Cheaters Anonymous Read Free Page A

pants. I’d sat on a ketchup packet in the cafeteria, but it certainly didn’t look like a condiment on my ass. She showed the picture to Brad. And then I didn’t feel so bad anymore. She had destroyed me the first week here; the bitch deserved to be cheated on.
    I tried to concentrate on the commotion in front of us, but the after-effects of my inhalations were too good to ignore. I opened and closed my eyes quickly, and then looked from side to side. The time slowed. As I watched the threesome, weird anticipation brewed inside my chest. My heart beat faster, and I wondered whether it was the pot or the unveiling fight out on the field. Brad stepped from one foot to another, and I was pretty sure he was stuttering too. When Sherry slapped him, turned on her heel, and stomped off, I couldn’t help but feel a rush.
    He deserved the slap. She deserved to be alone. I just wished the other girl had some smarts too and left him as well. Instead she hung on his arm like some kind of a medal around an Olympian’s neck. It made me sick to my stomach, admitting that I would probably have done the same.
    Still, my satisfaction was priceless.
    When I looked to the side, I noticed a huge scar running up my weed buddy’s arm. “Where did you get that?” I asked.
    “I fell down the stairs.”
    “Fell?”
    That look in his eyes told me he’d had some help with his ‘fall.’ “You’re new here, aren’t you? What’s your name?”
    “Julia. We moved from Denver last March.”
    “Well, Jules. If you want some of my advice, don’t get involved with any guy. There are no pretty rainbows at the end of that road. The only thing you can do is help a girl like that out. Get her out of a relationship before it’s too late. And the best way to do that is to be the one who takes the guy away and makes the girl see what an asshole he is. Look at her.” He nodded toward Brad’s new prize. “She’s so gonna get hurt.”
    “You sound like an expert.”
    “I’ve seen enough. I’m Nick, by the way, but my friends call me Scar.”
    “So what, do you just flirt with a girl and make sure the guy sees it to break them up?”
    “It’s a bit more complicated than that, but yeah, that’s the gist of it.”
    I wondered whether Scar would cheat on a girlfriend.
    “I know what you’re thinking. And yeah, I’d cheat too.”
    “But you haven’t.”
    “No, but I would. It works both ways. It’s human nature to procreate, and people seem to miss that point. Monogamy is not natural. That fact should have been accepted by the population long ago.”
    “What about those people who make it?”
    “Anomalies. Those exist in nature too. Sixty percent of marriages have an unfaithful spouse – and those are the ones honest enough to be a statistic. Since humans are a species with an instinct to survive, they’ll lie to further their own agendas, whether it’s career or personal. Infidelity is in the genes, and it ruins the anomalies forever, creating an infinite loop of cheating. Sooner or later the anomaly will stray as well and will defend their action by calling it a rebound.”
    I’d never heard a boy my age speak with so much knowledge of infidelity. I thought I was the only one who’d already been exposed to it. My innocence had been stolen by watching fights brew between my parents and by the herds of women filter through our house. A belief in love – true love, the kind you’d sacrifice your own happiness for – never even had a chance to grow.
    “You should write a book,” I said, but in his dreamy state he probably didn’t hear me.
    Could Scar be an anomaly? And why did his words hit home more than I wanted them to? Because they were the truth. What he said to me had been proven over and over again. Everybody cheated, including my father. I’d never want to stay in an unfaithful marriage, yet my mother had let him cheat for years. She just sat there, watching – and until recently, she didn’t do anything about