“In a breaking ‘and that’s news to you’ exclusive, we’ve learned that Congressional Democratic candidate Eliza Torres may be implicated in a scandal at her son’s private high school.”
“It’s not private,” Cat said.
Leo’s sharp look silenced her.
“Questions have arisen regarding her son’s involvement in a sexist prank last year. According to what appears to be an unnamed but reliable source, someone may have arranged for Leo to go unpunished. Speculation that his mother, Eliza Torres, knew or perhaps even facilitated such action herself brings a new round of attention on her character for serving for elected office. She’s already been called ‘aggressive’ and ‘hot-tempered’ by many—”
“By you,” Leo snarled at the video before stopping it. “Did you know in New Zealand you can’t do this? Election advertising is banned, candidates can’t be on social media, and loser talking heads like this can’t make a projection let alone a single comment about a candidate’s clothes or heritage or temperament. They’ve got kiwis and integrity.”
Angeline’s stomach twisted.
“I-I-I’ll fix it,” Cat said. “I’ll print a retraction and—”
“If you really think that will fix it, you’re not just two-faced, you’re naive.” The red coloring Leo’s normally tawny cheeks hadn’t faded since he’d arrived. It just bloomed with varying shades of intensity. Peak level right now. Yet his tone was even and calm. Which somehow was loads worse than if he’d charged in screaming.
Angeline wanted to go to him and instead said, “She’ll be okay, she always is.”
His hand clenched his phone. “No wonder we were together. I said the same thing to my dad when he reamed me out this morning. And you know what he said? He asked if I heard that ‘aggressive’ and ‘hot-tempered.’”
“Leo, I didn’t think . . .” Cat said.
“Well, maybe we all should start,” Leo said, and Angeline knew what she’d ask for if she had a wish rock right now. To go back to that day in her bedroom when all of this started.
“I haven’t been thinking, or paying attention, or whatever,” Leo said. “But this is what they’ve been doing all along, isn’t it? Throwing in racist stereotypes any chance they get? And here we all are, making things worse.”
Cat cleared her throat. “I thought you were behind The Shrieking Violet. I thought you were the one going after Angeline—”
“Two wrongs make a right, then?” he said.
“But the cupcake comment. I mean, do you suddenly like sweets?”
He pointed to the notebook he’d given her, which sat on her desk. “Aren’t you supposed to be an investigative reporter? What was Costa talking about?”
“You.”
“And? Strategy? Plays?”
“You mean lacrosse?”
“Lacrosse.” He faced Angeline. “The sport I played for her and stopped playing because of her. Nothing like starting a game with brand-new white lacrosse balls—cupcakes. Google it if you don’t believe me.”
“But . . .” Cat started. “Then why was your mom meeting with Principal Schwartz?”
“The election, media approaching campus, which I kept to myself because it sucked that the only thing that’d bring her around was herself. Also made me look like I was getting special treatment. But then this morning, my dad told me it was more. There was a threat against her—she was . . .” He tugged at his hair. “Afraid it might extend to me. Security for me. That’s why she came.”
Cat glanced at Angeline, looking like she wanted a shell to crawl into. Angeline longed to join her, regretting being so critical of Leo’s mom.
“I trusted you, Cat,” Leo said. “Gave you that interview when I didn’t want to.”
“I’m sorry, Leo.” Cat’s whole body shrunk. “I don’t know what else to say.”
“Just wait, soon as you sit at your keyboard, you’ll surely come up with something.” He reset his jaw. “Dad wanted to sue the school and you for libel. Guess you have my mom being so strategic to thank for our lawyer not being here now. She thinks the attention would only make things worse.” He jutted his chin toward Angeline. “And tell Maxine that she’s wrong about the IP address. Sammy swore he didn’t do it, and I believe him. But thanks, because he now thinks I’m an ass for believing he might have done it in the first place. Do me a favor and find yourselves another pair of brothers to scapegoat.” He pointed to Angeline’s feet. “And I want those back.”
The silence grew as they stared at one another, finally broken by static from the speaker in the hall. “Leo Torres, please report to the principal’s office. Leo Torres to the principal’s office.”
He closed his eyes and laughed. “Thing is, I actually wanted to do this. It’s been nice being thought of as more than just Eliza Torres’s son and the jock dating the most beautiful girl in school.” He headed for the door. “What’s that phrase about fool and shame?”
“You’re not a fool, Leo.”
“That’s always been the difference between you and me, Ang. I’ve always been able to admit when I’m wrong.”
29
When Cat Clucks Back
7 DAYS TO THE ELECTION
Cat couldn’t help thinking about the time she’d crashed into a chicken coop.
She was in eighth grade and had only been to her dad’s new place once before. He and his then girlfriend had picked up Cat and Angeline, and he’d helped with dinner, unlike at home, cutting onions for the salad, not knowing or remembering or caring that she and Angeline hated raw onions. The house belonged to his girlfriend. Smaller than theirs, but somehow felt bigger. Maybe because it was just the two of them.
