Tryst Six Venom by Penelope Douglas

of a sudden.
Take what you want from me, and do it in the next three months, bitch.
She yanks my panties down my legs, and I stumble with the force, feeling
her strip them from my feet in moments.
I gasp, my hands going to cover myself, but I stop, begging her to remind
me that I hate her and this school and need to get out of here. Let her push me
until I’m running for the state line.
“Oh, exquisite,” she coos.
Tears well in my chest. I can feel them rising to my eyes as the Sharpie
digs into my skin. I look anywhere but at her.
“Just a few suggestions,” she says, writing on me, “because poor or not,
these things can be fixed.”
She starts circling areas of my stomach, my inner thighs, and making
notes on my calves and toes.
Nudging me around, she pushes me until I’m damn-near prostrating over
the table, but I take it, even as the bile rises up my throat and I’m dying to
just kick her teeth in.
She won’t get in trouble. She never did, so I stopped telling anyone,
especially my brothers, because they would only get arrested for retaliating
for me.
No. I will deal with this. When I know I can’t get expelled.
She writes under my ass. “Some squats will take care of this.”
Rising, she lifts each arm, shaking it to see if there’s fat, and then circles
the offending bits in marker, so I can take note.
She marks the area under my belly button and my bikini line, and circles
whatever muffin-top she imagines is at my hips. She writes words I refuse to
look down and read and inspects me with her hands, trailing and squeezing,
accompanied by laughs here and there.
“I just can’t get over the state of you,” she gripes. “Jesus, you’re an
athlete. There’s no excuse.”
A golf ball swells in my throat, stretching it so painfully I can barely hold
back the tears.
But even as the hurt grows and grows, so do the bricks inside me.
Keep going, Clay. Please keep going.
She rises, caps her marker, and looks me dead in the eye, an inch between
us. “You should thank me,” she whispers. “Surviving me will give you all the
tools you need when you leave me.”