On a mild night in late August, my mother dropped us off outside of the stadium, handed me twenty dollars, and went on her way. I looked at Josh and exhaled, my vision blurring and hands shaking as an announcer’s voice boomed indistinctly from inside the stadium. This hadn’t been my idea; hell, it might not have even been Josh’s, but he was happy to go along with it. I was apparently too stupid to understand this, but high school football games were a rite of passage, and now that our first day of freshman year grew closer, it was our god-given responsibility to stand in a stadium full of people I couldn’t stand and yell about football.
This of course stemmed not from Josh, but his father, Paul, a former lacrosse player and not-really-former fuckboy who was hell-bent on his son experiencing high school the exact way he had, regardless of what it meant for anyone else in Josh’s life. It was painfully obvious by this point that I was not what Paul wanted for his son, and Josh had more or less told me that his father, along with his mother, Diana, didn’t care for me. I wasn’t good at fitting into the Baltimore prep school girl mold, and furthermore, I wasn’t even sure I wanted to. Artistic, disinterested in sports and social climbing, and unapologetically honest, I was certain Paul and Diana couldn’t fathom how I was the way I was.
To say I did not want to be standing outside Johnny Unitas Stadium to watch this football game was an understatement. Not only had I planned an entirely different evening before being told that our plans had already been decided for us, but the idea of facing anyone from Josh’s school made me want to crawl into a hole. It would be one thing if he ever defended me when the heckling started, but he never did, instead choosing to laugh along or sometimes join in. I was starting to see so much of Paul in him, and it made me want to slap Paul across his smug face every time he opened his mouth.
We sat down on the concrete bleachers as the teams lined up on the field and the sun disappeared behind the treeline. Josh’s phone buzzed with a text from Paul: Y aren’t U sitting on our side of the field? I rolled my eyes so hard I thought they might get stuck. He was truly not content unless he had total control over Josh’s actions. Josh got up to move and I followed begrudgingly, knowing exactly what I was in for on the other side. As we drew closer to the student section of the bleachers, I could hear it starting already.Â
Hey, Bloody Mary’s here! Someone got a tampon?
The twenty-four hour news cycle didn’t exist in the Baltimore private school scene.
Once you were infamous, you stayed that way forever. This was probably the number one reason I found it irritating as hell that I had to grow up here—once I’d bled through my pink Forever21 skirt at a mixer for all to see, I would never find another reputation. I was no longer Ryann Newman; I was Bloody Mary forever. The snickers and hoots could be heard from clear across the field, probably, meaning every person who didn’t know about the circumstances of my first period had now been informed. I hated this place.
Hey Mary, hollered a voice two or three rows behind me. How does your carpet grow? I ignored it and looked at Josh, unsure why I expected him to protect me. He looked up at the field, watching the opponent’s cheerleaders wave pom-poms in the air.
Hey Maaaaaaaaary! the voice yelled again, and something in me snapped. I shoved my way past Josh, stomped up the steps to the heckler’s row, and shoved my way into the throng of boys painted head to toe in red and white. All the while, he kept it up, now starting to pontificate about how feisty I was. I met some resistance once some boys saw the fire in my eyes, but it was nothing a well-placed fuck outta my way and an elbow to the ribs didn’t fix. Finally, I stood face to face with the offender: Hunter Brady IV.
What’s the matter, Mary? Need a new pair of panties?
I blacked out.
When I regained consciousness, Hunter Brady IV was gripping his nose, red of blood almost indistinguishable from facepaint. My right knuckles throbbed as boys pushed and shoved—they were at least raised well enough not to hit a woman, but I quickly realized it would behoove me to be on my way. As Josh looked up at me from our seats, disgusted, I beelined towards the stadium’s parking lot; he didn’t follow me. I knew coming here was a fucking mistake.