#Scandal

by Sarah Ockler

  He nods. “I misled you about my reasons for wanting the inside scoop on the Facebook scandal. But our friendship? That was real. From the first time we talked, I never saw you as just another variable. And Ash—he wasn’t involved, as far as your story was concerned. He and I started this long ago. He wanted to help you solve this thing too. He believes in justice. And he really likes you, Lucy. He respects you.”

  “You both took advantage of me. You both lied.”

  He winces, but doesn’t deny it. Instead, he turns to Griffin. “Do you mind if I speak with Lucy in private?”

  She snorts. “Like that’s gonna happen.”

  “I’m fine,” I tell her. “Go. I’ll catch up with you after.”

  Griffin huffs, but she does as I ask.

  Franklin says, “You’re right, I lied. I’m here to apologize for that. But you’re a liar too.” There’s no melodrama in his voice, no accusation. Just fact. “Still trying to convince yourself that Facebook is the cause of your problems. Or cell phones or cameras or Olivia and her friends. Even your sister gets the blame.”

  “Jay has nothing to do with this.”

  Franklin shakes his curly head. “I’ve seen the way you treat her, how embarrassed you were during her performance at the pep rally. You didn’t want me to know you were related—not because you thought I’d use you to get close, but because you were mortified of her.”

  I lower my eyes, focus on untangling Prince Freckles’s mane.

  “Why not add Cole, if we’re making a list? He should’ve told Ellie no when she suggested you go to prom in her place.” His voice is rising, emotion replacing his measured tone. “And Ellie . . . She’s the one who kept secrets, then got upset when she discovered you liked her ex. There’s also the school. Ms. Zeff. (e)VIL. Horses too. Right, Freckles? Bloody hell, he was at that party. He could’ve taken the pictures. Why not?”

  Prince Freckles stomps his still-sequined foot. Leave me out of it, dude.

  I’m silent, still brushing. It’s one of those moments I’ll reflect on later and come up with all the right things to say. All the best comebacks, the real zingers to put him exactly in his place.

  But right now, all I can do is hurt.

  He’s right.

  “You’d like to crucify everyone for living on Facebook,” he continues. “Yet you shared more of yourself with Miss Demeanor, a fake online persona whose primary claim to fame is hashtag scandal, than you have with any real person in your life. You haven’t even shared your feelings with Cole.”

  “I trusted you,” I say. “Maybe not with everything, but with a lot. And look how that turned out.”

  The words find their target; hurt flickers in his eyes.

  “I’ve been here for you all along, Lucy. I still want to help you solve this. And I still want to be your friend. You just refuse to let anyone in.”

  I clap the brush against the side of the pen and hang it back on the hook. “It’s done,” I say. “I know who did it. I have my proof.”

  Franklin raises his eyebrows. “Well, don’t leave me hanging, Veronica.”

  “You won’t be shocked to know it’s Olivia.” I tell him about Griff and the phone.

  “Why didn’t Griffin send me an update? This is a major breakthrough in the case.”

  “Why do you think, Miss Demeanor?”

  Franklin’s neck goes bright red. “Right. Well. Are you sure it’s your phone? Lots of people have iPhones.”

  “Same cracked screen.” I slide it out of my pocket and show him; then I remember he’s not allowed to be involved anymore, and I put it away.

  “What are you planning to do?”

  “Confront her,” I say.

  “But it’s still yours and Griffin’s word against hers. I think you should—”

  “Stop.” I shake my head, erase my stick figure sketches with the heel of my boot before Franklin even notices them. “Griff and I can take it from here.”

  • • •

  I’m so ninja style—minus the fruit—as I sit through our last art class, quietly rolling my final sketches into a long cardboard tube. Olivia’s cozying up to Mr. Lopez today, no eye contact, no harsh whispers or smarmy remarks about me and Cole. But when the bell rings and she slips into the bathroom for a break, I follow her, quiet as a mouse, deadly as a viper.

  Once she’s in a stall, I lean back against the main door. I hold my breath.

  And I wait.

