#Scandal

by Sarah Ockler

  “You think they were hooking up?” I ask.

  Jayla snorts. “Hiding out in a closet? You can bet they weren’t doing an intervention.”

  Clarice and 420? That girl’s whole raison d’être is to bust him. She’s tried to convince Zeff to get a search warrant for his locker, filled his backpack with pamphlets, scowled and huffed at his constant cannabis cloud. That’s just what the president of Students Against Substance Abuse does. And 420 . . . well, he’s 420. He’d be the president of Students All About Substance Abuse if being president of something wasn’t so mentally taxing.

  “Lucy. You thinking what I’m thinking?” Jayla’s eyebrows wiggle. “Season three, episode eleven?”

  “Ohmygod . . . Barista Boy!”

  Angelica had this crazy crush on her barista, but she couldn’t let her fiancé know, and the barista always gave Angelica decaf instead of regular because she was so high-strung and bitchy to the baristas, and they’d always make fun of Lady Wiggles, Angelica’s wallet-size dog.

  But one night she got there just as the dude was closing up, and he made the coffee without charging her because he’d already cashed out the register. She was all appreciative—cue the witty banter—and in the very next frame, Lady Wiggles nosed her way into the supply closet to reveal Angelica and Barista Boy getting it on, complete with all the half-caff, extrafoam, extrahot, triple-shot innuendos you’d expect.

  “Lucy?” Roman asks.

  “Mocha what? What?” I blink back to reality. TV room. (e)VIL and Cole, Griff and Jay, the guilty-looking dog duo who probably broke something downstairs, all of us crowded around the table, everyone looking at me.

  “I asked if you think they took the pictures,” Roman says.

  “No,” I say. “But maybe Clarice knows something.”

  “Will she talk?” Franklin asks. “As I recall, your 420 interrogation didn’t go well.”

  I scoop the photos back into the dossier. “I have pictures that place the president of Students Against Substance Abuse in a closet with the class pothead. I have a ten-minute slot at graduation with a projector and a captive audience. 420 might not care about his rep, but I bet Clarice does.”

  Franklin shakes his head. “More graymail, Lucy?”

  “Superlight gray,” I remind him.

  “Right. In the meantime,” he says, “any leads on the Juicy page?”

  All of us mumble and shrug.

  “I’ll look into it,” Kiara says. “No guarantees, but if the page is public, there might be an electronic trail.” She turns to Asher. “Request permission to access social networks for investigative purposes?”

  “Permission granted,” he says.

  “Permission to report findings to Lucy via secure e-mail alias, Code Name Hackalicious?”

  “Permission granted,” Ash repeats. “Anything Lucy and the others need. Oh, one final matter of great importance.” He turns to Jayla with a serious glare. “What’s a helpless kid in a wheelchair gotta do to score a ride in that Porsche?”

  HIGH SCHOOL, THE MOON LANDING, AND OTHER CONSPIRACIES

  MISS DEMEANOR

  4,209 likes

  1,097 talking about this

  Thursday, May 8

  The moment you’ve all been waiting for—since you forked over $100 of Daddy’s cash for a memento that will only torment you in the future as you drink your depression numb and complain loudly about how your life turned out and really, they should’ve voted you Most Likely to Do JACK SHIT, but that wasn’t a category on the list—has finally arrived.

  YEARBOOK DAY!

  There’s something magical about it, don’t you think? And by magical, I mean . . . I’ve seen you people in real life, and your senior pictures aren’t quite as authentic as one might expect from the upstanding students of Lavender Oaks. Back me up, (e)VIL. You kids know photo manipulation when you see it. Poreless skin and ultrawhite teeth, shadowy footprint on the surface of the fake moon, could be a UFO, could be a reflection. Feel me?

  Shit. I just remembered (e)VIL isn’t on Facebook. All this carefully crafted conspiracy humor is lost to the ether. No matter. For the rest of you, speaking of manipulated photos, I’m compelled to report that the Prince Freckles photographer has yet to come forth. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for artificially curated infamy, people. What are you waiting for, an invitation? Mi scandal es su scandal!

