“I’ve always wanted an armband tattoo,” Irene said. She showed her design, a circle of red ribbon intertwined with silver barbed wire. It expressed her pointed-yet-loyal personality perfectly. Off to the side she’d doodled an octopus with wavy arms.
“That’s amazing,” Haley said. She shaded her butterfly drawing with her hand. It looked pathetic next to Irene’s designs.
“I like that octopussy over there,” Shaun suggested.
“That’s just a doodle,” Irene said.
“Still, it rocks,” Shaun said.
“There are so many things I’d like to try,” Devon mused. “Here’s the latest.” His drawing was beautiful: a sweet-looking fish with shimmery blue, silver, pink, purple and gold scales.
“You’d have to find a really talented tattoo artist to do that right,” Irene said.
“Do you know one who works pain-free?” Devon asked.
Johnny’s dream tattoo was a flaming heart. “I’ve already got a few tats,” he said, lifting his shirt and showing off two tropical flowers printed on his impressive washboard abs. “A big one like this would have to go on my back, I guess, and I’m just not sure I’m ready to make that major a commitment.”
“I’m ready,” Shaun said, waving his elaborate drawing of an orange and black tiger. “This is no hypothetical dream tattoo. This one’s going to end up right here”—he pulled down his pants and mooned the class, slapping the paper against the skin on his buttocks. The class roared with laughter.
Mr. Von came over to their table to calm things down. “Shaun, let’s wait to reveal the posterior after you’ve gotten the tattoo,” he said. Haley supposed it was Mr. Von’s strange way of being reasonable. “Until then, it’s pants on.”
Shaun pulled up his jeans. “Got it, Rickster. That’s fair. But you’re all on notice—prepare yourselves! What creature emerges when the tiger meets the ass?”
“That’s one of those unanswerable questions,” Johnny said.
“For sure,” Irene said. “Haley, what’s your tattoo?”
Haley looked down at her sad little butterfly sketch. Transferring it into permanent body art would be a major mistake. Everyone else’s drawings were so much better. “I’m still working on mine,” she said, folding up her piece of paper.
“Well, you better hurry up and finish,” Shaun said. “ ’Cause we’re all going to the tattoo parlor and getting these babies inked up this afternoon!”
“Why don’t you get a tattoo of an inner tube?” Johnny suggested with a snicker.
“What?” Haley said. She looked up, worried. She had no idea what he was talking about, but she didn’t like the sound of his laughter.
“You know, because you’re such a good tuber,” Johnny said. Shaun was laughing now too, but Johnny stopped when he saw the clueless look on Haley’s face. He shook his head. “Oh, no. You don’t know, do you?”
“Know what?” Haley said, panic rising in her throat.
“About the video,” Shaun said. “Online. Of you.”
“What video?” Haley’s voice was getting shrill.
“Hillsdale Hauntings,” Shaun said. “That new Web site everybody’s talking about. I have to say it is totally awesome.”
“What are you talking about?” Haley said, but she was getting a very bad feeling. She’d heard people mention some raunchy Web site but she never seriously thought it could have anything to do with her. . . .
“It’s an old home video of you from when you were around ten,” Johnny explained. “You’re riding on an inner tube being pulled behind a motorboat, and . . .”
Haley didn’t have to hear the rest. She knew what was coming.
“You hit a wave or something and your bathing suit comes off.” Johnny paused while Shaun laughed harder, trying to hold it in, pounding a fist on the desk. “So basically you’re, you know, naked. . . .”
Haley’s face flamed red. He can’t mean this, she thought. He’s teasing me. He heard about this old video somehow and decided to play a joke on me.
“News flash. News flash. News flash,” Shaun chanted, pounding his fists on the desk. Irene didn’t crack a smile; she just kept on drawing, as if she were afraid to look up. Devon somehow avoided glancing at her, but Haley could tell this conversation had made his ears perk up. “I’ve seen it too.”
No, Haley thought. This isn’t happening.
It’s all true? Johnny and Shaun and who knows who else have all seen me . . . naked?
This doesn’t look good. There’s still a chance Johnny’s making up this story about a naked Haley online, but it’s looking like this is for real. If you think Haley is dying of humiliation and can’t think about anything but how this video will ruin her life, send her home screaming to see if it’s true on (TOTAL MORTIFICATION).
