#Scandal

by Sarah Ockler

  It doesn’t help that my sister showed up a month early and announced over postprom brunch that she’s staying the entire summer, which left my parents choking on their zucchini frittata with utter joy while I glared at her, like, Damn! Give a girl a warning shot!

  Lav-Oaks flew her in to do the commencement speech—Principal Zeff swore me to secrecy on that special surprise—but that was supposed to be it. Three days, in and out. For my parents’ sake, I could’ve faked my way through three days of nod-and-smile.

  But the whole summer?

  Before today, Jayla and I hadn’t spoken in almost a year.

  Ambush.

  On account of my prom-induced exhaustion, I scored several hours of alone time after brunch, but Mom and Dad are all about the forced sisterly bonding, and now Jayla’s standing behind me, her polished face and buttery blond highlights superimposed over the onscreen carnage.

  “Why can’t you, like, paint your nails or go to the mall like a normal girl?” she asks.

  Not a second too soon, I ice a charging zombie with my machete, splattering the screen with blood.

  Jay flops on my bed, tossing aside a few stuffed ghouls. “Sometimes I worry about your mental health.”

  Click-click boom!

  The shotgun works well for a few zombies at a time, but the corpses I wasted give rise to a howling horde. They remind me of the fairies flitting around the gym last night, and I’m all, Say hello to my little flamethrower, bitches.

  I roast them like marshmallows. A few slip past, grab me. “I’m hit!”

  “Miss me?” Jayla asks.

  “Fuck!”

  “Lucy!”

  “I’m black-and-white! Nononononooo!” I frantically work the keys, but it’s no use. My gamer crew is being all permafrosty about my tournament bailout, and I’m way too distracted for a solo campaign. “Happy now, Jay? I’m dead.”

  “Good. Come talk to me. It feels like forever since we talked.”

  Allow me to translate.

  “Like Forever”: from the Germanic “Like Forever,” last summer, after my disastrous visit to her posh pad in Malibu, cliché as it sounds. After I switched my flight to come home a day early. After Cole and Ellie picked me up at Denver International and I spent the night at Ellie’s so I wouldn’t have to lie to Mom and Dad about the change in my itinerary.

  “Lucy, come on.” She bats her baby blues. Really, I couldn’t make this stuff up. “Tell me about prom. Mom said you looked amazing—like a real girl.”

  “Let me guess. This is you apologizing?”

  Jay tugs a thread on one of my ghouls, ducking my gaze. “It was a year ago. Can’t we let it go?”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “Live in the moment for once. It’s done. Anyway, I’m turning over a new leaf.”

  I choke back a snort. New leaf? Allow me to translate again.

  On her weekly televised drama, Jayla plays a scheming, conniving killer whose questionable morals are justified by such original backstory as a string of cheating boyfriends, an absentee father, and an alcoholic mother who sleeps with Angelica’s friends.

  In real life, my sister’s questionable morals have no such justification.

  DANGER’S DARLING A DANGER TO HERSELF, the latest tabloid smear campaign said. SATURDAY NIGHT VIXEN VAMPS IT UP IN VENICE BEACH. That one had a picture of Jay draped over some tattooed six-pack of a dude, her eyes big and glassy, leather skirt riding up her thighs. I found a whole stack in the recycle bin last weekend, still bound in plastic ties like Mom had stolen them right off the delivery truck.

  Mom’s convinced the tabloids lie.

  I narrow my eyes at her. “You’re up to something.”

  “I have time off before shooting for next season, so I thought I’d see what’s shakin’ in the Mile High.” She scans a series of zombified celebrities tacked to the wall over my bed, a pen-and-ink project I sketched a few months ago for art. “Obviously not much.”

  I’m no detective, but it doesn’t add up. If my sister has time off, why would she spend it here? She has a beach house on Martha’s Vineyard. Boyfriends on every continent. She and I are totally on the rocks, and even her calls to my parents have been supershort, Jayla always phoning in an obligatory hello from the middle of some important shoot and, Oh, sorry, gotta run!

  I watch her across the room, searching for a crack in the facade, but she’s so tan and smiley it’s hard not to get caught up in her current. Hard not to believe her, every explanation made logical by her luscious lips. Hard not to miss her when she’s up close and personal again.

