Overexposed

by Susan J. Korman

  Text copyright © 2013 by Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.

  All rights reserved. International copyright secured. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc., except for the inclusion of brief quotations in an acknowledged review.

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  The images in this book are used with the permission of: © Marie-Reine Mattera/Photononstop/Getty Images, (main image) front cover; © iStockphoto.com/Jill Fromer, (banner background) front cover and throughout interior; © iStockphoto.com/Naphtalina, (brick wall background) front cover and throughout interior.

  Main body text set in Janson Text LT Std 55 Roman 12/17.5.

  Typeface provided by Adobe Systems.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Korman, Susan.

  Overexposed / by Susan Korman.

  pages cm. — (Surviving Southside)

  ISBN 978–1–4677–0312–3 (lib. bdg. : alk. paper)

  [1. Sexting—Fiction. 2. Dating (Social customs)—Fiction. 3. High schools—Fiction. 4. Schools—Fiction. 5. Mexican Americans—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.K83693Te 2013

  [Fic]—dc23

  2012027170

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  1 – BP – 12/31/12

  eISBN: 978-1-4677-0968-2 (pdf)

  eISBN: 978-1-4677-2968-0 (ePub)

  eISBN: 978-1-4677-2967-3 (mobi)

  “Woo-hoo!” said a familiar voice. “Somebody is looking hot today.”

  I glanced up. My boyfriend, Simon March, stood nearby, at the edge of Laurel King’s pool. He was grinning at me as I climbed the pool ladder.

  I grinned back at him. “Does that mean you like my new red bikini?”

  “Yes, it does,” Simon replied. “I like it a lot. In fact”—he moved toward a lounge chair—“stay there for a second, Daisy. I want to get some photos of you in that thing.”

  It was a hot spring afternoon, and a bunch of us were hanging out at Laurel’s house for a pool party. The school year was winding down, and the party was supposed to be a break from all the projects and tests that teachers were dumping on us. I didn’t stress much about grades and schoolwork, but a lot of my friends did.

  I let Simon take a few pictures of me, and then I went to dry off.

  He kept watching me as I walked over to the table and grabbed my towel. His friends, Deonte Lewis and Mason McFadden, peered over too.

  I grinned. “Check this out!” I put a hand on my hip and started strutting up and down the patio like a fashion model on a runway.

  “Oh, we’re checking it out,” Deonte called back.

  I put my finger on my tongue and then on my bottom and made a sizzle sound.

  “Too bad it’s off-limits,” Simon said loudly. He came over, put a hand on my shoulder, and kissed the back of my neck.

  I turned around and kissed him—a long, slow kiss that lasted until someone clapped near our ears.

  “Hey, you two!” Laurel teased us. “My parents are right inside. So let’s keep this pool party G-rated.”

  “Uh, I’ve got news for you, Laurel,” Simon said. “For us, this is G-rated!”

  A few minutes later, somebody tossed a giant beach ball into the deep end of the pool. Simon and most of the other guys jumped in and started playing keep-away.

  “Come on in, Daisy,” Simon called.

  “Nah,” I answered. “I just got out of the water. Maybe in a little while.”

  I stretched my towel out on a lounge chair and lay down. The pool water had been pretty cold, and the sun felt warm on my skin. I closed my eyes.

  “Hey, Daisy.” My best friend, Nora Thomas, plopped down at the end of my chair. “That was some show you put on for the boys,” she teased.

  “Thanks,” I laughed. “They seemed to enjoy it.”

  “Yep. I saw Simon taking lots of pictures.”

  Nora pulled her long red hair into a loose knot and then started slathering sunscreen over her skin. She has lots of freckles, and she hates that the sun gives her even more of them.

  “Oh,” she said suddenly. “Did you hear what happened to Alyson and Jordan the other day?”

  I shook my head. Alyson and Jordan were seniors at Southside. I didn’t know them very well.

  “A teacher caught Jordan looking at sexy photos of Alyson on his phone. They both got suspended.”

