#Scandal

by Sarah Ockler

  “Maybe because you need helicoptering?”

  Jayla turns a wounded gaze on me, but her eyes go from hurt to hurtful in five seconds flat. “Lighten up, little sister. Maybe if you weren’t so uptight and moody, you’d have more friends and bigger boobs.”

  She flips through one of the tabloids, forcing a smile at pictures I know she’s embarrassed of. I almost laugh. It’s something I’d text Ellie about, something we’d reenact at a sleepover with the stuffed animals in my bedroom.

  Ohmygod, I’m so famous! Look at all my fanboys!

  I drop into the chair across from her, head in my hands. “Why are you here, Jayla?”

  It’s not even a real question, just a tired, last-ditch insult, but as soon as the words are out, I feel the change between us, a shift and snap in the air like the instant before a lightning strike.

  Night’s ears perk, a low growl resonating behind his teeth.

  I look up. She’s crying. “Jayla?”

  “They fired me,” she whispers.

  “What?”

  “Danger’s producers brought me into corporate for a meeting. When I got there, my agent was already in the room. He had a stack of paperwork in front of him. I knew it was bad news.”

  “What happened?”

  “It was like Intervention. They accused me of partying too hard, missing work. I swear, Luce, they made it sound like I’m one of those crazies who freaks out on Twitter and goes all public meltdown. I don’t even have Twitter! And okay, so I missed a few days and had to reschedule a few shoots. And maybe I did party a little too hard. But it’s . . . Everyone does that stuff. It’s, like, coping.”

  “Coping with what?”

  Jayla wipes the mascara from beneath her eyes. “It’s hard to explain. But one day you’re normal, okay? Then you wake up with all this money, and you’re famous, and there’s a lot of pressure. . . . Hollywood isn’t what I thought it would be.”

  “Poor little rich girl.” I feel bad as soon as I say it, but Jayla’s nodding.

  “You have this dream. And you work your ass off, thinking if you can just get this one thing, your life will be perfect. Then you’re lucky enough to get that thing, and your life isn’t perfect, so you figure, well, I need a new dream. Then you get that one, maybe, work awhile for something more. More. More. And at every step, someone is there to stomp you down. To remind you that you’re just a nobody with a nice ass, that you just got lucky.” She kicks the table, scatters the tabloids. “But shit, that’s why they pay us the big bucks, right? Real high rollers. Depressed, drunk high rollers. That’s the Hollywood secret for you, Luce. And now I’m out of work, and I’m broke.”

  “Broke? But you’re . . .” It doesn’t make sense. My sister is Jayla Heart. She’s Angelica Darling. She’s famous. She’s rich. She’s the golden girl everyone loves to hate. “What about your credit cards?”

  “Maxed,” she says. “The only thing that still works is my debit, and that’s almost done too.”

  iPhone, makeup, clothes . . . Guilt ripples between my shoulders. “What about your rental car?”

  “Airline miles.”

  My eyes go wide. “The couple’s retreat?”

  “Already paid for. I was supposed to go with . . .” She taps her teeth. “Shoot, I don’t remember his name. We dated for a month, but it didn’t work out. I didn’t want the trip to go to waste, so I told Mom—”

  “What about your beach house? The condo?”

  She shakes her head. “Everything I own is in boxes at Macie’s house. She’s the only person in the entire state of California who’s still speaking to me. Well, not counting my so-called friends, the ones who only call when a new scandal surfaces.” She nods toward the tabloids. “I’m sure I’ll hear from them tonight.”

  “But . . . how can they just fire you? You’re the star of the show.” I cross the TV room and take the seat next to her, shooing Night out of the way. I don’t know whether to hurt for her or to be pissed. To hug her or to lecture her. Is this how Mom and Dad feel? Is this why Mom hides the tabloids, pretends it’s all lies? How much do they know? How much do they really see?

  “They wrote me out of the script,” she says. “Spoiler alert—Angelica dies.” She reaches for me, her eyes wild and desperate. “You can’t tell anyone. Not a soul.”

  “Talk to Dad,” I say. “He’ll help—”

  “Of course I’ll help, sweetheart.”

  My parents breeze through the doorway, happy and relaxed, bright smiles lighting up their tanned faces. Night knocks over a lamp on his mad dash to the door.

