by Mia Archer
So a computer lab with a desk in the middle that the “editor in chief” could sit at and feel important while they typed away on their ancient computer.
I’ll give you all one guess as to who was sitting at the desk feeling important when I walked in that morning. She had a self-satisfied smirk on her face as I walked in.
“Ashley! What are you doing here?” she asked, but the smile said she knew exactly what I was doing here. That she’d suspected all along that I’d be the person walking through that door.
At least that’s what I thought that smile said. It turns out maybe I was projecting just a little, and it was going to really screw me over.
Again, I should’ve kept my big mouth shut, but it’s always too late to do anything about it by the time you have those realizations.
“Let’s cut the bullshit.”
“Fine?” she said.
I ground my teeth together. It was difficult not to launch myself across the room at her. I had a fantasy of picking up one of the ancient tiny flat screen monitors, they were all squares rather than rectangles because the school hadn’t upgraded them in a decade and a half, and slamming it across her face.
Maybe they were even old enough that they’d have something nasty in them like mercury which would really ruin her day.
“You must be pretty proud of yourself,” I said.
She arched an eyebrow. “Why would I be proud of myself?”
“I don’t know how you did it, but you figured it out.”
“I did,” she said. “And now if you’ll excuse me I…”
That should’ve been my hint right there. If I’d been in a right state of mind I would’ve noticed all the signs. She was genuinely surprised to see me in there that morning. She was a little annoyed that I was hanging out monopolizing her time. She kept trying to brush me off.
We were having two separate conversations and I didn’t realize it. She was trying to get rid of me and I was fuming at her for revealing my secret that it turns out she didn’t even know. Yet.
Yeah, she was about to tell me to get out because she was waiting for the breakup artist to show up. Maybe she suspected I had something to do with it, maybe not, but it was clear in the next few moments that I’d been completely and totally wrong about exactly how much of a devious mastermind she actually was.
But they say hindsight is 20/20. Looking back I know what I should’ve done, but then again doesn’t everybody know what they should’ve done looking back?
It just so happens that I’m a bigger idiot than most as I look back. If I could go back I’d slap a hand over my mouth and stop what I said next.
“I did everything for a good reason,” I said. “Kylie and Thomas were going to break up. He was cheating on her. Screwing anything that would hold still long enough. And I had nothing to do with Sandra breaking up! I’d never do that to a friend!”
The blink was all it took for me to realize exactly how much I’d screwed up.
Remember what I said earlier about always keeping quiet around cops and reporters who think they know something? Well this is me learning it the hard way so you don’t have to.
I knew that blink. It was one of the few tells she had, and it made me glad I’d decided to record this conversation just in case.
And to stop all you armchair lawyers from griping in the comments yes, it’s totally legal to record someone without telling them in this state. So you can stop the angry comment you’re composing in your head right now.
I swear, everyone becomes an expert on everything on the Internet, and it seems like the more they protest how much they know the less they actually know..
Valerie prided herself on having a hell of a poker face. She said it was going to serve her well when she went off to work for some fancy big city paper that did “real journalism,” but her poker face wasn’t nearly as good as she thought it was.
That’s a freebie for you Val. I’ll give you this one because there are still so many others that give away when you’re lying. I’ll let you be paranoid about exactly what you do to give yourself away.
No, that blink said it all. She hadn’t known as much as she was letting on. She put that article out there as a fishing expedition. And I’d looked at that dangling bait hanging there just below the water with the shiny thing sticking out of of the worm and thought to myself “that looks delicious.”
“You snake,” I hissed. “You sneaky little…”
The tell was gone as quickly as it had appeared. Valerie looked down at the computer on her desk and started typing.
“You should be careful what you say,” she said. “After all. This is all going into my story.”
I might’ve been pretty stupid in giving away exactly who I was, but that didn’t mean I was going to continue being stupid now that I knew the game Valerie was playing. No, I clammed right up.
“I have to admit I’m surprised it’s you,” Valerie said. “How could you do that to Sandra and Sean?”
My eyes narrowed. “I just told you I had nothing to do with Sandra and Sean. I would never…”
“That’s all well and good,” she said. “But by the time I get done with this story everyone’s going to blame you. I think the story’s going to say Darrell hired you and you were the one who let Sean think his girlfriend was getting a little too up close and personal with that clueless nerd.”
There was something about the smile plastered across her face that seemed wrong. Off. And now that I knew exactly what a snake Val could be I realized there was more to this than she was letting on.
I reached down and patted my pocket. Made sure the precaution I’d taken when I came in here was still there. I just hoped it was picking up everything nestled in my back pocket, but it’s not like I could turn around and ask Val to detail her nefarious plan directly into my ass.
That would be way weird.
“You did it,” I said. “You’re the one who told Sean that Sandra was getting too close to Darrell.”
