by Brodi Ashton
DEDICATION
Dedicated to: My boys. Hi Carter! Hi Becks! *waves*
*blows kisses* *Carter gets embarrassed*
*Becks yawns, unimpressed*
CONTENTS
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Acknowledgments
Back Ad
About the Author
Books by Brodi Ashton
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
1
In seeking truth, you have to get both sides of a story. At least, that’s what Walter Cronkite says.
He was the anchor who announced, on live national television, that President Kennedy had been assassinated. My gramma Weeza remembers exactly where she was when Cronkite made the announcement. She was in her kitchen, chopping onions. To this day, onions make her think of presidential assassinations. Sometimes, if I’m helping my mom cook, and Gramma Weeza is invited over, I’ll purposely leave out the onions.
They have too much baggage for her.
Gramma Weeza says we all have those Where were you when blank happened? moments, and then the blank is usually something about when Pearl Harbor was bombed or when 9/11 happened or when the Beatles appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show.
Now I had one of those moments of my very own.
I was sitting in the living room, balancing a paper plate with a leftover taco on my lap, watching the nightly news. My mom had a talent for stretching leftovers into five-day territory. Even on day five, I still usually chose to eat the leftovers, because the other option was always instant ramen.
On the television, there was a press conference about a senator who had died in the arms of his mistress. It was a typical headline inside the Beltway of Washington, DC. My nine-year-old brother, Michael, wandered back and forth in front of the television, spinning a plastic hanger around his fingers, his gaze distant because he was in his own world. He was often in his own world.
My mom sat next to me, half watching the news and half folding laundry. She used to have a separate laundry room, with plenty of space for folding clothes, and even a midsize flat-screen TV on the wall for entertainment, but that was before the economy crashed and my dad’s start-up folded, leaving him with massive debt. Now the “laundry room” is behind a plastic beveled folding door in the kitchen, and the “folding area” is on the couch in the living room. My mom called us a typical middle-class family, but I think she did that to make us feel better about our situation. We were barely clinging to the lower half of the middle class.
“Pipe, why don’t you change the channel?” she said, using her hand to flatten a collar on one of Michael’s shirts. “This is so depressing.”
“But it’s news and it’s the truth. We shouldn’t be scared of the truth.”
I turned back toward the television. The monitor showed the questionable woman who had been with the senator when he had taken his final gasps. (When I become a reporter, I will never shove a camera in the face of a mistress. That is so tabloid.) As the woman shook her head in front of the press corps, mascara tears streamed down her face, making her look even more like a prostitute. Is that uncharitable? Maybe so. I’d have to cut that out if I wanted to be unbiased.
The next video showed the press hounding the senator’s wife, who insisted she’d had no idea of her soul mate’s infidelity.
I shook my head. “Everyone in politics has something to hide, and if a senator hasn’t been involved in a scandal, that’s just because the skeletons in his closet haven’t been discovered yet. The privileged always get into trouble. Rich people are bored people. And that equals trouble.”
My mom sighed through her nose. “You’re so cynical.”
“Reporters are supposed to be cynical,” I said. “That’s how we get the dirt.” I shoved another bite of leftovers into my mouth as I looked at my watch. I still had a half hour before my shift at the Yogurt Shop started.
The kitchen door opened and my dad walked in, looking war torn from his latest day at the Virginia Power and Light Company. He used to be an investor in a company with a big contract to provide glass for smartphones. The problem was, most of his savings were tied up in stock, and he borrowed against it, so when the economy crashed, he lost everything. After that, he took what he could get: shift work at VP&L. He always said he felt safer with shift work.
I never understood how someone could start the day looking fine and end it looking as if he’d just been released by the Mexican drug cartel. He used to wear Armani and smell of Clive Christian cologne. Now he wore secondhand Men’s Wearhouse and smelled of quiet resignation. But he still always managed a wide smile when he walked in the door.
“How are my people?” he asked.
My mom smiled even wider than he did. “Piper was just telling me how every politician is dirty.”
He raised an eyebrow. “So, the usual?”
“Yep.”
“It’s not me saying it,” I said. “It’s the news.”
My dad plopped the mail down on the kitchen table, and that’s when I saw it. The large white envelope with the red Chiswick Academy insignia in the corner.
I drew in a breath as my stomach fluttered. “That’s it,” I said.
“That’s what?” my mom asked.
I nodded toward the table. The rest of my body was frozen in anticipation. “Large envelope. Third from the top. Under the Economist.”
My dad made a move to reach for it.
“Don’t touch it!” I blurted out. “Sorry. I’m just nervous. Go ahead and touch it. But don’t open it.” I sighed. “Never mind. Open it. Not yet, though.”
I realized I had stopped eating my taco midchew. I didn’t mean to be so dramatic. It was just that senior year had started a month ago and I’d given up hope.
