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The first time somebody calls her a slag, it’s three weeks away from her eleventh birthday, and Imogen Heaney is running after the other kids in the school playground.
They’re playing capture the flag, out on the school oval. It’s May, the days bleak and foggy but not as much as they have been in the winter months, spring reluctantly unfolding in the form of blossoming buds and snatches of indulgent honey-white sunlight. They’re supposed to be still be wearing their winter uniform, and for the girls that entails stockings; but Imogen hates stockings, hates the way they drag down her legs when she walks, hates how they make her skin itch. Plus, they make her feel like a little old lady, bumbling around in her stupid woollen stockings. To compromise, Imogen’s mother bought knee-high socks the exact colour of her school stockings, which are covered by the hem of her school uniform. When she’s walking around or standing still, that is. As soon as Imogen’s running, just as she is now, there’s a crop of pale skin between her socks and her uniform, flashing like the light-up batons that airport workers use to direct the planes.
“You’re not supposed to be wearing socks,” says one of the older kids, frowning at Imogen. She has a sour face and a pin winking on her collar that says Playground Monitor. One of the sixth formers, obviously.
“My mum bought them for me,” Imogen shoots back, simply. “I can’t run in stockings.”
The girl with the monitor pin sniffs. “People can see your legs, and maybe even your knickers.”
On the other side of the oval, a commotion breaks out. One of the boys on Imogen’s team, Nick Nelson, has seized the other team’s ‘flag’ — an improvised plastic sports cone — and is making a run for it back to their side of the green. Imogen starts to jog forward, barely glancing back at the sixth former. “So what?”
The other girl sniffs, primly. “You’ll get detention, obviously. People are going to think you’re a slag .”
Imogen stares, her feet dawdling to a pause. She’s old enough to know exactly what the word is and exactly what it implies, but she’s not old enough to have never had it directed at her before.
Something swells up in her chest like a balloon forcing aside her lungs and intestines and all of the other organs they learned about in science class, but at the same time it feels like her throat is shrinking, squeezing, like somebody has their hand gripped around her neck, closing tighter, tighter . She’s not silly enough to cry in front of the other kids, especially the ones from the older forms, but her eyes feel hot and tight as the word echoes in her mind. Slag . It’s a coarse word, one that only occupies one syllable but somehow feels like it’s more, dragging out on your tongue. It’s a word meant to be spat out, just as it is one to be drawled out maliciously.
“I’m not a slag,” Imogen says back, but her voice sounds flat and hollow even to her own ears, like somebody’s taken a straw to her normal voice and sucked all of the energy out.
The sixth former just stares at her, smirking. For a moment Imogen considers repeating the words to a teacher, but then the Playground Monitor pin winks in the sunlight again. Imogen’s mouth puckers, her mind set. She smooths her skirt back over her legs, her fingers reaching to nervously tug at her socks where they’ve hiked down.
She doesn’t play capture the flag at lunchtimes again.
Instead, Imogen sits on the benches outside the auditorium with the other girls, the older ones mostly in fifth and sixth form, who are only interested in spending their lunchtimes talking . At first, it’s tedious. They talk about other people — complaining about the teachers and their parents; giggling about the boys in the upper forms or even ones at Truham, the all-boys high school across town; making snide, nasty comments about other girls, even the ones who usually sit with them on the benches on days when they’re home sick. Some of the oldest girls, the sixth formers, have iPods or even mobile phones, waving them around like laurel wreaths, reciting conversations with boys that Imogen has never even set eyes on, let alone know.
Eventually, Imogen makes friends with some of these girls. She doesn’t particularly like Harriet or Kiara, the two sixth formers who think they’re like Regina George from the Mean Girls film they once watched altogether at a sleepover party, and a few of the others sort of act like their worshipping followers. But Heidi and Bridget are nice enough, and Imogen is fairly convinced they don’t gossip about her when she’s not there, so she ends up being proper friends with them.
She’s not silly enough to not know what other people say about her, though. Oh, there goes Imogen Heaney. She was such a nice girl until she started being friends with the wrong people, and now she’s just — and then they’d insert the insult they felt best fitted her. At first, it was mostly just variations of the b-word. Imogen was friends with the nasty, gossipy girls at school, and automatically that made her a nasty gossip. But once she started talking more to boys, as well as her friends on the benches, people started to say the word slag too.
