by Sarah Ockler
One section over, I find Cole, and in his eyes are all the pleas from that day in the woods, the last words he spoke to me.
. . . nothing like the Lucy I fell in love with . . .
He’s right. Revenge is nothing like the old me. But things are different now; we’ve all crossed so many lines that it’s impossible to untangle them, to find our way back to the original starting points. I crossed lines when I kissed Cole, when I got into his bed that night, when I passed judgment on Griffin before any of this started. Griff crossed lines when she took my phone and uploaded those pictures. Even Ellie crossed lines, keeping her breakup from Cole a secret, urging me to go to prom in her place as if she really did have a simple case of the flu. When the scandal hit, she automatically assumed the very worst, that I’d posted pictures of me and Cole—and everyone else—just to avoid telling her face-to-face.
I’m not sure we can ever recover from that.
Cyberbullying: A Cautionary Tale, the slide reads behind me. The crowd goes silent. (e)VIL doesn’t know I changed the presentation. I hope they understand.
My finger hovers over the button to advance the next slide. The one with Griffin’s picture, a candid shot of her holding up her phone. Back when all of us were still friends. Back when I still had my own secrets, my own dark desires, none of them plastered all over the Internet.
“Miss Heart, is it true you’re being fired from the show?” one of the reporters asks my sister, low enough that only those of us onstage can hear it.
“Is this your last season on Danger’s Little Darling?” another says.
“Lucy?” Ash whispers behind me. “You okay?”
Roman leans forward, a flash of red Mohawk in the corner of my vision. “Start the show, Lucy. We’re ready.”
I nod, look from the paparazzi to my sister. She’s waving her hands to shoo them off like flies, but they’re relentless. A few seniors are watching them now, too, snapping cell phone shots of the whole scene, texting them off into cyberspace, ready for the next scandal or photo caption contest.
If they knew Jayla Heart was my sister, they’d be snapping shots of me, too.
One click. That’s all it will take. One click and a few words to clear my name, to shift the blame to Griffin, to get off the stage before anyone realizes the scandalous Vacarro at the podium is the sister of the scandalous Vacarro in the honorary chair nearby.
. . . nothing like the Lucy I fell in love with . . .
“Any truth to the drug rumors?” The reporters are relentless. “Is rehab an option?”
“Lucy?” Ash asks again. Ms. Zeff is looking at me, waving her hand in the international gesture for roll the tape.
I look out across the crowd once more, find Griffin’s eyes and hold them.
It was laced with something . . . It hurt . . . All the times you scoffed at me . . .
“Any party plans this summer, Miss Heart?” That guy is loud, louder than the rest, and a bunch of students in the front row snicker. Their attention shifts from me and (e)VIL to my sister, and in that moment, in all that laughing and cell phone clickage, I know it’s time to let my voice be heard. To stand onstage before this huge, captive audience and finally, without any more doubts and speculation, make things right.
I turn and catch Kiara’s attention. “Message from the Mockingjay.”
She cocks her head, confused.
“Change of plans.” I explain the situation, my desperation fueled by the crowd’s pressing impatience. The heat. The paparazzi machine-gunning Jayla. Griffin’s eyes, now boring into my face. Cole’s eyes, dim and disappointed.
“Leave it to (e)VIL.” Kiara ducks into a commando roll behind the stage, narrowly avoiding the sound system. Tens follows her, also almost taking out said sound system, seashells clicking as he rolls.
“Fellow graduates,” I boom into the microphone. Certain I’ve nabbed their attention, I play a background track Stephie made with a few imposing, Borg-like theme songs and recite my canned intro about the dangers of cyberbullying, the difference between having fun online and having fun at the expense of other people’s feelings. There’s a whole pile of statistics and definitions, and while Roman, Stephie, and Ash perform their baffling interpretive dance of colliding electrons, I rattle off the facts, memorized from all my time bonding with Zeff’s manual.
The entire audience—my classmates, our parents and relatives, the faculty, the administration, the paparazzi—is mystified and rapt, all eyes on me.