  I blow a breath into my bangs. It’s always like this with Jay, like the “Itsy Bitsy Spider” song she sang during our childhood baths. When that girl laughs, up comes the sun and dries up all the rain.

  And then the hurricane hits, right when you least expect it.

  “Oh,” she suddenly squeals, “I totally have to show you something! You’ll die of sweetness!” She smashes against me in the computer chair. “Make a hole. Make a hole.”

  I scootch over and swallow the lump in my throat, soaking up the essence of her latest signature scent. Pears, this one smells like. Crazy, expensive, diamond-studded pears.

  Her fingers click-clack across the keyboard as she navigates to her Facebook fan page, the Jayla Heartthrobs. Two hundred thousand fans, growing steadily by the hour, I’m sure. Every picture has hundreds of likes and comments. Hundreds.

  My research is hardly scientific—already established, not a detective—but I spy a distinct correlation between Jayla cleavage exposure and number of fanboy likes.

  “Congrats on being the last thing thousands of adolescent boys think about when they get into bed at night,” I say.

  “Isn’t it awesome?”

  “In a gross and illegal way, sure.”

  She tries to smack me, but I duck. Video games have seriously honed my reflexes.

  Jayla replies to a few messages with Xs and Os, and in the pale glow of the screen I study the curve of her jaw, the berry-hued lips, the salon-shaped brows. Even without the money, she’s always been a stunner. But for the first time since she became famous, she looks older, way more than the seven years she has on me.

  “Don’t you start filming the next season in the summer?” I ask.

  “We’re shooting in the fall this time.”

  “But you—”

  “Here’s the one I wanted to show you.” She taps a French-manicured nail against the screen. “ ‘Dear Jayla Heart. You have my heart. I turn eighteen in two years. If you’re still single, will you marry me?’ Isn’t he the sweetest thing ever?”

  I roll my eyes. “Like high-fructose corn syrup.”

  “How many marriage proposals have you gotten, little miss smug?”

  I clap my hands and give her a radiant smile. “Golly, I don’t know. Maybe Mr. Right is waiting for my response right now!” I lean across the keyboard and sign in to my dusty-ass Facebook profile, barely giving it a glance.

  “Eww.” Jay scrunches her nose. “You have the same number of Facebook friends that I have on my hair and makeup team alone.”

  Whoosh! That’s the sound of my rekindled sisterly affection evaporating. “Guess that’s why my online marriage prospects are so slim,” I say.

  “I get that you’re not a party girl, but you should be all over this. You don’t even have to do your hair to hang out online.”

  My hand shoots to my head. “I do my hair.”

  Jayla snorts. “Seriously, Luce. Facebook is, like, twice the friends and half the effort.”

  “You think?”

  Jayla doesn’t get it. I didn’t abandon social media because I don’t want to make an effort. I just couldn’t deal with the we’re-so-in-love, aren’t-we-adorable status updates from Ellie.

  Ellie.

  Without my phone, I have no idea what’s going on with my friends. For all I know, Cole’s already confessed everything. Or Griffin’s sharing her theories, taking revenge on me
for snapping at her last night, for leaving without saying good-bye. And I’m hiding out at home, a phoneless coward, not one word closer to figuring out what I’m supposed to say to Ellie tomorrow.

  I jam my thumbs into my eyes to erase the images of last night, and when I blink it all away and look at Jayla again, she’s shaking her head, her face all, WTF?

  “Are you trying to make everyone hate you? Or is this, like, a call for help?” She squints at the pictures loading on my page. There’s one of a girl in a pink lace bra, dress pooled around her waist. She’s kneeling on the floor, arcing backward and drinking from a Mike’s Hard Lemonade bottle that’s stuck between her boobs.

  Caption: Sweet little Olivia puts the HARD in Mike’s Hard Lemonade! #scandal

  Dread fills my insides. “Is that on my profile?”

  “Not cool. People don’t like their drunken shame spread all over the Internet.” Jayla’s voice is machete-sharp. “Trust me.”

  “Move.” I bump her out of the chair and slide closer to the computer. Olivia’s acrobatics are part of a whole new album on my profile, created two hours ago. “PROMiscuity,” it’s called.