  Jayla and I shoot up from the couch to hug them.

  “You were supposed to call when you landed,” Jay says, her voice all perky-perky again. “I wanted to pick you up.”

  “We took a taxi,” Mom says. “Oh, sugar, it is nice to be home. The resort was beautiful, but boy was it hot.” She fans her face, her big red Texas hair billowing around her like a cloud. If she or my dad overheard us, neither of them shows it, and Dad seems to have already forgotten that he offered to help with some unknown problem.

  Mom scans the disaster of the TV room, cataloging the infractions. “See what happens when I leave you two alone for this long? Good heavens, darlin’, it’s like a tornado came through here.”

  Dad laughs. “What did we miss?”

  Jayla and I stand in front of the coffee table, smooshing together to hide the space between.

  Evidence from our two weeks of bonding rests on the surface behind us, damning and obvious. On one end, dirty dishes, half-finished Coke cans, cake crumbs. Ice cream spoons licked clean by the dog. Earrings, lipsticks, a tampon, a tissue covered in black nail polish. One sock. A hairbrush. A bottle of Aspirin. Two unpaid speeding tickets. A corkscrew.

  On the other end, there’s a stack of tabloids featuring Jayla car servicing a bunch of Lav-Oaks minors, a folder full of prom party pictures that would shock Mom’s ladylike sensibilities and send her to the hospital, six incomplete PowerPoint printouts highlighting the dangers of cyberbullying, a second copy of Kiara’s Hackalicious report, and a partially dog-licked bowl of crusty brown goop that used to be, in a galaxy far, far away, guacamole.

  Jayla squeezes my hand, a silent plea.

  I’ll keep your secrets if you keep mine. . . .

  “You didn’t miss a thing,” I say confidently. “Welcome home.”

  • • •

  Later, when I’m deep under the cool sheets, my phone lights up the dark room. For a groggy instant I’m disappointed it’s not Franklin, or at least an e-mail from Miss Demeanor, but when I see Cole’s name, my heart soars.

  “I needed to hear your voice,” he says. “I miss you, Luce. I hate that we’re tiptoeing around. I feel like I saw you more before me and Ellie—before all this.”

  “I’m . . . Everything’s so messed up. I know I’ve been acting crazy. I just . . . I don’t know what to do.”

  “You don’t have to do anything. Just be Lucy.”

  “Even if I’m cranky and moody and demanding?”

  “Wouldn’t love you any other way.”

  I smile, the tightness in my chest loosening. “Here’s a demand, then. Sing me a song. You said drummers get all the groupies, but I’m still not convinced.”

  “Oh, I can sing, Vacarro. I’m just waiting for the right moment to steal the spotlight from John.”

  “Think John’s still awake? He did say I was hot, after all. Maybe I’ll ask him to—”

  “This is a B-side from Oasis,” he says. “ ‘Talk Tonight’? I always think of it as our song. At least, since that night.”

  “Dude. You gave us a song without consulting me?”

  “Shit, girl. You’re about to get a free concert in your ear, for which I’m asking practically almost nothing in return, and you’re criticizing?”

  “I thought our song was ‘Reckoner’s Encore’.”

  “Well, yeah. And ‘Nothing Compares 2 U.’ The Stereophonics version. If I told you I downloade
d pretty much all those songs from prom and made a Lucy’s Kickass Boots playlist . . . Is that creepy?”

  “You’re so concerned with not sounding like a stalker, not sounding creepy . . . why don’t you just, you know, be less creepy?”

  “I don’t know how.”

  I match his laugh, and when it finally fades, his voice is in my ear, singing the opening verse.

  I’ve never heard this song before. I’ve never loved a song more.

  I wanna talk tonight . . . until the morning light . . .

  And I’m right back in that lavender dawn, the moment full of all possibilities. At the end of the song he whispers good night, a love spell unbroken as I slip into the darkness. . . .

  A text buzzes against my cheek, yanking me back. I squint to see the message.

  Franklin: i’m so sorry

  IDENTITY THEFT

  MISS DEMEANOR

  4,991 likes

  3,195 talking about this

  Tuesday, May 13

  My dear, loyal pretend friends.

