Face-Slapping11 min read
He Called Me "My Girlfriend" — Then They All Watched Her Fall
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"I saw your photo on the campus forum."
"Who said that?" I said, dropping my bag on the bed. Joan, Lena and Nina crowded around like jurors.
"You!" Joan opened my phone and shoved it toward me. "You didn't know?"
I stared at the blurred library photo. It was me and a boy, close together, heads bent over a book. The caption screamed we were dating. My heart thudded dumbly.
"That's not even his face," I said. "I don't know him."
Lena waved a finger. "He’s Alexander Cunningham. Medicine department. Big name. People have been gossiping all break."
"Why would anyone make this up?" Nina asked, voice small. "They said mean things. I spent the whole holiday arguing for you."
Joan sniffed. "We came back early to confront you. You owe us answers."
I folded my arms. "I told you — I don't even know him. I was studying. Someone took a bad pic."
"You said you'd ask him," Lena pushed. "You said you'd chase him if it meant shutting the forum up."
"I didn't mean it," I said, but the three faces lit with hope like a match set to paper.
"Then go," Joan ordered. "Tonight or never."
I hated being the center of plans. I hated their conspiracies. But I also hated those messages on my screen — ugly comments, people calling me rude names. I swallowed. "Fine. I'll try."
Weeks blurred into small chances. I saw him once in the library, once on stairs. He was always quiet. He looked like someone carved from stone — sharp cheekbones, white skin, a slow calm that didn't need attention. I felt ridiculous and greedy to want his notice.
On a slow night I blurted, "Do you want to date me?" in the library, and I slapped my hand over my mouth like I'd bitten a stupid seed.
He blinked, a neutral tilt to his mouth, and stepped back. "Not now," he said, voice calm as water.
I let go — crushed but oddly proud. I told my roommates it failed, and they moaned as if their life faucets had been turned off.
Then I bumped into him again, in the stairwell, and he surprised me.
"That photo on the forum," I said. "People think we're a couple."
He took my phone and studied the shot. "I remember that night," he said. "You were there. I was there." His thumb brushed the screen. "You pulled out a pear and ate quietly. I remember thinking you'd be good company."
I blinked. "You remember me?"
He looked at me like that mattered more than any gossip. "I was worried people would make trouble for you. I said yes to being your boyfriend so the forum would stop."
"What?" My mouth fumbled for reason. "You agreed... to be my boyfriend?"
"Yes," Alexander said, as if he had just agreed to lend me a pen. "If it helps, I'm in."
The protesters in my head shut. The world smoothed a little.
We kept a pact at first — quiet, private. "Just between us," he wrote once. I nodded. The secret felt safe, and sometimes a secret becomes a soft armor.
Days became small rituals. He left a thermos on my desk with soup if I was sick. He smoothed my hair in the library when a draft made me shiver. Once I fell asleep on his shoulder on a campus van; he nudged me awake gently, eyes soft, and my heart forgot how to be ordinary.
Then they attacked.
"You are slutty," a woman sneered at me across a restaurant aisle. I smelled perfume and venom. I turned and met Anastasia Nunes's eyes — sharp, cold, perfect. She loved drama in designer shoes.
"You think you fit with him?" she mocked. "You think you deserve him?"
She stepped forward. Words curled like vipers. My stomach tightened. Joan grabbed my wrist and hissed, "Stay calm."
Anastasia's palm swung. Not a slap, a heavy bottle of sanitizer aimed for my head. I felt the world explode — a hard, bright pain at the back of my skull — and then darkness.
I woke in a hospital bed. Alexander sat by the window, hands clasped, not blinking. He'd carried me into the ambulance, held my head in the clinic, and stayed because his parents had some pull in this city and Florence Burks — his mother — hovered like a gentle shadow and fussed like an aunt.
"You're awake," he said the morning I opened my eyes. His voice was the room's gravity.
"What happened?" My head throbbed.
"You were hit by a bottle," Alexander said. "She claims it was an accident. But the staff saw the throw."
Anastasia sent a message and then a bank transfer of money — twenty thousand. She looked shocked and apologetic in the clinic, all glossy eyes and soft voice. I kept the card. I wanted justice, but I didn't want to make things larger than they had to be. Florence fussed, brought soup, checked my pulse, and then left notes on my bedside like a mother on duty.
When I left the hospital, the gossip spun faster. The forum made a hero out of her and hunted me for drama. Then Bjorn Garnier walked back in.
He had left me years ago, at the end of high school, with one text: "I have to go abroad." No calls, no dying-goodbyes. I had mourned him in a tidy way, then moved on. Now he stood at the campus gate in a dark suit, perfect hair, eyes that said he was sorry in a movie voice.
"Jasmine," he said. "I came back."
He reached for me and I stepped back. "Don't," I said. "We said goodbye."
He followed, clung to sentences like a drowning man. "We can try again. I didn't mean to leave. I had reasons."
"You left me," I said, a blade in my mouth. "You walked off without saying a thing."
