An hour later, the post and all the comments were deleted. As if they’d never been there. With the blog post gone, Audrey was sure the whole thing would finally blow over.
She was wrong.
3
The story was gaining momentum like a giant snowball. A snowball being pushed by about four hundred people.
Shortly before Audrey and Melicia took down their post, a student’s parent had seen the blog and printed it off. That parent had gone to some other parents. And they had brought it to the school administration.
By the next day, the school was asking questions.
It wasn’t long before Mr. Barcomb wasn’t in school.
And on Friday, the local news ran the story. First on their website and then on their morning broadcast:
LOCAL ADMINISTRATOR SUSPENDED
Audrey could hardly breathe. No, no, NO.
She was desperate to talk about it even though she knew it was risky. She grabbed Melicia outside of her AP Psych class.
“Did you hear—” Audrey started.
“Yes,” Melicia stopped her, pulling Audrey down the hall. “Of course. Everyone’s heard by now.”
“He actually used a fake resume?” Audrey couldn’t believe she was saying it aloud. It was shocking. Their fake story apparently had some truth to it.
Melicia breathed deeply. “Looks like it.”
Audrey shivered. “Do you think they’re going to fire him?”
“Who knows?” Melicia shrugged. “I probably read the same article you did. There was something about some certification he didn’t finish. Some place he only subbed at a couple times but claimed he taught there.”
“Yeah, like thirty years ago. Who cares?” Audrey was in full panic mode now. “We should tell someone.”
Melicia frowned at her. “Tell them what, exactly, Audrey?”
“That the post was fake,” Audrey said. “The documents. The bribery stuff. All of it.”
“Well, I guess they found something that was real,” Melicia said. “Enough to suspend him at least. I don’t know.”
“But whatever they found probably isn’t nearly as bad as the stuff we made up. Not bad enough that he deserves to lose his job over it. God, I feel . . .”
“Terrible?” Melicia finished.
“Yes,” Audrey admitted.
“Join the club.”
“And the post is deleted. Like, gone gone, right?” Audrey needed to make sure. “No chance that the old post is saved on some computer somewhere or anything?”
“I can’t promise that,” Melicia said. “People could have taken screenshots of it. But the whole site’s down now if that makes you feel better.”
Audrey’s brows shot up. “You took down whole blog?”
“You bet I did,” said Melicia. “They’re going to come looking for us. For whoever made that post, that site. So it seemed best if there’s no site at all.”
“I guess.”
“No emails about this,” Melicia warned. “No texts either. This is . . . bad. Red alert stuff.”
“I know,” said Audrey.
“I’ll talk with Rachel,” Melicia promised. “Can you get Bryant?”
“Okay. Is Rachel . . . How is she? I’ve been looking for her all day.”
“She’s freaking out,” Melicia admitted. “And I don’t blame her. But let me deal with that. You just make sure Bryant stays quiet. I gotta go.” Melicia stepped back into the current of students passing between classes. “Talk later.” She vanished into the crowd.
Audrey was alone again in the hall. Alone but surrounded by a thousand classmates moving past her in every direction. They were all moving so fast. She felt like throwing up.
She rushed down the hall and burst into the bathroom and an open stall. Audrey stood frozen, perched over the toilet, trying to breath. Her whole body was shaking.
The bell rang.
What could she do to fix this? Maybe she could write another article, a real article, to help Mr. Barcomb get his side of the story out to the public. The news said the investigation was ongoing. Maybe there was a chance she could stop things from becoming any worse. She knew where Hope lived. She could go over there tonight, maybe even admit to what had happened. Try to explain.
But even as the thought crossed her mind, Audrey knew there was nothing she could do. As soon as she admitted that they’d made up all their accusations, she would be done. They all would. They’d be expelled or even arrested.
Melicia was right. They needed to keep quiet. Lay low until all of this was over. Even a snowball a hundred feet wide melts eventually.
Audrey flushed the empty toilet and walked back into the hall.
She was late to math class. She slunk toward her usual chair as quietly as possible, willing herself to become as small as she could so that Mr. Ward wouldn’t notice her.
“Audrey, how nice of you to join us.” Mr. Ward turned toward her. “An office runner dropped off a note.”
Everyone watched Audrey grab the small light blue pass. Before she even got the chance to read it, she knew what it was—an infamous “CK Now” slip that would send her to the main office immediately. The most notorious pass in the whole school.
Carla Kramer. Principal.
NOW.
Audrey’s heart lurched so hard she thought it would burst out of her chest, and all of the sudden she felt dizzy enough to faint.
The snowball just kept on rolling.
4
Principal Carla Kramer was actually Doctor Carla Kramer, the PhD kind. Everyone assumed she was super smart, and from everything Audrey had heard, she was. Audrey hadn’t ever talked to her. As principal, Kramer mostly just dealt with serious discipline problems, talked to parents, and gave speeches at school functions. All Audrey knew about her was that she drove a Jaguar and always dressed nicely.
Audrey waited outside Kramer’s office for a good fifteen minutes. The whole time, the office assistant at the front desk kept looking over at her. And she did not like the faces he was making.
