Layla completely shuts off.
It’s like she freezes over. One second, she has hurt and frustration and fear all over her face; the next, she’s sitting calmly on the stone steps, examining her nail beds, her expression cold and detached. “Seriously,” she says again, her voice almost bored. “It’s not a big deal. You don’t post pictures of yourself half-naked online if you can’t handle a little catcalling.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” I say slowly, trying to nudge the soda closer to her. “Sweetheart, you’ll feel better if—”
“I’m fine,” she snaps, and I look down. She sighs and leans her head back against the brick wall, squinting up at the dark sky. “Sorry,” she says softly. “Sorry, sorry. I turn to a bitch when I’m embarrassed.”
I shake my head. We’re silent for a moment. A car trundles down the road. A few streets away, I hear drunk voices singing a Mariah Carey song. Slowly, Layla reaches down and cracks the tab of the can, bringing it to her lips and taking a few deep swallows.
“What does Tuggy mean?” I ask when she sets it back on the pavement.
She makes a lewd jerking motion with her hand.
I grimace, my stomach turning. “What? Why the Hell did he call you that?”
She looks at me sideways. “You really don’t remember me at all, do you?” She says, her voice soft.
“I told you. I barely remember anyone from your class.”
“You remember Donny,” she points out, and I huff.
“Yeah. Because Donald refused to study, and then his parents threatened to sue me for bad teaching practice every time I gave him a failing grade. I ended up tutoring him on Friday lunch breaks, just to get them to back off.” I don’t like to think badly of my students, but occasionally, you meet a kid that’s just bad, through and through. Donny was one of them.
I try to put the pieces together. “Did he give you a hard time?” I guess.
“Among others,” she says stiffly.
“Was it… bad?” I ask, my voice hesitant. I already know the answer. She wouldn’t be crouched here, shivering in the cold, if it wasn’t bad.
Her face twists. “Well,” she spits, “I got death threats every day for about three years straight, so yeah. I’d say it was pretty bad.”
My stomach lurches. “What?” I ask. “Death threats? At Emery High?”
She fiddles with her bracelets. “I know, I know. The loveliest children you’ve ever worked with. Lowest rate of student suspension in the country. I guess I must have just imagined it.”
I sit forward. “I don’t understand. Were you bullied by the other students?”
She tilts her head and looks at me, her pale eyes inscrutable. “Well,” she says slowly. “It wasn’t the janitor threatening to beat me to death behind the bike shed.”
“Layla—” My horror must show on my face, because she immediately backtracks.
“I shouldn’t have said that.” She shakes her head. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
I ignore her. “Donny threatened to kill you?”
She snorts. “Oh, no. He was just the ringleader, making up stories about what a slag I was. It was mostly the girls who wanted to kill me.” Her lip curls in disgust. “Trust me, Tuggy was the best of my nicknames. I had a bunch. Handy Queen. Two-pound Thompson.”
“Two-pound…” I repeat weakly, my head whirring.
“It was the rumoured price I charged for a blowie.” She tosses her hair back. “One pound to touch my boobs. Fifty pence over the shirt. Not that most of them bothered paying. Or asking.”
Horror shudders through me. All of this was happening whilst I was there? Right under my nose? “Layla. You didn’t—”
She scowls at me, her eyes hard. “None of it’s true.”
“That’s not what I was going to ask, sweetheart. Why didn’t you ask for help?”
It’s the wrong thing to say. Her eyes flare. She suddenly flings her leg out, kicking the half-empty can across the pavement. It clatters against the gravel, rolling to a stop a few feet away.
“Screw you,” she spits. “Don’t make this my fault. I did ask for help. I told my form teacher. I told the receptionist. I told the headteacher. I told the goddamn nurse every time I had to come in for an extra PE kit, because the guys liked pouring water down the front of my shirt. For God’s sake, Luke, do I seem like the kind of person who takes this stuff lying down?” She shakes her head. “I kicked up as much of a fuss as I possibly could. No one did anything. Anything. Hell, the head of year told me I should be grateful, because ‘when a boy picks on you like this, he’s clearly interested in you’. And then she called me a ‘slapper’ behind my back as I walked away.”
I stare at her, wide-eyed. “The head of year… Eveline told you that?”
She looks at me coolly, her eyes gleaming in the dark like a cat’s, like she’s daring me not to believe her.
I run a hand over my face. This is all my fault. If I’d been in a better state, I would have noticed something was wrong. I should’ve helped her. It was my job to keep the students safe. Jesus, no wonder Layla’s so prickly and defensive around men now; she’s used to them trying to hurt her.
She was sixteen, for God’s sake. Sixteen, and getting sexually harassed in school. “But why?” I ask, my voice breaking on the last word. “Why did the other kids pick on you like that? I don’t understand.”
She’s silent for a long, long time, staring up at the sky. “I don’t want to tell you,” she says eventually.
The words hit me like a brick wall.
All of my life, I’ve prided myself on being someone people can come to for help. When I was a teacher, I had kids traipsing in and out of my office all day, just to talk to me. It’s one of the reasons I like doing Three Single Guys. Giving advice is what I’m supposed to be good at.
But Layla doesn’t want to open up to me. Why the Hell would she? She was getting bullied for years, right under my nose, and I didn’t do anything to help her. I was her teacher, and I let her get hurt and harassed. I let her down.
My phone suddenly dings in my pocket. I stand up, my head spinning. “I… I need to make a call.” I mutter. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