  “Bummer,” I said.

  “Yeah. And I heard Mrs. Núñez might have told the police. I guess ever since those news reports about ‘sexting,’ you can’t look at that kind of thing in school or send it to people. So principals have to get the police involved sometimes.”

  “That’s so stupid,” I said.

  “I know. But maybe you’d better be a little careful about what you send to Simon. At school, I mean.”

  “Yeah … ” I shrugged. “I guess.”

  “Do you guys ever send, you know, pictures to each other?” Nora asked me.

  “Todd and I do it all the time,” Laurel blurted out. She was dumping pretzels and chips into colorful plastic bowls on the table. “Since he left for college, I’ve sent him lots of pictures of myself.”

  “Do you think he ever shows them to his friends?” asked Nora.

  “I doubt it,” Laurel replied. “He knows they’re private, just for him.” She shrugged. “I’m not really worried about it.”

  She went into the house to put away the snacks while Nora and I lay out on the lounge chairs, listening to the music blaring from a speaker and soaking up more rays.

  Bop! I jumped as something bounced onto my stomach.

  “What the … ?” My eyes flew open. The giant beach ball was rolling around near my lounge chair.

  In the pool, Deonte and Mason burst out laughing.

  “Hey!” I snapped.

  “Oops,” Simon called from the deep end. “Sorry about that, Daisy.”

  I tossed the ball back to him. “Here.”

  “Thanks.” He caught it. Then he swam off as somebody chased him down to the shallow end.

  A second later Simon stood up, still holding the ball. This time it was my turn to stare.

  Wow, I thought. His shoulders were tanned and muscular. In the sunlight, his eyes looked even bluer than the pool water. I felt a little ripple of excitement rush over me.

  Nora was looking at him too. “You know something, Daisy?” she said softly. “That is one good-looking dude you’re dating.”

  “You can say that again.” I got up and dropped my sunglasses on the lounge chair. Then I jumped into the pool and swam toward my good-looking boyfriend.

  After we’d eaten dinner, we all sat around one of the big round tables on the patio.

  “Mrs. Kim told me that her husband really needs a new wheelchair,” Eddie Beyer was saying. Mrs. Kim is my chemistry teacher at Southside.

  “The new standing ones are really high tech,” he explained. “They’re made so that people can actually stand while they ride around. If Mr. Kim had one of those, he could go back to work.”

  “Cool,” I said. Mrs. Kim is one of my favorite teachers. Two years ago her husband got into a really bad car accident. Things haven’t been easy for their family since then. Mr. Kim is paralyzed and can’t walk. He and Mrs. Kim have three little kids.

  “Wheelchairs like that cost about twenty thousand dollars,” Eddie went on. “There’s no way the Kims can afford that. Especially with all the o
ther medical bills they have to pay.”

  “I wish we could help them,” I said.

  Everyone looked at me, and I felt my cheeks heat up a little. “We could have a fundraiser,” I added. “You know, like a bake sale or something.”

  Mason laughed. “Uh, we’d have to sell a lot of cookies to raise twenty thousand dollars!”

  “So?” I shot back. Mason got on my nerves sometimes. “Every little bit helps.”

  “She’s right,” Eddie put in.

  Thank you, Eduardo, I thought. Eddie and I have been friends since freshman year. We’d both been stuck in Mr. Andrews’s history class. If it hadn’t been for Eddie, I might have failed history that year. Or died from extreme boredom.

  “Mason does have a point,” said Laurel. “A bake sale wouldn’t raise much money, maybe only a few hundred dollars.”

  “So we could have a lot of bake sales,” I said.

  “There’s only one grading period left in the school year,” someone said. “That’s not much time to raise twenty thousand dollars.”

  “That’s true,” I admitted.