My dad picked up the letter delicately with two fingers, as if it were a bomb. “Is this okay?” he said, one corner of his mouth turned up.
I nodded.
My mom set down the shirt she’d been folding. “Odds are the school wouldn’t waste time writing you a letter if you didn’t get the scholarship.”
“Who knows what a school like that does?” I said, my voice noticeably higher than usual. “It’s Chiswick Academy. Seven-to-one student-to-teacher ratio. Forty-one countries represented in the student body. A faculty full of doctorates. And home to the Bennington Journalism Scholarship.” I said the last part with reverence, resisting the urge to put my hand over my heart. Winning the Bennington would mean a free ride to the school of my choice. No more hand-me-downs. No more leftovers.
My mom raised an eyebrow.
“I memorized the brochure,” I explained.
“If you’re not going to open it, I will,” my dad said.
I nodded. “A
nd while you do, I’m going to eat my taco and act like I don’t care.”
“Well, then we have a plan.” My dad ripped the end of the envelope as I swallowed my bite of taco. He smiled as he read the first sentence. “You’re in,” he said.
And that’s why I will forever associate tacos with the end of life as I knew it.
I felt the bite of ground beef make its way down my esophagus and toward my stomach, and I wondered if the tacos at Chiswick would taste the same as the ones at my current school or if they would taste unfamiliar and elite. Or maybe Chiswick Academy didn’t even serve plain old tacos. Maybe they served something hoity-toity like tofu tacos. And maybe they called them “tofacos.”
I couldn’t wait to find out.
That night, I worked my usual shift at the Yogurt Shop with my best friend, Charlotte. We were also coeditors in chief at the school paper. When I got the job at the Yogurt Shop, she applied too, I think for fun. I thought of telling her about the Chiswick scholarship, but as I opened my mouth to do so, she raised a cup of frozen yogurt and said, “To the best coeditors Clarendon High has ever seen! Together forever!”
She always made toasts like that as an excuse to eat free yogurt. Nevertheless, I filled a cup and clinked with her, and decided to keep the news that we might not be together forever to myself, at least for the weekend.
The front doorbell rang, and we put down our cups as a man walked in.
“Chocolate milk shake,” he said.
Charlotte nodded and made the order, and when he put a dollar bill into the tip jar, I groaned. The label on the jar said, “Will sing for tips,” so any time we got a tip, we had to sing a song.
“Your turn,” Charlotte said.
I sighed and proceeded to sing “There’s No Yogurt Like Our Yogurt” to the tune of “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” and dreamed of the day I would win the Bennington and never have to sing for tips again.
2
The following Monday morning, Charlotte and I were hunched over the layout for the front page of our school paper, the Clarendon Community Gazette. We were arranging the placement of the cover story, an exposé about nonrefrigerated times for the lunchroom mayonnaise. But I wasn’t focusing as I should have been. I was working up the nerve to tell Charlotte about the scholarship.
When I left for Chiswick next week, Charlotte would have the editor in chief job to herself, but I knew she would rather share the job and work as a team. I took a deep breath.
“So, Char, I’ve got some news.”
“Perfect.” She smiled. “We just so happen to be in a newsroom.”
“I got the scholarship to Chiswick.” I took in a breath.
“What?” Charlotte looked up from the layout.
I nodded, feeling a little pit in my stomach that I was abandoning her. “I got the scholarship.”
“But it’s October.”
“One of the scholarship students must have dropped out or something. The point is, I’m starting there Monday.”
“Wow,” Charlotte said, her hands gripping the stylus as if this news might throw her off balance. “Top story, team coverage. But what about the paper? What about school? What about . . .” Charlotte gasped in dismay, as if Barry Manilow had just canceled a concert. She loved him more than anything. It was the weirdest thing about her. “The Schmulitzer?”
The “Schmulitzer” was Mr. Peters’s version of the Pulitzer. The student with the best-reported story of the year would win a cheap plastic trophy, and also a letter of recommendation and résumé packet assembled by Mr. Peters himself.
“Well, now you have a clear path to the most prestigious award in the entire boundaries of Clarendon High.” I bowed toward her and made a circular gesture with my hand.
“Nobody likes to win by default,” Charlotte said. She frowned.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I’ll be fine.” She studied the layout so closely, I was afraid she’d impale her eye on the stylus.
Right then, Jorgé Robles came over to our desk. “Hey, Piper, do you have any contacts at the dog pound? I’m doing a story on—”
“Paul Jensen,” I said, cutting him off. I pulled out my phone and sent the contact info to Jorgé. “Ask him about his eclectus parrot. That always gets him talking.”
I turned back to Charlotte, who seemed to be blinking back tears. The sight pricked at my eyes. So I resorted to the only surefire way to coax her out of her funk. I switched my phone to camera mode and then to film, and turned the lens on her.
“Charlotte Giovanni, you’ve won the Schmulitzer Prize, despite what some might call insurmountable odds.”