Imogen never really wanted to explain why she liked to chat to blokes — people would look at her sideways, not truly believe her, if she tried. She liked that they didn’t hold grudges or talk about their mates when they weren’t around to stick up for themselves, like her friends at the auditorium benches did. Not that every girl was like that, but it felt like more and more of them were becoming like so. She liked to talk about sports, too, but none of the boys ever wanted to talk avidly about women’s football or hockey or netball or swimming, so mostly they talked about men’s rugby instead, which Imogen watched every Saturday night on the telly with her father.
After the summer, Harriet and Kiara and some of the other girls leave, going away to Higgs, the all-girls secondary school that was just down the road from Truham. Most of her friends are still older than her but at least Heidi and Bridget are still in primary school, even if they’re in the form above. They still spend their lunchtimes talking, but less so about other people and more about other things. Bridget could talk for hours about Harry Potter if you let her, and Heidi’s apparently the only person in the world who’s happy to chat to Imogen about women’s sports. In the summer, they spend every afternoon in the pool doing laps, getting fitter and leaner, until their hair is crispy from chlorine. In the winter, they’re in the same netball and hockey teams together, waking up early every brisk Saturday morning for a frantic day spent running back and forth between the netball courts and the hockey fields.
That same year, four different things happen — the sort of ‘things’ that are so important you feel like you wear them on your skin.
The first thing is that Imogen gets her period for the first time, and wears bras for the first time — proper silly wired ones, not just the slips of cotton labelled as ‘training bras’ — and her mother seems to forget who her daughter is, for a little while. Every conversation doubles back to when you’re in high school and when you have a boyfriend. Imogen hears the same words over and over again, until she wants to rip out her hair and scream. She doesn’t want to care about getting a boyfriend, or what happens in high school when that’s another year and a bit away. The only time she ever really listens to what her mother’s going about is when she’s telling Imogen how to wear tampons, because she might possibly shrivel up and die if she can’t swim when it’s warm enough to.
The second thing is that after Christmas, Heidi moves to New Zealand with her family. Even though she’s known Heidi for only about a year, it feels like her loss has torn away some great gaping cavity in Imogen’s chest, and every time she thinks about Heidi it hurts. It’s not just she no longer has somebody to do sports with, it’s more complicated than that. They exchange emails, because Imogen’s still not allowed to be on social media and Heidi doesn’t have a device of her own. Everyone at school keeps asking me to repeat words in my accent, Heidi writes in one of her emails, and I feel more like an animal at the zoo instead of their classmate. Imogen faithfully promises to visit her, even though she’s not sure how she’d ever pay for hundreds of pounds worth of plane tickets. After all, Heidi’s on the very other side of the world. It’s not like Imogen can simply pop over like she used to.
The third thing is that a boy kisses her for the first time. They’re at a school dance, and Imogen is dancing with Bridget, when one of the boys she talks about rugby with pulls her aside. She’s been watching more of the New Zealand All Blacks since Heidi left, mostly because she’s fascinated by the haka they perform before every match. Tobey is in Bridget’s form, with hair that sticks out in every direction and one of the few kids at their school to already have braces. For a few minutes they shimmy awkwardly to a spot of censored Rihanna before Tobey grips Imogen by both shoulders and sort of bumps his wet mouth over hers. It’s about as unromantic as she can imagine it to be. She smiles, tremulously, and hopes he doesn’t notice her wiping her mouth, just to be polite, before she escapes to find Bridget again. People saw it happen and afterwards they talk. Did you see what Imogen Heaney did at the school dance in front of everyone? What a slag.
And the last thing happens at the very end of the school year, when the flights have been booked for Imogen and her family to go on holiday in the Canary Islands, and Imogen’s mother finds out that her husband has been having an affair. The mistress is fifteen years younger, has a boyfriend serving in Afghanistan, and is one of the girls working in Imogen’s mother’s shop. They get a full refund for the holiday and every night of the summer break Imogen lies awake, listening to her mother and father screaming at each other. By the end of July, there are divorce papers sitting on the kitchen counter, waiting to be signed off and finalised.
“Don’t waste half your life with just the one man, Imogen,” her mother tuts as she pulls a hairbrush through Imogen’s hair one evening. “Life’s too short to bother.”
Sixth form starts, but it doesn’t really register that Imogen’s about to leave primary school. Her parents have separated and she swaps households every week. She’s an only child, so she has no siblings to worry about, but it doesn’t make things any easier. Her mum’s struggling to pay for rent and groceries on just her own income, and her dad’s already moved in with his mistress, into some little condo on the richer part of town. Imogen doesn’t like her dad’s new girlfriend that much, all things considered, but her dad’s not pleased with her efforts unless she plasters on a silly smile and asks Lisa all sorts of questions about herself.
