Part 2: Break on Through

That crucial night they got together in Joey's basement was a delicate matter, but it could not be classified as a moral tort. Craig and Ashley were broken up at the time of the occurrence. As for Craig and Manny, they were secretly thinking as they got dressed about how easy it would have been to call it off if other forces were making the choice for them. The doubt stayed with Manny only long enough for her to realize that Craig had to love her. The doubt stayed with Craig all through the night and up until he dragged his feet to school the next day.

He had hyper-analyzed love into obscenity since Ashley put so much pressure on him to say it. He could not say he even knew what it was anymore, but his disheveled mind had always understood actions over words. Without those three words- or any words for that matter- spoken, it was clear Manny loved him. It was not the same as Ash loving him; he didn't always feel like he was failing a pop quiz over material that was never covered. She couldn't get into his head because there was none of that psychiatric nonsense happening in hers.

That sounded like a good thing for him, but he would be handicapping himself to calibrate simple girls into his high school resume. People would judge, people would talk. Their assigned reputation of him would ensure he never became more than a simple guy himself. Ashley had been working so hard to save him from that, and he never asked her to! Good people like Joey, Angie, and Ashley were always rescuing him without him realizing he was drowning.

Before classes started, he decided to find Ashley and see if they still had a chance of making up. His one-track mind discarded Manny the moment he saw his ex-girlfriend sitting pensively on the steps: probably encapsulating the whole world in one glance. She was too good for him, and the prognosis of their relationship was poor…Craig sought an easier decision above either of the two girls. At least if Ash shut him down, he would be saved from a choice and could be with Manny. Was that what he was secretly hoping for when he approached her? He realized too late that his feet were carrying him towards Manny, who was sitting on the other end of the stairs, when Ashley and Manny both walked up to talk with him.

Everyone trying to cash in on love left a shortage. Ashley got her wish for him to verbally admit the three words, but he felt like a trained animal being given its treat when she took him back as her boyfriend. It could not be like this. She was oblivious to what he needed as long as she got her stupid words. There was still time to save himself from this indignant hell, but only if Manny looked back. He called out to her in his thoughts and imagined their night together fused telepathy into their physical bond. She looked back out of coincidence, but the desperate romantic in him decided it was love that turned her head over her shoulder.

This isn't over. Not even close, his eyes beseeched her. Call me?

She never called, but she did what she was known for by going one step ahead. She invited him to a rave and suggested he "just come". That "it would be fun". Hell yeah it would be fun. He wouldn't miss it for the world.

He near jumped out of his skin whenever he saw her, but that had nothing to do with their love. Could it? The agony of being a mistress struck through when she realized she could confide in no one. Ashley could love him in public, yet she was forbidden under penalty of fierce disgrace. She loved him more in one kiss than Ashley could with her whole body. She could loser her mind over the injustice, or hang on until her efforts were rewarded with all of him. She had so much to prove by having him that she could not imagine a world in which she lost. Once love was established, it was forever. Therefore, failure never crossed her mind. Every minute at Degrassi she prepared her body to subtly entice him; it was a small school. He was always in the backdrop watching while Ashley bored him into misery. What an ice queen to not spend every moment of her time in his arms! In the height of her infatuation, she believed that Ash deserved to be cheated on.

Growing up was a lonely endeavor that involved the dismissal of her friend group. She knew it was malicious to make Emma the face of it, but God was she infuriating! Getting back at her involved reaping the highest reward for her efforts. How it would render Emma speechless during Spike's forthcoming versions of "the talk" because it would terrify her to discover Manny could possibly nod her head with dissenting familiarity towards sex. The only hang up in her immaculate revenge scheme was Craig's cooperation. If he did not comply, she had no idea how to start again from square one with the pitiful handful of candidates within her own class. JT only farted and joked around. Toby was too behind the curve to ever catch up. If Sean had to be counted, he was whipped cleaning the ravine for the environmental club.