  Despite my impressive undead kill stats and my obsession with all things gore, I’m not a brawler; I detest actual violence. I’m not even much of a yeller. Sarcasm and avoidance, the dash of melodrama I inherited from my actress sister? Those are my weapons of choice.

  I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and I almost laugh. Smudged black eyeliner. Dyed red hair. Nose ring.

  Real intimidating.

  There’s the telltale flush, but before she opens the stall door, Olivia’s phone rings. I hear the rustling, wait for her to dig out her phone and answer. There’s a deep sigh, a pause, the hello.

  And then she’s crying, her voice broken and defeated as she tells her parents yes, it’s fine if they cancel her graduation party; her friends will make other plans. Yes, she’ll come right home after school, and yes, tomorrow’s senior picnic is mandatory, but she’ll come right home after that too. Yes, she knows she’s still grounded.

  I look at my cracked iPhone, the dead black screen smeared with fingerprints.

  Oranges in a vase, sunflowers on the table. A basket full of puppies . . .

  Olivia’s paintings in Lopez’s class.

  When she lurches out of the stall, eyes red and smudgy, I don’t give her a chance to speak. I hold the phone up, wiggle it in front of her face.

  “You’re taking my picture in the bathroom now?” she asks. “Classic.”

  Her expression doesn’t change, short brown hair sticking up like she couldn’t be bothered styling it this morning. She ducks under my arm, heads for the sink.

  When the faucet clicks on, I toss the phone into the sink, right under the stream.

  “I’m not paying for that, I hope you know.”

  I hold her gaze in the mirror. She looks sad, maybe a little angry. The ghost of it still burns behind her blue eyes.

  “I have irrefutable proof from . . . from an independent investigator that you created the Juicy Lucy page,” I say. “They were able to cross-check the times of the messages and the linguistics.”

  Olivia’s face rearranges into something closer to surprise, followed quickly by fear.

  And then it crumples.

  She turns to face me, takes a breath, looks at me like she’s about to say something sincere, something important. But all that comes out is, “I deleted it.”

  She plucks my soaked phone out of the sink, drops it on the counter. “Pretty sure this is toast. God, you really are nutter butters.”

  Like I’m not even here, not even a blip on her radar, she goes back to washing her hands.

  Olivia hates me for kissing Cole. She hates me for the picture that got her in trouble with her parents, even though I didn’t post it. She just admitted to starting an online bullying campaign against me. She and her two best friends fueled it with new photos, captions, commentary, and lengthy discussions about my skankiness.

  But one thing is suddenly clear: Olivia didn’t steal my iPhone. She didn’t take pictures of me and Cole kissing on the deck, embracing in his bed. She didn’t upload incriminating evidence to my Facebook profile. Maybe one of her friends did it. Maybe Haley dropped the phone in her bag, set her up to retaliate for being left out of the senior campout. Maybe Griff just assumed the bag in gym class belonged to Olivia, but it was someone else’s entirely. Someone we overlooked.

  Maybe I’ll never know who did it. Maybe it doesn’t even matter anymore, because it’s the last day of school, my friends are scattered, my reputation is shot, and the formerly kind and happy girl at the sink is graduating with her own scandal, her own disappoi
ntments and broken hearts.

  “I’m sorry about the Facebook pictures, Olivia,” I whisper. “I honestly don’t know who posted them.”

  Olivia shrugs, meeting my eyes once more in the mirror. “What’s done is done.”

  All the momentary fury I felt walking in here breaks on the shores of my heart, settling into a low, throbbing ache that no one can feel but me, and when I retreat to the gray-and-maroon halls to clear out my locker, to disassemble four years of pictures and quotes and magnets and long-lost, coffee-stained homework, I’m alone.

  PRIVACY IS DEAD. GET OVER IT.

  Does the phrase ‘restraining order’ mean anything to you?” I snap. “How about ‘hungry German shepherd?’ ”

  There’s a dude with a camera sniffing around my garage when I get home, trying to get shots of Jay’s Porsche through the dusty windows. He jumps when he sees me, mutters something about the wrong address.

