Jack_ Secret Vengeance - F. Paul Wilson [6]
Jack wound up next to his usual seatmate, Darren Willmon.
The bus pulled into the parking lot ten minutes later. Weezy got off ahead of him. He was hanging back, waiting for Karina and Cristin, when a trio of older girls, a blonde and two brunettes with high hair and stick-up bangs, breezed by him and flanked Weezy.
“So,” the blonde said with a grin that looked as friendly as a great white’s, “I hear you were out with Carson Saturday night.”
Weezy stopped and reddened. “Where’d you hear that?”
“From Jerry.” She gave Weezy a frank up-and-down. “You don’t seem his type.”
Eddie waved as he walked by, still lost in his headphones.
“I’m not,” Weezy said.
“Yeah? Cars says you showed him a real hot time.”
Weezy gaped. “‘Hot time’?”
“Yeah,” said the heavier of the two brunettes, “we hear you were all over him. He, like, couldn’t stop you.”
Weezy’s face turned a deeper red. “Me all over him? I had to fight him off.”
They all laughed.
The third said, “When a girl like you gets near a guy like Carson Toliver—and will someone please tell me how that happened?—you don’t fight him off. It just doesn’t work that way.”
“So we came up with a name for you,” said the second. “Easy Weezy.”
As they all laughed and repeated it, Jack saw Weezy’s stricken expression and wanted to punch them. Just to shut them up.
“Who’d’ve thought,” said the blonde, giving her another up-and-down. “But I guess if you want to look like that you’ve gotta make up for it some way.” She waved and started to walk away. “Bye, Easy.”
The other two followed, but not before the heavier one said, “And don’t start thinking you’re Carson’s type. You’re not. You’re just … easy.”
Weezy, mouth still open, stood and gazed at their retreating backs. The red faded to a sickly white. Finally she turned to Jack.
“How … what…?”
“Obviously he’s been spreading lies about you.”
The urge to hurt, maim, maybe even kill Carson Toliver returned, stronger than ever. Not only had he attacked her, he was now smearing her.
“But why?”
Jack hid his anger and hurt with a shrug. “Who can figure a walking turd like that? Maybe he figures every girl should have the absolute hots for him. Maybe he doesn’t hear ‘no’ too often. So instead of letting you talk about how you had to fight him off, he launched a preemptive strike.”
“But it’s a lie! It makes me sound like a slut.”
“He’s not worried about your rep, he’s worried about his.”
Two guys about a dozen feet away stopped and pointed. Jack recognized them as a couple of starters on the football team. Friends of Toliver’s, no doubt.
“Hey, it’s Easy Weezy!” one cried. “Wanna go out? You can have us both—two for the price of one!”
They must have thought that was a riot because they laughed all the way to the front door.
“It’s all over school,” she whispered, looking sick. “It’s not even first period and already everybody’s calling me Easy Weezy.”
Jack didn’t say it, but none of this would be happening if she’d reported him.
He touched her shoulder. “Not everybody. Just some big-hair airheads and a couple of Toliver’s jock friends. The girls are jealous he asked you out instead of them, and the guys are just being jerks.” He gave her a gentle squeeze on the shoulder and tried to lighten things up. “Us guys like to act like jerks whenever we can. It’s in our nature.”
She looked at him then at the two jocks disappearing inside. “I can’t imagine you ever saying that.”
“Maybe not, but maybe I simply haven’t found the right outlet for all my pent-up jerkiness. When I do—duck and run for cover. Because it’s gonna be ugly.”
That won half a smile from her. He walked her in through the entrance, then they had to part ways. Jack’s first period class was to the right, hers to the left.
He’d gone maybe a dozen feet when he heard a guy call out somewhere behind him.
“Hey! It’s Easy Weezy!”
He cringed and turned. He couldn’t see who’d said it, but saw Weezy moving