It was Tuesday. Just another normal day at school, and another day that Mary didn't turn up to class.
I was, as I usually did, eating a sandwich in the cafeteria with Ahmet and Alex. I wasn't particularly close to them anymore, but it was good to appear to live the life of an ordinary schoolboy. Just as Alex was telling a joke that made me half-heartedly laugh, I saw Katie, who always sat alone for lunch, leave the cafeteria, with Mel and Vicky handling her roughly as Jacie led the way. Among the trio, Jacie was always the leader. If she could detach her head like Jude she would have held it in her hands and looked up to herself.
I didn't think much of it at the time. This was a daily occurrence. Things had been escalating somewhat lately, but it wasn't like they were going to kill her or anything. Those bitches would never have the courage to do something like that.
Mr. Latkowski was absent from math class that afternoon - something about attending an annual math teachers' conference. He'd given us a set of questions to solve. Ms. Ferenzi was our substitute teacher for the day. She was an elderly woman who seemed hard of hearing and mostly didn't care what we did, sitting at the teacher's desk knitting.
Then Ahmet, in front of me was fiddling with his phone, with absolutely no intention of doing anything productive during this class, just like most of the other students today.
When I saw his shoulders flinch and heard him yell out "Whoa!" I just thought he won something good in one of those gacha games he plays. His family was rather wealthy and the boy was a bit of a whale.
Unusually, though, the rest of the class showed a similar reaction around the same time. There were gasps, exclamations, whistles, cheers, and some laughter. Ms. Ferenzi paid no attention, focused on knitting a scarf.
It was then I felt something rather special must have been shared, probably in the class group chat I was part of - but I always had notifications turned off for that. If something was important enough, someone would tell me in person.
"Did you see this?!" Ahmet turned around in excitement, thrusting his phone to my face.
I didn't see it clearly at first, but when I backed off a little, I saw the photograph.
It seemed that the picture was taken in the toilet, judging by the white tiles, and in the center, Katie was standing fully naked. Her arms were open, raised and extended to the side. It looked like two people out of the frame were holding her hands to make sure that she couldn't cover her exposed body.
Her legs were pressed against each other in a desperate attempt to hide where babies come out, but her pussy was shaved clean, leaving everything bare.
Just above where her public hair must have been, right on her pelvis, two words were written with a thick black marker.
"Cum Deposit"
The words were accompanied by an arrow just below it pointing downward, serving as a signpost to where the hole was.
I immediately averted my eyes from the phone screen as soon as I felt I saw more than I needed to, and they found Katie sitting in the front row with her face buried in her arms on the desk.
Boys around me murmured, questioning whether she still had those words written on her and how smooth it would feel to fuck a bare pussy.
They thought it was kind of hot.
I then looked at the Three Whores.
They were giving each other high-fives. Mel, between bursts of innocent laughter, was excitedly praising Jacie for being a genius, while Vicky giggled as she looked at the picture with Craig, who sat in front of her.
My eyes turned to the Squirrel again, expecting that she would burst out of the classroom and run away as far as she could, but she didn't move at all. I saw her small back tremble.
I knew - I knew that she could hear everything.
She just sat there, but no longer out of the bravery and perseverance I'd come to admire, but out of sheer despair at having lost everything.
The world was a truly ugly place.