Laila sat in the front seat of her father’s car adjusting the rear-view mirror back and forth. She hated that every time she got into her dad’s sedan she had to adjust everything just to get comfortable. She shrugged her tense shoulders and leaned her head against the steering wheel.
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She didn’t plan on driving anywhere, but old habits die hard.
Die hard, she thought to herself and a hysterical giggle escaped her as she pondered the expression. She supposed that was more or less what she planned to do.
Laila sat in the dark garage in her dad’s car for the better part of an hour, building up the courage to do what she felt she needed to. She glanced at the gun on the passenger seat next to her. She reached for it, then brought her hand back to her lap.
From deep in her coat pocket, Laila’s phone vibrated. She instinctively took it out to see who was texting. It was just a message telling her someone had liked one of her posts.
Her face clouded with fury. If it weren’t for one stupid post, she wouldn’t be in the situation she was now.
She grabbed the gun and gently tapped the barrel against her leg, thinking about the post that had destroyed a life.
She had only wanted to get back at her. It had been early Saturday evening; Laila and her friends had just come home from shopping for the Valentine’s Day Dance. While at the mall, they had come across Rebecca Lewinski.
Rebecca was the bane of Laila’s existence. They had been going to the same preparatory academy since they were small, but Laila was considered a “scholarship kid” while Rebecca’s parents practically had their name on every building there: The Lewinski Hall of Fine Arts, the Lewinski Library. Laila had once joked that there was a toilet somewhere with the Lewinski name branded firmly on the seat.
Rebecca took it upon herself to remind Laila nearly every day that she—the poor, dark scholarship girl–didn’t belong there. Rebecca frequently referred to Laila’s Middle Eastern background with derision, joking that Laila’s family were “towel-head terrorists.”
Laila endured Rebecca’s taunts and tried to distance herself from the prissy mean girl as much as possible.
It didn’t matter how hard she tried though. Outside of class, Laila constantly found herself the butt of jokes in the hall. Inside of class, no one really spoke to her outside a small group of friends.
That day in the mall was karma giving her a chance to get back at Rebecca for all of the daily humiliation.
As Laila and her friends had passed by an expensive boutique, they spotted Rebecca trying on dresses with her mom looking on. Rebecca had always been the biggest girl in their class. She wasn’t even five-feet-tall, but was easily over two hundred pounds. Laila knew that Rebecca had tried countless diets; she’d even heard a rumored that she had begged her mom for weight loss surgery. But Rebecca’s mom, who normally indulged Rebecca with whatever she wanted, stood fast against her daughter’s surgery idea. At least, that’s what the rumor mill said.
Laila nudged her friends, Mattie and Trish, and pointed to Rebecca, who was too busy arguing with her mother over a dress to notice them.
Mattie snickered. “Fatty’s trying on dresses? Good luck!”
“Ugh, she looks like such a pig in that one. She probably ate the sales associate,” Trish said, smirking. “It’s no wonder she’s so mean. Constant indigestion from eating people!”
Laila couldn’t control the burst of laughter. She said, “She does look ridiculous in that dress. It looks like it’s going to pop at the seams if she takes a deep breath.”
Mattie squealed, excited. “Oh my god! You guys! We have to get a picture of her looking like this!”
Mattie pulled out her phone and snapped a few pictures of Rebecca. When they checked out the images, they all fell into giggling fits.
Between Rebecca’s red face, the pink dress she was wearing that couldn’t contain her bulging body, and the way she was waving her huge chubby arms back and forth, they all laughed at how much she actually did resemble a pig!
“Let’s go before she sees us,” Laila said. She giggled one more time before they all hurried away from the dress shop.
That evening, while trying on their dance dresses one more time at Laila’s house, Mattie said, “You know, we shouldn’t let those pictures go to waste.”
“What are you talking about?”
Mattie flopped down on Laila’s bed, her skirts flouncing. “We have absolutely classic footage of Ms. Piggy herself. How great would it be if the whole school saw those pics? It would be hilarious!”
Trish frowned. “I don’t know. I mean, they’re pretty funny. But I don’t really want to get in trouble like that.”
“Yeah,” Laila said. “It’s one thing to laugh now. I just don’t see it being worth it.”
“Aw, come on guys!” Mattie grinned. “We could post them online and no one would even know it was us. You know she deserves it. Laila, you’ve been putting up with her crap for years. She’s a bully.”
Trish said, “She might be. But I’m not.”
“God, Trish,” Mattie said, eyes rolling as she dropped back to lie on the bed. “You’re such a goody-two shoes.”
Trish shrugged and frowned.
Mattie said, “What about you, Laila? You think it’s time for you to stand up for yourself?”
“Just delete them, Mattie. We’re graduating in a few months. I think I can put up with Rebecca a little bit longer.”
Mattie grumbled. “Your loss, ladies!”
The next Monday at school, Laila was running late from lunch and bumped into Rebecca and her friends in the hallway.
