What If ... Your Past Came Back to Haunt You

by Liz Ruckdeschel

  “Not lately,” Haley replied. “I’m waiting for your trashy SIGMA videos to end up online.” Coco was still busy being squired around by Spencer’s mother. Haley felt awkward hanging out with the hostess’s drunken boyfriend, but she didn’t know who else to talk to. This party was beginning to feel like a field full of land mines—with every step she took, something could blow up in her face.

  “Haley, you’re looking fine as always.” Matt Graham, Spencer’s old boarding school friend, kissed Haley on the cheek. “Did somebody say SIGMA? You know we’re reviving it this weekend, right? At the Etons’ humble abode.”

  Haley caught Spencer elbowing Matt in the side. He was too drunk to be subtle. “Shut up—I’m not supposed to invite any of Coco’s friends,” Spencer muttered.

  “But dude, it’s Haley,” Matt said. “We can make an exception.”

  “No we can’t,” Spencer said. “No friends of Coco’s—not even the boob tuber.”

  Haley felt like throwing the contents of her crystal glass in his face. The “boob tuber”? How drunk did Spencer have to be to say something that rude to her face?

  Horrified, Haley walked away without a word and tried to lose herself in the crowd. She spotted Reese Highland off in a corner near the dessert table. He looked forlorn leaning on his crutches and watching the revelers dance, his left foot still in a cast. At last, Haley thought, someone too mannerly to insult her.

  “Hide me,” she said to Reese. “Everybody in this room has seen me naked—and they won’t let me forget it.”

  Reese grinned. “Poor girl. I’m feeling out of it myself. But I’ve got your back. Stay here with me and we’ll hide out together.”

  “Thanks.” Haley reached for two chocolate-covered strawberries and gave one to Reese. “At least the food’s good.”

  “Awesome,” Reese said. “A whole lot better than the dancing.”

  Haley laughed. They watched their classmates wriggle on the dance floor in their fancy clothes. Most of them looked like awkward kids at a bad school dance. Then Mia Delgado, dressed in a slinky, low-cut red gown, stepped onto the floor and started swaying by herself.

  “That’s a different breed, right there,” Reese said, and he was right. Tall and sinuous, Mia stood out from everyone else at the party. She moved with sexy confidence. There was nothing awkward or teenagery about her at all.

  “Got to give her props, it’s a bold move coming in here dressed like that,” Haley said.

  From a table across the dance floor, Spencer, Matt and their private-school friends sat drinking their spiked juice and laughing loudly. “Mia, Mia,” they chanted. Mia ignored them and kept on dancing.

  “She’s pretty brave,” Haley said. She wouldn’t have lasted a second on that dance floor by herself, knowing that everyone was talking about her.

  “Hook me up, Mia, hook me up, Mia, hook me up . . .” Now Spencer and his friends were yelling louder. Haley thought she saw Mia flinch. She grabbed the hands of a nearby boy and let him twirl her around.

  “Hook me up, Mia, hook me up. . . .” The chanting got louder. Finally Mia couldn’t take it anymore. She ran out of the ballroom toward the bathroom.

  “Rotten stuff,” Reese said. “She may never live that video down.”

  Haley felt nervous. “I probably shouldn’t have ever left the house today. Spencer and those guys could do the same thing to me.”

  “They’re thugs,” Reese said. “Don’t mind them.”

  “I think I’ll get out of here before they get a chance to ruin my night too.” Haley said.

  “I’ll go with you,” Reese said. “I’m bored out of my mind.” Then, as if realizing he’d said something rude, he added, “Not with you. With the party, I mean.”

  Haley smiled, for the first time all night. “Let me just make sure my mom knows she doesn’t need to pick me up.” She opened her clutch purse and peeked at her cell phone. She had twelve new messages. What could that be about?

  Scanning through them, she saw that they mostly seemed to be from random boys, some of whose names she didn’t even recognize. The video, she thought grimly. This is all because of that stupid video.

  Then she noticed a message from Matt Graham. She glanced across the room and saw him sitting at Spencer’s table. Why didn’t he just come over and talk to her in person if he had something to say? She opened the message just out of curiosity. It said, “H, Come to SIGMA. XO Matt.”