  I come to you from the precipice of 5,000 likes, a white whale of a fan base I never dreamed of reaching in all my one year of dreaming about this page. Alas, on our final day of classes at Lavender Oaks High School, I’m writing with a heavy heart (and it’s not because I’ll miss the Jell-O).

  Fangirls and fanboys. Minions and followers. Likers and oversharers. There’s something you need to know. Something, I’m sure, you’re dying to know.

  Who is Miss Demeanor?

  It’s time to remove the mask.

  I, the undersigned, do solemnly swear (on the U.S. Constitution shower curtain and coordinating Bill of Rights liner, which is a real thing that I own, along with a Declaration of Independence bedspread, because my immigrant parents are patriotic and educational that way) that I am the voice, the face, the mind behind your beloved/behated/be-totally-indifferenced Miss Demeanor.

  Me.

  Senior at Lavender Oaks High School. Valedictorian. Editor of the Explorer. Rogue Brit and secret admirer of American pop culture.

  Franklin Margolis.

  I started this column last year as a joint social experiment with Asher Hollowell, acting independently of his club, (e)lectronic Vanities Intervention League. He’s given me permission to share the details of his involvement here.

  Ash is a good friend of mine, something we’ve kept mostly under wraps in an effort to more effectively conduct our experiment. The idea came about one night during a Star Trek marathon that inspired a lively discussion about technology and its role in how we communicate and relate. Our central question was this: Do human relationships and interactions inspire and shape technology, or does technology shape us?

  Together we set out to prove that people—specifically, our fellow almost-graduates—are more interested in perpetuating negative drama online than in engaging in important, interesting discourse about the news and events in our community and school, and that advances in communications technology—the Internet, texting, smartphones, and social networking—have done more to destroy relationships than to enhance or enable them.

  Sadly, most of our assumptions were upheld.

  Surprisingly, though, they were upheld not just by our subjects, but by me.

  I fueled the drama, offering incentives for the #scandal page, asking you to validate me and profess your so-called love by clicking the like button. I posted gossip, reblogged negativity. I dished the dirt, doused it in gasoline, lit it on fire, and broke out the marshmallows, all under the guise of a legitimate experiment.

  I was wrong.

  I presumed that people use technology as a screen, allowing them to say virtually anything without consequence, but through the Miss Demeanor persona, I got to know students’ issues in a way that writing for the newspaper never allowed. There’s truth in all we say and do, even in our lies and exaggerations.

  I never planned to out myself. After graduation, I was supposed to trail off into the sunset, go out with an air of mystery, become an Internet legend. But that was back when I was still treating this project as an effort to validate my own assumptions rather than as an objective experiment. I never thought this would change my perspective. I never thought it would be the catalyst to bring new friends into my life. And I damn well never thought it would be the thing that, through my underhandedness, would hurt those friends—especially the one I’ve grown to care about most.

  Hurting her is my biggest failure, my deepest shame.

  It’s possible that my confession will earn more enemies than accolades, and that I’ll regret going out like this instead of going out with an anonymous bang. Or perhaps a buzz? ;-)

  Okay, no more jokes. My cynical heart being what it is, I’m guessing most of you stopped reading after “Franklin Margolis” above, and I’m typing into the echo chamber. But for those of you still with me, thank you for listening. I sincerely hope that those I’ve offended and hurt will find it in their hearts to forgive me, knowing that you’ve taught me much.

  Mostly, that even as the guy with the highest GPA at Lavender Oaks High, I don’t know jack.

  With sincere apologies and a final online good-bye,

  xo ~ Ciao! ~ xo

  Miss Demeanor

  Better known as Franklin Margolis

  PANTS, SHIRTS, HATS, ACCESSORIES, AND ALL MANNER OF UNDERGARMENTS TOTALLY ON FIRE

  They used me.” I lean against Prince Freckles and breathe deeply, focusing on the soft sounds of the horses and the earthy smell of hay and oats. “I’m such an idiot.”

  “Shut up,” Griffin says. “You’re so not an idiot. Franklin and Ash are idiots. Honestly, I expected more from our valedictorian. Miss Demeanor? The whole thing is bloody—I mean, freaking—insane.”

  This gets a smile. “Does this mean you’re not moving to London after college?”