Finally, the door opened and Kramer stepped out. “Sorry to keep you waiting, Audrey,” she said, smiling. “Got stuck on an important phone call. Please, come in.”
Audrey trudged into the office. The room was bigger than she had expected, with huge windows that overlooked neat rows of bushes and the entrance of the school.
“Have a seat,” said Kramer, shutting the door and gesturing to one of two chairs in front of her desk.
Audrey took the first, wondering why it was so cold in the principal’s office. Cold enough to make her shiver. Stay calm, she reminded herself. And don’t say anything.
“How’s your year going?” the principal asked, taking the other chair right beside her.
“Fine. Good,” Audrey responded.
“Everyone always says junior year is the hardest,” Kramer prodded.
“Yes, that’s what I’ve heard too.”
Kramer was a cat playing with its food. Just get to it, already! Audrey wanted to shout.
“Mrs. Raymond says you’re probably going to be our school paper’s editor in chief next year. Is that right?” Kramer asked, clasping her hands together.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Audrey replied.
“You’re the features editor this year, correct?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You wrote the pieces on . . .” Kramer reached over to her desk and checked a small notepad covered in handwriting. “Homeless teens, and the one on teen dating violence. Both excellent, by the way.”
“Thank you.” Audrey could barely breathe.
“Oh,” Kramer grinned. “And the one on teen ‘foodies.’ Fun one.”
Audrey kept still.
Kramer asked, “I heard you’ve also written some for the local paper, The Star. Is that right?”
“Yes,” Audrey answered. “I, um, was covering high school sporting events last year. They pay forty dollars an article.”
“Very impressive,” Principal
Kramer said. “Your dad must be very proud. I assume you’re thinking of journalism for college?”
“I don’t know.” The fact that Kramer brought up her dad made Audrey’s heart beat a little faster.
“I hope so, Audrey. You’ve definitely got the talent for it.”
Audrey blinked but said nothing. She couldn’t get over how Kramer had worked in a mention of her dad. Had Kramer already called him? Would she? Did he know his daughter was caught up in the town scandal? Then, after she realized Dr. Kramer was still staring at her, waiting for a response. “Oh . . . Well, thank you.”
“So, Audrey, what do you think of this whole Dean Barcomb mess?” Kramer asked.
Audrey tried very hard not to breathe too loudly. Kramer doesn’t know—she doesn’t know! Not for certain, anyway. She was just fishing for information. So Audrey simply shrugged. “I don’t.” No other words came. She hoped Kramer would just move on.
“Did you see the article in the local paper?” Kramer asked.
“No,” she lied easily and quickly.
Principal Kramer nodded “What about that blog?”
Audrey held still. “The blog?”
“The Espresso—the ‘unofficial news of Clara Barton High.’ The not-so-secret blog everyone reads.”
“No,” she said. “I mean, I’ve read it a couple times—most kids have, but . . .”
“But?”
“I never saw anything about Mr. Barcomb on it.”
Principal Kramer picked up the notepad and studied it before speaking again. “We think that’s where all of this started,” Kramer said.
Audrey nodded, trying to appear disappointed in someone. Someone who definitely wasn’t her. “I thought the newspaper found—”
“Oh,” Kramer shook her head. “I can’t discuss that, but whatever the newspaper and the school may do, it’s this blog that started things. I’ve read it a couple times. The whole site’s recently been taken down, but we printed copies of a handful of posts a few days ago. And you know what’s funny?”
“What?”
“I think this Barcomb thing was maybe meant as a joke,” the principal said. “There’s a certain feel to it.”
Audrey sat as still as possible. Hardly daring to breath.
“It seemed like it was going for over the top, as if it wasn’t meant to be taken seriously. But then it got blown out of proportion. And now someone who’s been a valued colleague of mine for years is under scrutiny because of it. Of course, if he’s done anything shady, we need to know so the appropriate actions can be taken. But if this whole thing started with lies that made a mountain out of a molehill, we need to get to the bottom of that too.”
Audrey said nothing.
“I suspect,” Kramer went on, “the person, or persons, who ran that blog feel terrible about this whole thing. I’m not going to pretend there won’t be consequences. But I’m doing my best to get out ahead of this thing before it becomes a legal matter. I’ve talked with the authorities and they’ve agreed to let this be a school issue if we can handle this at school. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Audrey managed to say.
“Good.” The principal looked closely at Audrey. “So, while you’re working on your next story for the paper, if you hear anything, or if there’s anything you want to tell me, my door is always open. Got it?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Audrey gulped. Her words sounded strangled, even to her. She was doomed. They were all doomed.
“Are you friends with Hope?” Kramer asked.
“Um, no, not really,” Audrey stammered. “I mean, I know her, but I wouldn’t say we’re friends.”
Principal Kramer nodded. “I know this has been hard on that whole family. I was just wondering if anyone had heard from her. Okay, then.” She smiled broadly and stood. “We better get you back to class.”
Audrey’s legs were noodles, which made standing tough. Walking out of Kramer’s office was practically a miracle. But she did it.
Not bad for a doomed person.