God how she adored this secret that raised her to ladyship in her court of lions and lambs. Her body was doing far more than controlling Craig. It became a tool of politics that made the worst of the haters shut up.

The sovereign queen of the bitches, Paige Michaelchuck, made friends with girls by tearing them to shreds if they opposed her. Since the spirit squad face off in the hallway in junior high, both girls embraced sisterhood required from the squad. They both had talent the school needed badly, so reasons to fight had to ignite from the social strata. Without putting her finger on it, Paige detected a disturbance in her delicate order when Manny kept coming into her sophomore friend group and stealing one of her own. She was possessed not by jealousy but by principle that Manny should have the nerve. One day at the drop of a hat, Manny recognized Paige was dousing her with fake sincerity and a tone that made other girls giggle.

Manny had to draw answers from the precious little that she knew. Most likely Paige had wanted Craig for herself and bore the scar of not getting what she wanted. High school girls were maliciously mean; there was no rhyme or reason for how they singled out their omega wolves to abuse except when it came to the proprietorship of guys. It is ironic how women are the objectifying ones that brutally micro-manage men beneath facades of submissive etiquette. In a matter of speaking, Manny had stolen a possession that belonged to another. Since she could not lose her right hand for it, Manny would castigate the thief on a psychological plane.

Paige was rather successful in making Manny examine the qualities about herself she had no power to change. In the locker room, Paige doled out backhanded compliments over how gaunt she was in her cheerleading uniform: like a dairy cow. She said in the way only Paige could how Manny was lucky she had time to fill out before any boy saw her naked. Being labeled a cow of any kind was disturbing, because for the first time in her life she worried her body was that of a sexless being. People could actually make fun of her for that and resurrect the rumors about her being too young. Yes, that bitch was good. Her supposed "compliments" were so distressing to Manny that she grew nauseous with fear now that there was a man in her life that saw her naked. She became so obsessed with how she looked naked that she spent copious amounts of time staring at herself, thinking, and planning while hating herself for letting Paige get to her so effectively.

Manny salvaged her lands from the last aerial raid the best she could before Paige obliterated her metropolis with another wave of self-esteem nukes. She made Manny feel like a baby when she would ask to borrow Craig for a minute and say in her sing-song trill, "The grown-ups need to talk now" or the classic, "Run along, niner". Manny could not imagine there could be so many explicit conversations two sixteen-year-olds could have that she was too far behind the curve to keep up with. But then, maybe there were? The pattern of feeling stupid and belittled started over again when she obsessed over what Paige and her boyfriend spoke about so confidentially. The one time she slipped up and asked Craig was the worst fuck up she had ever made. Paige had vanquished her young foe in that moment, and then twice over when Craig laughed off the question like it was stupid and then went off to music class with his crew.

It was clear that Paige and Manny could not share Craig, and that one of them had to go. It would be madness to put Craig in the position of having to choose between them since neither of them was his girlfriend. The battered Manny resumed the good fight although she knew she was losing. Paige was allowed to insult Manny right to her face because Craig himself pardoned the catty behavior. "That's just Paige being Paige, don't worry about it," he would say. His ingratitude towards her struggle for him was so infuriating that Manny asked herself if he was worth more than his baggage. Perhaps he was already aware that Paige was a viper that was going to destroy his relationship with both of his girlfriends. Perhaps he was willing to permit it for the sake of giving his time to the most popular girl in school, at the cost of castrating himself into her loyal gelding.

No, Craig was definitely not a gelding. Truth be told, his dossier in that department was more remarkable than any of his public credentials. The queen bitch would be floored if she found out- and found out from Manny of all people. What a queen she would be when one of her doting ladies-in-waiting surpassed her. It was interesting how gossiping about sex suddenly became more thrilling than all the times she had done it. Manny decided that she was going to start a rumor about her own sex life. She had not cared or considered how Craig could be tarnished by this rumor because it benefitted more people than it hurt. A rumor would bring Paige down to size, drive Ashley away, and then give two soulmates the chance they needed to make each other complete at last. She told herself that trust was negotiable in this case. She also told herself that Craig would agree with her.

