My Ex Threw Me Away, Now He's Bleeding for Me novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Lawn
On graduation day Paige trips Margo and unlatches her leg while the crowd films and Reid calls it good for her. A photographer shoots every face holding her down, and she walks away from Reid, only to find him in her room holding her spare leg.
Paige Danner tripped me on the quad an hour after our graduation ceremony ended.
I went down hard on the grass in my cap and gown.
Before I could push myself up, she knelt beside me and pressed the release on my prosthetic.
She knew exactly where it was.
She pulled my left leg off and threw it over the hedge.
Paige and I had shared a photography seminar for two years.
She had borrowed my lenses and cried on my shoulder when her mother got sick.
"Oh my God, stay right there," she said, and lifted her camera.
I tried to get my hand under me and couldn't find anything to push against.
Reid stood at the edge of the lawn with four of his fraternity brothers, holding the coffee he had brought me.
He was my boyfriend of two years.
In all that time I had never once seen him drive a car, so he had walked me to the ceremony that morning.
"Reid, tell her to stop."
"Margo, she's helping you," he said. "You have to face reality sometime. This is good for you."
He had been saying that sentence to me since the day I got out of rehab.
Two of his brothers walked over, knelt, and pinned my arms to the grass.
"Don't fight it, Margo," one of them said. "You'll ruin her shot."
People were already gathering.
A girl in a green gown asked, "Is this the senior show?"
"It's my final project," Paige called out. "She signed a release. It's about bodies on display."
I had never signed anything.
I tried to say so, and Paige moved the lens closer to my face.
"Chin down," she said. "Look sad. You're good at it."
More phones came up.
Somebody laughed, and then half the crowd was laughing.
"Isn't that Margo Tennant?" a boy asked behind them. "The Garrity Fellowship girl?"
"Reid Garrity's girlfriend, yeah. Free tuition and a rich boyfriend, and she's lying in the dirt."
"Guess charity doesn't cover standing up."
I pulled my gown down over what was left of my leg.
Paige crouched and tugged it back up, because she wanted the shot of the scar.
A boy I didn't know threw a cup of lemonade over my hair.
Ice slid down my neck.
Two of my professors slowed down at the edge of the crowd.
"It's for the show!" Paige called, and waved.
One of them nodded and they kept walking.
I looked at Reid again.
The coffee was gone from his hand, and he wasn't smiling anymore.
For a second his whole face was tight and gray, and he took one step toward me.
Then Paige laughed, the crowd laughed, and he stopped and put his hands in his pockets.
A man with two cameras on straps pushed through the circle.
He wore a black jacket and a university staff lanyard.
He didn't look at me first.
He lifted one camera and photographed the two brothers holding my arms.
Then Reid.
Then Paige.
"That's not a performance," he said. His voice carried across the whole lawn. "I'm the photographer the school hired today. Every person touching her is on my card, with a clock on every frame."
The hands on my arms let go.
He walked to the hedge, reached in, and came back with my leg.
He knelt a few feet away and held it out to me without touching me.
"Yours?"
I took it from him.
My hands shook so badly that it took me three tries to seat the socket.
When it clicked, I got up by myself.
The grass was stuck to my dress and the lemonade was in my collar.
Every phone on that lawn was pointed at me.
So I stopped asking them to stop.
"Reid, we're done," I said.
"Margo, come on. It was a joke."
"I'm going to the police. All of you are on his card."
Paige's smile finally slipped.
"You signed a release," she said.
"Show it to the police."
I walked to my dorm without looking back.
Behind me, the photographer's shutter clicked twice more.
My room was on the third floor.
I got to my door, still shaking, and found it unlocked.
Reid was sitting on my bed with my spare prosthetic across his knees.
"Sit down," he said. "I'll give this back when you stop being dramatic."
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