Bridget was always in the year above her, and now she’s at Higgs, so Imogen doesn’t really have anyone left to talk to. They share a leg of the morning bus trip together, though, and every Sunday after Imogen’s sports Saturdays they get to hang out, but apart from that Imogen doesn’t have much time to see her friend at all. Without any of her old girl-friends left to talk to at school, Imogen chats to the boys again. She even starts playing at lunchtimes again, heedless of how much her socks are flashing under her uniform. They’ve long since moved past capture the flag, but the teachers yell if they play proper rugby, and most of the boys aren’t interested in football. “That’s so gay,” Harry Greene says when Imogen brings it up, his voice dripping with disgust.
She looks away. She knows what the word gay is; knows that it’s as bad calling a bloke that as it is calling a girl a slag. It’s not so much what the word really means but the social condemnation of it, the way that people’s lips curl coldly over the word and their eyes become flinty with cruel judgement.
Instead, they play touch, which is as close enough to rugby as the boys can get away with it. Imogen’s faster and quicker than a lot of the boys, which they all get cross about, but nobody can hold a candle to Nick Nelson, of course. Out of all of the boys she hangs out with, he’s probably her favourite. He’s kind, and a little dopey, and mostly just wants to talk about sports or dogs. If Imogen was to have a boyfriend, then it would probably be Nick.
The other kids at school notice that Imogen only talks to the rugby boys. (Funnily enough, they don’t seem to notice when she and Bridget are sitting together on the bus, shoulders flush together, heads bowed over the Tumblr posts Bridget is showing her.) The other girls in Imogen’s form look too long, too meaningfully at her before they turn to their friends and whisper something. It’s not hard to imagine what exactly they’re saying though.
“Mum,” she says to her mother one chilly Saturday morning, on the way to a hockey game. “Do you think it’s a bad thing I’m friends with so many boys?”
Her mother glances away from the road at Imogen, her eyes widening. “Of course not, darling. I think it’s wonderful you’re not shy around them whatsoever.”
The next Monday, she repeats the same question to Lisa. An engagement ring winks on her left hand as the woman sets a cup of tea in front of Imogen. “You tell me, Imogen. What’s wrong with the other girls?”
She shrugs. “The ones I’m friends with are all at Higgs.” Truth be told, she hasn’t spoken to Harriet or Kiara or their posse in years, really, but she sees Bridget every day.
“That’ll change soon enough,” Lisa says. “There comes a day when young girls forget to be nice to each other, and you’ll be glad to have all of those boys.”
Imogen frowns, trying to imagine Bridget forgetting to be kind. Bridget’s a shy, soft-spoken sort of person, who prefers to have her head wrapped up in fictional worlds. She doesn’t ever get cross with Imogen. Harriet and Kiara used to be awful to Bridget, in the way they were awful to most people.
By the end of sixth form, Lisa is pregnant, and Imogen’s father seems to have forgotten all about her. By the end of the summer holidays, they have moved away to London, with no promise of Imogen visiting any time soon. She wipes away her tears, forces herself to smile, and goes to swim laps at the local pool. Over and over, around and around, until she’s so exhausted that she can’t think of anything at all, least of all her father, and that she’s sick into a bin once she finally hauls herself out of the water.
Her mother comments on all of the weight Imogen’s losing, and asks if she wants to buy a new bikini swimsuit. “You could wear it in front of the lunchtime boys,” she says with a suggestive smile.
She’s not even in secondary school yet, and even her mother seems to think she’s already a slag.
Her first few days at Higgs are … underwhelming. Because Imogen spent so much of last year hanging out with the rugby boys at lunchtimes and Bridget after school, she never really became friends with any of the girls in her year. It’s a small town; most kids go away to boarding school, if you’re rich enough, or simply divide between Higgs and Truham, since there’s not really any options. There’s a few kids from even smaller neighbouring towns but apart from that there’s relatively few new faces. Most of the girls from primary school have already made their minds up about Imogen, and aren’t interested in being friendly.
At the very least, she and Bridget get to spend more time together. They sit together at lunchtimes and on the bus to and from school. Imogen does her very best to keep up with all of Bridget’s various ramblings about music and fictional characters and Tumblr posts, and Bridget comes to watch Imogen’s never ending swimming races and sports games. They even coordinate the timezone differences to FaceTime Heidi in New Zealand.