  Inside, the TV room is a cave, total darkness broken only by a single ray of light slicing between drawn curtains. Jayla’s asleep on the couch, mumbling and murmuring, her thin body curled up and wrapped in one of Mom’s afghans. Six out of ten manicured fingers poke through the crocheted holes.

  On the table in front of her, there’s a stack of tabloids, wrinkled with water stains. The top one is an old issue of #TRENDZ, and Jayla’s on the cover, the Cali sun bright behind her. In one hand she’s holding a to-go carrier with two coffee cups and a small pastry bag. Her hair is a wild nest, makeup smudged, something dark spilled down the front of her white blouse. Her expression is both shocked and annoyed, like she didn’t realize she was being photographed until the exact moment the shutter clicked.

  CAUGHT ON CAMERA: GET THIS GIRL TO MAKEUP, STAT!

  Beneath the headline, in smaller print: Your favorite celebs doing the walk of shame. Would you want to wake up next to them? Cast your vote on our Facebook page!

  There’s a whole pile of old issues—#TRENDZ and CelebStyle—each one featuring a photo of her on the cover or in a sidebar.

  None of them positive. None of them nice.

  I pick up the stack and chuck them in the kitchen garbage, dump in a glass of water for good measure.

  Back on the couch, Jayla’s still asleep. Her skin is pale, the shadows under her eyes dark and deep, and the whole scene reminds me of last summer.

  The last time I saw her in California.

  Before that, I hadn’t seen her since Christmas, and that was only for a day. When she invited me out to California after school ended, I couldn’t wait to spend time alone with her. We’d have two whole weeks, I thought. Two weeks to catch up, to be together.

  Jayla’s life didn’t stop when I arrived—shoot after shoot, dinner parties, bar meetings, agent calls. Most nights, she left money for pizza or Thai, and I spent my dinners alone, streaming Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

  Two nights before I was supposed to head home, she promised she’d stay in. Only instead of spending the night alone with me, she insisted on throwing a party.

  “I want you to meet my friends, Luce. You’ll love them!”

  All these fake plastic people showed up, half of them assuming I was a caterer or coat-check girl, some even stuffing money into my pockets. Jayla quickly disappeared in a cloud of drunk jokes and forced smiles.

  Hours passed. Long, boring, uncomfortable, synthetic. Finally I decided to go to bed, and I pushed my way through the crowd to find my sister. She was in the kitchen, head thrown back in a laugh that didn’t even sound like hers.

  Everyone there was talking with borrowed voices, flaunting tried-on clothes and faces. When they saw me in the kitchen doorway, they smiled like sharks.

  “Oh, Lucy! Everyone, this is my baby sister, Lucy!” She made a big deal, shouting across the whole apartment, but I didn’t budge. It took her a moment to realize I was upset, and when she did, she gave me this huge frown.

  Come over here and hug me, I thought. Put your arm around me and whisper that you’ll send everyone home so we can hang out.

  But of course she didn’t, and when it was clear that I wasn’t moving from the doorway, she rolled her eyes. “What’s wrong, Lucy? You don’t like when the grown-ups have adult time?”

  Her friends laughed, egging her on.

  “Have a drink,” she said, downing one of her own. “Maybe you’ll learn something.”

  I knew better than to argue with her in front of her pseudo friends, especially drunk pseudo friends, everyone laughing at me like I was some poor little twit Jayla got stuck babysitting.

  Wordlessly, I stalked off to the guest room, flopped on the bed. I just wanted to close my eyes, not open them until the party was over.

  But I wasn’t alone.

  Someone had followed me, this bleach-blond wannabe actor I’d been half flirting with earlier that night—more out of boredom than intrigue. He sat next to me on the bed then, tried to kiss me. He was wasted, and I shoved him off. It really wasn’t a big deal, but I was already annoyed and tired of drunk people, and the guy freaked, raising his voice.

  It was all talk. He’d landed on the floor when I pushed him, and he was still there, holding his head, slurring.

  Tease. Slut. Prude.

  He got up slowly, stumbled to the door, yelled out a few more names.

  Bitch. Dyke. Jailbait. Whore.

  Jayla heard the shouting. When he opened the bedroom door to leave, she was walking in. He stumbled into her.