  Soon the other kids at the table were tossing out more ideas, ways we could raise a lot of money fast—a raffle, a car wash, an all-night volleyball game …

  Suddenly another idea came to me. “What about a talent show?” I said. “We could have some acts and sell tickets for ten dollars each and have a concession stand. I bet we’d raise a ton of money. And do it fast, too.”

  Nora raised her hand for a high five. “That’s a really good idea, Daisy.”

  Eddie nodded. “I like it.”

  “Yeah. It would be really fun,” I said. I’ve been in some of the plays at school, and I like the feeling of being onstage—that thrill that comes from performing.

  But Simon was shaking his head. “I’m not doing any talent show,” he muttered.

  Deonte and Mason shook their heads too.

  “No way,” said Mason.

  “Well, I can play the guitar and sing,” Audrey Clark said.

  “We know how to do magic tricks,” said one of the Shea twins. It might have been Kelly. Or maybe Tara. I have trouble telling them apart sometimes.

  “I play the trombone,” said Marquise Owens.

  Nora grabbed her phone and started taking notes. “The first thing we need to do is get a faculty adviser. I’ll take care of that.”

  “Thanks,” I told her. “Between the two of us, I think we can actually get this thing rolling.”

  “I think so too,” Eddie said, flashing me a smile.

  “Great idea, Daisy,” added a few other kids.

  “Thanks.” I took a theatrical little bow. Then I glanced at Simon to see if he had noticed all the compliments I was getting. But he wasn’t paying any attention to the conversation at the table. Instead he was hunched over his phone, scrolling through the photos of me in my red bikini.

  “Come on, Daisy. Don’t go in yet,” Simon said.

  “I have to go. It’s pretty late. My parents probably need my help closing the bodega.”

  We were parked on the street in front of Garcia’s, the small food store that my parents had opened after moving here from Mexico. Through the lit-up windows I could see them and my brother, Raymond, bustling around inside. My mom and dad were wiping counters and wrapping up food. Raymond was sweeping the floor.

  I kissed Simon and reached for the truck’s door handle again.

  “Come on, Daisy. Five more minutes, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said, giving in. I slid closer to him on the front seat, and he put an arm around me. I closed my eyes, letting him trace my face with his finger.

  “You looked really good today,” he said softly. “I’m glad I got some pictures of you in that bikini.”

  “Thanks. Hey, did you hear what happened to Alyson and Jordan?”

  I told him about how they’d gotten suspended.

  “Well, that was dumb,” Simon said.

  I looked at him in surprise. “You mean you’d never sext anyone?”

  “No, I mean they were dumb for getting caught.” He turned my chin toward his face and kissed me. “Maybe you could—”

  “Hey, Daisy.”

  I pulled back from Simon and saw my brother carrying two big trash bags. He was on his way to the Dumpster out back.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” Raymond called. “But we need your help, Daisy. The store was really busy tonight. Hey, Simon,” he added with a nod. “How’s it going?”

  “Hey,” Simon said back.

  “I’ll be there in a second,” I told my brother.

  I turned back to Simon. “I really have to go now.”

  “Okay,” he said, keeping a hand on my leg.

  “Simon … ”

  He laughed and lifted his hand.

  “Thank you,” I said. Then I kissed him goodnight and went to help my parents.

  On Wednesday, after school, Nora and I held a meeting for anyone who wanted to be in the talent show. Mrs. Frank, one of the music teachers at Southside, had told Nora she’d be our faculty adviser. We met in her classroom.

  Nora twirled a finger around her hair as she looked at her phone. “I’ve been keeping track,” she said. “We’ve got about seven acts so far.”

  She rattled off what people were doing: playing the guitar, playing the saxophone, two magic acts, a stand-up comedy routine, a juggling act, and a dance routine.

  “We need to charge a lot for the tickets,” Nora said. “So we’ll have to add more acts. I hope we can find more people to participate.”

  “We will,” I said confidently. “Once we start posting on Facebook and sending out e-mails, we’ll be fine. Lots of kids will want to be in it.”

  “Does Mrs. Kim know about the show?” Eddie asked.