  Don’t let me keep you, fishies. Run along to the cafeteria and collect your yearbooks, write those keep in touches and have a great summers until your hands cramp. In twenty years, when the delicate arts of handwriting and eye contact are long forgotten and communication occurs solely via brainchip-to-brainchip text, you’ll have a lovely little keepsake of the good ol’ days. Or a doorstop for your space pod.

  Either way, someone else’s money well spent.

  xo ~ Ciao! ~ xo

  Miss Demeanor

  HAVE A GREAT SUMMER! BON VOYAGE! TRY NOT TO SLEEP WITH ANYONE ELSE’S BOYFRIEND ON YOUR WAY OUT!

  I’m sixty percent sure I’m ditching my yearbook anyway, but it’s already paid for, so I brave the hostile territory of the cafeteria and get in line for the pickup.

  Right behind Olivia and the sprite sisters.

  The line moves at an agonizing pace, and the girls keep whispering and turning around and laughing, making a big production of it just in case I miss the point.

  “Yes,” I say. “You’re all quite cool, and I’m a horrible person. Moving on.”

  “Did you hear something?” Quinn asks Olivia.

  Olivia looks right at me, scans my zombie food pyramid shirt. The scowl looks funny on her sweet face, like she borrowed it from one of her friends and it’s not quite her size. “Probably just the wind,” she says.

  “Why does the wind advocate zombies eating people?” Haley says, absently tapping her phone screen with a seashell-pink fingernail. “The wind is so, like, morbid.”

  I’m all, Whatevs. You three would be the first to get eaten if I were in charge of feeding zombies, but getting middle-schooled by Olivia and her friends stings. Kiara’s creeping on their Facebook profiles, but she’s yet to find any connections to the Juicy Lucy page owner. I haven’t cornered Clarice, either—she’s been too busy handing out flyers about staying sober at the upcoming graduation parties. Avoid a scandal, the flyer urges. Party with pride!

  None of my allies are present either. Ironically, they’re suffering through their mandatory cyberbully training today. Zeff let me out of it since I’m doing the presentation with (e)VIL, but word on the street is that Zeff’s trotting out her personal Facebook feed again, complete with babies and inappropriate messages from her mom.

  “Oh my God, prom pics!” Haley squeals when she reaches the table. The yearbooks are stacked in a pyramid, and on the other side, there’s a file box with eight by tens of our unicorn pictures. In all the craziness that happened after prom, I forgot about them.

  Say magic pixie dust. . . . Cutest couple ever . . .

  I wait for the girls to finish collecting their stuff before I hastily sign for my yearbook, locate my prom photo. Anxious, I slide it from the box.

  There’s Cole, green eyes sparkling brighter than the unicorn’s golden horn. I’m laughing at something he said, and he’s got one arm over the horse’s back, a hand on my shoulder, and it’s almost the kind of picture you frame on the mantel to show your kids when you’re fifty.

  Almost.

  If not for the angry black letters scrawled across my face.

  #SLUT.

  Everything inside me shrivels and aches. I tear the defiled photo in half and drop it in the trash.

  “Don’t throw it out,” Haley says from behind me. It’s obvious now that they knew, that they were watching me, waiting for the reaction. They must’ve planned it—probably got their hands on the photos earlier, left their mark. “Don’t you want something to remember him by when he dumps you?”

  “Hot tip for you, Haley,” a voice says from behind us. I’d recog
nize it anywhere. “Cole and I broke up way before prom,” Ellie says. “So I suggest you and your posse of haters recheck your facts and quit abusing Lucy. It’s none of your business, anyway.”

  “It’s our business,” Haley says. “We have a right to know who’s skanking around, trying to steal our boyfriends.”

  “None of you have boyfriends,” Ellie says, grabbing my hand. It’s so unexpected, I have to fight my instinct not to flinch. “We’re all women, aren’t we? We should be sticking up for our sisters, not perpetuating the patriarchy by tearing one another down.”

  “She’s the one sticking things that don’t belong to her into places where they don’t belong,” Olivia says.

  “What happened to you, Olivia?” Ellie says. “Lucy’s a person. She has a heart and a soul and she makes mistakes. You want someone talking to your little sisters like this? Or your mothers? What is wrong with you guys?”

  “We’re trying to help,” Quinn says. “You should be glad.”