“Did you hear about Kiara?” Bridget says to Imogen one morning. They’re walking in through the school gates together, tucked up against the fierce cold. Her best friend’s made far too many Winter is coming jokes in the past week.
Imogen glances around at the floods of other girls. “What happened to Kiara?”
“She sent pictures to a Truham boy,” Bridget whispers. “Now half of their school’s seen her naked.”
Imogen’s mouth falls open. She knew things like this happened; her mother had sat her down and given her a long talk when Imogen first downloaded Snapchat. “Oh no.”
“You remember what she was like in primary school,” Bridget looks around before dropping her voice. “No wonder she turned out to be such a slag .”
Her callous words shock Imogen a little. She’d always thought of Bridget as being reserved, soft-spoken, happy to be in her own little world. But this was a side of her friend that Imogen had never really seen before, and she wasn’t sure how that made her feel. Distantly, she wondered if Bridget would call her a slag as well.
That afternoon, Imogen purposefully missed her bus and walked down the road to wait outside Truham for the boys she used to spend every lunchtime with.
After that, it would become a routine. It was easier to spend time with the Truham boys in the morning instead, so Imogen would catch the earlier bus and then sit on the picnic tables until it was time to walk up to Higgs. Harry and his inner circle were even more insufferable than ever, but Nick and a few other boys were kind to her.
“You watch the All Blacks, don’t you?” As usual, Nick is only interested in discussing one thing, bloody rugby of course. At the very least, it’s nice he thinks to address these questions in Imogen’s direction as well as the other boys.
Imogen smiles tightly. “Not as often. I used to watch it with my dad, and he’s living in London now.”
She doesn’t want to think about her father; doesn’t want to think about how he never comes to visit or offers to let her stay for a few nights, doesn’t want to think about how he barely picks up her phone calls and scarcely responds to her text messages, doesn’t want to think about how his Facebook account is always flooded with pictures of his new baby.
“Oh,” Nick nods along but doesn’t pry. “Well, what about the Olympics? Are you going to watch it this year?”
“My father bought tickets to watch the U.K.,” Harry brags. “I’ll get the whole first month off school to go to Brazil and watch athletes in real life , not just on the telly like you losers.”
Imogen ignores him. “Well, I always love watching the swimming, even though we lose almost every race to the USA or Australia.”
“I know!” Nick grins toothily at her. “But it’s so fun to watch, they’re always neck and neck ‘til the very last second. I reckon it’s better than most of the team sports.”
“Even rugby?”
“Well, except for rugby.”
When the Summer Olympics finally come around in August, it’s the start of eighth form now. Imogen saw her father during the break, but she might as well have not bothered going to London at all. He seemed to forget every time she was in the room at all, cooing over his baby or attending to Lisa’s every whim. It felt like he’d simply invited her down to get it out of the way, tick the box on his checklist, still feel like he was an involved father. Bridget’s depressed now, even though she won’t admit it, folding further and further into herself until Imogen barely recognises her at all.
Worst of all, just days before the school term starts up again, she gets knocked down by some idiot who’s just gotten his bloody license when she’s walking out of her mother’s shop, and she’s wobbling around in a stupid moonboot for the next two months. Playing sport is totally no longer an option for her, so she tries to make up for it by chatting about it to the Truham boys every morning. It’s far more pleasant without Harry there, and more than once Imogen loses track of time and has to frantically hobble up the hill towards Higgs just as the bell rings.
“Imogen Heaney,” her form room teacher announces every time Imogen comes in late. “You should ask your mother to drive you to school if that foot of yours is always making you late.”
“It’s not the foot that’s making her late,” Imogen overhears one of the girls giggling to her classmate. “She’s always off slagging around with the Truham boys, that’s why.”
And there’s that word again, slag , except it doesn’t make Imogen feel like she’s drowning in her own shame like it used to. It barely makes her ears burn to hear it. She’s not sure whether or not that’s a good thing as she assumes her seat and gets out her things. Maybe it’s time she started being friends with the girls in her own form again, so they can’t call her slag because they don’t know any better.
She doesn’t go walking up to any group, not right away. After all this is high school, and teenage girl politics are astronomically more difficult than the real-life politics you see on the telly. Patience isn’t really Imogen’s strength, so she bides her time for the perfect opportunity.
It emerges one day in the locker room, when one of Imogen’s neighbours is bemoaning about some Truham boy. “I’ve been Snapchatting Harry Greene for the last week , but he won’t make the first move! He can’t take a bloody hint!”
