Read Online Working Girl by A. E. Woodward - Free Book Online

high school people made the connection between our address and our parents’ ‘careers’ and Chrissy and I were labeled whores, simply because of where we lived. It made us targets for pretty much everyone at school, thus meaning our time in high school was ever more hellacious than it is for most.
    Chrissy and I weren’t in the “in-crowd” and we were tormented. The reason was simple: we were seen as a threat. We were pretty and mysterious, guys talked about us, and it didn’t help our case that Chrissy kept sleeping with them. It wasn’t the way I chose to handle things, but it made Chrissy feel better—like she was sticking it to the bitches that made us miserable by fucking their boyfriends. Needless to say our high school experience was anything but typical. I didn’t go to prom. Boys didn’t ask me out on dates; they asked me for blowjobs. Except for Simon. Simon had been different.
    Or at least so I thought.
    Simon and I met during our senior year. He was a foreign exchange student from Australia and his accent alone was enough to make me fall head over heels in love. With him being in almost all of my classes, we talked every day and, eventually, we both started to feel things. I trusted him, he made me feel human and I told him my deepest and darkest thoughts. But I never went there . He didn’t need to know about my home life. As our feelings developed, our talks shifted from being casual to him asking me out on a date.
    Preparing for that date was the most blissful night of my life. I had hope. Thoughts of finally knowing what a real relationship might be like intoxicated me. Chrissy and I trawled through my wardrobe, looking for something for me to wear. None of the clothes I owned could match what the popular girls wore, but that’s what I liked about Simon; he liked me for me.
    But as always my excitement was short-lived.
    Simon and I met at a little coffee shop, where he rushed me through my drink and dessert. We left and started walking towards a secluded park and although he was touchy feely as we walked, I didn’t think anything of it until we got there and he pushed me up against a tree and began to kiss me with a force that caught me off guard. His hands were all over me, and I kept asking for him to stop. He laughed, leaning in to whisper in my ear, telling me how much I wanted it. And all the while I was trying to convince myself that none of it was happening; that I was imagining his heavy breaths and the feeling of his hips pressing against mine, pinning me against the trunk of the tree. When he started to unzip his pants, I panicked and jerked my knee into his crotch and sprinted as fast as I could the minute he dropped to the ground. As I ran back up the path toward the bus stop I could hear him shouting to me, telling me how much I was going to regret what I’d done. That he’d let everyone know what a tease I was.
    You see, Simon knew all along, and he was looking for nothing more than some easy sex. He tried to take something from me that night, but I refused to be held down. No one was going to tell me who I was, or what I was going to do.
    No one.
    As we approach the clique, I tighten my grip on Chrissy’s arm and she gives me a reassuring look. “Fuck them,” she whispers, sensing my apprehension. “We’re here to watch a movie.”
    We join the circle and Emerson acknowledges his friends. Once everyone quiets a bit, he gestures toward us. “Hey guys, this is Presley and her friend, Chrissy.”
    Raising my hand, I wave awkwardly to everyone as they nod in my direction. Chrissy immediately starts working the guys in the crowd and, fighting the urge to smack her, I ball my hands into a fist. She should know better, she’s only adding fuel to the fire. And sure enough, out of the corner of my eye, I see the two girls whispering again.
    “Well, shall we?” Emerson asks, opening the door to the theatre, and the group heads in, everyone buying their own tickets. Chrissy spots