  Ellie snorts. “You’re trying to cause drama, and it’s pathetic. Show a little love and respect for your Lav-Oaks sisters. For yourselves.”

  I turn to Ellie with grateful tears in my eyes.

  She drops my hand as the girls slink away, waves the air like it was nothing special. Nothing she wouldn’t have done for anyone. “I can’t stand seeing girls hate on girls. There’s enough of that in the tabloids.”

  There must be something meaningful and important to say, something to make her stay. . . .

  We’re supposed to go to college soon. To buy coordinating bedspreads and posters. To pack up the car with snacks and playlists and heart-shaped sunglasses in every color, Cali-bound, future-bound, best-friends-for-the-rest-of-forever-bound.

  But all I come up with is, “Tell me about it,” and then she’s taking her yearbook from the stack, stuffing it into her backpack without asking me to sign it.

  “See you around, Lucy.”

  • • •

  On the downside, by the end of the school day, my yearbook is MIA.

  On the upside, I dug deep, and I’ve yet to unearth any regret about this. It was probably Quinn—she’s in my physics class and could’ve easy swiped it from my backpack when I was at the whiteboard calculating the velocity of an elephant sliding down a seesaw at a forty-five-degree angle.

  Superrelevant.

  The word of the day is . . . meh? By the time I stake out Clarice’s locker after last bell, I’m feeling more curious and less graymaily than I was yesterday.

  “I need your help,” I say. “And before you refuse . . . 420. Photographic evidence.”

  Beneath her sleek black bangs, Clarice’s eyes go wide, and an armload of flyers scatter at her feet.

  “Relax.” I crouch down to help. “I just have some questions. I’m trying to figure out what happened that night and who started the Facebook stuff. It wasn’t me.”

  “It wasn’t me!”

  “You might’ve seen something.”

  She holds my gaze for a moment, considering.

  “Photographic evidence,” I singsong. “Fairy wings, pot leaf hats . . . could be the biggest scandal to hit Lav-Oaks since the other biggest scandal.”

  She blows a breath through her bangs. “Fine. Because I respect Cole and I’m a huge proponent of truth, I’ll talk to you. Confidentially?”

  “Off the record,” I say, which basically means it’s not confidential but it’s not going viral, either.

  We grab her stuff and duck into an empty classroom, shutting the door behind us.

  Clarice confirms that she and 420 were making out in the closet when Cole and I came in—they heard us arguing about Ellie, but didn’t want to get busted. After we fell asleep, they saw their chance. 420 left first, and she followed a few minutes later.

  “No one was around on the second floor,” she says. “By that time, people were mostly chilled out in the living room and on the deck. Everyone was, like, wasted. Total I Love You, Man stuff, stupid parlor tricks.”

  “Olivia with the Mike’s Lemonade,” I say.

  “Exactly. No, wait . . .” She shakes her head, presses her fingers to her temples. “That was later. I didn’t actually see it. When I was in the living room, she was sitting with her girlfriends, all smooshed together in the big recliner. They were playing ‘I Never.’ A few minutes later, Farrah came in and told people that you and Cole were doing it upstairs.”

  “Doing it? God. Was there a stampede?” I say. “I’m surprised there weren’t more pictures.”

  She shrugs. “Most everyone was so blasted by then, it didn’t really register. Olivia and Quinn got up, just kind of giggling and whispering about it. But then Brian and Ryan got into a wrestling match on the deck with these two werewolves, and after that someone brought Prince Freckles inside, and . . . I don’t know. I think people kind of forgot about you and Cole. Seriously, it’s not like you really were doing it. You were asleep. It was just one of those ‘what happens at the party stays at party’ things.”

  “Can you say for certain whether anyone went upstairs after that?”

  Clarice nods. “A few people. Olivia for sure, and maybe Haley and Quinn. I don’t know them all that well, and everyone had wings, so . . . I just . . . People were kind of coming and going, and I found . . .” Clarice’s face goes from pale to puce in a second flat. “I was doing something else. In the mudroom.” She waits for me to get the drift.

  Pause button on my own drama, because . . .

  “You and 420, huh?” I say playfully. “He called you a Doritos kind of girl, right? In 420 lingo, that’s practically a sonnet.”