I take a deep breath, ready—after weeks of hiding—to drop the bomb.
“There’s something you need to know,” I say as the music fades. “Something I’ve kept under wraps for far too long.” My voice echoes across the field. I look at Griffin again. Then Cole. Then, finally, at Jayla.
“Jayla Heart,” I say. “Please join me again at the podium.”
Her brow is pinched with confusion, but she smooths out her navy pencil skirt and rises from the honorary chair, crosses the stage to join me. The paparazzi follow, reassembling in a pile before us.
“Jayla Heart graduated on this stage seven years ago,” I say. “Many of you didn’t know her then, and unless you have older siblings, you probably weren’t here to see it. But I was. She was going by Jayla Heart even then, but her real name is Janey Vacarro.”
I pause, letting it settle across the field of caps and gowns before me.
“She’s my sister,” I continue, “and she’s talented and beautiful. Whether you’re a fan of the show or not, you should know that behind Angelica Darling’s scheming, conniving backstabbery, there’s a real person. An amazing person with the biggest heart of anyone I know.”
Jayla’s shocked into silence. I grab her hand and squeeze, don’t let go. Not when my parents stand and applaud. Not when Zeff blinks at me through confused but heartfelt tears. Not when the media surges forward again, blasting Jayla with more questions.
“Miss Heart, are you bankrupt?”
“What can you tell us about your contract? Is Angelica off the show for good?”
Still grasping Jayla’s hand, I twist her behind me, stand between her and the paparazzi piranha. Just when I fear I can’t hold them off another second, I spot Kiara in the audience, standing on a chair in the middle of the crowd.
She’s holding her megaphone, right on cue.
“Oh! My! God!” she shouts. “I can’t believe it! Right here in Lavender Oaks! It’s the Sarah Palin 2020 tour bus! They just turned down Dorchester Street, flags a-blazing!”
The camera crew exchanges brief glances, then bolts away en masse, chasing Kiara and Tens onto Dorchester in search of the mythical bus.
Zeff seizes the moment and takes the podium from me and Jayla, rushing through her closing remarks, ending with an emotional send-off: “Allow me to be the first to officially congratulate you, Lavender Oaks High School graduates!”
“Lucy last name Vacarro!” From a chair in the back row, Marceau stands up to make an announcement of his own, one of (e)VIL’s megaphones pressed to his lips. “Lucy Vacarro, I’m—”
But a cacophony of tubas and trombones drowns him out, blasting us with an off-key marching band rendition of Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out.”
The crowd rebounds from the confusion and goes crazy, cameras flashing, parents cheering, horns blowing, black caps winging into the air like a hundred tasseled crows taking flight.
Freedom.
THE IMPRESSIVELY GRUESOME DEMISE OF ANGELICA DARLING AND THE UNEXPECTED RISE OF REALITY-BASED RELATIONSHIPS
A flirty tangerine dress is the only thing my sister kept from Angelica Darling’s wardrobe collection, and it was made for Jayla. Stunning much?
Still, her eyes can’t lie. She’s nervous. A little sad, too.
“Sure you’re okay with all this?” I zip her up and tie the halter at her neck, just below her messy-on-purpose updo. “We could go low-key instead.”
“And cancel our joint party? Where there won’t be any actual joints? No way.” Sh
e turns to face me. “Seriously, Luce. I’m superexcited for you to see the episode—you of all people will appreciate the artistic vision. Besides, new leaf, remember? I’m done crying over one little canceled contract.” She waves her hand, like, Been there, done that, got the T-shirt, next?
“You’re beautiful. You know that, right?”
“I owe it all to Sephora,” she says with a cute shrug. “And bee pollen smoothies. Also, wine is a factor—it’s good for the heart. Now, turn around. People will be here soon and your hair is a hot mess!”
Despite the crazy-coaster we’ve been riding this month, and the ongoing paparazzi fallout from last week’s graduation madness—including dozens of feature stories insinuating that Sarah Palin’s team was covertly recruiting campaign aides from the Lav-Oaks graduating class—Mom and Dad wanted to throw us a combined Danger’s Little Darling finale and grad party.
