The Greatest Liar Ch. 01: My Awkward Phase

Marta texted me and apologized for contributing to my downfall. She had dated Miguel concurrently with our encounters. She was gang property, and I was a trespasser. I had been Marta's revenge fuck for Miguel's dalliance with a ninth grader. But she loved the girl that she had discovered inside me. She regretted the trauma our fling had caused and the ached over the empty space our parting left in her heart.

I would leave for college soon and leave all these troubles behind. I promised to keep in touch, and that we would dance at our fifth reunion. By then, she predicted, I would be the most beautiful girl in our class. I told her I could only hope to be half as beautiful as her.

I managed to avoid Miguel and Jack, but Seth spotted me from his passing car as I walked home from the Coffee Bean. I heard footsteps a few paces behind me as I turned the corner to cul de sac where my parents lived.

"Rios, hey, about Prom Night, I was fucked up, didn't remember what went down until I sobered up a week later."

"What you think happened?"

"Got down and dirty, had a good time. Didn't you?"

My mind flashed back to him pounding inside me, the pulsing of his seed, the fiery orgasm that he elicited from me, his tender strokes and soft words. From that momentous night Seth had assumed a starring role in my sexual memory. But my wounded pride and paranoia prevailed over my desire.

"Not really."

I turned and walked away.

"Take my number, we could hang out."

I waited as he scribbled.

My soul craved a companion, and my body craved his caresses. The crevice that he had bored in my belly craved to be filled by him. I longed for him to ignite and stoke a fire inside me and then douse it with a flood of his silky semen to extinguish the flickering flames that burned within me.

He thrust a scrap of paper in my hand. I crumpled it into a ball and stuffed it in back pocket of my jeans.

"Whatever."

I walked away, not wanting to let my erstwhile assailant know that I was crying about him. I wanted to recapture the submissiveness and sexual allure that I felt with Seth, but with new boys whose feelings would not be tainted by their perceptions of the old Alex.

I called the University of Michigan and arranged to start in summer school instead of waiting until autumn. I emptied my bank account to cover the expense.

University High School was a seething caldron of class, racial and gender biases, fired by post-9/11 insecurity and anger. I tried to delude my classmates by hiding a vulnerable girl inside the façade of an arrogant boy who ridiculed narcissistic jocks, deluded Christians, addled dopers, and loser gangsters.

Before Prom Night, I had been defended, and imprisoned, by my lies. But those bastions had been breached by the pictures of my cum-spattered face and ass on the internet. I had been ostracized by my friends for my lies about that shocking truth, and humiliated by my enemies.

Every exile's escape exacts a cost. I'd paid my ransom. My defilement on Prom Night unlocked my karmic cage and set free the girl imprisoned inside Alex Rios.

If anyone tells you that what happens in high school doesn't matter, they're lying. If they tell you that life begins in college, prove them right.