  “Hell no.” Griff puts a hand on her heart. “From now on, the only Brit I’ll ever love is Harry Potter.”

  I sit down just outside the pen, sketch two stick figures in the dirt where I first had lunch with Franklin. It was only two weeks ago, but it seems like a year’s worth of ups and downs have converged into one moment, today, our last day of classes.

  “So what did you bring me?” I ask. Griff texted me just before lunch, got something 2 cheer u up bigtime! meet @ stables? “Please say it’s the Daryl and Merle action figures from The Walking Dead.”

  “Not quite, weirdo, but now I know what to get for your birthday.” Griff crouches next to me. She doesn’t quite sit—no way she’ll get her Calvin Klein cutoffs dirty—but the fact that she’s enduring the horse barn at all shows her loyalty.

  From her purse, she fishes out a silver iPhone. My iPhone. The one I lost at Cole’s party.

  “Where . . . ? How . . . ? What the . . . ?”

  “This morning in gym,” she explains. “The little Judas left her bag on the bench while she was in the bathroom.”

  “Olivia?” I ask, and she nods. “You went through her bag?”

  Griff rises and dusts off her hands. “Hardly! The zipper was partway open. Like, a lot of the way. And I happened to see a phone that looked a lot like yours. When I saw the cracked screen, I knew for sure.”

  “What did she say?” I ask.

  “I was about to rage on her,” Griff says, “but I reined it in. I figured it would be better to talk to you first, see how you wanted to play it with Zeff.”

  “Good call.” I flip the phone in my hands, trace my fingers over the familiar scratches and grooves. I’m not that surprised that Olivia turned out to be the perp—even before the phone, the evidence was pointing that way. But I guess there was a small part of me that hoped she wasn’t, that hoped my suspicions would be proven wrong. I wanted to believe that decent people stay decent, deep down, even when bad things happen to them.

  She really had a thing for Cole, more than I ever realized, and seeing him with me must’ve crushed her. Enough to make her post those mortifying hard lemonade pics as a cover. En
ough to inspire her to launch the Juicy Lucy page, to turn the fickle mob against me.

  The Daryl and Merle action figures might disagree, but it doesn’t take a zombie apocalypse to bring out the worst in us, to chase off our humanity. Like the old song in the emo bathroom says—all we need is love. A secret, unrequited ache that goes deep enough to leave scars.

  “Lucy. I hoped I’d find you out here.” Franklin appears in the doorway, the sun lighting him up like some kind of poufy-haired angel. There’s a deep apology in his eyes, but when I recall the message I sent to Miss D the other day, the confession that felt a lot braver when she didn’t have a face—especially not Franklin’s—my skin burns with the heat of a thousand lightbulbs.

  The old, nonenvironmentally friendly kind that get, like, superhot.

  Griffin levels an icy glare. “What are you doing here?”

  “I was hoping I could talk to Lucy,” he says.

  “She’s not interested,” Griff says.

  Franklin crosses the stables and stops before me, his eyes pleading. “You’re my partner, Veronica. Don’t shut me out.”

  “Was.” I’m surprised at how much it aches to say it. “Guess (e)VIL was right all along. Vanity-based technologies really do kill relationships.”

  “Lucy—”

  “I’m not perfect, okay? I screwed up majorly this year. And before all this happened, I was a total antisocial emo bitch most of the time. I get it. But you pretended to be my friend, and I believed you.”

  “It wasn’t pretend. All that time in the lab, hanging out, working on the case . . . it was me. Franklin.”

  “But not Miss Demeanor, the one I was e-mailing for advice. I defended her—you—and you attacked her—you . . .” I squeeze my eyes shut so hard that when I open them again, I see stars. “That’s so—”

  “Meta?” He cracks a smile, but quickly drops it.

  “Really?” Griff rolls her eyes. “That’s pretty ridiculous, even for you.”

  “It was an experiment,” he says. “Gone wrong. I never meant—”

  “You set out to prove how meaningless relationships are by faking one with me.” I slip the phone into my pocket and dust off my hands. There’s a brush dangling from a nail inside the stall, and I grab it, get to work on Prince Freckles. “There was never any Explorer story, right? All your notes, your research, it was all part of your experiment.”