She smiled. I wish I had a recording of that smile to show everyone. It was a devious smile. It was the kind of smile that you see on the face of a devious muckraking yellow journalist who doesn’t care about integrity as long as she’s getting hits.
That’s right, Valerie. You’re not some big fancy journalist taking people down. You’re a muckraker and your stuff belongs on supermarket shelves. That’s all you’re ever going to be if you keep pulling stuff like this.
I don’t have a recording of what she looked like in that moment because I didn’t have a camera, but I do have the recording of everything she said which completely backs up my assertions here.
Hey, it’s like I told you. I wasn’t completely unprepared. That’s a lesson for you Valerie. If you’re going to come at the Queen, best not miss.
And all you gossip mongers who’ve been hanging on my every word this entire time. I’m going to have a link down at the bottom that shows you all the dirt. You’ll hear it clear as day. What Valerie said as she looked up and grinned that sneaky grin that said she thought she was going to get away with it.
Still think that now, Val?
“Maybe I did have a talk with Sean,” she said. “But there’s no way you can prove it.”
Prove this, Val.
My eyes narrowed. I fought the urge to reach out and slap her. I felt like my body was on fire, and not in the good way I’d felt when I was with Maddie.
No, I felt like my world was crashing down around me, but at the same time I couldn’t help but feel excited because I knew I’d just caught her saying that on a recording, and all of you can listen to it now.
That’s right, Valerie, you don’t think I’d go through this whole thing and just have a “he said, she said,” thing going, did you?
No, this whole thing might have seemed like it was muckraking just like what you do, but I’m going to be the Washington Post to your grocery store tabloid. Enjoy having everybody turn on you.
“So are you sure you’re n
ot going to sit down for an interview? Try and put everything in your own words?” she asked.
“I’m not saying anything to you,” I said. “And you can be sure this isn’t the end of it.”
“Oh but I think it is,” she said. “By the time I get done with this you’re going to be in a world of hurt.”
I can’t be sure whether she was right or wrong on that. I still can’t be sure whether or not she was right or wrong. All I know is I’m about to pull my own Hail Mary.
So go ahead and click on the link down below. It’s a hosted file of my entire conversation with Valerie, including the part where she admits to breaking up Sandra and Sean because she wanted to get more hits on her stupid school newspaper website.
I did everything I did with a clean conscience because I always did it to people who needed to be broken up. Something tells me Valerie can’t say the same.
Now it’s time for you, the vengeful gossip loving public, to have a listen and see what you think. Go do your thing.
26
Overload
Ashley Timmons says
Well then. I have to say I was shocked. Completely and totally shocked!
I’ve heard of online mobs turning on people before, but I never thought it would happen as quickly as it did with Valerie. She had to switch all her social media profiles to private, and I hear that even now she’s having trouble keeping it locked down because people who were her friends are going through and dissecting every post she’s ever made.
I’ve even heard that some of them are taking screenshots of everything she’s ever said and sharing them on the anonymous boards.
Hey Valerie? I know you’re reading this, and this is karma coming to bite you in the ass. You did it to me, and now I’m doing it to you.
I heard she even got called down to the principal’s office yesterday, and that’s pretty funny considering what we’re going to be talking about either in this post or the next one.
I wonder if she was as smart as me, because at this point in our story I was living all of that advice about not talking to any authority figures or people who could twist my words and spread them far and wide.
And it turns out Valerie didn’t waste any time in trying to screw me over. No, no sooner had she figured out I was the breakup artist than she decided she was going to run with her story.
I just had no idea exactly how devious she was going to be when she ran with that story.
It happened at lunch. Though I wasn’t eating lunch that day. I wasn’t hungry. You try working up an appetite when you’re pretty sure your entire world is going to come crashing down around you at any moment and your friends are going to hate you.
At least I could rest assured that Craig and Kylie would have my back. Everyone who assumed they hated me after everything that happened are just plain wrong. The fact that we still hang out is proof enough of that. What I’ve told you as I went through this story should be proof enough of that.
Instead of eating lunch I sat on a bench outside the lunch room listening to the dull roar of everyone chattering in there. I had no doubt they were talking about the breakup artist and the article in the school paper.
I had my head down buried in my phone just like everybody else that day. It’d gotten so bad that the teachers had even given up on keeping people off their phones. Heck, some of the teachers were buried in their own phones, caught up in the juicy drama bomb that’d been dropped on the school as much as their students.
Apparently Valerie’s promise to drop more information if the breakup artist didn’t come forward was enough to get everybody all hot and bothered waiting for the update.
I’m sure whatever server the school paper was hosted on was overheating. It was a miracle the site was still up considering all the traffic it was getting.
I had my head buried in my phone for very different reasons, though. I was getting inundated with emails. I made sure to stay off the school network, but I figured this was the kind of situation where I needed to be checking my special email.
