Jeff asked Phil.

Phil stared at me. It was menacing, but also contemplating. He didn't say a word.

"Why don't we just, like, boot him out?" The dumb redhead piped up.

"He yelled in Phil's face." Eli observed. "Highly unprofessional for someone who represents the school."

"I'm cool with kickin' him out." Jeff agreed.

Nicole looked me dead in the eye. "As long as we're all in agreement." She said, mostly to me. Her tone was about ten times colder than any ice the Earth could produce.

"No. We're not." Phil finally spoke up. "Yeah, he did some bad things, but that's only strike one. He was still voted by the school to be here, and I say we give him one more chance to clean up his act."

Phil. Phil, of all people, was defending me. I looked into his eyes and could see menace, but there was something else there. Like a grave understanding. Something about his eyes told me that Phil felt guilty about letting Nicole lie her way to clear Phil's name, so he gave me once last chance.

Jeff piped up. "I don't think-"

"This isn't up for debate." Phil barked back. "Just this once, this isn't a democracy, because all of you would just vote him out. But I want to give him a second chance. Student council is about improving the school. It's not about preserving the good kids, it's about changing the bad. Adam is staying. Just this once, as President I'm gonna make that an order, not a vote."

No one said anything.

"And no one is to treat Adam badly in or out of council meetings for this. But Adam here is going to clean up his fucking act, and come back next week proving to us all why I wanted to keep him. Isn't that right, Adam?"

I was no longer confident. Hell, I was a bug. And with a bug's voice, I sheepishly answered, "Y-yes, Mr. President."

"Great." He barked tiredly. "As I was saying, Adam and Megan won't be working together for the rest of the year. Blah blah fucking blah. We won't discuss this point again. MOVING ON…"

***

The fact that Phil advocated for my continued seat in the council meant jack squat when the meeting ended. Anyone who dared look me in the eye was giving me some kind of look of contempt. Truth be told, I would have preferred for Nicole to give me one. Just a look, just acknowledging my existence. But she didn't. Avoiding eye contact completely with me without making it painfully obvious she was ignoring me, she packed up her stuff, looped her camera strap around her neck, and promptly left without another word. Phil followed soon after, in the same direction.

I was completely torn as to whether I disliked Phil. On the one hand, he got what he wanted from Nicole without making sure she was okay with it, and he made me look like an ass in front of the council. On the other hand, everything he said was true, he kept me on the council, he was a lot fairer with me than anyone else, Nicole included. Plus he seemed to actually make Nicole happy, even though she didn't give her consent. I couldn't reach a conclusion about how I felt towards him, but that didn't matter for another week now.

Noting I was the last one left in the room after being given a couple of minutes to myself and my thoughts, I sighed and slung my bag over my shoulder, glad I was out of that hell.

As I closed the door behind me, I sensed that I wasn't alone again. More paranoid this time after what happened the last time , I shot a look behind me as I walked forwards down the hallway.

Out of nowhere, I felt something slam into me from in front of me (where I wasn't looking), causing me to fall to the ground.

"Sorry. My bad." I managed to get out, before looking up to see that the person I had walked into was Matt Schneider.

"Watch it, dork." He snarled.

"I said I was sorry!" I protested. "I wasn't looking where I was going."

"You've got a lot more to be sorry for." He told me ominously. "You may have Phil fooled, but you screw up one more time and I swear, I'll…"

"You'll what?" I asked him, coming to my feet. "Phil told you not to treat me differently for this. Why can't you just accept that the past happened and leave me alone? I'll leave your sister be, I swear."

"You're right. You will." He agreed, coming in close to face me. "And if you don't, you'll be in for a world of hurt, I can promise you that. Hurt my sister again, and you'll wish you've never been born."

I swallowed hard, but held my ground. "I guess I won't have to worry about that." I said, looking into his eyes with a serious, stone-cold glance.

He nodded gravely. "Damn right." He muttered as he walked away. As soon as he was out of sight, I leaned against a wall and slid down, sighing sadly as I did so.

This was middle school all over again. This was exactly the kind of thing that happened in middle school. Whenever my name got too popular, I just ended up getting bullied. Beaten up. It looks like high school was going to be no different. I must have been an idiot for thinking that it would be.

I wasn't even aware of it, but I was crying. I shouldn't have tried out for student council. It actually gave me hope. I should have just accepted my fate as a nobody. I kept my head down just in case anyone saw me. I didn't like to be seen crying.

Unfortunately, the universe didn't care about what I liked and didn't like, and soon I felt a hand caressing my back. I lifted my head up just enough to see who it was. The exact person I didn't want to see anymore in my life – Megan Schneider.

"Oh, just go away." I muttered bitterly, lowering my head again.

"I'm sorry." She softly said.

"I don't care." I replied, my voice muffled from my head still being lowered. "Just go away."

She didn't say anything more, but kept caressing my back. After a while, I gave up trying to tell her to go away and just stayed there.

"May was more to you than another me, wasn't she?" Megan asked after a while.

I was well aware of the implications of asking such a question. Megan was implying that to me, she was just a sex object. But I was too tired to try to better my image to her of all people at this point. "Yeah, she was." I responded.

"I just assumed…" Megan trailed off. "I assumed you wanted to be with Nicole."

"Hm." I responded weakly. I wasn't even going to bother with occupying my mind with that one.

"I'm sorry." She repeated.

I lifted my head and tried to wipe away the tears with my hand. "I don't care if you're sorry." I replied both bitterly and with fatigue in my voice. "Thanks to your overreaction, everyone in the council hates me, Nicole won't look at me, May is out of my life and your brother wants to beat me up."

Megan looked to the ground and scowled. "I'll talk to him." she told me. "I promise."

"And then what?!" I asked her, the fury in my voice building. "Tell Nicole that we're all good? Convince the whole council that I'm a good person, but not deny that what happened happened? You're not going to be able to fix this, Megan. And now, I have to live with it.

Not you, me."

Megan looked into my eyes and pulled me in for a hug. "I'm really sorry." she repeated. "What can I do to make it up to you?"

"I don't care about making it up to me." I responded, shaking off the hug yet feeling my fury die down. "I just want to be left alone. I don't have anything left. You being here is just reminding me."

Megan bit her lip and looked down again. "I didn't mean for this to happen." She said quietly.

"Yeah well, funny thing: IT DID." I replied bitterly, sinking down again. After a moment of silence, I sighed. "Look, Megan. I appreciate what you're doing now, but what happened, happened. And now I've got a lot of crap in my life."

Megan nodded, looking at me with those big brown innocent eyes. She really was innocent, in a way at least. I was aware that she was just trying to save May, but she drove me through hell because of a hunch.