Free Physical by Gabriella Luciano

school
record.
    “ You’ve been in trouble
before, Valentina, isn’t that right?”
    She couldn’t believe it. The principal was
trying to put this back on her.
    “ Yes, but this isn’t my
fault. I didn’t do anything,” she pleaded.
    “ I didn’t say that. I just
want to be sure that I have all the facts. Brittney is a straight-A
student with an impeccable record here. If I am going to accuse her
of this, I want to make sure that I have the truth.”
    “ That is the truth!” she
shouted.
    “ Lower your voice,” he
told her.
    “ I’m sorry but I’m telling
you the truth.”
    “ And you’re not just
trying to put this on Brittney to cover your own
actions?”
    “ My actions? What do you
mean?”
    “ Well, I have already
spoken to Brittney this morning.”
    “ And what did she
say?”
    “ She said that she had
nothing to do with the list. She said she heard a number of senior
guys made up the list.”
    Valentina couldn’t believe what he was
telling her.
    “ She’s lying. What
guys?”
    “ Well, that’s why I
brought you in here. I thought you could tell me. You have been
written up before regarding your inappropriate
behavior.”
    She suddenly felt like she was going to
faint. She had been caught kissing guys a few times at school
functions and once got caught ditching with a couple guys but the
school certainly didn’t know anything beyond that. Almost every
girl there had done something like that.
    “ I just wanted to remind
you that you are on scholarship here,” he began to lecture her. “We
abide by a strict moral code. It is not our place to invade the
private lives of our students but if anything is done on school
grounds, well then, it becomes our problem.”
    “ I didn’t do anything,”
Valentina pleaded. She wanted to cry. Her mind was racing with
thoughts of everything that she had ever done with other boys at
the school and wondering if someone actually did see something. She
thought back to the previous night when she was with Tyler. She was
so drunk she really probably wouldn’t have noticed if someone had
seen them.
    “ I didn’t say you did. I
just want you to be sure that you are confident that it is the best
choice to accuse Brittney. This is no longer just a private school
issue. The press has gotten a hold of this and parents are going to
start asking questions.”
    Valentina had no idea what to say. She
certainly didn’t want this to escalate to the point of being the
online poster girl of high school sluttiness. She suddenly wondered
if Tyler or one of his friends had made up the list, but she just
didn’t think any guy would bother doing such a thing.
    “ I’m just telling you that
she was the one who gave me the list. That’s all,” she told the
principal.
    He nodded again, thinking to himself of how
to handle the situation.
    “ Well, my advice to you
Valentina, from here on out, is to behave.”
    “ Behave?” she responded, a
bit confused.
    “ Yes, I don’t want to hear
anything about this list again. I can’t have parents going to the
press with this and creating such a scandal.
Understand?”
    “ Not really. It wasn’t my
parents who called the press was it?”
    “ No, it was the parents of
another girl on the list, but I will be having a talk with your
step-mother just to make sure she knows about the list.”
    “ But why?” Valentina
objected. “I didn’t do anything. You should talk to Brittney’s
parents or the parents of whoever made the list.”
    “ Brittney is not on the
list. You are,” he told her sternly. “I am only concerned with the
people who might think of complaining about this. It’s not my place
to get involved in internal feuds between you girls. Is that
clear?”
    Valentina started to object again. It was
completely unfair that she should be the one who had to keep quiet
about this. She figured she would just wait and talk to her
step-mother about it to explain what happened.
    “ Yes, it’s clear,”she told
the