That day, with the girlfriend now his new wife, Cat had ridden her bike. Past the river, down the winding road lined with so many thick, tall trees it was hard to believe the houses tucked behind were still part of her town. The ocean wasn’t in charge here. It had been then that she’d realized she could live somewhere else. That she wanted to. But the ride was longer than she’d expected, and the sky darkened with each rotation of her wheel.
She’d studied the map on the computer, and it was basically three lefts and a straight ride down one long road, but somehow, she’d gotten lost. Her mom hadn’t yet caved on giving them phones despite Angeline’s pleading.
The handlebars slipped in her clammy hands, and the burning in her legs begged her to stop, but the memory of Angeline curled into her lap after she’d set that fire in her dad’s grill propelled her forward. If only she knew where to.
She pumped harder, and then she saw him. Her dad, behind the wheel of his new wife’s small SUV, heading toward her.
She panicked. Every thought of what she’d planned to say disappeared out of her head, and she spun the bike in the opposite direction. She skidded in the gravel on the side of the road and rolled down the embankment, trying to steer herself to flat ground when chicken wire rose up in front of her.
She jammed on the brakes and flew over the handlebars and into the coop. Three hens clucked as if she were a coyote, and the rooster puffed out, lowered his head, and started hopping on his wiry toes.
Her fear of birds increased in direct proportion to their size. The jagged movements of their heads and their black cold eyes freaked her out. They clucked. She clucked back. She jumped up and scrambled over the bent chicken wire. Long scratches ran down her hands and forearms, and something on her head felt sticky, and she tried not to imagine if it’d come from her or the chickens.
Her bike lay twisted on the ground. She stood at the bottom of the embankment, looking up, expecting to see her dad.
But he wasn’t there.
He hadn’t seen her. His focus had always been somewhere else.
She untangled her bike from the brush and walked it straight to the house beyond the chicken coop, where she’d called her mom to come pick her up.
The next day, she’d written her father a letter with all the things she’d planned to say to him. She’d never sent it. She hadn’t needed to. Turned out, he did the main thing she’d asked all on his own: stopped disappointing them. She hadn’t expected him to do it the way he did, by running off to LA with his new wife, playing the music he loved more than them in any club that would have him and simply opting out. But that worked too.
She’d watched Angeline struggling with it, but that day, when he hadn’t appeared on the road above her, Cat knew she wouldn’t. Sometimes the thing you wanted didn’t want you, and that was okay. Forcing it meant getting less than what you wanted, far less than you deserved.
She wanted this. The Fit to Print award. But she didn’t deserve it. She closed the email with the submission instructions and once again watched the story about Leo’s mom. She still couldn’t believe her article had basically reached the local news. They hadn’t attributed anything to The Red and Blue or her. They’d simply reported what she’d reported, with no effort to verify anything. This was how easy it was to make suspicions and rumors fact.
She began typing an email to the news station, directing it to the retraction she’d just posted online. But she knew they wouldn’t pick it up. They’d moved on.
She shut off the lights in the newsroom and headed for the parking lot. When she passed the front office, she saw more packages of angel wings had arrived. As had Leo and his mom. His face was somber, hers wasn’t angry exactly . . . defeated, that was it.
Or maybe Cat was projecting.
Acedia Confronts Its Inner Sloth:
Controversy Surrounding Student Council Unprecedented in Charter School History
A SPECIAL REPORT
Part 4 of 6
No deaths occurred save for The Shrieking Violet. In the last days leading up to the election, the online paper went dark, perhaps resting on its tadpole laurels (the petition and parental calls forced the administration to conduct testing, and it would be another two weeks before the water fountains were cleared for use). The void was filled by active engagement within the walls of Acedia as well as out. While Quinn maintained a steady lead in Maxine Chen’s online polls throughout the campaign—a point of contention by many, considering the friendship between Chen and Quinn—with five days remaining before the election, Quinn and Torres entered a dead heat.
Whether accusations of Quinn being a witch were truly to blame, her supporters were more outraged than ever. The pacifist kisses they’d been planting on her posters were replaced with aggressive graffiti on Torres’s. Using what students reported smelled like nail polish, those behind Quinn painted in bright red things like “Nepotism’s not my prez” and “Fakers can’t be allowed to prosper.”
Despite The Red and Blue’s retraction, the story about Torres receiving preferential treatment brought direct attention to Acedia. Twice, teams from news stations in Boston camped outside, interviewing students about the climate inside the school, seeking to uncover whether those students with influential and wealthy parents seemed to receive perks not available to the full student body.
“I didn’t tell them this,” Andreas Costa said, “but always seemed fishy to me that Marcus didn’t have any classes after noon on Friday. Stacked up three study halls one after another, where he got to nap for, like, three hours before every Friday-night game, while I had P.E. last period. I begged for just one study hall before game night. So, you do the math.”
Costa wasn’t the only one with a story like that to tell, but with one or two exceptions, the focus remained on Torres and Quinn. Yet what had once been platforms with concrete goals largely devolved into a male versus female fight.
As memes of each—Quinn, an animated Frankengirl riding a broomstick, and Torres, a robot programmed by his mom—went viral, attention-seekers on the lookout for the next cause to exploit picked up the “Battle of the Exes” to further their own agendas.
