Ashley’s point of view

"Andy?" I asked worriedly as Andy slid down his locker tiredly. "Are you okay?" I rushed over to him and kneeled beside him, grabbing his hand tightly with my own. Realising that I was holding his hand in front of all these people, I quickly let go. I didn’t care of course, my useless reputation was already in the garbage after I confronted Justin, but Andy did, and he was all that mattered.

He looked up at me, a spark of determination and confidence lighting up his blue eyes like I’ve never seen before. I started to say something, but before I could even open my mouth, I was stopped by Andy firmly placing his mouth upon mine. My eyes opened wide as I felt his lips move mine and I was in a state of shock when I quickly realised what was happening.

AndyBiersackwas kissing me in front of 20+ kids.

Andy Biersack was fucking kissing me.

I closed my eyes and gently twisted my fingers into his long black hair, pulling him closer to me as I returned the kiss. The kids around us were silent for a moment as we kissed, until the hallway erupted into a mixture of cheers and clapping, and shouts of ‘faggot’ and ‘fucking gross’. Andy and I ignored them all, lost in each other’s embrace.

"Purdy! What the fuck?" I heard someone screech from the crowd.

I broke away from Andy and looked over to see Kina, her bright pink lips parted in shock and utter disgust.

"You’re fucking cheating on me with a guy?" She screamed, storming up to me in her black high heels. Andy gasped when he heard this and pulled away from me so that he was no longer holding onto me.

I looked over at him, trying to plead with him through my eyes. Never looking away from Andy, who was clearly trying to avoid eye contact by looking at his hands, I responded to Kina.

"No." I said coldly. "We broke up Monday night. Or had you forgotten?"

That stopped her in her tracks. “No we fucking didn’t.” She responded after several seconds of silence.

"Yes, we did." I said calmly, finally looking away from Andy to look at Kina. "You called me that night to yell at me and break up with me when I didn’t want to fuck you at lunch."

Silence filled the hallway once more as Kina stuttered over her words, trying to find the appropriate response.

"Y-yeah. Well… I-I, y-you." She paused for a second and looked at me. A slight smile pulling at the corners of her mouth as she finally decided on her reply. "I should have taken that as my first hint that you’re just a fucking faggot."

I nodded slightly, allowing an amused look to cross my face. “Yeah, I guess you could have. Or it could have been an indication of what I really think about you.”

"Yeah? And what would that be?" She sneered.

Not even a moment passed before I replied. “That you’re just a nasty whore.”

As soon as the words left my mouth the audience that had formed around us began to make noise. I heard a couple of laughs and mutters of agreement, and I smirked.
Kina, on the other hand, was silent, a look of complete shock on her face. I knew for a fact that no one had ever spoken to her like that before, even though everyone thought it. I could honestly say that I was damn proud of the fact that I was the first one to tell her exactly what everyone was thinking.

"You’ve… We’ve… We’ve had sex before Ash…" She whispered, almost to herself.

I let out a harsh laugh. “Only because you’re an easy fuck Kina. I’ve had sex with you, yes, but so has over half of the student population. Fucking slut.”

This time the reaction from the kids surrounding us was more pronounced. Loud, harsh laughter broke out in several places and there was a loud chorus of ‘oooooooh’ that filled my ears.
Kina, looking about ready to cry, looked around at our audience, clearly seeking out help from her friends. She spotted them almost right away and looked at them, pleading with her eyes. The girls mutely shook their heads, making it quiet clear they didn’t want the negative attention, while the guys just laughed. One even muttered, “Slut” under his breath, which earned him a bunch of high-fives and nods of approval. The exchange made me shake my head sadly.

"Yeah, real great friends you have there Kina." I spoke loudly in order to be heard over everyone. At the sound of my voice, the hallway fell silent again. Kina turned to me, tears filling her eyes. "They’d do anything to fit in with the crowd. They’d do anything to remain popular.
Even turn against their supposed friends. It’s fucking pathetic."

I heard murmurs of agreement coming from some of the unpopular kids in the crowd. A few of the girls that rejected Kina looked down in what I could only assume was embarrassment. The popular guys that I once considered friends chuckled awkwardly. Kyle however, who was my other best friend next to Justin, just rolled his eyes.

"What makes you so great, Purdy? You’re just like us, doing anything to save your stupid reputation." He sneered. I laughed in his face and grabbed Andy’s hand. I held up our intertwined hands for everyone to see.

