#Scandal

by Sarah Ockler

  Her eyes stay fixed on my white Converse, the skeletons I’d been sketching on the canvas all year.

  After an eternity of pained silence, Griff slips her arm around Ellie’s shoulders, the very definition of support system. To me, she says, “Tell Mrs. King I won’t be in homeroom.”

  • • •

  In first period calculus, the Jell-O mold has been replaced with Colorado peach “Pi,” and Mrs. Smolinski composes a love story on the whiteboard between differential equations and baked goods. This is exactly the sort of academic comedy Griff and I should be secretly texting about, but now that Ellie’s back on the scene, Griff’s stonewalling me.

  So much for not taking sides.

  “And the solution is pure elegance,” Smolinski’s saying, but instead of taking notes, I’m hiding behind my textbook with my new phone, scanning the Juicy page.

  Confirmed: Ellie, Cole, Griff, Marceau, and the members of Vanitas aren’t on the fan list. But with more than two hundred likes, that still leaves most of my classmates, not to mention a dozen kids who don’t even attend Lav-Oaks.

  The usual Lucy-bashing pictures are there, plus a shot of me and Asher from this morning—I’ll show you my secret bunker if you show me yours. My apology note was reposted too, complete with critical reviews such as, Your example is sleeping with your best friend’s boyfriend! and u should be apologizing for being born! and the simple yet classic, SLUT!

  Maybe I should’ve used Jayla’s ass-vampire speech.

  “There’s not a problem in the world that calculus can’t solve.” Smolinski’s still scribbling on the whiteboard with furious determination. My phone blinks with a text.

  Cole: saw on fb u got a new phone. hope this is ur 1st text. :-) OH HAI LUCY’S PHONE!

  Me: u win. ur saving me from smolinski’s calc lovefest right now :) I leave out the part about how seeing his name on my phone makes my insides go all firecrackers.

  Cole: zzzzz. ;-) so . . . u ok? john & i are trying 2 figure out who made fan page. nobody seems 2 know.

  Me:

  What am I doing? Ellie still isn’t speaking to me. Griffin’s being a flip-flopper. The scandal is crossing interschool district borders. If Cole gets any more involved, it’ll just feed the rumor mill and make things harder for Ellie.

  Whatever happened between me and Cole, whatever lingers now . . . it needs to go back into hypersleep.

  Cole: please talk 2 me. worried abt u. want to help. :-|

  Me: i’m ok. gtg.

  This #scandal so needs to vanish, but how? The Zeff-mandated apology was a dead end. No offense to Mrs. Smolinski, but advanced math won’t help me out of this mess either. Asher’s offer flits through my mind, but . . . no. The last thing my rep needs is an affiliation with Team Tinfoil Hat.

  I need solid backup.

  Otherwise (formerly?) known as my friends.

  After dragging myself through the rest of calculus, through British lit and physics, through a brief tearfest with the Indigo Girls in the emo bathroom, I hightail it to the cafeteria to catch Ellie before lunch.

  We’ve got six years of loyal BFF-ship together—how long can she ignore me? Especially on Tater Tot Tuesdays, when we always team up to steal Cole’s and John’s? We’ve got a road trip to plan, dorm decorations to pick out. The rest of our lives to map.

  Together. Inseparable.

  • • •

  Leave me alone, Lucy!

  Ellie’s anger hovers like a storm cloud as I trudge to the stables. I hate going all walking cliché two days in a row, but the cafeteria is way behind enemy lines, total red zone. I’d probably get drone striked with Tater Tots.

  Lunch bag and sketchbook in hand, I pass the other horses and reach Prince Freckles’s stall, immediately relaxed by his presence.

  I’m not the only one.

  Franklin Margolis is paling around with my equine bestie when I arrive, scoping out the scene and scratching notes onto his yellow pad. His messenger bag rests on a brick of hay just outside the stall.

  “What’s the scoop, paper boy?” I drop my backpack and plop down on the ground.

  Franklin looks neither amused nor surprised to see me. He hesitates, polite smile firmly fixed, probably scanning his journalistic vocabulary for a synonym for whackjob loonypants so he can properly describe me in his article.