  She blushes again. Despite our tense history, it’s hard not to like this smitten version of her. “He’s charming once you get to know him.”

  “How will you cross the drug divide?” I ask. “I don’t mean that as an insult. But really. Clarice, you don’t even like my boots. You’re, like, hard-core straight-edge. And he’s . . . more of a squiggle.”

  “Honestly? It’s an issue.” Clarice’s voice is thoughtful, but her smile doesn’t fade. “Look. I’m not one of those girls who thinks she can save the boy, or even make him change. I’ve been trying for years with no results. The thing is, all that time I spent lecturing him and following him around, I got to know him—even more than I got to know John. There’s a lot more to 420 than just . . . Well, for starters, he has an actual name. Lucas.”

  Lucas. Such a little thing, knowing a person’s name. A simple, everyday thing that changes my entire perspective.

  Clarice smooths the back of her hair. “It’s not perfect, Lucy. But you can’t help who you love.”

  • • •

  I text Franklin to meet up at the lab for the Clarice update, but we cross paths in the hall at my locker.

  With Olivia.

  “Oh, there you are,” she says, all fake nice. She holds out a yearbook. “It was on the condiment table in the cafeteria.”

  “I didn’t leave it in the cafeteria,” I say.

  Her face pinches. “Well, that’s where I found it. Do you want it or not?”

  Franklin’s giving her this look, like he’s trying to puzzle something out, and when I reach for the yearbook, he makes a move to do the same. I’m faster though, and the second it’s in my hands, Olivia motors out of there.

  “She’s up to something,” Franklin says. “Maybe you shouldn’t—”

  “People signed this? For me?” Every page, every inch of white space is covered with signatures.

  But they aren’t signatures. They’re messages. Identical.

  Have a #JUICY summer!

  After all the name-calling, the spitballs, the Facebook page, this is the thing that breaks me, the final act that sends me over the edge. Tears slip down my cheeks unbidden, splashing onto the yearbook.

  “Original,” I choke out. All the lightness I felt with Clarice is slipping into shadow, all the camaraderie with (e)VIL a distant memory.

  Franklin takes the yearbook, fli
ps through the pages. “Bloody hell.”

  He slams the yearbook shut, and I grab it and chuck it into a trash can.

  “We could talk to Ms. Zeff,” he says, “ask if they have extras—”

  “I don’t want one. What’s the point? No one will sign it.”

  Franklin’s deep brown eyes are full of concern. “We’re almost graduates. You can’t let these petty acts of vandalism convince you that you’re a bad person. You’re not, Lucy.”

  “I hooked up with my best friend’s barely-ex-boyfriend.”

  “One, I know there’s a lot more to the story than that. And two, even if there weren’t, that still doesn’t make you a bad person.”

  “It just feels like no one’s willing to stick up for me.”

  “Lucy, I was at your flat yesterday. The place was full of people.”

  I shake my head. “Ash and those guys just want someone to fight for their cause. You know? To make a point, like, ‘Ooh, social networking is bad!’ But what about my cause? Someone stole my phone, first and foremost. This is practically a criminal matter.”

  Franklin squeezes my arm. “Don’t get mad at me for saying this, love, but you can’t expect people to stick their necks out for you if you won’t speak up for yourself.”

  “No one gave me a chance!” I break away from his touch. “They just attacked. Everywhere I look, people are whispering about me or throwing stuff. Since this started, I’ve had to cut gum out of my hair, wash ink out of my gym shorts, tear posters off my locker, pick noodles out of my bag. You saw the yearbook.”

  “I’m not defending their behavior. I just mean . . . you could’ve gone on record and said something in the paper, if not to Zeff. But you chose not to.”

  “I’m trying to figure out what happened first. I can’t defend myself without evidence. Someone stole my phone and deliberately posted those pictures on my account. I’m trying to find out who. And every day, it gets a little more obvious that it’s Olivia.”

  “Okay,” Franklin says. “Let’s say it is Olivia. Let’s say you get your evidence—irrefutable, even. What then? All of this is pointless if you’re not willing to take a stand. This is bigger than you, Lucy. It’s not just about a stolen phone and a few embarrassing pictures. It’s not even about Olivia and her friends bullying you.”