People circled. A crowd gathered — the campus is never short of witnesses.
Bjorn pressed. He grabbed my arm like a thief claiming a right. He ignored the sharp disgust on my friends' faces. Alexander watched quietly, then moved. He separated us with a single motion and then something colder arrived — not anger but a command.
"Back off," Alexander said.
Bjorn scoffed. "Who are you?"
"Her boyfriend," Alexander said, voice slow. "Stay away."
Bjorn laughed, the kind that means challenge. He made a scene — loud, entitled, flailing. Girls whispered and phones came up. I wanted to run from the noise.
"That's enough!" I said. The world blurred into a ring of faces.
And then we plotted.
We needed one thing more than anger — proof. Anastasia had lied. Bjorn was trying to steal a stage. We were small, but we had friends. Lena whispered about security footage at the restaurant. Nina knew someone from the student's tech club. Joan demanded that we make it public: not a private complaint, but a show they couldn't ignore.
We were careful. Alexander quietly called his mother. Florence Burks — sweet, exact, not naïve — had friends. She found the recording of the restaurant cameras and the dining hall gossip tapes. We asked the tech club to help. In three days we had a plan.
The punishment would be where everyone would be: the spring welcome fair, the big auditorium night when freshmen and seniors and parents swelled together and the campus main stage drew every phone light like a moth swarm. If we wanted clean, public humiliation, we needed witnesses and a screen.
The night came.
I stood backstage. Joan squeezed my hand. Lena whispered, "You ready?"
Nina grinned. "We're live."
I heard the host speak — student council preface, wasted speeches. Then Alexander's voice, calm, a low hum in the mic that made bodies turn.
"Good evening," he said. "We have something important to share."
The house lights dimmed. The big projector woke like an eye.
"All of us have seen rumors and watched people suffer because of them," Alexander said. "Tonight we are showing the truth."
They rolled the footage.
First, the restaurant clip. The camera was steady, grainy. Anastasia — perfect in red — stood up and walked behind my table. She raised the sanitizing bottle like a pitcher and threw with force. The bottle spun and slammed into my head. The audio picked up the clatter, my cry, then the room's silence.
A hush fell like cold.
On the screen, Anastasia's face was unmasked — not shocked, not panicked, but a flash of anger. The forum's posts that smeared me appeared beside the video: messages where she had egged on others to call me names, to shame me for being "too forward" and for "using men."
Then came a second clip. It was a private chat screenshot that a tech kid had unearthed: her messages with a friend about stirring trouble, screenshots of a staged photo and her advice on how to spice it up. Her punctuation dripped contempt. "Get them talking about her," she wrote. "Make it fun. He'll never notice. She'll be eaten alive."
Gasps flew over the auditorium. Phones lit up like a firefly field. I felt my face go numb.
Anastasia had been feeding the rumor. She'd staged the photo. She'd thrown a bottle and then tried to pay to cover it up. We had proof.
But we were not done.
On the screen next came Bjorn's messages — a string of late replies and then a damning admission. "I left because I was scared to stay. I chose mine. I left you," the message said. Another screenshot followed: messages where he bragged of his new life abroad, a flippant text about being "free" without attachments.
The auditorium counted breathing. People in the crowd murmured. A few stood up, phones recording. A teacher at the front had an open mouth. The screens showed Bjorn's face at our café confrontation. He looked cornered as footage from the café — phone clips captured by friends — revealed him reaching for me, pushing, trying to force conversation.
Then Alexander stepped into the light.
"This campus cares about truth," he said. "We don't let people bully others and hide behind edits. We don't let those who run away come back and pretend to be victims. Tonight is public because this is public behavior."
Anastasia sat in a student seat near the balcony. Her mascara ran. She rose like a queen called to the mat. The crowd turned.
"Anastasia," Alexander said, voice steady, "you edited and posted to ruin someone. You staged a photo to make a rumor. You threw a bottle in anger and then tried to buy your silence. Stand."
She stumbled to the front, legs shaking. The auditorium's hush was a physical thing.
"Why are you showing this?" she cried, voice thin. "You have no right! I didn't mean—"
"You meant it," I said. My voice surprised me — steady, not a tremor. "You wanted me hurt."
Her cheeks flattened. She tried to speak. Laughter, small, sharp, spread like wind.
"Take the mic," Alexander ordered. "Tell them why."
She swallowed. "I was jealous," she whispered. "I wanted what she had."
"Then say sorry," someone called.
"Say sorry!" a dozen voices echoed.
Anastasia dropped to her knees on the auditorium floor under the stage lights. The sound of her dress rustling was obscene. She wrapped her arms around her knees and sobbed.
"I am sorry!" she howled. "Please! I'm sorry! I didn't mean— I didn't know it would go so far!"
Phones recorded. A rustle of shocked fragments — "She threw the bottle!" "Did you see?" — moved through the room like an insect swarm.
"You're not the only one who says sorry," Alexander said. "You staged a public lie. You hurt someone who didn't deserve it. Community means consequences."
