No fucking way. No fucking way. No fucking way.
I need to get outta here. Now. No time to tell Karina.
I cut right between the asshole kids and the TV, then walk through the foyer and out the front door, laughter trailing me as I make my escape.
4
EVEN THOUGH it only makes me feel worse, I keep watching the video. I refresh the page on my computer screen, my insides bunching up every time. David Gets Bitchslapped has 8,507 views. Over thirty more since I checked a few minutes ago.
Once again I click play.
00:01: Even after so many viewings, the first image still has the power to shock me. That’s me in the locker room. Calm and unsuspecting boyish face. Stick limbs poking outta a blue-and-gray PE uniform.
00:04: I take off the shirt, revealing the skinniest teenage torso the world has ever seen. That’s when Ricky, edited into a blur, rushes in to swing an arm and land a loud slap across my face. A slap, not a punch. Turns out my weakass got knocked out by an open hand.
00:05: My head whips to face the camera while my T-shirt, barely off and over my head, falls to the floor. My eyes glaze over as I wobble like a stripped Jenga tower. I sway right as if pushed, put my foot down to steady myself, tip forward, and keep stumbling until I end up in the same spot.
00:08: My legs give out and I drop to my knees. My head hangs as if in solemn prayer before I topple forward. My shoulder bounces off the narrow bench before the side of my face thuds against the floor.
00:13: The camera zooms closer to capture my head lifting, eyes struggling to fully open and figure out what happened.
Offscreen, Ricky and his buddy burst out laughing, the sound echoing throughout the empty room.
Then it’s the first frame again, signaling the start of the slow-motion version. I have mercy on myself and click pause.
I’ve reported this video to YouTube, flagged it, and checked the Violent or repulsive option. A message informed me that someone would review my complaint.
Does it even matter though? In the meantime, people keep watching and sharing. Besides, anyone who has downloaded it can upload it again. Soon my fifteen-second clip will be featured on compilations. Best of the month. Best of the year. Any day now I can expect GIFs and memes—I’ll be the joke used for other jokes.
How many times have I laughed at embarrassing videos or shared them? What was wrong with me?
This one beats them all, and not just because of how hilariously goofy I look at every moment of it, from the slap to being dazed on the floor.
It’s also the high quality. Usually these types of videos are shaky, blurry even, recorded from a distance. Not this one. Ricky’s sidekick has a steady hand and a talent for framing shots, could practically work for Steven Spielberg or something.
The whole world will know me: a guy so skinny you can see the contour of every bone. A guy so weak that a slap knocks him out cold.
This shit’s going viral for sure. It has . . . I click to reload the page . . . One hundred more views than minutes ago. 1,843 likes. 1 dislike. Mine.
It might have millions of views by tomorrow!
My throat tightens as I scroll down to look at the comments for the first time.
what a loser
I love how his face wiggles in the slo mo
the stumbling around looks like country line dancing
Comments accompanied by laughing emojis. Heart emojis. The applause emoji.
I remember TrashTalk and feel a cold pang in my heart. I open the TT app on my phone. Wait as the Culler High School page loads.
TT is where you go to comment anonymously about someone’s outfit or new hairstyle or who’s fat or who’s not as pretty or cool as they think. It’s mix of mostly disses and rumors.
The TT logo stops spinning and the Culler High page appears. My video is on there. Plus comments as dickish as the ones on YouTube. It might as well be renamed the Take Shots at Bitchslap David page.
That’s what everybody is calling me. It’s as bad as the YouTube comments but hurt so much more because I will definitely see these “anonymous” people again.
What can I do? How can I ever leave this house? How can I go back to school after the summer? My head buzzes with these and a million different thoughts.
I close TT and go into my other apps. Remove the Facebook account I rarely use. Deactivate my Instagram I always use and then remove that app. I move on to Snapchat and find a message from Miguel.
u ok man? i’m worried and you won’t pick up
I’m not taking any calls. Can’t even talk to Dad, who’s knocked on my door twice to find out why I’m back from the party so early.
I delete Snapchat.
There. No more social media. I’m officially cut off from a big chunk of my life. What next? With nothing left to do I feel useless. My stomach starts to rumble for real. If it’s possible to get physically sick from humiliation, it’s happening to me.
I wanna believe that things aren’t as bad as they seem, but hell no. This isn’t something that will seem teeny-tiny in retrospect. I won’t be laughing about this in months or years. My loser status is fixed. I’m forever Bitchslap David. And I thought the few dozen people calling me “Fuckstick” was bad.
Then I get an idea. What if I change my features? Surgeons give narcos new faces so they can hide in plain sight.
Yeah, right. I’d have to be a narco to afford a surgery like that.
A text lights up my phone: missing u here
Karina is still at the party with the others. The second I got to the car, I texted her to explain why I was leaving and needed to be alone. She’s been checking up on me ever since, downplaying the gravity of my situation, trying to cheer me up.
A selfie comes in. She’s beautiful, her smile bright underneath a lit-up palm tree.
She sends other pictures she took while I was there. In the last one all six of us are on the dance floor, Miguel in mid-jump. Not all of our limbs are visible, but the joy on our faces is clear.
Crazy how fast life can change. There I was, having fun and making friends at the party of the year. Setting up summer plans and, beyond that, my senior year stretching before me. Now I’m at home on a Friday night, counting views on a video that destroyed my life just as I was starting to live it.
So I can forget new friends. Forget my girlfriend too. Though Karina is sweet and awesome, she won’t want me as a boyfriend. She’s Karina of the drama club, Karina the honor roll student. She’s not trying to be Karina-who-goes-out-with-Bitchslap.
The greatest thing to ever walk into my life is going to walk right on out. Sprint is more like it, just as soon as she realizes how the slap will affect her.
How am I supposed to face everybody back at Culler High?
I won’t. Dad will have to accept me dropping out. I’d rather work or something. From home. I can’t set foot in public.
I’ll stay safely inside this house forever, ordering groceries and anything else I need online.
But I know that my dad won’t have that. No way. He’s still expecting me to get a scholarship. Even gifted me an SAT prep book this afternoon, a present for my last day of junior year.
Transferring isn’t an option, unless I can somehow find a town without internet. I can’t go to another school and I can’t go to Culler and I don’t know what to do.
I’m used to thoughts rushing one after another. The problem now is that they stay stuck, unable to escape, crowding up my brain.