Craig made love with Manny out of trust that everything they did was kept between them. It was what allowed him to be so free with her and so confident in pursuing what he liked. How would he take it if random freshmen in the hall glanced at him out of their periphery with their inquisitive whispers and giggles? If Snake caught wind of it in media immersion and then told Joey? Craig would be abashed enough to die, there was no doubt. Not to mention what would become of his future if his bandmates found out and decided to let it interfere with their music…In short, he would be screwed. Screwed for screwing.

As it turned out, Manny never had to say a word for the word to get out. It was hard to tie up all loose ends when they were not old enough to reserve a space of their own. Not knowing precisely how or when, but someone in town must have seen them doing something unsavory in the alley behind The Dot. She had a vague suspicion that it was Brianna from spirit squad, but it could have been anybody. She was too muted by fright to confront Brianna. That would mean talking about it. For some absurd reason, talking about it was more disconcerting than doing it. She was not sure she would ever be comfortable with what the masses knew- or what they thought they knew. Her worst fear was being questioned about it at any time by classmates, teachers perhaps, and her parents. If her parents heard that vulgar talk tied to her name, they would imagine it over and over again like a tape recorder. Rewind, pause, play, rewind, pause, play, rewind pause, play…

Both she and Manny panicked and developed disengaging attitudes towards one another, but their battleship had only taken minor hit. Craig never found out how Manny had been scheming against him to get back at the third parties she failed to deal with civilly. To withdraw from the anxiety at school, a positive feedback loop roped him into more sexcapades with his paramour. Their relationship forged deeper into the mire given how they rewarded one another for being their worst selves while blithely believing those were their best selves. After the one time they went all the way, they always stopped in the middle: as though they were proving to themselves that they could have been responsible enough to stop the first time.

Paige grew ruefully silent when she heard the rumors and saw that Ashley chose not to believe them. Spreading rumors was futile when the very people they were designed to hurt were too mature to give them credence. Paige herself looked the fool for talking about it rather than Craig and Manny for doing it! She was not disgusted so much as she was detrimentally hurt. No one could tell by her fearless demeanor, but after what happened with Dean at that wretched party, she couldn't stand people who paraded sex around as a game. She distanced herself from Craig and Ashley as much as the small school would allow. Ashley consistently ranted to her boyfriend about how stuck-up Paige had always been. Craig felt too disgraced to reach out to Paige and apologize for something that was none of her business. One again he turned to Manny to keep him feeling loved, and she obliged wholeheartedly. When she nervously asked him if she should pick up some condoms at the drug store, his heart leaped with joy. How they were always on the same page!

He could have resorted back to what he wondered the first time: if Manny was definitely on the pill all this time, why was she insisting on condoms? Not having any time to grow up since the last time, he let it slide again.

The power rush to Manny's head made her dizzy. She was counting down the hours before she would be alone with him. Perhaps they would even try some of the positions they were presumed to have done in the rumors. Publicizing her sex life was not mortifying or sinful at all. It was giving her control and popularity over her entire world after a year of wrapping Craig around her finger. All her friends were in curious awe of her because she outsmarted them in a subject that actually counted out in the real world. Senior guys treated her like a bro, though their comradery towards her was infused with flirtatious interest in how her reputation could serve them. Other girls kept her at arm's length no matter how hard she tried to make friends with them. She realized that the era of having female friends had ended, because they were all wary she would steal their boyfriends, brothers, etc. because that was what sluts did. That was fine. Manny found better company surrounding herself with boys, even JT. She was delightfully at ease knowing how they operated physically and mentally, also owning the experience to be able to trace out their nakedness quite accurately in her mind. No longer was she to be blindsided by the catty harem that constantly policed each other over standards made for them by men. They were pathetic creatures, and she pitied them so. She had her new friends and her new life courtesy of losing her virginity at fourteen. Her ambitions would keep accelerating until they hit a wall going breakneck speed. She did not care. She was in love with being queen.