"You think this is helping my fucking reputation? You think I’m only dating Andy Biersack to make sure my reputation is intact? If so you’re fucking stupid." I paused for a second and looked over and Andy, who was currently hiding behind his hair. I knew he hated this kind of attention and I felt a pang of pure guilt. However, I knew this needed to be done, for us. With my free hand, I lifted up his chin and forced him to look at me. When he finally did, I leaned over and softly pressed my lips to his. When I pulled away, I looked straight at Kyle.

"This is Andy Biersack we’re talking about, idiot. He’s so fucking unpopular that everyone hates the kid just because it’s the "cool" and "accepted" thing to do. How the fuck is dating this beautiful, wonderful guy," I said, turning my attention back to Andy. I stared into his tear-filled eyes as I continued, smiling slightly. "Supposed to help my reputation at all?"

The hallway was silent once again. I took my free hand, the one not holding tightly onto my boyfriend’s hand, and brought it up to touch his face lightly. I brought my hand down after a moment and looked coldly at Kyle. “And you know what? I don’t give a fuck. I’d rather be known as Ashley, the bisexual, unpopular Outcast than Ashley, man whore, ass hole, and Popular. Fuck my reputation; I don’t give a flying fuck about it. I just want to be happy. And he,” I said, gesturing to Andy, “And they,” I continued, gesturing to Jinxx, Sandra, Jake and CC, “They make me happy.”

I looked over at the guys and Sandra and gave them a grin, which they fully and happily returned. I stood up and offered my hands out to Andy to help him up, which he accepted. Once he was standing, I wrapped an arm around his waist and looked at Kyle, then Kina.

"I’ve made my choice, a choice that I will never, ever regret. So fuck my reputation, and fuck you."

I turned around and walked away towards the parking lot, Andy by my side and my new friends behind us. The group of kids that formed to watch what went on silently parted to let us through. I walked about five paces when I heard someone start slow clapping. A few more students joined in until nearly the whole hallway echoed with clapping and cheers of approval. It was obviously the unpopular people that were showing that they fully supported the fact that I stood up for myself and my happiness, especially because the people I stood up to have bullied and mocked so many of them for so long. However, I couldn’t really bring myself to care who started the cheering.

I just knew that I was happy and made the right choice. I glanced over at Andy and he gave me a brilliant smile, squeezing my hand as a way to say thank you.


- Time lapse; A week –

After coming out as an openly gay couple, the first couple days were hard for Andy and I. It was mostly the Populars who were trying everything in their power to make our lives miserable, but a few of the other less popular kids joined in as well, to avoid becoming the Populars’ next target, which honestly made sense I guess. Another thing that was annoying about the first couple days was Kina. You see, the thing with Kina is she’s never been dumped before, or embarrassed in front of loads of people. She’s also used to getting her way, no matter what. Now technically, I didn’t actually dump her; she broke up with me. However, by rejecting her in front of almost our whole entire school, I had embarrassed her horribly. You could say she didn’t take kindly to that fact at all and she was trying desperately to win me back just to prove that she can still have any guy she wanted. At first, she tried being a complete and utter bitch to me. I know what you’re thinking – that method seems completely stupid when trying to win someone back, but I never said Kina was smart. To her, being a bitch to someone is “playing hard to get”.

When she realised that that wasn’t working, she ignored me for the rest of the week; no longer making sarcastic and bitchy remarks whenever she saw me, ignoring me in the halls, and all that great stuff. In fact, it was pretty fantastic. It was like she never existed, which made it a lot easier to enjoy my time with Andy.

Unfortunately, when that didn’t work either, she went with a different, much more disturbing method. I learned this horrible fact Wednesday at lunch, exactly a week after Justin got suspended and Andy and I came out as a couple.
______________________________________________

“Aren’t you going to eat that instead of pushing it around your plate?” I jokingly asked Andy after watching him push around his uneaten food for five minutes. He shrugged.

“I’m not hungry.” He muttered without looking at me. I just shrugged and continued eating my own lunch.

“Guys,” Sandra said suddenly after dramatically slamming down her lunch tray, causing CC to jump nearly a foot in the air at the loud bang.

“Holy fucking hell! Where the fuck did you come from?” CC asked, grabbing his chest as Jake nearly fell off the bench from laughing. Sandra ignored them both and looked at me.

“Ash, your ex girlfriend has gone completely nuts.”

I just laughed, not thinking anything of it. “She’s always been completely nuts Sandra.”

She shook her head frantically. “No. I mean it. She’s lost it. Completely.”

I opened my mouth to respond when Jinxx’s cry of shock and disgust cut me off.