It’s not like anybody who had the authority to check my phone was going to check my phone. Breaking people up and causing some drama at school didn’t rise to the level of getting the cops involved.
No, checking my work account from my phone wasn’t something I liked to do, but I could do it in an emergency.
Right now seemed like one hell of an emergency. I was getting inundated with people asking me if I could help them out. It seemed that along with the article my special private email had hit the mainstream somehow.
I wished I could track down the idiot who leaked that mail. I’d give them a piece of my mind, that was for sure. And a piece of my fist.
The emails came from everywhere. Not just people from our school. No, the requests were coming in from all over the country. All over the world. Sure some of them didn’t seem all that legit, like the Nigerian prince who needed me to help him break up with his girlfriend by transferring a large sum of money to my bank account, but most of them were serious.
As though a high school girl in the middle of the cornfields in the Midwest could help someone in London or Tokyo break up with their SO because they were too chickenshit to do it themselves. Like, seriously?
Yeah, it was a miracle the school paper’s server hadn’t melted, because the breakup artist had gone viral in a big way. I did hear after the fact that Valerie got in pretty deep crap when the bandwidth bill came due for that month though.
So there I was outside the cafeteria deleting requests as quickly as they came in, but it wasn’t enough. And I had to be careful to watch everybody who passed by. The last thing I needed was for somebody to take a glance at one of my emails and realize who I was.
So far Valerie hadn’t let any cats out of any bags, and I figured I wasn’t going to out myself prematurely if she wasn’t.
I was about to delete another email, but my thumb stopped over the little trash icon as I realized this was one I’d want to open and read. I recognized the name. It was the same one from earlier. The one with a request that had me wondering if somebody had figured out who the hell I was.
Once I’d realized that Valerie had been digging into who I was I figured the email trying to get the breakup artist to split up Ashley and Steve had been Val on a clumsy fishing expedition, but here was a new mail from that same anonymous person and it made me think maybe it wasn’t Valerie after all.
Maybe it was the person I’d always thought it was. That sent a shiver running through me.
The email was simple. “Heard you’re getting some publicity. Sorry about that. Have anything on Ashley Timmons yet?”
I shivered again. Did I have anything on Ashley Timmons? Oh boy did I have plenty on Ashley Timmons. I had the kind of dirt that would surprise this person. Particularly if they truly had no idea they were talking to none other than Ashley Timmons.
I was about to tap out a response when a familiar voice sent another shiver running through me. I wasn’t sure if it was a shiver of pleasure or a shiver of terror, though. Because it was both the only voice I wanted to hear right then and one of the last voices I wanted to hear considering everything that was going on.
“What are you doing out here?”
I looked up. Saw Maddie looking down at me with a concerned smile. There must have been something in the look on my face.
She slipped her phone into her back pocket and I frowned. That was weird. If she’d had that out then…
But of course I couldn’t be sure she was the one who’d sent that mail, and I couldn’t very well ask her without giving something away. If I started asking her what she was doing on her phone, if she was sending an email, then she might start to put two and two together. Assuming she was the person who sent that mail.
Considering the heat my alter ego was taking right about now the last thing I wanted was to give Maddie an idea that I might be the school’s new number one villain.
So I kept my mouth shut.
&nbs
p; “I’m not feeling very hungry today, is all,” I said.
“I see,” she said, taking a seat next to me. “Want to talk about it?”
I smiled and shook my head. “You wouldn’t believe me even if I told you,” I said.
She glanced around and put a hand on my knee. It was such a familiar gesture, but then again considering everything we’d done in that movie theater it was hardly surprising. And it felt so good.
After everything that had happened today it was nice to have her so close. To feel her pressed against me. Even if it was just her hand on my leg.
I wasn’t even worried about anyone seeing. Next to the threat of my world crashing down around me the thought of someone seeing a girl putting her hand on my leg held no terror. No, next to all the bullshit I was dealing with having myself outed was near the bottom of my list of worries. It was still there, but near the bottom.
“That’s fine if you don’t want to talk about it. Whatever it is. But you know I’m here for you if you need me,” she said.
I reached out and took her hand. Smiled. “I know you are.”
We sat in silence for a couple of minutes. And then it occurred to me to wonder what she was even doing out here in the first place. I’d never seen her in this lunch period before.
“Aren’t you supposed to be in class or something? Won’t you get in trouble for being out here with me?”
She shrugged. “Maybe I will, but does it really matter? You looked like you could use someone. Besides, I can’t stay away from you.”
I melted. It was so nice to hear that from her. I hadn’t realized how much I needed to hear it until the words left her lips.
I took her hand. Gave it a squeeze. It was good to know there was someone out there who had my back when there’d been so many people who’d turned on me lately.
I guess I also had Kylie and Craig on my side, but it was nice to know I had Maddie in my corner. It was also mildly terrifying knowing that at any moment Valerie could drop another drama bomb on the school and it might be the end of our relationship.