I’d been imagining something like this all year, only in my before version, the guest list was different. Jayla wasn’t around in person, but Ellie and Griff were. We piled up on the couch, mowing down sundaes and poking fun at Angelica Darling, making outlandish predictions for next season.
In my before version, there was always a next season for the infamous Angelica Darling. Always a next season for me and Ellie and Griffin.
“Hold still.” Jayla gathers my hair in one hand and reaches for a brush with the other. As she pulls everything into a twist, we meet each other’s eyes in the bathroom mirror. “Congratulations, little sister. You survived high school. Now you can forget everything you learned.”
“High school whut?”
Jayla smiles. “That’s my girl.”
“Hey. Mind if I borrow your girl?” Ellie joins the reflection behind us, the last person I expected to open my party invitation, the last one I expected to see.
“Ellie,” I say. Her name is strange and foreign on my lips.
• • •
In my room, beneath my pen-and-ink series of celebrity zombies, Ellie and I sit on my bed.
She hands over a large brown bag. Inside, there’s a white box stamped with Black & Brew’s logo.
“You brought Tarts of Apology?”
“Chocolate espresso bean and lemon blueberry,” she says. “I didn’t want to show up empty-handed. Actually, I didn’t want to show up at all.”
My stomach twists.
“It’s not that I didn’t want to see you again,” she says. “It’s . . . I’m still reeling. Like, what the hell just happened?”
I lean back on my elbows and close my eyes. “Tell me about it.”
“Griffin came over the other night,” she says. “She confessed to posting the pictures on your Facebook. She said you had the evidence. Why didn’t you say anything?”
Across the hall, through the closed door, I hear my parents getting ready, Mom sending Dad back to the closet. Again. “The salmon polo shirt,” she says. “That one is orange.”
“I had this big reveal planned for graduation,” I tell Ellie. “But when I got up onstage, I kept looking at you guys and thinking about how things used to be and how screwed up everything got . . . how I screwed it up . . . and everything with Jayla and the paparazzi . . . Something shifted.”
All along, I’d been waiting for summer to come and go, for Ellie and me to get on the road to California and our new lives. But now that high school’s officially over, it doesn’t feel right. Nothing feels right.
High school might’ve been about as fun as a zombie apocalypse, but I always had Ellie. Cole and Griff too. It wasn’t supposed to end like this.
“Even when I saw the pictures that first day,” Ellie says, “I never thought our friendship would be over. I mean, it was superpainful, but . . . it happened so fast. The Cole stuff. The secrets we kept from each other. By the time Griff told me what happened, it was like it didn’t even register. I guess I’m just . . . numb.”
After that day at the picnic, I never thought Griffin would confess, but now that she has . . . maybe it doesn’t matter. She may have been the one who made the evidence public, but she’s not the one who created the evidence in the first place. I kissed Cole. More than once. And before that, I carried this spark, a red-hot thing that smoldered and burned for four years.
I love Ellie, but how could it not affect our friendship? There was always some barely concealed part of me that resented her, the easy way she had with Cole, the almost flippant shrug of her shoulders these last few months whenever she talked about the possibility of forever with him.
If Cole were my forever, I wouldn’t have shrugged. I would’ve held on to it with everything I had.
“I’ve been in love with Cole Foster since he first moved here,” I finally say. “The whole time. Prom was the first time we kissed, but it wasn’t the first time I imagined it. Not even close.”
Ellie’s eyes widen, but just barely, as if her initial shock is immediately replaced with comprehension, how it all makes sense now, how she should’ve guessed it all along.
“That night, he kissed me on the deck after we’d been reminiscing. I kept telling myself it was just that—prom night, everything coming to an end, drinking, some momentary flash. But it wasn’t. Later, in his room, I kissed him again. Not like the pictures made it look. But it wasn’t innocent, either. I wasn’t drunk. I wanted it to happen, Ellie.”