Imogen takes one look at the other girl’s flashy new iPhone and sleek bouncing ponytail and thinks This is it. She’s always thought Katie’s a bit of a cow, but Katie’s popular, and popularity equals friends, or more importantly equals social visibility. Imogen clears her throat. “I know Harry. I can speak to him, if you’d like. Or better yet, I can set you up?”
Katie turns and gives Imogen a sour, judgemental look. “Everyone knows that you’re just trying to get into his pants.”
Imogen wants to laugh. Harry’s a right twat; how does everyone not know that ? The only reason she chats to the Truham boys is because she’s got nobody else to talk to about sport. “Not exactly. He’s not my type, anyway. I’ll even talk to him this afternoon.”
Katie doesn’t look convinced but she nods along. “Alright, then. Thanks.”
She keeps her word; that afternoon, Imogen frantically hobbles down to Truham on her stupid moonboot to catch Harry and his mates. Nick Nelson catches her eye, and looks like he’s about to open his mouth and say something friendly, but for once Imogen prioritises Harry. “Oy, Harry!”
He whips around with his stupid, puffed-up grin. “What?” As per usual, he pronounces ‘what’ like wot , and it makes Imogen’s eye twitch a little.
“I’ve got news for you,” Imogen says, forcing her way next to him on the picnic table. “You’ve been chatting to Katie lately, haven’t you?”
“Yeah. She’s hot,” Harry says, and makes a lewd gesture over his chest for his mates’ entertainment.
Imogen bites on the inside of her cheek but doesn’t say anything. “Well, I heard her girls talking in the lockers today. Apparently some Year Ten from here’s got his eye on her.”
Harry’s face is exactly as she predicted. He’s a swotty rich boy; he’s not exactly used to having something taken away from him. “Do you know who?”
“I dunno. One of the rugby boys, I think they said?”
Around them, Harry’s boys oooh and aaah , just as she expected. Harry goes a little pink. “Nothing to worry about, lads. Just a fuckin’ rumour. We’re going out this Saturday.” Then he whips back around to Imogen, surprisingly frantic. “Help me out here, won’t you?”
Once Harry’s secured a date on Saturday with Katie thanks to Imogen’s meddling, it seems to work out well for Imogen as well. The next day at school, Katie walks straight up to Imogen’s locker, her posse of girls at her flank, and gives her a big smile. “Truly, how did you do it?”
Imogen smiles. “It’s not hard with a bloke like him.”
“Seriously. Teach me your ways.” Katie plays with her ponytail. “You can sit with us at lunchtimes.”
And just like all those years ago when Imogen started sitting with the girls on the auditorium benches, she starts sitting with the same sort of girls who gossip endlessly and have some absurd superiority complex. Imogen isn’t really in a position to object, not when she has no other friends at Higgs, so she goes along with it. At the very least, her morning chats with the Truham boys keep her a little sane, and once she’s got her stupid moonboot finally off, so does her netball and hockey games. She still sits on the bus with Bridget, and FaceTimes Heidi once a week; she’s probably the person Imogen interacts with the most on SnapChat.
“You should get a boyfriend,” Katie decides one lunchtime, and Imogen blinks at her.
“I don’t really want a boyfriend,” she says. She doesn’t want to bring up that it’s all her mother is truly enthusiastic to chat to Imogen about is boys. She knows she likes them, certainly, but it’s exhausting when she’s constantly surrounded by everyone’s expectations of her to find some nice boy.
“Then why do you bother hanging out with all of those Truham blokes?” One of Katie’s friends, Elodie, asks Imogen cynically.
Imogen shrugs, knowing that they’d all just laugh if she said they’re the only people she feels like she can talk about sports and normal, everyday topics with.
When she doesn’t respond, Elodie rolls her eyes. “Everyone already thinks you’re a slag, you might as well just start dating one of them.”
Imogen bites her bottom lip, wondering when exactly being friends with blokes translated into slag . “I wouldn’t want to date any of them, anyway. I’ve known them for so long, it would feel funny.”
“Fair enough,” Katie sits forward. “D’you want this guy’s SnapChat? He’s also at Truham. A tenth former, but.”
Imogen shrugs, trying to seem relaxed and nonchalant. They’d ask questions if she seemed uncomfortable, and they’re the judgemental sort. She wishes she could talk to Bridget about it, but Bridget’s avoided her ever since she started hanging out with Katie and her friends. She accepts the older Truham boy’s SnapChat and by the end of the day his messages are already flooding her phone. He’s eager; almost too eager , some part of herself whispers, before Imogen pushes it away.