Rebecca sneered with disdain. She said, “Rushing off to clean some toilets, peasant? After you’re done with the school’s, you can stop by my house and clean ours.”
Rebecca’s friends laughed.
Laila tried to walk past. “Whatever, Rebecca.”
“Whatever, Laila,” Rebecca said in a sing-song voice. “God, what a little piece of trash that one is.”
And before Laila could say anything in reply, Rebecca spat in Laila’s face.
In shock, no one said anything.
Finally, in a voice full of bluster, Rebecca said, “Come on, ladies, let’s get going. There’s nothing here to see.”
Rebecca gave Laila a long glance over her shoulder.
She said, “Literally nothing here to see. Go wash your face, Nobody. You look more disgusting than usual. I’m going to throw up.”
And with that parting shot, Rebecca walked away with her friends.
Laila stood frozen in shock. As tears rolled down her face, she realized she had been silently crying. Even more embarrassed, she dashed off to the bathroom and sat in the stall sobbing, the idea of anyone seeing her like that unbearable.
Her pain slowly turned to seething, boiling anger. With shaky hands, she took her phone out of her pocket and sent a single text to Mattie, “You still have those pics? Post them.”
Still upset and emotionally exhausted from her ordeal with Rebecca, Laila decided to fake being sick in order to get out of going to school the next day. She spent the whole time wrapped up in her blankets, sleeping and feeling miserable.
She was surprised when, that afternoon, she got a call from Trish. School wasn’t over yet…
“Hey, Trish.” Laila said in a sleepy voice, “Shouldn’t you be in school, still?”
“I figured you didn’t hear yet,” Trish said, sounding breathless.
Laila sat up in her bed. She adjusted the blankets around her. She asked, “Hear what?”
“About Rebecca…”
Laila groaned. “Oh, no. Do not talk to me about Rebecca. Do you know what she did to me yester–”
Trish cut her off. “Rebecca tried to kill herself last night.”
Laila’s breathing stilled. She looked at her phone, blinked, then whispered, “What?”
“Yeah. A whole bottle of diet pills,” Trish said. “Her mom found her.”
Laila’s head swam. “Oh my God… Oh God…”
Trish added, “They don’t know if she’s going to make it.”
“Oh no… No, no, no.”
Laila tried to melt into her blankets, to disappear into the soft warmth. This couldn’t be happening!
“This is all my fault,” she said. “All my fault…”
Trish said, “What are you talking about?”
Laila took in deep, ragged breaths. “I… Trish, I told Mattie to post those pictures! This is my fault… She must have seen them and tried to kill herself.”
“But Laila—”
“She’s going to die and it’s all my fault!”
Laila screamed hysterically. She hung up and slammed the phone against her bed; she couldn’t face her friend right now. Not knowing what she had done.
She paced her room, alternating between wiping her nose and tears on her sleeves. How had this happened? She had just wanted to embarrass Rebecca a little. It wasn’t nearly as much as she had gone through. She just wanted a little revenge, that was all. She hadn’t wanted anyone to hurt because of her.
Overcome with guilt, Laila thought feverishly about how she could make this right. With resignation, she thought of the box in her parents’ bedroom closet. The box that they thought she didn’t know about.
Confident that she now knew what she needed to do, she grabbed her phone and went off to find the box.
Staring absently into the dark garage now, recounting the events that lead up to this moment, Laila picked up the gun and closed her eyes.
She felt a faint notion of fear, but steadied her hand as she raised the gun. Taking a deep breath, she began to count backwards from ten aloud, crying between each number.
In her pocket, she felt the persistent hum of her phone, someone trying to call her, but she ignored it.
As she got to four, she heard the rumble of someone opening the garage door. She dropped the gun to the floor and kicked it with her heel under the seat.
Her mom pulled into the other parking space. She shut off the car and stepped out, clearly startled to see her.
“Were you planning on going somewhere? I thought you weren’t feeling well,” her mom said.
Still adjusting her eyes to the light that was now bathing the garage, Laila stumbled to find something to say.
“Oh, honey, I’m so glad you weren’t at school today. So many rumors floating around there! That Lewinski girl is in the hospital. Overdosed.”
Laila went to tell her mother that she had heard. She thought about telling the whole story even, but her mother kept talking before she could say anything.
“She left a note,” her mother said, as she unloaded groceries from the car. “Her mother is hysterical. I guess she talked to Judy Branford down the street. It seems the girl’s uncle’s been sexually abusing her since she was in grade school. All the parents are talking about it… It’s just terrible.”
Laila’s mouth dropped open in shock. Immediately, she eyed her phone.
She grabbed the phone and opened it. She read all the texts she had been ignoring, most of them about Rebecca from other girls at school. Among the rumors was the message most important to her: from Mattie late last night.
“Sorry for the late response. My battery died,” Mattie had texted. “I deleted those pics on Saturday. Sorry. What’s up?”