Still Ellie doesn’t speak, but no matter how hard I try to convince myself that it’s the right thing to do, I can’t regret loving Cole, and I say as much.
“I know,” she finally says. “Neither can I. I mean, things changed after the first year—like, we both knew it wouldn’t last. But we had some good times.”
We sit in silence again, not meeting each other’s eyes. I can almost see the flickering filmstrip of shared memories between us, years of stories and moments whooshing by in a heartbeat.
Between them, secrets. Assumptions. All the unsaid things, just as much a part of our story as the rest.
“Where is my brown belt?” Dad shouts from the bedroom. Footsteps follow, Mom rushing to his side.
“Black belt!” she says. “You’re wearing black shoes. Honestly, hun.”
Ellie smiles. “Good to know some things haven’t changed.”
“Oh, yes, they have,” I say. “Jayla sent them on this couple’s retreat, and ever since they got back, they’re all over each other.”
“Seriously?”
“I’ve lost count how many times I’ve busted them making out in the kitchen. It’s practically a health code violation.”
“Eww,” she says. “Thank God your parents aren’t on Facebook. The moms are all over it. It’s gross.” Then her smile falters, and she looks at me with watery eyes. “I was thinking we could . . . I don’t know. Try. Not today, but soon. I don’t want to start college like this. But I’m not . . . I still need time.” Her voice is a fragile whisper. “I can’t promise anything.”
“I know,” I say. “Neither can I.”
“Fair enough.” Ellie stands from the bed and smiles, and I swear it’s like the sun rises in my bedroom, lighting up the undead celebs on the wall. Zombie Taylor Kitsch looks especially cheerful.
“Sure you don’t want to stay for Angelica’s official farewell?” I grab the Black & Brew bag. “It’s supposed to be quite dramatic.”
Ellie laughs, but shakes her head. “I’m helping the moms pack tonight. They’re taking me camping this week—they say we have to bag at least three Fourteeners before I leave for California.”
“Ellie.” It’s all I can do not to crack up. “You hate hiking. And the woods. And pretty much everything about being outside.”
“Hey, we summited Mount Elbert! We sang on Mount Elbert, remember?”
“And the next day you refused to come out of the tent unless Cole promised that you’d never have to hike farther than the car. For the rest of your life. Remember that?”
She shrugs. “Eh, my plan is to fake an injury on day one, check into a hotel, and let them ca
rry out their midlife crisis wilderness adventure without me.”
“You’ve got it all figured out, huh?”
She taps her head. “Four years of quality Lav-Oaks education at work.” Ellie gives me a quick hug. Not a bestie hug, not a we made this mountain our bitch! hug, but a genuine one nevertheless. “I’ll call you when we’re back to let you know I survived.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
• • •
“Duuuuuude. Summertime, and the livin’ is eeee-zee.”
Under the brim of a new, bright red cap, 420 gives me his jack-o’-lantern smile and hands over a bag of Doritos, half empty.
“I think what he means,” Clarice says from the porch steps behind him, “is thanks for inviting us. I brought fruit salad. It’s the one thing I knew he wouldn’t eat on the way over.”
“Fruit and salad,” 420 says, “are not one of the four major food groups of cheesy goodness.”
“You’re hopeless,” Clarice says. But beneath her chunky black bangs, her eyes glitter.
Marceau shows up next, all sincere and adorable with a bouquet of store-bought, totally legal yellow daffodils. “These are for you, to say thank you for hosting me. But I didn’t get roses because they are the flower of love and . . . we are breaking up, chéri.”
I take the flowers. “Marceau, we never—”
“I don’t want to crack your heart, but I cannot go on like this. Someone else is in love to you. And I cannot be the one who stands in the way of true love.”
“Um . . .”
Marceau leans in and kisses my cheek. “You will find your heart to heal again.”
He walks into my house, introduces himself to my family as my ex-boyfriend.
“Marceau!”
“He’s right,” a boy says behind me. “Someone else is in love to you.”
I haven’t seen Cole since graduation last week.
But I turn toward the sound of his voice, and here he is again.
Straight out of my dreams again.