  “Yep,” Nora replied. “Mrs. Frank talked to her about it, and she was thrilled.”

  “I bet some teachers will participate,” Eddie said. He looked at me. “What are you going to do in the show, Daisy?”

  “Hmm … I’m still trying to decide which talent to pick. I have so many of them.”

  “You were very entertaining at Laurel’s party,” Luke Martin said with a grin. “I’m sure plenty of people would enjoy seeing your skill with a red bikini.”

  Mrs. Frank looked over at us from her desk. “This is a school event, people.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” I whispered to Luke. “But so far I’ve got two ideas—playing the kazoo or doing a routine with my Hula-Hoop.”

  “The Hula-Hoop!” Luke and Eddie called out at the same time.

  “Definitely!” added Marquise.

  “Okay,” I said. “Believe it or not, I’m actually really good with a hoop. Right, Nora?”

  “Yep.” She nodded. “When we were in elementary school, Daisy and I used to hula-hoop all the time. I could barely hoop, but Daisy can do a bunch of tricks.”

  “Really?” Luke raised an eyebrow. “This act is sounding better and better, Daisy!”

  We hung out in the music room for another hour, planning the show and ways to spread the word about it.

  Finally, Mrs. Frank looked up at the clock. “We have to wrap up for today, guys. I hope you’ve made some progress.”

  “We’re definitely getting there,” Nora told her.

  Eddie came over to me while everybody was grabbing their stuff. “Nora and I are going out for ice cream. Want to come?”

  I hesitated. “I told Simon I’d hang out with him this afternoon. He’s meeting me here after track practice.”

  “He could come too,” Eddie said.

  “Maybe,” I answered. “But he’s supposed to help me with my math project. It’s due on Monday, and I haven’t even started yet.”

  Just then Simon appeared in the doorway. He was carrying a pair of sneakers, and his hair was still wet from the shower.

  “Ready?” he asked me.

  “Yeah, but … ” I looked over at Eddie. “Want to go with Eddie and Nora for ice cream?”


  Simon frowned a little. “I thought we were going to my house. Don’t you want to work on your math project?”

  “We could do that after ice cream.”

  He didn’t say anything. But I could tell he didn’t want to go.

  “Never mind,” I told Eddie. “We’d better skip it. I’ve got too much stuff to do.”

  “You have a nice house,” I told Simon, looking around the Marches’ enormous kitchen. Simon and I had been dating since the fall. But I’d only been inside his house once before that day.

  Black speckled countertops and gleaming stainless steel appliances lined the kitchen. The family room was nice too, with moss-colored couches arranged around a huge TV on the wall. The first floor was bigger than my family’s whole apartment.

  A photograph in a silver frame stood on the bookshelves—Simon’s older brother. Like Simon, he has blond hair and deep blue eyes.

  “Nice picture of Joseph,” I said. “My brother says he still talks to him on Facebook sometimes.”

  “Yeah,” Simon said. “He’ll be home from college next month. He’s got a summer job teaching tennis to little kids.”

  “Raymond wants to go away to college after he graduates from community college,” I said. “He’s trying to get a scholarship. But if I go to college too, it will be tough for my parents to afford two tuitions at once.”

  “I bet,” said Simon. I knew he didn’t have to worry about anything like that. His mom does something in sales, and his father owns a big plumbing company in Houston.

  “Where do you want to go to college?” I asked as he got some sodas. We were about to finish our junior year, so everybody would be applying to schools in the fall. I didn’t know what I wanted to do yet. But I was pretty sure I was just going to work for a year.

  “I’m applying to a bunch of schools with good communications programs. You know how I want to be a sportscaster or a TV news anchor.”

  “I can definitely see you on TV.” Simon did a lot of media production stuff at school. This year he’d been doing most of the daily announcements that came on during our lunch period. He even hosted a high school sports show that aired on one of the local channels.

  “My parents really like you,” I said suddenly.