  She looked at him again, and this time he caught her eye. He flashed her a sly smile, then winked.

  Some party, huh? Coco’s ginormous birthday extravaganza was extravagant, all right, but that doesn’t always guarantee a good time. Some people seem to be having fun—Coco first and foremost—but Haley isn’t sharing the spirit of the occasion. And watching Mia flame out didn’t exactly help. Hate to break it to you, Mia, but if you’re looking for a blasé Continental attitude, you’re going to have to look a lot farther than New Jersey.

  At least Reese is behaving himself. That’s nice, but not always thrilling. If you think Haley should play it safe and hang with Reese, taking refuge amid all this torturous embarrassment and negative attention, stick with the good guy on, GOING PUBLIC.

  Don’t forget Matt Graham’s persistent invitation to party at SIGMA. Who knows—maybe if Haley parties with the thugs in suits, she’ll get them on her good side and they won’t tease her about the embarrassing video. If you think Haley is feeling wild and curious, show up at Spencer’s house on, OLD HABITS.

  Old habits die hard, they say, but playing it safe has its own risks—namely restlessness and boredom. Which route should Haley take? The first step is up to you.

  INVESTIGATE MIA

  * * *

  Even the most explicit video doesn’t reveal everything.

  Haley couldn’t concentrate on her homework. She kept thinking about Whitney Klein’s father and Mia Delgado. Was there really something going on between them? Haley couldn’t rest until she found the answer. She knew how she’d feel if her own father were involved with someone her age: disgusted. Luckily, Haley’s father wasn’t that type. At least, as far as she knew. He was surrounded by college girls for half the week. Did Whitney realize her father was a perv? She’d have to be pretty blind not to. But people could be blind when confronted with something they didn’t want to see.

  Haley logged on to the Internet and went to the Web site for Jerry Klein’s company, New Jersey Breath Spray. She knew that Mia had been on Jerry’s guest list for a campaign fund-raiser for Governor Eton, so she had a sneaking suspicion that she’d find clues about the nature of their relationship in his email correspondence. Somewhere, Jerry Klein probably had e-mails from Mia. All Haley had to do was find them.

  To her surprise, breaking into Mr. Klein’s e-mail account was far easier than she’d expected. She was no hacker, but once she’d found his e-mail address through the company Web site and the remote access site, all she had to do was crack his password. She sat back and thought, What would an obvious password be? He couldn’t be so stupid as to use his name or birthdate. Who else’s name would he use? How about his daughter’s? Haley typed WHITNEY in the password box but it didn’t work. Too easy. Next she tried his new wife’s name, Trisha. Access denied. Aha—what if he combined the two names somehow? That would make sense—the names of the two most important females in his life—not counting, possibly, Mia. TrishWhit? No. Whitrish? Haley chuckled as she typed in WHITRISH.

  Voila! WHITRISH worked. She was in.

  Excited and nervous, Haley got up and double-checked that her bedroom door was locked. She didn’t want anyone catching her when she was up to no good. But it was all for a worthy cause, she told herself.

  She searched through Mr. Klein’s e-mails. He had several private folders, one marked “Trisha,” another from his ex-wife, Linda, and several others filled with nothing but boring business exchanges. Then she hit the jackpot: a folder marked with a simple “M.” Haley opened it, and sure enough, M stood for Mia Delga
do.

  Mr. Klein had saved dozens of e-mails from her. Haley shook her head. There had to be something going on between them, or why so much correspondence? She opened the most recent message and read it.

  Jerry,

  I’m so sorry to do this, but I must ask for your help. You’ve done so much for me already, getting me into that fundraiser the girls at school were excluding me from, I hate to ask, but I’m desperate! I’m being blackmailed by a fashion photographer named Philip Fogelman. We used to date, for a little while, when I was living in New York, and now I find out he videotaped some of our, how you say, encounters? He put a video of us in bed on the Internet already! And now he says he will release more “romantic footage,” even more explicit! Unless I move back to New York and start modeling for him again. I never want to pose for or see him again! But the only alternative is to pay him off, and it requires a lot of money. . . .

