Last chapter Mara was being chased by the hallucination of her dead crush.

This chapter she flings open a random door to get away, and lo and behold, it’s her next classroom.  We jump straight into a scene about how absolutely terrible her Spanish teacher is.  Jude has been completely forgotten.  So, yeah, chalk that line up to “dramatic just for the sake of being dramatic.”  Should we start keeping a count?

After the teacher who does not know how to teach (which, admittedly, is called such and is realistic as a bad teacher), Mara makes a new friend.

a smiling short boy wearing an open, white button-down shirt. A yellow T-shirt that said I AM A CLICHÉ was beneath it.

It’s like you just want me to mock you.

This is Jamie, and he comes up to make nice to her and commiserate over how bad their teacher is.

“Better, thanks. You’re the first person to ask. Or say anything nice at all, actually.”

“So people have said not-nice things, then?”

Mara stares off into space for a while and narrates about uniforms instead of answering. 

But when I looked for any telltale signs of cliques—wild shoes, or students with dyed black hair and makeup to match, I saw none. It was more than the uniforms; everyone somehow managed to look exactly alike. Perfectly groomed, perfectly well-behaved, not a hair out of place. Jamie, with his dreadlocks and tongue stud and exposed T-shirt, was one of the only standouts.

1) You have a very narrow definition of clique.  I went to a high school with uniforms, and we had cliques.  I was part of a clique (if you can really call it that, what’s the difference between a clique and a social group?) who always sat at the top of the stairs reading manga and giggling and blocking everyone’s path.  But even though we were the ‘obsessed with anime and manga’ group, no one had dyed hair or wild make up or matching shoes.  Hell, I was the only one that disobeyed uniform policies at all, and that’s just because I insisted on painting my nails green.  None of the groups at that school had visual markers, but we were still a wildly varied bunch.

2) Can you see everyone’s tongue?  How do you know tongue rings aren’t this school’s version of friendship bracelets?  (Or…what’s a trend these days?  I’m old.)  Maybe everyone has ironic t-shirts on under their uniforms and just buttoned up to not get caught.  Maybe Jamie is part of a t-shirt and tongue ring clique, and all his buddies just happen to be on the other side of campus for the moment.

3) Jamie does not get brownie points just because Mara is too judgmental to admit that grooming does not equal vapid conformity.  

So, Mara finally gets around to answering Jamie’s question, and the only answer she can come up with is that that one girl from before was mean to her.  Everyone else has been remarkably neutral.  Jamie says that it must be because Mara came within spitting distance of Noah Shaw, because Anna (the mean girl) is quite persnickety about him. 

Jamie also says that Noah will try and get into Mara’s pants eventually, because he does that to everyone and he’s ‘run out’ of girls at the school currently.

Anna used to be the abstinence poster girl, but post-Shaw, you could write a comic book about the many adventures of her vagina. It could wear a cape.”

I…

…just…

I…

I need to break something.

I want to break everything.

OH MY GOD, ARE YOU SERIOUS BOOK?  AND THEN MARA LAUGHS AT THIS?  I WILL FUCKING END YOU.  I NEED TO FIND A PHYSICAL COPY OF THIS BOOK SO I CAN LIGHT IT ON FIRE.  I NEED DESTRUCTION AND VIOLENCE BECAUSE OH MY GOD I CANNOT EVEN. 

Let’s put this in a way that doesn’t deliberately try and paint someone as a filthy whore, shall we?

Anna was a girl who valued her virginity, for whatever reason.  There are many options.

Here comes Noah, who (if his reputation is to be believed) chews through girls like farming equipment through a wheat field. 

He manages to get Anna to give up her commitment to remaining a virgin.  No clue on how he did that, but the implication is manipulation, because I’m getting very strong “Barney from HIMYM” vibes off this guy and anyone who thinks you can’t screw a girl twice probably has the morals of pond scum.  Then, he dates her for a couple of weeks, “a new record for him.”  Anna probably thinks that she gave up her values for something real, that she could “change him,” and for all we know this was part of his ploy to get into her pants.

Then he dumped her.

This fuckfaced turd got this poor girl to upend her beliefs for the sake of his own cock all because he has to have a ‘new’ girl and none of the other students throwing themselves at him (according to Jamie) will do, and then after he did god knows what to her emotions and mind, he dumped her.

So after being lied to and manipulated, Anna acts promiscuously.

Hey, here’s a fun fact that will ruin your day: a sudden change in levels of promiscuousness is one sign of sexual abuse.  It’s not a sure thing, but it’s one of the many ways in people react which has been recorded enough times to count as ‘average.’

I think the basic mindset is “I was saving myself for someone special and now I’m ruined so FUCK IT, YOU WANT TO CALL ME A WHORE?  I’LL SHOW YOU A WHORE.”  According her previous values, she’s screwed up, and since she didn’t get a chance to change her view slowly/naturally/on her own, she’s thrown into anger and confusion and self-hatred.  So she reacts in what is actually a very natural way, especially when you dump teenaged hormones on top of that.

But the book wants to call her pathetic because she’s sleeping around a lot and still gets jealous when anyone gets near Noah.

Not one single bad word about Noah yet at all, but they make fun of Anna’s vagina and have a good old guffaw over it.

I can’t.  I’ve only done three pages so far, not even a whole chapter, but fuck it.  I can’t.  I’m out.  See you tomorrow.