A few students began to chant: "Accountability! Accountability!"
People stood. One guy who used to follow Anastasia on campus unhooked himself like a man shedding a cloak and spat, "We deserve better."
Anastasia's face collapsed. She pulled at her hair, soaked mascara running tracks like small rivers. "I'll leave!" she begged. "I'll drop out! Please! Please forgive me!"
Joan shouted from the second row, "No! Not simply leaving. You make a public apology and you work with student services. You help run media literacy training. You can't just run."
The dean stepped forward then, a figure of authority that made the room quiet to a pin. He read out the university sanctions: formal apology, community service with counseling, an official record, and a public statement correcting the forum posts. The dean's face was stern as a judge.
Anastasia folded. She stumbled toward the dean, then sank to the stage and started to plead out loud. "Please, it's my life. I'll fix it. Don't ruin me," she said, voice thin and broken.
The auditorium reacted like an animal startled at a truth. "You should have thought of that before," someone said.
People recorded. Students lined up to ask her questions. Cameras flashed. For ten minutes she begged and tried to explain, then we watched her look smaller and smaller, until she finally crawled off the stage under the dean's direction and the lit phones.
Then the crowd turned to Bjorn.
He stood at the back, pale. People walked toward him. A dozen clips played: his messages, his departure text, his avoidance. The mood cooled and sharpened. He opened his mouth, tried to say he had reasons, that he was young, that things happened.
"Is that all you have?" Alexander asked softly.
Bjorn stammered. He had a moment of fury. He moved toward me with a few long strides, hand raised like he had old claims to the world. At once Alexander stepped forward and restrained him with the quiet strength of someone who doesn't need to prove anything.
"Drop the act," Alexander said. He eased Bjorn's wrist and then, in a movement that stunned the auditorium, turned Bjorn toward the empty center of the stage.
"Face them," Alexander said. "Tell everyone why you left. Say it out loud."
A hush. Bjorn's face crumpled. The auditorium leaned in like a crowd around a hearth.
"I was selfish," he said, voice small. "I wanted my life separate. I — I left. I'm sorry."
"Say it properly," came the cold chorus of voices.
He tried to walk away. A chorus of phones followed. A student rose with a microphone. "Kneel," she said. "Kneel and say you were wrong."
Bjorn looked at her like he hadn't been asked to see himself clearly. He went rigid. Then his knees buckled. He fell to his knees on the polished floor, right in front of the stage, and the auditorium gasped like wind. Cameras captured the slow, ashamed descent of a man who had thought himself immune.
"Please," Bjorn said, breaking. "Please forgive me. I was scared, I made a mistake. I can't take it back."
A long minute of silence. Then someone started clapping — not applause, but a slow, sardonic beating that became a chorus as one by one people recorded the penitent man. "You left, you owned it," a voice said. "Now be accountable."
Bjorn bowed his head, covered his face, and the scene was done.
After the event, posts went viral. The video of Anastasia kneeling, the dean's statement, Bjorn on his knees pleading — it traveled beyond campus. People texted, friends called, parents read. The forum apologized. The editor who had allowed edited photos was suspended. The campus paid attention.
I walked off the stage with Alexander beside me. Joan grinned like a prize. Lena and Nina cried a little and hugged me. The auditorium's lights were high enough to see faces still recording, but the worst of the storm had passed.
"That was public enough?" Joan whispered, too proud.
"It was true," I said. My voice was small but honest.
Alexander squeezed my hand. "You okay?"
"Yes." I looked out at the crowd — faces I'd known since freshman year, lined up in seats. They had seen me fall. They had watched two people who had hurt me beg. They had seen the record set straight.
Later, there were conversations — formal apologies, pages updated, community service reports filed. Anastasia read her apology aloud at a student panel. Bjorn, when confronted by the student ethics board, agreed to step back from campus activities for a year, to attend counseling, and to write a public letter about accountability. He often sat on a bench in the quad, head lowered. Some students recorded him leaving campus. Others left him alone. The world is never perfect, but it had shifted.
And me? Joan, Nina and Lena still poked me mercilessly. Alexander still left small thermoses on my desk. We became a quieter pair in public and loud in private. He would send me messages that were short, precise and full of care.
"How long will you stay?" I asked once, fingers tracing the rim of my cup.
"Long as you'll have me," he said, and the answer felt like a promise. He kissed my forehead like a benediction.
I learned to watch the screens without holding my breath. I learned to let friends stand guard. I learned that when someone attacks you to erase you, the right answer is to show back what is real. The crowd watched. They judged. They turned. Some clapped, some recorded, some loathed the spectacle. But they saw the truth.
That night, Joan leaned over and whispered, "See? You didn't need to chase him at all."
I laughed. "No. I didn't." I put my head on Alexander's shoulder and let the city's soft lights come through the window. This wasn't about a perfect ending. It was about the truth finally having a place to sit. It felt like home.
The End
— Thank you for reading —