  Haley couldn’t believe her eyes. Mia was asking Mr. Klein for money to pay off this Philip Fogelman character and save what was left of her reputation—Poor Mia, being blackmailed by that icky man—and having no one else to turn to for help but Jerry Klein. Haley began to see the glamorous Spanish girl in a new light. She noticed an attachment at the bottom of the e-mail. She didn’t dare open it—she assumed it was probably the “romantic footage” Mia was worried about, and that was the last thing Haley wanted to see.

  Her phone beeped and she noticed she had a load of text messages coming in all at once. Most of them were from boys she barely knew and carried the annoying subject line “Boob Tubing Babe.” She didn’t bother with them and opened the one normal-looking message instead. It was from Matt Graham, a boarding-school buddy of Spencer Eton’s. Haley hadn’t heard from him in a while and wondered what he could want.

  Come to SIGMA this weekend, at Eton’s house. Can’t wait to see you again. XO, Matt.

  XO? From Matt Graham? That was a surprise.

  So, there’s more to Mia than meets the eye. But is she telling the truth? Or is she up to something sneaky? If you think finding out the truth about Mia’s complicated life has made Haley want to RESCUE MIA, turn to RESCUE MIA. If you think Haley doesn’t need to help this girl gone wild—after all, Mia’s made so many foolish decisions on her own, she may be beyond help—LET HER ROT.

  Is Haley less concerned with Mia’s problems and more embarrassed about her own online scandal at the moment? Have her try to get over her fear of GOING PUBLIC. If you think that Haley should forget her troubles and take Matt up on his invite to SIGMA at Spencer’s, go party hearty at the boys’ hangout on (OLD HABITS).

  GETTING FRESH

  * * *

  Sometimes the truth can be very refreshing.

  “Hi, Marta,” Whitney Klein said to the secretary at the desk outside her father’s office. “Is Dad in?”

  “He is, but he’s on the phone,” Marta said.

  “I don’t care,” Whitney said, marching past the secretary’s desk. “We’re going in.”

  “Whitney, wait!” Marta cried, but Whitney ignored her.

  “Come on, girls.” She waved at Haley and Sasha to follow her.

  Haley and Sasha had agreed to go with Whitney to the corporate headquarters of her father’s breath spray company. She needed moral support because her mission was painful: to confront him about the video of Mia Delgado he had stashed on his home computer. Whitney had been shocked to think that her father was obsessed with a girl in her own grade at school, and was determined to confront him about this once and for all.

  Whitney barged into her dad’s corner office and sure enough, he was on the phone, a conference call. “Whittles, what a pleasant surprise! What’s the occasion?”

  “I’ll tell you what the occasion is,” Whitney said, her voice already rising to a shrill pitch. Haley moved quickly to close the door to the office. No need to scandalize everybody in the company.

  “You’re a pervert!” Whitney shouted.

  “Um, gentlemen, I’m going to have to call you back,” Jerry said nervously, disconnecting the call.

  “You’re involved with Mia Delgado! How could you, Dad? First you dump Mom for that bimbo Trisha, and then you start slobbering over a girl in my class?”

  Mr. Klein looked stunned for a moment but quickly recovered. “Whittles, honey, what makes you say this? You’ve got it all wrong—”

  “What makes me say it? How about I found that raunchy video of Mia on your computer?” Whitney said. “What are you doing watching filth like that, of a teenaged girl?”

  “I’ll tell you what I was doing with it,” Mr. Klein said. “If you’ll all just take a seat and calm down.”

  “I won’t calm down! I won’t!” Whitney shouted.

  Haley gently led her to a chair and made her sit. “Listen to your dad, Whitney. He might have an explanation.”

  “I already know the explanation,” Whitney said. “My father’s a perv! Ew!”

  “Whitney, stop,” Jerry said firmly. “Now listen. The reason I bookmarked that video is that Mia asked me to help her. The man who posted that footage is a New York fashion photographer she used to work for named Philip Fogelman.”

  Whitney sat up. “I’ve heard of him,” she said. “We saw him at Bubbies the other day. Love his work.”