  “What the hell’s going on?” she said.

  “Baby sister’s a tease, that’s what.” He pushed past her, back out into the crowd.

  “Lucy?” she said softly, and I thought she might hug me after all, might squeeze my hand and ask if I was okay. But then her face turned sour. “This party was the worst idea ever. I should’ve known you wouldn’t be able to handle it.”

  She slammed the door, slammed me inside the guest room and went back to her party like I really was the poor little twit she had to babysit.

  I packed the next morning, called a cab before she could stop me.

  “What’s your problem?” she said as I was hauling my suitcase out the door. “You’re acting like he raped you or something. Grow up, Lucy.” She laughed like the whole thing was a joke, like I needed to lighten up.

  But she didn’t get it. No, he hadn’t attacked me. He was just some drunk guy at a stupid party I didn’t want to be at. He wasn’t the reason I was leaving.

  It was Jayla. The sister I no longer recognized as mine. I knew it that night, confirmed when she slammed the door.

  Janey-girl was gone, and I never even got the chance to say good-bye.

  Now, standing before our couch, I shove Jayla hard in the shoulder. “Wake up.”

  Her eyes flutter, sticky and uneven, squinting.

  “There was a photographer outside. Should I let him in? Get a few behind-the-scenes shots?”

  Her eyes finally focus, huge and blue, and for a second it’s like she forgets everything that happened in the last few years. She’s sweet and beautiful again, innocent, happy to see me. She smiles, stretches her fingers through the holes in the afghan, flutters them against my knee.

  I want to scream at her. To cancel her graduation appearance, pack up her Louis Vuitton bags and get her on the next flight out. Back to California, to her fake friends, to anyone who wants her. I want to yell, demanding to know how the golden girl who had everything could lose it all so fast.

  Reckless. Ridiculous. Impossible. Selfish.

  The labels float before my eyes.

  But under all the anger and denial and brattiness, the real truth rears its ugly head.

  Jayla is alone.

  Hundreds of thousands of Heartthrob Facebook fans, and she never once thought to talk to her own sister about how much she was hurting, about how dark her dreams had turned.

  And her own sister—aka me—was too wrapped up in drama to figure it out. To offer one encouraging word. To draw her a hot bath. To bring her chocolate mini bundts with spri
nkles. To challenge her to a game of Fruit Ninja.

  To give her one sincere, everything’s-gonna-be-all-right hug.

  To forgive her.

  • • •

  “Die, beasty hellions!” I slam on the keyboard and lay waste to a rabid horde. The screen is doused in blood splatter. “That’s right. I’m a survivor, bitches.”

  And a princess. Warrior. International girl of mystery. Back to the safety of online anonymity, where my toughest dilemma is choosing between a weapon that’s sharp and one that’s blunt, judged only by the number of walking corpses I slay.

  No what-ifs and maybes.

  No huddling around the coffee table, helping investigate a scandal.

  No shades of gray.

  No swapping videos of baby animals.

  No drama, no #scandals.

  No bundt cakes and nerd debates. No Fruit Ninja champs. No Keith and Veronica jokes.

  “Kindly welcome your face to my shotgun! Blam!” I ice a few more zombies, exchange a round of digital high fives with my crew.

  I’m toggling through my weapons when my e-mail notifier pings on the task bar, demanding to be clicked. It’s from Miss Demeanor. Miss Franklin Margolis Demeanor.

  Subject: EVIDENCE.

  I pull out my flamethrower and torch another zombie, creep around in search of more carnage.

  This is me, Franklin. Not clicking on your e-mail. Not clicking, not caring.

  Movement on the screen—another horde. I light up a molly and toss it at a nearby gas tank, watch the whole shit blow up.

  Survivor, that’s me.

  EVIDENCE.

  Click-click BOOM!

  EVIDENCE.

  Rat-a-tat-a-tat! BOOM!

  EVIDENCE.

  EVIDENCE.

  EVIDENCE.

  From: Miss Demeanor

  Dearest Lucy,

  If we were on the phone, here’s the part where I’d say, “Don’t hang up!” So, don’t hang up.