What… what happened… (this chapter might not be for everyone)

Author’s note

Trying to avoid spoilers here, but I wanted to include a chapter about defeat and humiliation- not the happiest of paths for the story to take but one I wanted to write regardless. If that may not be to your liking, then I’ll understand if you don’t want to read further.

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Moving at a pace close to a jog, Christina had to get to the other end of the school to reach the gym. She rounded a corner, her bare feet tapping the floor with each step. Slowing slightly to make sure the hallway was deserted, she fell back into the same pace a split second later.

She came to the hallway leading to the gym and the locker rooms, rounding the corner and breaking into a full jog. She could see the entrance to the female’s locker room up on the right and her pace quickened further. Her last few steps were close to a complete run when she got to the heavy wooden door. She grabbed the handle, yanked the door open and bolted inside.

Even with most of the lights off, the room seemed bright. Clean white tiles covered the floor and ran over halfway up the walls. The lockers were an unpleasant shade of yellow, standing out poorly but making the floor look all the brighter. The room was completely silent, and Christina dropped her hands as she moved past the first aisle and stepped into the second, going straight for her locker.

Four steps into the aisle, Christina slowed. Her locker was ahead on the left, but the door was wide open. All of the other lockers were uniformly shut, but hers stood apart from the group, the only one left open. She stepped up to it, bent slightly and peered inside. It was empty, save for her padlock, clearly broken.

What happened?

But she knew what happened. Denise and her friends must have realized she’d come here for clothes and gone straight here. They had broken in, taken her uniform and left the lock as a final middle finger to her.

“No…” Christina whimpered to herself. “No… please.”

Fresh tears welled in her eyes and she started tugging on the padlocks around her locker, praying that she could find one that hadn’t fully latched but with no luck.

“No… I can’t walk home like this…”

She moved down the aisle, pulling on locks, praying to gain access to a uniform she could borrow. But each door she tried was fully secure. Christina slowly sat down next to the lockers and allowed herself to quietly sob for a moment. Apprehension and embarrassment overwhelmed her.

I can’t just sit here, she thought. I have to get home…

After a few minutes Christina stood. Tears still spilled from her eyes though she was no longer weeping. She took a large halting breath, then another. Then she started to walk.

Leaving the relative safety of the empty locker room she turned back down the hallway. The corridor ended in a large metal door, leading outside. She knew that immediately outside this door were the fields the school used for sports practices, and across from that was the park she walked through every day to get home. She approached the door and peered outside. The fields were barely lit by the occasional sodium lamp. She could see no one out there. Clinching her hands in front of her body once again, she pushed the crash bar in front of the door open and stepped out into the night.

The utter humiliation of being outside naked renewed her tears. She’d never in her life thought of being slightly undressed in public, and now the act of doing so with **** in the matter made her heart race in terror. She stepped away from the school building and began cutting across the field, heading for the park.

In the distance she could hear the occasional car, the sound rolling from the street on the other side of the forest to her left. But she heard no people. No talking, no one out for a jog. The grass of the field lightly tickled the soles of her feet as she kept moving. Her backside felt terribly exposed, and she found herself wishing he had a third arm to cover herself back there.

She reached the end of the school grounds and crossed the wooden bridge that covered a dried streambed. She continued walking into the park, back onto the sidewalk trail that led ahead and to the left, towards the street she’d eventually have to cross.

The concrete bit into her heels with every step. The occasional sob escaped her mouth, punctuated with new tears running down her cheeks. Blinking them away as best she could, she continued onwards.

The sidewalk arced through the park, cutting around the sporadic tree or clumps of bushes and random park bench. Her vision was still slightly blurred from crying but between blinks she realized that one of the benches ahead was populated by two people. She nearly froze in her tracks but her desire to just get home propelled her along. She made sure her arms were securely covering her breasts and crotch as he got closer.

It was a man and a woman, sitting on the bench, gawking at her. They were clearly surprised to see someone coming through the park in this state, but so far said nothing. Christina could feel her hands tighten in front of her with each step that closed the gap between them. She tried to avoid looking at them, keeping her eyes fixed in front of her.

“Are you okay?” the woman finally spoke up.

“Please don’t look at me,” was all Christina could bring herself to say, refusing to meet their gaze. “Just… please don’t…”

She felt another tear seep from her eye as she passed them, not breaking her pace and looking only straight ahead. The couple didn’t say another word. She could almost feel their eyes on her as she walked past, was tempted to ask them again to not look at her, but she kept silent and continued walking. Soon she was ten feet past them, then twenty. Eventually she heard them start whispering, but Christina tried to ignore them.

I have to get home…

The path curved further to the left, reaching the street. A car drove by at a leisurely pace. Christina imagined the driver was staring at her and another batch of sobs struck her. She was between the night lamps in the park and in near perfect darkness but the idea wouldn’t leave her mind. But the car kept going without slowing down.

She reached the street and almost stopped. It wasn’t a wide street, only two lanes, but this felt even more exposed than walking through the park had been. She didn’t let herself stop though, out of fear that she would have a harder time moving again.

The concrete under her feet changed to asphalt. Still walking at the same pace, she glanced left and right and saw no cars approaching. Up ahead, three houses on the left, she saw her home, the porch light still on. Her mother’s car was in the driveway, her dad’s likely stowed in the garage. She reached the far side of the street, stepped onto the curb and kept hiking towards her house.

Christina’s tears finally stopped coming. She passed by the first house, tempted to look at it and see if anyone was at the window staring at her, but she decided that she’s rather not know. She passed the second house, a hedge running along the sidewalk keeping her body out of sight if the occupants happened to look outside. Finally she reached her house. Passing behind her mom’s car, she turned up the driveway, then over the two-slab walkway to the porch. Her hand moved away from her breasts and grabbed the doorknob. Locked. She knew it would be. Her keys were in her jeans, now in Denise’s possession. Christina pressed the doorbell, returned her hands to her breasts. She wasn’t waiting for long before she heard footsteps approaching the door.