Maybe you think Haley would seriously consider getting a tattoo after hearing there’s a video of her in the buff circulating online. Hey, maybe she’s feeling reckless, like, what’s the difference now that everyone in school has seen her naked anyway? If so, send her to the TATTOO PARLOR.
If you think Coco’s birthday party is a good chance for Haley to prove that some silly video won’t get her down, go to, TEA AND SYMPATHY. The event is sure to be amazing, at the very least—if Haley can stand the public scrutiny.
Just how brave is our Haley? Will she hide out in her room or face the possible scandal like a trouper? The after-shocks will depend on what you decide.
TIME ALONE
* * *
The past is much more likely to come back to haunt you if you film it on Super 8.
Haley escaped to her bedroom and logged on to her computer. She was long overdue for some “one on none” time. Between all the drama in her life and the scandalous talk circulating at school, she needed to clear her head.
Once the door was closed, she took a deep breath and relaxed. From her bedroom window she could see the Highlands’ driveway, but luckily there were no distracting signs of Reese. Now that his foot was broken, he was housebound, and it helped clear Haley’s mind not to have him in view.
Haley checked her in-box and found an e-mail from Coco De Clerq with a link to a Web site for the teen queen’s seventeenth birthday party. Haley clicked on it and a beautiful Web page opened on her screen. The words High Tea were written in an elegant font: gold letters on a china blue background. Coco’s initials were monogrammed at the top of the page.
Coco must have hired a Web designer to make this, Haley thought as she clicked on the picture to enter the site.
“You are invited to celebrate the birthday of Coco De Clerq,” it said over a photo of the De Clerqs’ expansive lawn and white pool-house portico. The place, of course, was fabulous, and Haley knew the party would be too. She tried to imagine herself in this elegant setting, wearing . . . what? Whatever attire was appropriate for this shindig, it wasn’t hanging in Haley’s closet. If she went to the party, she’d have to take a serious shopping jaunt first.
Haley returned to her in-box and clicked on the next e-mail. It was from Irene Chen and the subject line read, “You might want to get a tattoo after you see this.“ Inside was a link to the new Web site everyone at school had been constantly mentioning in the halls, Hillsdale Hauntings, along with the coveted password.
Finally! This is it, Haley thought, clicking through to see what all the fuss was about. Under the “Hillsdale Hauntings” banner, a ghost popped up and whispered, “Boo.” On a sidebar was a list of videos available for viewing. Haley scanned the choices and clicked on one called “How to Sleep Your Way to a Cover Shoot.” She had a feeling she knew who’d be starring in that particular Webisode. And she was right.
The video opened with a shot of Mia Delgado lounging on a mussed-up bed in her underwear—with a guy. She wore a bra and shorts and nothing else, her thick, dark hair sexily messy, a smear of red lipstick on her mouth. She laughed and flirted with the guy, who was lying back and harder to see.
“Want some water?” Mia said in her Span
ish accent, taking a glass from the table next to the bed. She playfully poured a little water on the guy in bed with her.
“Hey! Stop it!” he said, but they both just laughed.
“I thought you were thirsty,” she said, and splashed a little more on him.
Haley was stunned. Mia Delgado, in her underwear, in bed, for everybody to see! She hadn’t expected the videos to be this explicit.
Then Mia fell on top of the guy and started kissing him. Soon they were making out heavily while the video camera rolled. Haley could not believe her eyes. Who shot this? she wondered. And who posted it on this site?
The video cut off after three minutes, just when things were getting really steamy. Haley returned to the menu and scrolled down the page. What else was on this thing? Wait a second . . . what was this video called “Boob Tubing”? She’d heard those words whispered around her a lot lately. She clicked on it, and as soon as the first image flashed on the screen, she had to suppress a shriek of horror.
There she was. Or at least her younger self.