5
“She’s bluffing,” Rachel said as the friends all gathered at her house after school. Kramer had tried the same questioning routine with all of them. None of them had cracked. “She doesn’t know anything.”
“She knows.” Audrey shook her head. The more she thought about it, the more she was sure. “Kramer totally knows. And even if she doesn’t, we have to say something now. It’s gone too far.”
“It has gone too far,” Melicia agreed. “But that’s why we stay quiet. It’s gotten way too big now. We’d be expelled. Maybe even arrested.”
“I don’t wanna go to jail.” Bryant held up a hand as if he was voting.
“All we have to do is stick together and we’re good,” Melicia insisted. “This goes away in another week, tops. Seriously, there’s no way she can prove it was us. The site’s gone and I destroyed the flash drive. It would take, like, the FBI to trace things back to the library.”
“I could probably do tattoos for my fellow inmates in prison,” Bryant said reflectively.
“Look,” Rachel said as she rubbed her forehead. “I know, I know. We messed up. I messed up. It was a bad idea, and I’m the one who put us in this—”
“We all did it,” Audrey stopped her. “We all wanted to teach Hope a lesson. You’re not taking the fall for something we did as a group.”
“Let’s just drop it,” Melicia said. “Our blogging days are over anyway. At least for a long time.”
“Okay,” Rachel said, nodding in agreement. “Let’s make a pact to never discuss it again.” She held out her hand. “It never happened.”
Rachel wiggled her outstretched hand, and Bryant put his hand in next to hers.
Audrey sat frozen. She didn’t really want to make a pact. But how could she avoid it?
“I’m not making some secret pact,” Melicia said. “That’s corny. And kinda insulting. Everyone just stay quiet.”
“Right. It never happened,” Rachel said again. Audrey tried to avoid catching anyone else’s eye as they all nodded.
* * *
It never happened. The words rolled around in Audrey’s head all night.
It’d taken hours to finally fall asleep. Then she’d jerked awake in the middle of the night anyway, gasping for air as if waking from some nightmare she couldn’t remember. Her heart thumping, she grabbed her phone and checked the time. It was two in the morning. She tossed the phone to the foot of her bed and stared up at the ceiling. It never happened.
But it wasn’t true. Mr. Barcomb was suspended. Hope hadn’t been back in school for days. And she and her friends were responsible for all of it.
She lay in the dark staring up at the ceiling. As if the answer was written there somewhere in the shadows above her bed. Nothing was there.
Not even when the sunlight appeared.
6
Five days later the basement was still nasty even after she’d been cleaning it all day. Sorting through the boxes packed with junk. Sweeping and dusting. Dragging things up the steps and out to the trash cans. And, when she was done with the basement, there was the whole fence in the backyard that needed a second coat of paint. Oh, and more yard work. Usually her dad didn’t care too much about that kind of thing. But not now. Now he was actually inventing work to be done.
It was all part of Audrey’s punishment for writing the blog post.
She’d come clean at school on Monday. Admitted everything to Principal Kramer.
Okay, not everything. She’d confessed to writing the blog post. But she said she’d done it all herself and that it had always been her blog. She accepted full responsibility and whatever punishment would come with it. If the others wanted to stay anonymous, that was their business and she could respect that. But she didn’t have the guts for that, or maybe, she’d just finally decided that telling the truth was the right thing to do. Lies grew, after all.
Her dad was called into the school. He’d taken forever, it seemed, and then once he
’d gotten there, all Audrey wanted was for him to disappear again. Her dad just kept shaking his head at her.
She’d kept it together until she saw the disappointment in his face. Then, Audrey had lost it and broken into tears. She had kept apologizing to him and Principal Kramer, and had tried to explain it had been a stupid joke.
During the crying, she was suspended.
Kramer used some generic violation in the student handbook about social media behavior and school-related topics. It seemed like something they could argue if they wanted, but her dad wasn’t in any mood to argue. And neither was Audrey.
Probation would follow when she got back. Including some service hours around the school. But she managed to dodge any legal charges. Back home, she’d also lost her laptop, car keys, and television privileges
Then the chores came. Her dad decided she’d be spending the entire two weeks of her suspension painting the fence, doing yard work, and cleaning the house. And she wasn’t allowed headphones or the radio as a distraction while she worked.
Audrey supposed it was a small price for ruining someone’s life. She actually thought she’d gotten off pretty easily.
But then the real price came. And Audrey hadn’t seen it coming.
Melicia and Bryant were suspended too.
Despite Audrey’s claims that she’d worked alone, Principal Kramer had called in all the others again one at a time. Everyone at school knew the four of them were good friends. Kramer had explained to them that Audrey had admitted to writing the blog and then had given them each a second chance to admit their involvement. Two had.
Only Rachel, it seemed, had stuck to the plan. She was still at school. Or at least Audrey assumed she was. All of her friends were ignoring her texts. She tried to tell herself it was because they’d lost their phones as punishment, but Rachel hadn’t gotten in trouble yet and Audrey had tried texting one of Melicia’s burner phones that her parent’s didn’t know about.
The Prank Page 2