  “Lucy Vacarro. Perhaps you can assist,” he says. The British accent increases his genius vibe the same way Marceau’s increases his yum factor. “I’m interviewing the equestrians about prom-night mistreatment. Rather, alleged mistreatment. I’ve yet to locate the rumored golden horn, but it appears that the committee used superglue to decorate the hooves.” He nods toward Prince Freckles’s feet, still bedazzled with glitter. “Thoughts?”

  “I plead the Fifth.”

  Franklin sits next to me in the dirt, trading the notepad for a packed lunch from his messenger bag. “The truth is I’ve been looking for you, love. I saw you walk to the stables for lunch yesterday and hoped I’d find you today. And here you are.”

  “And here I am. Care to tell me why I’m being stalked by the newspaper editor? I’d like to chill on the publicity awhile, if you don’t mind.”

  Prince Freckles lets out an emphatic shiver-snort, like, I got your back, Lucy Belle.

  “I’m not interested in publicity,” Franklin says. Beneath his chestnut curls, his brown eyes are alert and genuine, and he doesn’t look away when he speaks. “I’m interested in your story. Obviously I’ve seen the photographs, the Juicy page. Not a fan, by the way.”

  “That’s what they all say.” Admittedly, it sounds better in his accent. Like, more official.

  “I don’t go in for the online popularity rubbish,” he says. “And for the record, I think it’s bollocks what they’re doing to you over a few regrettable photographs.”

  “For the record, I didn’t post them.”

  Franklin nods. “Let’s say I believe you.”

  “I believe you,” we say simultaneously. I laugh with him, which is unexpected, considering I also just discovered that Jayla put olives in my egg salad. Totally grateful that she made my lunch, but olives? What are those Hollywood weirdies doing to her?

  “Any idea who did it?” he asks.

  I’ve been over it a hundred times, but I just can’t figure it out. Everyone at the party was outed by the pictures. Drinking, hooking up, butt shots, smoking—no one escaped unscathed. For all I know, a bear snuck into the cabin, swiped my phone, took the shots, and vanished, uploading the evidence from his underground lair in Wyoming.

  It’s about as plausible as anything else.

  I shake my head.

  “Still.” Franklin procures a can of ginger ale and a falafel wrap from his lunch bag. “I’d like people to hear your side of the story.”

  “How? My own friends won’t even listen to me.”

  “A feature interview.” He takes a few bites of falafel, expertly navigating the wrap. I’d be wearing it by now. “Present your evidence. Talk about the dangers of judging without facts. Invite fellow students to engage in a healthy discourse about—”

  “That’s so cute.”

  Franklin cocks his head.

  “Your blind idealism,” I explain. “Faith in our classmates.”

  “You think they’re not capable of intelligently debating an issue in a neutral public forum?”

  I bite back a laugh. “Pretty sure all the discourse is happening on Miss Demeanor’s page. No offense, but if I want advice from my peers, I’ll message her.”

  “Odd. You don’t strike me as the Miss Demeanor type.” He wolfs down the last of his falafel and folds up the napkins and wrappers, neatly tucking them back into the brown bag. “Look. You can’t ignore this. I mean, you could, but then you’ll graduate with this scandal as your last memory, and in twenty years at the reunion, they’ll still be calling you Juicy Lucy, because people are cruel and petty and bored. Is that what you want?”

  “I have no plans to attend the reun
ion.”

  “Just an example. I fail at American irony.”

  I shove the uneaten bits of my sandwich back into the bag and fish out a granola bar, which is actually a fiber bar. Last time I let Jayla make lunch.

  “Thanks for the offer,” I say. “But I’m not interested in an interview.” Adding more fodder to the fire? In zombie-slaying circles, that’s called ringin’ the dinner bell, and it’s the fastest way to get yourself munched.

  “You’re certain?” Franklin says.

  “I just want to fix things with my best friend. Ellie Pike? She’s the one who . . . she’s Cole’s . . . Cole’s the one I . . .” I shake my head to unclog the words. “She’s not speaking to me.”

  “And you think Miss Demeanor can assist?” Franklin asks.

  “Maybe. Fiber bar?” I hold it out to him.

  “I’m quite regular, thanks.” Franklin’s brow is pinched. He taps the side of his soda can, eyes meeting mine again. “So you won’t grant me an interview, but you’ll muck about with an anonymous online gossip?”