With shaky fingers she clicked Play and the video rolled. It was grainy but beautiful footage, shot with her dad’s antique Super 8 camera. There was Haley at age ten in a blue polka-dot bathing suit, riding on an inner tube being pulled at high speed by a motorboat on a lake. Haley remembered this incident with a sense of dread—it was old film from a vacation she’d taken with her family at Lake Tahoe. And she already knew what came next. The inner tube bounced on the waves until it crossed the huge wake of another boat. Haley was dragged through the water and the inner tube went flying. The force of the impact pulled her bathing suit right off her body. And still, the camera rolled.
“Oh no. Oh God no,” Haley murmured, shaking her head in disbelief. “I can’t be seeing this. This can’t be on here! This can’t be . . . public!”
The video showed skinny little underdeveloped Haley washing up on the shore of the lake in her birthday suit. She stumbled onto the beach covering her private parts with her hands and diving for a towel.
The clip finally, mercifully ended. Haley felt faint. Her dad and his stupid camera. She hated it! She’d always hated it. And now look what had happened. She stared at her computer in shock and disbelief.
How could this have happened? Then she remembered her dad’s latest project, to transfer all the old Miller home movies onto digital files for easy storage and access. And who, but who had been helping him at the post house? Garrett “the Troll” Noll.
Haley was mortified. She groaned, fell onto the bed, put the pillow over her head and screamed in frustration.
I’ll never be able to leave this room again, she thought. Never ever ever ever ever . . . But even if it’s the last thing I do, I will get back at that jerk Garrett for humiliating me like this. Maybe not now, maybe not this year, but someday, and for the rest of his life!
Poor Haley! She’s joined the ranks of Pamela Anderson, Paris Hilton and many more famous faces—and body parts—seen by millions, or in this case hundreds, on the Internet. Sure, she’s just a skinny kid in the video, but it’s still humiliating. Maybe even more so. This is the kind of attention Haley could totally live without. One of the worst moments of her young life, replayed over and over for everyone at school to see. Thanks, Dad. Thanks a ton.
Of course, Mia showed almost as much skin as Haley did—and a heck of a lot more curves. Haley couldn’t help wondering how Mia felt about her exposure—was she as embarrassed as Haley? Or was she proud of it? Maybe she’d posted the video herself. Haley found that hard to imagine, but anything was possible when it came to Mia Delgado, who was always criticizing Americans for their puritanism.
After those startling home moments, you nearly forgot about Coco’s big birthday bash, didn’t you? Any party given by the First Girlfriend is bound to be the talk of the town, especially when the governor herself is planning to make an appearance. Haley may feel like hiding in her room forever, but won’t she regret missing the party of the year? And won’t Coco’s blowout eclipse her silly little video anyway?
If you think Haley is experiencing TOTAL MORTIFICATION and is never going to leave her bedroom again, turn to TOTAL MORTIFICATION. If you think Haley should keep her chin up, face the music and enjoy Coco’s birthday party in spite of the haunting video, go to TEA AND SYMPATHY. If you are way too curious about that video of Mia and what’s behind it, have Haley INVESTIGATE MIA. Finally, if you think Haley is feeling so angsty over the leak that she wants to turn to the dark side and punish herself with body art, go with Irene, Shaun and Devon to the TATTOO PARLOR.
The video is out; the damage has been done. Don’t let Haley do anything to make things worse.
PRINCIPAL CRUM’S LITANY
* * *
If you think people are whispering behind your back, they probably are.
Haley walked into the auditorium as the students settled in for another rant from Principal Crum, who always seemed to be on the warpath about something. No one took his outrage very seriously, as anyone watching the Hillsdale students (tossing paper airplanes, tweaking each other’s hair, tumbling over their seats and laughing and talking as if they were at a house party) could immediately attest.
Principal Crum had just entered the room, so Haley sat down where she was, near the front. She turned around and caught sight of alterna-rebels Devon McKnight, Irene Chen and Shaun Willkommen occupying the nosebleed section with Devon’s blond neighbor buddy, Darcy Podowski, by his side. Irene was sketching in a notebook, Shaun was pounding his chest like a gorilla for some unknown reason, and Devon was leaning over and touching Darcy’s wrist just where, Haley happened to know, Darcy had a small tattooed blue star. Darcy leaned toward him too, and he held her wrist and lifted it up toward the light to see the tattoo more closely.