  “Well, I don’t,” Jerry Klein said. “He and Mia used to be . . . involved, I guess you’d say. And he has a lot of video footage of their . . . involvement. And now he’s blackmailing her, saying that he’ll post even more explicit pictures and films of her on the Internet if she doesn’t do what he wants.”

  “She’s lying,” Whitney said matter-of-factly. “Philip Fogelman wouldn’t do something so terrible.”

  “How do you know?” Sasha said. “Do you know him personally?”

  “No, I just think, Why would a known photographer have to stoop so low?” Whitney said.

  “To get what he wants,” Jerry said. “Either Mia goes back to New York to work with him again, or he’ll post those videos. And the only other way to stop him is to pay him off. That’s why Mia came to me—to borrow the money she needs to make him go away.”

  “Oh.” Whitney looked chastened now and kind of annoyed that she’d have to rethink her opinion of Mia.

  “It goes without saying that what I’m telling you girls is confidential, okay?” Mr. Klein said. “Okay, Whitney?”

  “Okay,” Whitney said.

  “Of course,” Haley said.

  “So, you’re not dating Mia?” Whitney said. “Not at all?”

  “Not at all, pumpkin,” Mr. Klein said. “I’ve got my beautiful, if demanding, Trisha at home.”

  Whitney looked relieved, but at the sound of her stepmother’s name she couldn’t help making a sour face.

  “Good,” she said to her father. “Keep it that way.”

  So that explains that. Jerry Klein is not—in this case, anyway—a pervert. And Mia Delgado is not as skanky as she appeared to be, either. In fact, she seems to truly be the victim here.

  But has this changed Haley’s opinion of her? If you think Haley feels sorry for Mia and wants to help her, go to RESCUE MIA. If you think Haley still doesn’t like her or trust her, no matter what Philip Fogelman is doing to her reputation, LET HER ROT.

  If you think Haley would rather forget all about this online scandal and do a little much-needed partying instead, send her to SIGMA with Matt Graham on (OLD HABITS).

  TOTAL MORTIFICATION

  * * *

  It’s not easy to be a hermit in the burbs.

  Haley logged on to her computer for the fifth time in an hour. She went to the Hillsdale Hauntings site and clicked on “Boob Tubing.” Yes, it was still there: that horrible vision of her at age ten at Lake Tahoe, riding on an inner tube being pulled by a motorboat. She cringed as the tube crashed through a heavy wake and she lost her bathing suit. There she was again, washing ashore naked. No, it wasn’t all just a bad dream.

  Why did she keep doing this to herself? She knew the nightmare
was real; she just couldn’t get her mind around it. It was too horrible to contemplate, yet there it was in living color for the whole school to see.

  Ding—another text message came in. She didn’t have the heart to even see who it was from. She’d been bombarded for hours with e-mails and texts about the humiliating footage; then she’d locked herself in her bedroom and vowed never to leave. She couldn’t take it anymore. How had this happened to her? Well, she knew how. Garrett “the Troll” Knoll had began working at the post house where her father had been transferring all their old home movies to digital. But it didn’t make the fact that the most humiliating home video ever shot was now leaked onto the Internet any easier to take. Her life was ruined. All she could do was hide in her room until the scandal died down—if it ever did.

  In a way, it was all her dad’s fault for taking the videos to an amateur in the first place. If only he were home, she’d go downstairs and yell at him once again for letting their personal footage fall into the wrong hands . . . even though she knew in her heart her dad didn’t really deserve to be yelled at. It might help her feel better, that was all.

  Her phone beeped again. Five more text messages from random guys with the same subject line: “Boob Tubing Babe.” There was one from Matt Graham labeled “Hi Haley,” but who knew what he had to say. Matt was a friend of Spencer Eton’s and a well-known party guy. She shut her phone off in disgust and threw it onto the desk. She couldn’t take it anymore—negative attention overload. She started to tear up and fell onto her bed to settle in for a good cry. Why did this have to happen to her? Just when things were starting to go so well . . .

  The doorbell rang. Haley stopped crying and listened. There was no one else home to answer it. She lay still, waiting for whoever it was to go away.