And slowly but surely, she feels herself finally turn into the sort of person every other person has already perceived her as. People have never looked at Imogen Heaney and thought that she’s particularly kind or always up for a chat or good at sports; people have only ever looked at her and thought one thing, the very worst thing that a girl her age can be. If life was a stage play and they could see their parts in the script, then Imogen’s would be bimbo number two or silly whore number five , and that’s all she’s ever allowed to be.
So she goes along with it. She plays her part in the play. She flirts with the Truham boys and lets their eyes linger on her bare skin and doesn’t speak up when Harry and his boys are being bigoted twats again. She gossips with Higgs girls and compares everything, because life is a competition now for some ridiculous reason, and it’s just like her stepmother said, she’s reached the age where girls forget to be nice to each other.
Imogen plays her part for so long that she feels like she’s forgotten she’s onstage, and there’s another part of her that’s still looking on from the audience, observing this girl who’s not allowed to be anything apart from shallow and slaggy, and she hates herself for it.
And for a long time, it seems to all remain the same, like she’s eternally trapped in her designated role in the script of the stage play. It feels like she’s being held underwater, for so long that her lungs have altogether forgotten they need oxygen to breathe in the first instance.
Nick Nelson has a boyfriend now, and the whole world seems to have gone a little mad.
The Monday morning after the eventful sports day the Friday before, Imogen stops by the gates outside Truham for her morning chat with the rugby boys, like she always does. Harry wastes no time in strutting right up to interrogate her. “Alright then. Did Nick ever tell you he was a fucking poof ?”
His voice holds the same disgust as it first did all those years ago, when Imogen suggested they play football, and Harry dismissed it as being too gay .
Imogen feels her expression go sour. She can’t entirely bring herself to resent Nick for leading her on, even though she’d fancied him for months and him finally agreeing to go out with her had felt like a supernova opening up in the middle of her life. “Bugger off, Harry. Why would he ever tell me?”
Harry scowls at her for a long moment, before his face becomes entirely nasty. “Of course. I should have known better, asking the school slag of all people.”
Something hot and furious boils up in Imogen’s chest, scorching up her lungs and into her mouth until she’s choking on it. “Why do people always think I’m a bloody slag ?” The outburst seems to surprise everyone, but she’s not, not really. This outburst has been waiting for years to be unleashed, simmering under her skin like a promise. As soon as the words are out of her mouth, there’s a glorious moment of waking up, of kicking free to the surface, like she’s finally looking at the version of herself performing onstage with clear eyes.
“Just look at yourself, Imogen!” Harry barks back at her, and the moment of glory is dashed to pieces. “You’re always flouncing around like — like a fucking groupie ! You’ve been embarrassing yourself for years!”
It occurs to her that Harry’s taking out whatever he feels about Nick on her, but for the first time in years, Imogen doesn’t step back, doesn’t back off. Instead she gets right up into his face and yells, “If we’re going to compare notes, then you’ve been a proper cunt ever since you were a kid! I might be a stupid bloody slag, but at least I haven’t spent years being a fat bully because I’m too fucking insecure to deal with it otherwise!”
Harry looks surprised for a moment before he glares down at her again, and for a moment Imogen is entirely convinced he’s about to hit her. Instead, before she can even react, he takes a step back and spits on her shoes. Spits . Like a bloody kindergartener or some feral street gang urchin. Imogen makes a sound of disgust and hops back. “You were better off when you were trying to get into Nick’s pants,” Harry says, disgustedly. “You’re such a fucking woman sometimes, changing your bloody mind faster than the fucking weather.”
It’s not the first time he’s been so horrible — misogynistic, Imogen, the word you’re looking for is misogynistic , she reminds herself — but it’s the first time she’s found herself facing off with him, jaw set and fists clenched. “I don’t care what you think,” she hears herself saying. “You shouldn’t be calling me a slag, just like you shouldn’t be calling Nick a — a poof.”
Harry’s face twists. “Take the hint and fuck off.”
“Gladly.” Imogen stomps away in her spit-covered school shoes, and doesn’t look back at the group of boys outside the gates. People are staring at her, but she doesn’t particularly care, as she takes out her phone and removes the phone numbers and social media accounts of every Truham boy from that stupid group of boys. They were never worth being called a slag over, and she’s furious at herself for having not realised sooner. Silently, she vows never to speak to the lot of them again.
Imogen Heaney isn’t ever going to be another boy’s slag. Not if she can help it.