Marcus Baker never set out to become a jerk. It wasn't, like, some conscious decision.
But people got one good look at him, and after that they seemed to expect it from him. He knew he looked a certain way. He knew he was lucky, and that he should be happy that he'd started turning girls' heads when he was about thirteen.
Except it quickly became the only thing people noticed about him.
And his looks didn't always make him feel good—he got called prettyboy a lot by a certain type of dude. The Brodies of the school. Maybe those guys were just jealous, or super confused about their own sexuality or whatever, but it was still a kind of attention that Marcus didn't particularly like.
Some girls—a lot of girls—flirted with him, but the ones he was actually interested in carefully avoided him. They always had their guard up. Totally untrusting. They even seemed angry sometimes. Like ... he looked a certain way, so he must be a conceited, self-centered jerk. It was like they were already angry at him for something he hadn't even done. For being a person he wasn't.
So after a while, it became easier to just let everyone think he was that person after all.
Besides, it was already so exhausting to exist in the shadow of Maxine's manic energy and volcanic charisma. He couldn't compete with that. Never had been able to. No matter how pretty he was.
So yeah, in a way, those untrusting girls were right: Marcus knew he was attractive, the evidence was right there in his mirror. And he wasn't above using it to his advantage, now and then. For little stuff. But he wasn't as smart as the smart guys, wasn't as—fucking exuberant—as Max, wasn't as ambitious or driven as most of his classmates. He wasn't particularly athletic. He had interests, he had hobbies, but he was surrounded by overachievers and he just wasn't one of them.
He spent a lot of time getting high and drawing or painting. That made him happy, but in the town of Wellsbury, it also made him a loser.
So he was a jerk and a loser. A pretty loser.
He got high more often, so he didn't have to think about it.
Padma had come along, and sort of decided he was her boyfriend, or something like it. He went with it, because it was also easy. She didn't seem to want much from him. He was like a fashion accessory for her, something she ticked off a list. Expensive purse, Brazilian blowout, reasonably hot arm candy. He looked good on her Instagram feed. It was whatever. She didn't even seem to want to sleep with him, and for his part he didn't try very hard.
He'd been on antidepressants for months, after … a really bad year. The antidepressants nuked his sex drive, something his 13-year-old self wouldn't have thought possible.
He'd only been off them a few weeks when the new girl showed up.
Her name was Ginny Miller. She caught his attention immediately. In more ways than one. She was ... real, somehow, in a way no one else at school was. But she was also full of contradictions. Sometimes she seemed brash and full of confidence, like Max. But just as fast, she went awkward and shy and embarrassed. Trying to figure her out gave him emotional whiplash.
And before he could even decide how he felt about any of it, and whether he ought to do something about it, Ginny was ... dating Hunter? How had that even happened? How did people negotiate that kind of thing so fast?
Hunter was everything Marcus wasn't. A smart, tall overachiever. He could dance. He was in a band, for Christ's sake. He was an academic genius, because of course he was. He treated girls with respect, because he treated everyone with respect. Because he was just a genuinely good guy. It came naturally to him.
But Marcus knew, on some gut level, that Hunter was all wrong for Ginny, and vice versa. It was so obvious that he wanted to scream it at both of them. To scream it at Max, who absolutely gushed over the budding relationship.
The worst part—the very worst part—was that he knew Ginny knew it too. He could see it written all over her face.
So why was she pretending to be into Hunter?
Maybe for the same reason Marcus pretended to be someone he wasn't—after a while, it was just easier. Maybe Ginny was just doing what other people expected of her. Maybe she didn't know, yet, who she really was.
Maybe that was why she slept with Marcus, that first time.
And maybe it was why she burned herself.