I should preface all this with: I know nothing about feet.

Some have called me a fetishist. Others believe it to be art. Many realize what it actually is—well, actually was, at first.

Trolling. Lovely, lovely trolling.

It started off with my friends. Oh, I know those shoes. Snap a pic. Send it to a private Instagram, just spam for me and my friends, although they never knew which of us started it. Guess who we think it is. Winner gets to post the caption. Enough people found out about it that after a while, I just made it public. Seemed easier than fielding all the follow requests.

Eventually, I had to get Romano in on it. Leo Romano is my best friend, and also a guy, so it made sense to have him start bringing some consistent gender diversity to the feed. He takes his bathrooms and I take mine. Our school does have one family bathroom, but everyone knows that that's just used for hookups. And besides, you can't see under the door. No feet to be found there. Stalls for the win.

As @urfavfeets took off on Instagram, even people from outside of the school wanted to know who we were. Romano and I had agreed to keep quiet about our secret identities (because who DOESN'T want to have secret identities?). Our cult following wanted to know, but ... fuck them, they aren't posting foot pics in their free time.

Everything was going fine. The whole school thought it was a joke for the most part, although a few Karen-ish moms weren't pleased. Still, we stayed out of everyone's way, and everyone applauded our content.

And then. I had to take pictures of Asha Woods and Emma Niels' feet.

At the time, it seemed like a good idea. I know people say that a lot, but seriously, two people gossipping together in a bathroom stall? How was I supposed to leave? It was so mysterious.

Look, I didn't take photos of them hugging in the stall. And I didn't take notes of their conversation, even though it was strange enough that I pretended to leave the bathroom and then stood nearby to eavesdrop. (Because, yes, I am a creep when I know Romano would slug me over not listening in.) And, most importantly, I didn't take pictures of the shoes moving closer, and then the passionate kissing noises, mingled with honest-to-God moans.

You have to understand—these things never happen to me, okay? I live the most boring-as-fuck life. Legitimately boring. All I have is an anonymous Instagram where I post pictures of feet with my popular best friend. Usually, I let the exciting things happen to Romano, and the excitement trickles down to me. Trickle-down excitenomics.

And, I booked it as soon as Asha Woods and Emma Niels started their makeout, okay?

I posted the picture I had taken—Asha sitting on the toilet, Emma standing in the corner, not kissing because I do not suck—with the caption "best friends do everything together."

I know now what a mistake it was.

It was just too interesting to leave. I think someone they know might be pregnant? Emma has a boyfriend, I know—even if she's not the pregnant one, she still just totally cheated on her All-American boyfriend. With her best friend! Come on! It's just like a contemporary teen drama. I assume.

It took four days of asking around for Emma to figure out who I was. No one guessed the photo was her and Asha, but the two of them knew, and they came hunting. And as soon as Emma discovered it was me—how, I don't know, but she did—Asha is the one to show up at my locker.

Asha has that dark, coily kind of hair only shampoo models have. Her eyes are like melted chocolate, except they're not nice eyes, so I don't think I can justifiably call them melted chocolate eyes. Smoldering brown? Is smoldering brown a color?

She glares at me with smoldering brown eyes. (Meh. I'll workshop it.) Her nose is contoured to hide its crooked bridge, even though we all saw her face plant and break it in the fourth grade. Her whole face is makeupped to perfection, really. Like, damn, how early does she wake up in the morning?

"I need to talk to you, Connor," she says, her lips turned down. She's got that whole brown lip-liner and pink gloss thing going on, the kind—

"Hello? I do have the right Riley O'Connor?"

I try to act like I wasn't just staring at her mouth. Which, yeah, okay, probably failing. "Yes, you have reached Riley O'Connor. May I take a message?"

She scowls, and it's adorable, and she is totally going to rip me in half with her pink-polished talons. "I need to talk to you, Connor."

"Aren't we talking right now?" My mouth is saying things I don't want it to say and ohmygod she is going to kill me, isn't she? Just right here, right in this hallway. I die here. They'll have to put up a cross like they do on the side of highways, although I'm not the most Christian, but dammit, we respect highway memorial imagery here. And then Romano will have to bring me flowers every two weeks and then someone will probably cry, hopefully a pretty girl but probably not because who am I kidding, and—

"Oh my god I can't believe this. Hello? Hello?"

My eyes have drifted to her lips again. What's that saying? 'FML?'

FML, man. FML.

"I need to talk to you," Asha snips, and before I can say something else I can't believe I just said, she says, "It's about the feet."

If life were a TV show, I would have gone "oh shit" or something, but the credits would be rolling already, leaving us on a cliffhanger and me to wait to see just how Asha kills me.

I just need to convince her I'm not a secret Instagram foot dealer. "The, uh, the feet?"

"Don't play dumb with me. I know it was you."

"I...." I cock my head. "I have no idea what you're talking about. You must have the wrong O'Connor."

The hallways are clearing up now. Soon, the bell will ring, and my chance to escape will be gone. Asha and I are round about the same height-ish, with her being a couple inches taller than me. She is so hot, and she is so intimidating, and I am so fucking easily swayed by pretty girls that I know if I don't get out of the hallways now, she will beat the shit out of me and I'll just stand there and take it and whatever, because she's pretty, and I'm dumb, and these are only a somewhat cool combination when the dumb person is a football star.