Gross, Haley thought, averting her eyes. Why was it so hard to watch Devon with that blond freshman? Haley wasn’t sure, but something about the two of them together really bothered her. She looked around the room for something to take her mind off Devon.
The skate crew—Chopper, Troll and associates—crowded into the back corner. Devon hung with them sometimes, but lately he’d been putting more energy into his photography than his shredding. The Troll and Chopper were squirting each other with water guns, only whatever they were shooting wasn’t water. Unless water was bright orange, which could happen, Haley thought, if the pollution in New Jersey got bad enough.
The brain trust—Annie Armstrong, Dave Metzger, Hannah Moss and Dale Smithwick—sat near Haley in the front row. Normally Alex Martin might have been with them, since he was cocaptain of the debating team with Annie, but he and Annie were still having shouting matches over his conservative environmental views. Instead, Alex sat near his fellow fiscal conservatives Spencer Eton and Coco De Clerq, although Spencer and Coco did not acknowledge his presence in the least. Coco had a large box in her lap and sat at attention, as if ready to spring something on the masses.
Soccer star and singer-songwriter Sasha Lewis sat in the middle of the room with her boyfriend, Johnny Lane; Cecily Watson; Cecily’s guy, Drew Napolitano; and soon-to-be-Sasha’s-sister Whitney Klein. Sasha and Whitney appeared to be chummier than ever, now that they were living under the same roof, at least on alternate weekends and three days during the school week. Coco kept stealing annoyed glances at their little clique and then quickly turning away so that they wouldn’t know she’d been looking. Not a very effective strategy. Whitney and Sasha continued their whispering and laughing, oblivious, and Haley couldn’t help wondering who they were talking about. Coco, perhaps? Or maybe Haley herself?
No sign of Sebastian Bodega or his sexy ex, Mia Delgado, but that didn’t strike Haley as strange. She wondered if they had assemblies like this in Spain. She doubted Spanish school principals were as uptight as Principal Crum, but anything was possible.
Principal Crum stormed onto the stage in a huff, dropping papers on the way and bending down to pick them up, which made his pants ride up and s
howed that he was wearing mismatched socks that day.
“Vermilion Alert, people! Vermilion! A very, very serious matter has come to my attention,” he shouted into the microphone. The students quieted down somewhat, but not completely. Principal Crum was not expert at keeping their attention.
“I’ve just learned of the existence of a Hillsdale High Web site so heinous it defies description. I want you all to know about it so you can keep as far from this filth as possible. The site is called Hillsdale Hauntings.”
Bursts of laughter popped up throughout the room. Obviously some people were already well aware of this threat to their mental and moral health. A few people around Haley whispered and she thought some of them were looking at her. I’m just being paranoid, she told herself. Why would people be talking about her? She hadn’t done anything exceptional lately. She hadn’t even had a bad hair day in weeks.
“On this despicable site,” Principal Crum said, “someone—a student or students at Hillsdale, as I understand it—has posted explicit video footage of some of our own students. These videos contain graphic language and even some brief nudity—”
Now the room really buzzed, and again Haley got the feeling, stronger this time, that people were pointing and whispering about her.
“I want you all to avoid it like the plague! Someone is violating the privacy of our students. It’s illegal and immoral, and I will get to the bottom of it.”
On the word “bottom,” Shaun Willkommen stood up and slapped his butt.
Great, Haley thought. Principal Crum doesn’t want people to see the site? Then why did he just advertise it to the whole school? No one could resist logging on to Hillsdale Hauntings now.
“I’d like to get to the bottoms of some of it too,” a guy yelled out from the back.
“Who said that?” Principal Crum’s face was red with rage. Haley wondered if he used the color of his face to determine what kind of alert he called when trouble arose. If today was a Vermilion Alert, the principal’s skin tone certainly matched it. “Who said that? Never mind. I’ll find you. I’ll find the perpetrators of this terrible crime against our modesty and good taste. And when I do it will be no joking matter, I promise you that. Now, since this is an Internet problem, we need to fight technical expertise with technical expertise. Not my forte, so I’d like to enlist the help of our school’s finest scientific minds. Where are Hannah Moss and Dave Metzger?”
What If ... Your Past Came Back to Haunt You Page 10