  Someone must’ve gotten into my account, but how? My password is supercomplicated, and I’ve never given it to anyone, never signed in at school or at anyone else’s house. I’m hardly ever on Facebook anymore. The only way someone could upload photos to my account is by hacking it, or by uploading directly from—

  Oh shit. My phone!

  I didn’t forget my phone—someone swiped it last night. And whoever did it snapped a bunch of drunken shots and uploaded them to my Facebook profile, tagging them so they’d show up on Miss Demeanor’s page for the #scandal contest.

  It’s one thing for people to post their own dumb stunts. But whoever did this made it look like I posted them, and Jayla’s right. It’s not cool.

  I click through the photos with shaking hands. Funneling? Strip poker? The vampire bros smoking out of a . . . What is that contraption? Who the hell let Prince Freckles into the living room, and why is Margo Hennessy making out with him?

  The album has already been shared and reposted dozens of times. Hundreds, maybe, everything tagged to Miss Demeanor’s page, the damning shots mixed in with pictures from earlier in the night—ones I do remember: John in the pond. The blinged-out gym. Group poses in front of the party Hummer. Cole nervously pinning my corsage the first time. Paul sucking on Griff’s earlobe in my front yard, one hand creeping on her boob. My parents sitting in the Hummer, just for fun.

  And then my heart sinks.

  Kiara, posing with Prince Freckles.

  See no (e)VIL, photograph no (e)VIL! What Kiara’s friends don’t know won’t hurt them . . . but it might get the little traitor kicked out of her favorite club! #scandal

  I promised her I wouldn’t say anything, and now it looks like I broadcast it to the whole school.

  “Explains why you’re all death-warmed-over tonight,” Jayla says.

  I click to the next incriminating shot. Me and Marceau on the deck.

  “Yum.” Jayla raises her brows, suddenly more impressed than accusatory. “Well played, little sister.”

  Doing my best to maintain international relations, ooh-la-la! Despite this passionate embrace, Marceau’s lips were no match for my date, Cole Foster! #scandal

  I blink back tears, my throat tight and dry, fingers trembling.

  Click.

  Worst fears.

  Confirmed.

  Me and Cole, standing beneath the stars, lips locked in a five-second, totally accidental, three-hundred-percent mistake of a kiss.

  Click.

  Ellie’s black cherries dress draped over the end of Cole’s bed, pink wings casually tossed on top.

  Click.

  A bare foot. Two. Four. My hair spilled across the pillow. And Cole’s arms wrapped around me tight, our bodies an indiscernible tangle beneath a knot of dark green sheets.

  Who needs costumes to create such magical, mythical memories? #scandal

  FRECKLES PLEADS THE FIFTH

  MISS DEMEANOR

  2,742 likes

  601 talking about this

  Monday, April 28

  Good Monday morning, fishies! How y’all feeling? Here’s a tip: water. Lots of it. Your still-throbbing heads will thank me!

  In the time-honored tradition of prom-goers since humans first crawled out of the pond with the dinosaurs (and/or appeared on the earth exactly seven days after it came into existence four thousand years ago, give or take, depending on your beliefs, all of which I publicly support while whispering about you behind closed laptops), many of you undoubtedly engaged in a few rites of passage this weekend. Before we continue, please join me in a moment of silence to mourn the collective loss of innocence.

  . . .

  Bee-tee-dubs, thumbs-up on keeping your names out of the police blotter, kids! Always a proud moment when my esteemed Lav-Oaks colleagues avoid embarrassing legal trouble (and associated fees). Trust me on this little nugget: The last thing Mommy and Daddy want to do is dip into your college fund for bail money. Awkward for everyone, please pass the hard lemonade!

  While we’re on the not-entirely-unrelated topics of hard lemonade and awkward shit your parents don’t know about, thanks for oversharing those delectable prom and party pics! We have our work cut out for us as we try to determine the most #scandal–worthy moments. The girls lacrosse team dancing in their underwear and dragon wings at Red Rocks? The entire prom court tossing their collective cookies on the steps of the state capitol building? Ms. Zeff, out-jousted by the physics club president? Like I always say, ladies. When it comes to dueling lances, it’s not the shape or the size that matters, but the velocity of the projectile and the angle of the trajectory!