The bell rings.

So this is how I die.

"I don't have a lot of time for this," she whispers. "Delete the feed."

"Delete the—what?" I heard her incorrectly. I had to have.

"Delete it. The account, the pictures, everything."

My mouth hangs open. My eyes are probably protruding a good three inches right now.

"What you're doing could be considered unlawful," she says. "FERPA or some shit. I don't know. But, Emma's dad is a lawyer. And he will know."

"So?"

"So, shithead, delete the account."

"It's not like I overheard everything," I say, then quickly amend, "Anything."

Asha's muddy cinnamon (no) eyes narrow. "What did you overhear?"

Could this be it? Leverage? My bargaining chip? "Pregnancy," I say nonchalantly. "Moans."

Her barbecued cocoa (well) eyes shoot from narrowed to saucers. "Really now?"

"I didn't know you guys were gay."

"We're not." Her tone is icy.

"No, I mean, you can say 'no homo,' but it's not really—"

"We're not gay."

"Oh." I'm catching on. I think. "So you're curious?"

"No, we're—she's—why are you like this?" Asha gestures wildly and angrily with her hands. The movement makes wisps from my braid whip around.

"Because you're pretty and you smell good."

She scrunches up her face. Another thing I didn't mean to say. I add, "Like strawberries. And musky coconut."

"You're infuriating." That might sound cute coming from someone else. Asha does not make it sound cute. "t had to be you, didn't it?"

"Look, Asha, I'll level with you"—I lean in—"I may be annoying, but right now, you're making me very nervous, nervous to the point of near-spewdom—"

"Near—oh." She takes a step back and adjusts the hem of her sweatpants. I swallow. Girls in sweatpants and cropped tank tops are probably a sin because they're just too perfect. This is why I cannot have TikTok. And why my only Instagram account is full of shoes.

"You're very pretty and all, although I'm not attracted to you because I'm also not gay"—a blatant, awful lie, but I am 99.7% sure I am selling this right now—"but I need to get you away from me because I actually have a fear of coconuts, so if you would be leaving now please."

She stares at me with ... brown eyes.

"Or puke," I say.

Asha continues staring.

"Coconuts kill more people than sharks every year."

"You're crazy."

"In a cute way?" She says nothing. "In a cute way."

She takes a calming breath. "Just ... delete the photo, Connor. And, if you tell anyone about this, I will end you."

"Romano and I won't tell a soul."

Now Asha looks like she's going to spew. "You told Leo Romano?"

"He's my best friend?"

"He's—he has no filter!" Her head flops back, sending dark coils springing around her shoulders. She groans. So it was her making those noises in the stall. "Neither of you have a filter. No wonder you're best friends."

Then, with no warning, she grabs me by the arm and tugs me down the hallway. I feel like I'm shuffling to try and stop but speed walking to try and keep up. "Is this the part where you peck out my liver and leave me to die on the rocks like a mortal Polyphemus?"

"Quit being such a Gemini!" she hisses, her eyes darting around to try and spot lurkers in the empty hallway.

"I'm an Aquarius, actually. Are you a Scorpio?"

"No. Fuck off."

"Really?" I'm not a Zodiac Gay, but I know my shit. Kinda. To flirt. In college. Someday. "Aries?"

"Stop talking, Connor."

I can't stop talking. Not like this. "You're totally an Aries. I read that makes you good in bed—"

"Oh my God! Don't make me rip out your liver."

"I knew it!" I clear my throat. We're nearing the school's side door, the one that leads out into the jock parking lot. "Why are we here?"

"We're going to my house, and I'm going to make you shut up."

"That sounds so dirty. It's not a forever shut up, is it?"

Asha looks about ready to scream. Those perfect lined-and-glossed lips are pursed in a frustrated line, and oh man, shit, gay, gay, go away. "No! Now are you coming?"

I don't actually have to be home till around six, when my mom gets off work, so I shrug. "Sure. You're stretching out my sleeve, though."

She lets go of my sweater dress and almost looks sorry. But, you know, not sorry. "Let's just go."

"Okay." We leave through the doors, the cold wind nipping at my exposed calves. I thought a sweater dress and tights would be cute today. I was wrong. "Is this like Mean Girls now?"

"If you say anything else, I'm ripping a chunk of your hair out."

"You're, like, kidnapping me."

She turns her head to whisper it: "You watched me make out with a girl in a bathroom stall! You flushed the toilet, washed your hands, left and then came back in to watch it!"

"That makes me sound creepy."

Asha gives me a pointed look.

"Ohhhh." We stop as she unlocks her Jeep. I look down at the ground. "Hey, I like your new shoes."

"Shut the fuck up and get in the car, Connor."

"Yeah, okay."

A/N: I needed something to write in my fluff class that requires little attention. This popped into my head when I was having a bathroom panic attack and I'm GOING WITH IT. It's cursed. Are we surprised?????? Yuh.

I'm also grounded, lmao. Whoops. How did this get uploaded??? Idkkk.