  “Why not?”

  “You’ve a much better chance at being heard with the Explorer.”

  “Is that a fact?”

  “Technically an opinion, but a valid one, which—unlike that horrid gossip column—deserves serious consideration.”

  Franklin folds his arms, his gaze unwavering. He’s good-natured about it, but his utter certainty feels like a challenge, like the noobs who come on Undead Shred talking about kicking ass only to march off alone and die.

  “Don’t judge Miss D. just because she’s not all, ‘Ooh, I’m the valedictorian and I have important sorts of bloody discourse,’ ” I say.

  “Your English accent isn’t half bad,” he says with a crooked grin. “Then, it’s not half good, either.”

  “I’m just saying, if you’re so fair and balanced, you should support all forms of journalism. Even Miss Demeanor’s.” I grab my phone and sign into the ground zero of my Facebook account. A few taps later, I’m an official Miss Demeanor fan, dashing off a private message to the great adviser of our time.

  From: Lucy Vacarro

  Dear Miss Demeanor:

  With your finger on the pulse of Lav-Oaks’s most popular gossip channel, you likely already know me. I’ve recently been embroiled in a scandal over some photos taken at a postprom party, in part because of your ongoing encouragement of scandal documentation.

  In a sense, one might say you owe me.

  No judgments, of course. I realize that you trade in scandalmongering and I’m not one to impede the life choices of fellow students. Still, you’re nothing if not fair and balanced, and I thought you might like to know the truth.

  Despite all evidence to the contrary, I didn’t post those photos, and I didn’t have sexual relations with the male subject in those photos. I’d like to clear my name and patch things up with my best friend, who is currently not speaking to me because of this disaster (the male subject was, until recently, her boyfriend).

  I’m sure you’re aware.

  Anyway, word on the streets of Lav-Oaks is that you’re the one to go to for advice. So . . . got any for me?

  Yours truly,

  Vilified and Illified

  “Vilified and Illified?” Franklin laughs when I show him the message.

  “You know advice columns. It’s all, ‘Stranded in Sacramento’ or ‘Heartsick and Hopeless.’ I’m trying to be legit.”

  “The Explorer doesn’t require you to feign legitimacy. Illified, good grief.”

  I sign out of Facebook feeling slightly less destroyed than I did when Ellie gave me the shove-off. Thankfully, Jayla didn’t screw up the chocolate pudding cup portion of my lunch hour, and I hold the dessert up in a toast. “Franklin old chap, I’ve been called much worse and lived to tell the tale.”

  He raises his ginger ale, giving me his sly, lopsided smile. “Indeed.”

  WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE, NO WONDER ANGELICA DARLING WHACKS ALL OF HERS

  MISS DEMEANOR

  2,983 likes

  788 talking about this

  Wednesday, April 30

  Today’s Wednesday Words of Wisdom—a meme I just made up since it’s Wednesday and I’m both wordy and wise—go out to a couple of former friends in the midst of a thorny #scandal, the details of which have been widely publicized.

  In such situations of the backstabbing nature, I like to ask, WWAD—what would Angelica do?

  Anytime a friend has double-crossed Miss Darling, she’s had them killed, a move that in this case is neither an option nor a good idea. Although I sometimes confuse the two myself, this is real life, not television. While real bestie betrayals aren’t unheard of, interested parties would be wise to fully investigate the evidence. Ending a friendship is a serious, often irreversible decision, and without absolute proof of betrayal, you could be making a grave mistake.

  If you’re the wronger, on the other hand, and you’re looking to make things right, why not come forth with your honest, heartfelt feelings? If you need a forum in which to carve open that vein, Miss D is your girl, girl. Call me Switzerland, ’cause I’m impartial. Or is that neutral? Either way, consider this an invitation to let your voice be heard!

  Speaking of hearing voices, in dramatic times such as this, let’s all remember the old chestnut: Assumptions make an ASS out of YOU and UMPTIONS. I don’t know who Umptions is, but I’m pretty sure if he were a Lav-Oaks student, he’d focus on more pressing issues, like planning the senior prank. Maybe we could redirect our collective angst into something more productive, such as relocating Principal Zeff’s car to the roof or giving the iron Swordfish statue a gender reassignment? Just throwing suggestions out there, people. Class secretary and horse lover Margo Hennessy tells me the official planning meeting is in the you-know-where on you-know-what at precisely you-know-when-o’clock. Unless you don’t know, in which case you won’t know what you’re missing.