It was a game we liked to play, the Joyce Latroy Game. Joyce Latroy was a talk show host notorious for making everyone who came on her show cry. She even made the ousted dictator of Libya tear up when she mentioned his boyhood dog, Giaque.
The rules of the game were simple: first person to laugh was the loser.
“Your father was an alcoholic,” I said in a low, grave voice. “Your mother lost one of her legs in the war and the other in a freak toaster oven incident. The money your family received in the toaster settlement was stolen by your mailman.”
Charlotte nodded solemnly. “That bastard. We never should’ve hidden the money in our mailbox in the first place, but still, that bastard.”
I felt my lips twitch.
“But the tragedy didn’t end there,” I said. “You wrote in your memoir about a humiliating incident with a kebab stick . . .”
Charlotte pressed her lips together.
I continued. “Your uncle made you chicken kebabs for your fourteenth birthday. But when you went to raise the kebab to your mouth, you missed your lips completely and impaled your left eye.”
Charlotte nodded, her lips trembling. “The other kids made so much fun of me. They would stand behind me and tap my back and then move to my left.”
I knew I almost had her. “To add insult to injury, your father then gambled away your other eye.”
That was it. She spit-laughed. But it didn’t count as a win, because I laughed too.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a freshman, Scott Summerdorf, hovering.
I kept my eyes on the layout. “Scott! Stop loitering. What do you need?” I frowned deeply and caught Charlotte’s lips twitching out of my side view. Mr. Peters had warned Charlotte and me that we could be intimidating to the younger reporters. But his news hadn’t had the effect he’d intended. It just made us torture them a little bit more.
Scott stared at his feet. “Um, I’m supposed to interview the janitor, but he’s, like, playing deaf.”
I sighed. “Start the conversation by telling him how annoyed you get when the students don’t dump their own trays. His temporary deafness will subside.”
Scott stood there for a moment more, probably wondering if it was safer to thank me or to just stop talking. I decided to put him out of his misery.
“You’re excused.”
He all but ran out of the room.
“You’re terrible,” Charlotte said with a smile.
“I know.” I raised the camera again.
“My turn.” Charlotte tried to reach for the camera, but I shook my head. If there was one thing I was really bad at, it was being on camera. I had this stupid nervous tic where my mind would go blank and my mouth would stammer. I also had this overblinking problem.
“Please? Just once?” Charlotte said. “Our last days together must be documented.”
“You’re the one who wants to be on camera. This is good practice.” Print reporters are rarely seen, except for a favorable head shot next to the byline.
Charlotte sighed. “Fine. Piper Baird. You’ve just found out you’ve been awarded a scholarship to the prestigious Chiswick Academy.”
I let the camera sink. “Wait. We don’t address real subjects.”
“Don’t interrupt Joyce Latroy!”
I frowned and raised the camer
a back up to my eye. Joyce could be so demanding.
“Yes, you’ll miss out on the Schmulitzer, but you gain the chance to win the Bennington Scholarship, an opportunity many of us would give Mr. Peters’s right arm for.”
“I heard that, Miss Giovanni,” Mr. Peters said from his desk at the front of the room.
It was quiet for a few long moments, save for the clicking and clacking of students finishing up their edits. Charlotte had an uncle who worked at People magazine. She wanted to be just like him, except the television version. I knew Charlotte would’ve killed for the chance I was being given.
“What if I fall flat on my face?” I said softly.
“What if you do?” Charlotte said.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “Well, Joyce,” I said. “You know what my father used to say every time I fell down. . . .”
“What’s that?” Charlotte said.
“He’d say, ‘Son, why do we fall down?’”
“I think that was Batman’s father,” Charlotte said.
“Oh. Right. Well my father always said, “With great power comes great—”
“That’s Spider-Man’s uncle,” Charlotte said.
“Hmmm . . .” I put my finger on my lips like I was thinking really hard. “What did my father ever say?” I thought about my real father, and what he had told me when he was facing a difficult raise negotiation at VP&L. “Oh, yeah. He said, ‘Don’t be afraid to live on your edges. That’s where you’ll find the truth.’” My dad was always saying stuff like that. He was like a walking platitude.
“I have just one more question for you.”
“Shoot.”
“What is your best friend going to do without her most kindred soul?”
I frowned and reached over to pat her leg. I would miss seeing her every day. I shook my head and pushed the sadness back to the special compartment in my brain labeled “Painful stuff that I’m not ready to deal with now. Or maybe ever.” It was a large section of my mind—probably because I was always putting stuff in and never taking stuff out.
“Just promise me you won’t become one of them,” Charlotte said.
I knew the “them” Charlotte was referring to. The privileged elite, who made up the other 95 percent of the student body at Chiswick. The nonscholarship part. The part that came with chauffeurs and nannies and silver platters and no side jobs.