On Twitter, a vocal male-rights proponent started a hashtag, #UnleashTheTorres, supporting Torres, and in response, a prominent feminist continued urging followers to knit angel wings in support of Quinn. By election week, seven hundred pairs of angel wings had arrived, and more continue to arrive daily from as far away as Alaska and Singapore, where year-round temperatures above ninety degrees would seem to make knitting a less than popular pastime.
Despite this being a high school election, the “he said, she said” narrative struck a chord with a nation that had been having the same debate on a grander scale for the past few years, culminating in a presidential election where issues of minorities—especially women, LGBTQIA+, immigrants—had taken center stage.
Yet Acedia might have faded behind the next viral flash in the pan had it not been for what started it all: the Frankengirls.
“They’re baaaaaaack!” Baker reportedly was the first to cry, directing students into the cafeteria during the exchange of classes four days before the election.
Huge blowups of all three original Frankengirls blanketed the lunchroom like tablecloths. Quinn arrived before Torres, leading some to question his dedication to the cause of investigating the responsible party.
While two female students from the junior class were seen ripping a poster to pieces, Quinn strode to the center of the cafeteria and carefully rolled the one on the table in front of her into a long cylinder. Even before Quinn spoke, witnesses say other girls were already mirroring her action and, instead of shredding the posters, calmly turning each into a large scroll.
Quinn’s words were equally restrained. Instead of posturing and campaign promises, she simply said such action hurt.
Goldberg relayed Quinn’s impromptu speech. “She said—and I remember it exactly because I got chills. And, well, yeah, because I videoed it: ‘Imagine actually doing this to us. I mean, actually tearing us limb from limb and stitching us back together. Because that’s what this feels like for us—all of us. If you still think this is one big joke, go ahead and laugh. And see if anyone’s laughing with you. Respect us. Respect one another. What we need in this world is empathy. Because we are all so much More Than Our Parts.’”
Comments and cheers poured in on Quinn’s social media accounts, and it seemed she’d be a shoo-in not just to win the student council election but to nab an interview with Oprah or a dinner invite from Emma Watson.
And then, a phone without a passcode, an angry ex, and one last shriek changed everything.
As Goldberg said, they should have seen it coming. “Football players, right? Everyone knows you can’t trust a jock.”
Click for more: 4 of 6
30
When Cat Hits the Big Time
4 DAYS TO THE ELECTION
Cat’s hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
“Let’s hear it for The Boston Globe!” Ravi clapped as Cat entered the newsroom.
A goofy grin took hold . . . until Cat saw Grady’s eyes, the disappointment made worse by his large glasses. He’d begged her to be able to write the story about the resurgence of the Frankengirls. The story that had just been linked to by The Boston Globe.
Her phone lit up.
The story that had just been retweeted.
Again.
And again.
“That’s awesome, Cat,” Ravi said. “Huge deal.”
Grady’s hands twisted something white and fluffy.
He’d wanted it so much.
“Not so huge,” Cat said nonchalantly despite the fireworks ricocheting in her belly. “Really, just a lucky break.”
“Um, radar?” Ravi’s eyebrows lifted. “You apply for an internship or pitch a freelance article, you can namecheck it. Make sure you screenshot it.” Cat gave the briefest of nods, but Ravi kept going. “Or better yet, you could be a special correspondent on this! You’ve seen the traction online, haven’t you? No way they won’t pick up the full story,
especially after the accusations against Mrs. Torres and the statement she gave. Acedia’s hitting the big time.”
“Thanks to me,” Grady blurted out, tossing down a ball of yarn and the angel wing he’d been knitting.
An angel wing? Really? So much for being objective.
Ravi turned to him. “Oh, did you get Cat quotes for the Frankengirls story?”
“No, she did that all on her own,” Grady said.
Though he had no right to make her feel guilty, Cat said delicately, “Listen, Grady, we talked about this. You’ve been invaluable on so much, but with this one, there just wasn’t the time. Besides, there was no way Mr. Monte was going to let you miss class in order to write it. I’m a senior; it’s just different.”
Angeline calmly rolling that huge Frankengirl poster spoke volumes in its quiet resistance. Videos had been going viral even as Angeline spoke. Not a minute could be wasted in getting The Red and Blue’s factual account of what had transpired out there, and Cat had a correct feeling that Ms. Lute would excuse her so she could write the story quickly. Without hers, the only reports would be ones framed by nonprofessionals.
A voice inside Cat scoffed: Some nerve, lumping yourself into the professional category after what you did to Leo.
“I’m good, Cat,” Grady said. “I know a story when I see one.”
“I know—”
“Do you?” He closed the gap between them. He always towered over her, but until this moment had never used his height to his advantage. “Ever stop to think how the news picked up your story about Leo and the cupcakes so fast?”
“I . . . well, all the followers Angeline has, and the original Frankengirls had gotten some attention in the local papers—”
“Me. It was me. I sent it to my cousin. Bo Booker was on it, like bam! He brought it to the producer. The story, the news stations camping out here after, The Boston Globe paying attention to you now—none of it would have happened without me.”
Sources Say Page 21