  It’s all very meta, and you know what I’m missing? An adult beverage.

  xo ~ Ciao! ~ xo

  Miss Demeanor

  IF YOU CAN’T BEAT ’EM, JOIN ’EM, THEN BEAT ’EM AFTER ALL THE JOINING, BECAUSE THEY TOTALLY WON’T SEE THAT SHIT COMING

  Must be a slow news week if both the newspaper editor and the gossip blogger are offering me page time. Not to mention Asher’s (e)VIL invite yesterday. Way to rally around a crisis, random people I’ve never talked to before!

  After besting my Fruit Ninja score on the walk to school, I flip my iPad case closed and sip my coffee, Black & Brew forgiven on account of my addiction being more important than petty vendettas. Today was another early-to-riser for me, and I enter the building with a clear mission: swap a few books at my locker and slide into homeroom without any confrontations, accusations, or invitations.

  It’s not that I don’t appreciate the sudden support—particularly in light of the explosive popularity of the Juicy page—but my besties shouldn’t need to read my defense in the newspaper or Facebook court. This is a private matter among friends (and, okay, some not-so-friendly acquaintances who got swept up in the photo scandal), not some save-the-whales, antisocial-media rallying cry.

  Unless I get a free T-shirt and/or Chipotle veggie burrito out of the deal, I’m no one’s poster child.

  Even though my locker is now covered in posters.

  Pay no attention to the woman behind this curtain of mystery and contradiction!

  “We tried to get them off,” John explains as I approach. Cole’s there too, scraping at my locker with fierce determination, drumsticks poking out of his back pocket. They must’ve had band rehearsal in the gym this morning—Vanitas is playing at the pep rally on Friday.

  There’s a stack of shredded posters at their feet, but the wallpaperist who did this was serious about longevity. Printouts of the infamous bedroom shot are duct-taped to my locker in layers.

  “Creative,” I mumble. According to the liner notes scrawled over the photos, I’m a narc, a slut, a home wreck
er, and an ugly C-word who needs to get some. “Yet inconsistent.”

  With my back against the adjacent locker, I sink to the floor. Coldness seeps through my ripped denim shorts, through my purple fishnets, straight to my skin. I can’t bring myself to look at John, but I apologize about the pond pictures anyway.

  “You kidding? That’s the funniest shit I’ve ever done. Don’t worry about me.” He tilts my chin up to meet his eyes, and I’m relieved by his familiar smile. “Got it?”

  I smile in response. Maybe random, sudden support isn’t so bad after all.

  “Gotta bounce.” John tugs on one of my braids and knocks against Cole’s shoulder. “Catch up with you later.” On his way out, he scoops up the torn posters, pitches them into the trash.

  Cole slices at my locker with his car keys, trying unsuccessfully to tear down another layer.

  “Leave it,” I say. “They’ll just put more up later. Obviously someone’s determined to humiliate me.”

  “Us,” Cole says. With a key, he points to one of the pictures and taps his pixelated face. “We’re in it together.”

  Inside, warmth tangles with guilt like a weed choking a flower, and I scan the hall for cell phone snipers. A handful of teachers dot the dim corridor, but it’s early yet; most of my classmates are still home toasting their Pop-Tarts.

  Cole crouches in front of me, head bent close. “Looked for you in the woods last night,” he says softly. “No Lucy. No Night of the Living Dog. Spike misses his bestie.”

  “Yeah, things are kind of crazy at home. My parents are in California and my sister’s back for the summer, so there’s . . . that.”

  Also, I didn’t want to run into you alone. I’m avoiding you because every time you look at me like that, it hurts. Stop looking at me like that. Don’t ever stop looking at me like that.

  Cole shifts around and sits next to me, setting his sticks on the floor. Our shoulders are touching and it’s all aren’t-we-the-greatest-of-pals, except for my heart, which is spazzing in a very nonpals way.