  As for the bash at that undisclosed mountain locale, wowza. Someone’s putting Angelica Darling to shame! Good God (and by God I mean inclusively God, Goddess, Buddha, Allah, Mother Earth, Zeus, universal force, and any and all past, present, and yet-to-be discovered deities), tell me there’s more to this tale than meets the bloodshot eye. Despite intense bribery of the sugar cube nature, Prince Freckles isn’t saying a word.

  Start talking, peeps. Miss Demeanor is always listening.

  xo ~ Ciao! ~ xo

  Miss Demeanor

  HOW MANY TARTS DOES IT TAKE?

  Play dumb, Lucy. You never even saw those pictures.

  So goes the strategy my self-appointed publicist devised last night. She wouldn’t even let me change my Facebook password or delete any photos. “You’ll just look more guilty,” she said, like, straight from her How to Duck and Cover in a Shit Storm manual.

  Of course, this morning’s CelebStyle features a close-up of Jayla in the Denver airport terminal, all Louis Vuitton bags and angry middle fingers and white leather napkin trying not quite hard enough to be a dress.

  J-HEART’S HIGH TIMES IN THE MILE HIGH!

  So much for duck and cover.

  I snatch up the remaining copies from the newsstand at Black & Brew while the barista bags my order. Ellie might be ignoring my desperate e-mails, but no way can she stay all deep freezy if I show up on her doorstep with coffee and Tarts of Apology.

  Doubt is a hard lump in my throat, but I swallow it down, pay for the breakfast and tabloids, and make my way to Ellie’s neighborhood on foot. I timed my arrival for after Ellie’s moms left for work, but as I step onto her front porch and press the doorbell, my body vibrates with fear. Maybe it would’ve been better to have witnesses. . . .

  “What do you want?” Ellie’s face appears behind the screen. Her eyes are red and puffy, her chocolate-brown hair wrapped in a messy topknot.

  My words bail, and I shove the carton of coffees and paper bag forward, hoping they convey everything. I’m sorry. Can we talk? Don’t hate me. Tart? Coffee? Still friends?

  She scrutinizes the bag.

  “Chocolate raspberry,” I manage. “And white chocolate kiwi?” The last part comes out uncertain.

>   “You must be really sorry.” She opens the screen door and steps out, blocking my entrance into the place I’ve considered a second home for six years. “Again. What do you want?”

  “I just . . . I thought we could talk and . . . Can we go inside?” I maneuver the coffees and pastries and inch closer to the doorway. She doesn’t budge.

  “I trusted you.” Her voice breaks on the last word. I open my mouth to answer, but everything in my head twists and tangles.

  I didn’t mean to. I care about him. We were drinking. I totally meant to. I’ve loved him forever. I didn’t want to go to prom. I’m glad I went to prom. I hope you still want to do our summer road trip. And college. And you lied to me. . . .

  “You should probably just get to school,” Ellie says.

  “What about you?”

  “I’m staying home to enjoy a delicious breakfast.” Ellie grabs the bag and the carton with both coffees, and before I can choke out another word, the door slams shut.

  “So not how it looks,” I whisper, but my best friend is already gone.

  • • •

  With twenty minutes to go before homeroom, the sprawling Lavender Oaks campus is a ghost town, save for a small knot of students gathered on the front steps. Absent Kiara, the now four-membered (e)lectronic Vanities Intervention League marches in a circle around their leader in his wheelchair, wordlessly pumping their poster-board signs.

  MAKE LOVE, NOT STATUS UPDATES!

  REAL FRIENDS DON’T NEED BATTERIES!

  GET YOUR HEAD OUT OF THE CLOUD!

  Franklin Margolis, valedictorian and editor of the school newspaper, lurks behind them. With a pen, he pokes at his curly moptop, observing the protest a moment before scribbling something onto a yellow pad. Not sure why he bothers with the journalism gig—everyone ditched the Lavender Oaks Explorer when Miss Demeanor hit the scene last year—but if his unwavering dedication to the fashion disaster of jeans plus sport coat is any indication, Franklin is a determined trend-bucker.

  The group disperses as I approach, reassembling at the far end of the parking lot to greet the incoming cars.

  I dig deep for some enthusiasm and call out a “thanks!” across the quad. (e)VIL might be whackadoo, but they get it. Facebook is out of control, and though my account exposed Kiara’s fling with technology, maybe—in a secret-handshake-on-the-grassy-knoll kind of way—they’re on my side.