“What the actual flying fuck.” He muttered. I quickly looked in the direction he was looking and my mouth dropped.

Kina was walking down the hall towards us, holding her lunch tray in front of her, but that wasn’t the reason the six of us stared at her, open-mouthed.

Kina, who usually wore stupidly short skirts, tight tank tops that barely contained her boobs, and ridiculous shoes, was wearing tight, black skinny jeans with rips in the knees and a ripped up black SOAD t-shirt. Around her waist hung two belts; a black and silver studded one that actually went through the belt-loops of her jeans, and another black one that had a bunch of chains hanging off it that hugged her hips loosely. She also traded her usual pink high heels for black, just below the knee, combat boots.

If her change of clothing wasn’t weird enough, it was nothing compared to her new piercings. Before, Kina only had each of her ears pierced once, and that was it. Now though? Her ears were almost covered with new piercings.

In the first hole on both of her ears she wore 14 g stretchers, but whether they were real or fake, I couldn’t tell. On her left ear, she had silver studs in her second and third ear piercings, her anti-tragus done, and her helix done, in which she had a captive bead hoop. Her right ear, she still had her second and third holes pierced, but only the third hole contained the silver stud. In her second hole, she had in a chained cuff, where the stud was silver, and contained two chains, one black and the other silver, connecting to a simple, silver cuff that she had attached where a helix piercing would be. Hanging on the chain was black and silver crosses. In that same ear, she also had her tragus done, and her rook done.

And that’s not all she decided to get pierced apparently, because she had a black nose hoop going through her left nostril, a black lip piercing on the right side, and an eyebrow piercing, which was located on her right eyebrow.

To top it all off, she had dyed her platinum blonde hair jet black with large, noticeable blue streaks. What. The. Fuck.

“Hey boys,” Kina purred when she got close enough to our table. When she opened her mouth to talk, I could see she also decided to get her tongue pierced. That fact was also evident by the sudden appearance of a lisp, which was no doubt caused by her swollen tongue.

“Hey Ashley,” She said, the corners of her black and blood red lips curving up into a slight smile. She looked at me, batting her eyelashes. Normally she wore minimal purple eye shadow, and a lot of too-dark foundation, but today she obviously wanted to do something different. Today, her dark blue eyes were lined with heavy black eyeliner, her eyelids covered with black eye shadow, and her face was lightly covered with a lighter shade of foundation. The foundation made her look paler, which just made her black lined eyes pop. In a strange way, she looked beautiful. Which, I guessed, was exactly what she wanted me to think.

“Kina.” I said finally, looking back down at my food and pointedly grabbing Andy’s hand. From the corner of my eye, I saw Kina’s smile falter a bit when she noticed mine and Andy’s hands were intertwined.

“How are you?” She asked, leaning against her left hand that she put on the lunch table. She was clearly trying to ignore the fact that I was ignoring her. I shrugged but didn’t respond. Then I noticed something more disturbing and more disgusting than her obvious need for attention. Underneath the multiple purple, blue, and black bracelets, thin red lines covered her wrist.

“Kina. What the fuck is this?” I asked, disgust clear in my voice.

She gave me a confused look. “What’s what?”

I let go of Andy’s hand and grabbed her wrist, pulling aside the bracelets. Once the cuts were blatantly visible, I pointed at her wrist.

“This shit.” I said.

Kina looked down in shock at her wrist and back up at me before forcefully pulling her wrist away. She looked down at her feet before answering.

“Nothing.” She muttered.

“Nothing? It’s obviously something.” I said, struggling to keep myself from shouting and drawing attention to us.

Kina didn’t say anything, which only made me angrier.

“Look. I don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish by dressing like this,” I started, pointedly waving my hand across her clothing. “But it’s pathetic. That’s not even the point though. The point is, I know a lot of people think that if people dress the way, they’re automatically suicidal and a freak.”

Again, Kina didn’t say anything. She just looked away, but not before I noticed the tears forming in her eyes.

“It’s pathetic Kina. People only self-harm for attention. The end. All this bullshit about people doing it because it “helps them” and because “it’s better than feeling the emotional pain” is just that – bullshit. I know you’re an attention seeking whore Kina, everyone knows it. But I NEVER thought you’d stoop to this level of stupidity. Get the fuck out of my sight.”


Andy’s point of view

Each time Ashley said something else, his words cut deeper into my heart. By the end of his rant, I actually had to dig my nails into my wrist to keep myself from bursting into tears.

“Get the fuck out of my sight.” Ashley snapped, turning back to his food. Kina stood in complete shock, not even bothering to hide the tears that were smudging her thick eyeliner and streaming down her face. Slowly, she turned and walked quickly away. Ashley sighed heavily, still obviously pissed off. He turned to me and gave me a small smile. He tried intertwining his fingers with mine, but I quickly pulled away. A look of confusion and hurt crossed his face, but I was too busy trying not to cry to really notice.

I stood up quickly. “I have to go to the bathroom.” I mumbled thickly before walking off. I stumbled towards the bathroom, not really caring who I ran into. Mutters of, “watch it faggot,” sounded when I crashed my way through a group of girls, but I just kept walking. Finally, I made it to the bathroom and locked myself into a stall. I barely got the door closed and locked before the tears escaped my eyes. Choking back a sob, I punched the stall wall, barely feeling the sharp pain that shot through my hand. That pain, and the extremely brief relief it brought with it, made my wrist start to itch, begging for my razor.

I quickly shook the idea from my head, letting myself fall against the wall and slide down to the floor. Ashley thought what I did to help me cope with all my stresses was pathetic. No, he thought I was pathetic. And maybe I was, for doing this to myself.
I always told myself that I wasn’t one of the people who cut for attention, that I actually needed it to help me through the pain that life sometimes brought, but after what Ashley said, I questioned even that.

Was I actually an attention seeking idiot? I asked myself.

No, you’re not. Said the part of my brain that was still thinking properly. I don’t think very highly of myself at all, but one thing I knew for a fact was that I wasn’t attention seeking. If I were, I wouldn’t force myself to wear a long sleeve shirt during stupidly hot days. If I were, more than one person would know. If I were, Ashley would know.

At the thought of Ashley, I felt myself getting mad. He says he cares about me, but he clearly doesn’t because if he did, he would be able to see that I wasn’t okay. He would be able to tell that I starve myself and I mutilate my body. He would be able to see through the defenses I put up and the lies I tell. But he doesn’t.

“Ashley’s fucking wrong.” I darkly muttered to no one but myself. “Not everyone cuts for attention.”

But however wrong Ashley was about that fact, he was right about one thing; Kina was an attention seeking slut, and I fucking knew that fact right from the moment Ashley and I came out. Everyone knew it, and she made it painfully obvious. For one, right after she found out Ash and I were together, she made a point of making a huge scene in front of everyone and being a fucking cunt whenever she saw him just to try and get his attention. Then, when she realised that that wasn’t working, she tried ignoring him. Ashley was overly excited when she started doing this because he thought that she finally got bored and moved on. I knew different however, because although he didn’t notice the little, annoying things she did, I did. I noticed every single glance she made in his direction, noticed whenever she leaned over to whisper something to her friend whenever Ashley was near, noticed that she would laugh extra loud and act extra perky whenever she realised Ashley was in ear shot.

So because of this, I knew for a fact that the only reason Kina was cutting herself was to try and get Ashley’s attention. Not only that, but I saw the cuts on her wrist too; and while mine were jagged, deep and ugly, hers looked like she took a pin and lightly scratched herself. I would be willing to bet anything that her little “cutting session” barely bled at all. Not like mine.
I was so lost in my dark thoughts that I didn’t even hear someone come into the bathroom until I heard the sound of boots against the school floor. I covered my mouth to try and muffle the sounds of my sobs and listened intently to the sound of someone walk hesitantly into the bathroom.

“Andy?” Jinxx called out. I sighed in relief because Jinxx knew exactly what I was going through, and as much as I hated talking about my feelings and shit, I knew that I had to in order to keep myself from going back to the razor.



A/N: And that’s chapter fifteen. I know it took a really long time for me to update, and I don’t even have a good excuse like being too busy or whatever, I’ve just been feeling so lazy. :P
I just want to make this super clear right now: I do not share Ashley’s opinion about self-harm. I know that although some people do hurt themselves for attention, not everyone does and those people actually go through so much trouble to hide the fact that they do that to themselves. I also know that cutting is a way to help people through tough, emotional times. I know that some people use it as a release, and that it actually helps people deal with the overwhelming emotional pain that they are going through by turning it into physical pain, which is much easier to deal with in some ways. I just wanted to make this super clear. :)
Anyways… Like always: Tell me what you think! Did you love it? Hate it? Was it so bad that you wanted to punch your computer screen and toss it out the window? Let me know! Any feedback, positive or negative, helps me become such a better writer.
I would also like to take this time to thank all my lovely readers. I love you all. <3
See you next chapter! xoxo