Plagued: Book 1 (28 page)

Chapter 4

Girl on Film

It took me a little while after I got to school on Valentine's Day to realize something was very wrong. Boys were staring at me. No, not staring. Leering. That was the only way to describe the lingering looks coming my way up and down the hallways and in my classes. Girls pointed, the boys leered, and I got scared. I kept checking to see if someone had put a “Kick Me” sign on my back or if I had toilet paper stuck to my shoe or gum in my hair. No, nothing that I could see. The Awesome Posse strode by in cashmere sweater sets, short plaid skirts and a mantle of superiority. Amber Lynne flashed me a peace sign. Her friends laughed, except tall, pale Missy, who shot me a concerned look. This could not be good.

Brianna and Isobel asked me to take pictures of the Valentine's decorations at school. (My little pocket digital was new, actually. A going-away gift from them so I could document my life in Tokyo with tons of pictures. Usually, I borrowed one of my dad's cameras.) The girls were sure the Academy must be like the American TV shows with heart posters and banners everywhere. Cute boys carrying roses to give. That sort of thing. (It's a boy-deprived life at girl's schools...) And they were right. Since I'd arrived a week ago, the amount of pink and red crepe paper had been unrolling at an eye-popping rate, draping every hallway in color. Lots of classroom doors also had big, bright, hand-made Valentine's posters on them as well. The school held a homeroom poster-design contest for Valentine's Day and, from what I could tell, this was a big event for all the grades. I managed to get a few snaps in before giving up. I couldn't find the energy to do anything except worry about the Awesome Posse's “St. Valentine's Day Massacre” comment.

After lunch, I found a heart-shaped card stuck to the front of my locker. Inside was a
URL
and signed only
xoxo
. I tried to open the link at the study hall computers. There was only a polite “
ping”
and a pop-up saying, “This site has been blocked.” That
really
wasn't good. Once I got home, I understood exactly why everyone was staring.

It was my face on some other girl's body.

Some other girl's naked body.

There were several really awful pictures, and I felt physically sick. These sort of pranks were easy to accomplish, I knew. A snapped digital picture in the hall, a bit of software prestidigitation and you had yourself a smear campaign.

Nothing like this had ever happened before. I'd never had enemies. Lonely, yes, often that. I kept my head down, hiding behind the self-made opaque barrier that separated me – the real me – and the world, letting life pass by on the other side. I didn't even know how to react in those first few minutes. It was about half an hour before the tears started. Once I began crying, I couldn't stop. Wrapping myself in a blanket, I hugged Coco, my little stuffed dog that I'd had since I was a baby, and a pillow to me for some illusion of comfort. It didn't help.

What time was it in Paris? I checked my laptop which I kept set to a Euro time zone. Still morning there. Damn it. Brianna would be at school for hours. I needed someone, anyone, to be on my side. Dragging my laptop
and
my new iPad (a Christmas present from Dad) into bed with me, I sobbed over the keyboard and tried to Skype Brianna anyway. Calling and calling on both machines simultaneously as though that would somehow make it happen faster.

Damn the earth and its size! Damn time zones!

It was after dinner Tokyo time before we finally connected. Not that I'd been able to eat a bite. Poor Tina, our day maid, didn't know what to say or not say when she called me in for dinner, looking at my tear-stained face. A maid always came as part of Dad's package. Live-ins when I was younger. Day maids now that I was in high school. Tina came from Thailand and made a living watching over other people's children, cleaning their homes and cooking meals to provide a life for her own three young sons back home. She saw them twice a year if she was lucky.

By the time Brianna finally picked up, I could hardly speak from crying so long. I sent her the link. The girl possessed awesome tech skills. I used to joke that the forest of barrettes sped up the synapses in her brain like a bionic neural net.

“This is unacceptable!” She launched into a torrent of descriptive French cursing. I knew it was cursing because she'd taught me some of the more memorable phrases. “I'll get them, Lexie,
cher,
don't you worry. Bastards. Back to the origin we will go, to the
source vitale
. They will be sorry.
Very
sorry. I shall
skewer
them.”

We Skype'd with the camera on to feel closer. Once Brianna started something online, she was like a Navy Seal on a Black Ops mission, only with more hair and knee socks. She would take no prisoners. After awhile, she said it wasn't that difficult, not like the pranksters had tried to cover their tracks.

“Stupid amateurs,” she sneered. “I have them. Anthony LeBlanc and Tommy Stein.”

Amber Lynne's boy friend, Tony, had done this to me.

Brianna glanced up at me, “Are those their real names?”

I nodded.

She gave me a look of incredulity. “
Merde
, what idiots. But how wonderful for us! All this information. I will put it in a file for you. You must take judicial as well as emotional revenge,
c'est vrai!
”

In triumph, she then dispatched an avenging angel of a virus, two in fact. The first was directed only at the pranksters themselves. It would freeze their hard drive the next time they logged onto the site. The other, she deployed to the site itself, inserting a sticky and undoubtedly very illegal worm for anyone opening the link. The curious and malicious would be rerouted before the screen opened to the most annoying and loud infomercial ever created. After watching it, I agreed with Brianna it absolutely was. She laughed gleefully and I laughed too, for the first time in what felt like days.

Chapter 5

Overexposed

February 15 I was back in the Principal's Office.

“We're suspending you until we can investigate conduct unbecoming a student at this school.”

Moral high ground, blah, blah blah. In vain, I protested I was the victim here; this had been done to
me.
Mrs. McCarthy was a mean, spiteful woman and she wasn't listening to a word I said. Today she was wearing a flowery pale pink sweater dress very much at odds with the steely set of her expression.

“It's
your
face.”

“But not my body!” I protested. “Do you want me to strip naked and
show
you? I didn't put that up there. I have the email addresses of the boys who did this. Your daughter's boyfriend, Tony Le Blanc and his pal, Tommy.”

“How dare you bring my Amber Lynne into this filth. That is a groundless allegation.”

“No, it's not. I have a trace to the domain and website bought with Tony's parents' freaking
credit card
! Who is a bully now?”

My protests fell on deaf ears. She had already made up her mind.

“While this matter is under investigation, we are suspending you for three days.”

“That's not fair.”

“I decide what is fair in this school, Miss Carpenter.”

And that was that.

They called my father and made him come get me. It was the single most humiliating day of my life. Not the worst day. That was the afternoon Mom walked out, but definitely the most humiliating. Dad texted me to find out what was happening and I was forced to text him back, warning him not to open the site because of the virus Brianna had set loose. I would have died if he'd seen those pictures.

After he arrived, I sat outside the office, back on the nubby couch. I knew that nubby couch better than I knew any of the students walking the halls. Inside, the voices got louder and angrier. Some of the staff shamelessly stood in the corridor, eavesdropping. Maybe parents didn't argue with Mrs. McCarthy that often.

Opening the door, Dad stood in the entryway. He looked very handsome, I thought. Mr. Robert Ashley Carpenter. Of the Rhode Island Carpenters. Though that's as much as I knew about his branch of my family tree. The Carpenters, if there were any others, had never been part of our life even before Mom left. Dad was very much the A-list executive in his beautifully tailored dark suit. Six feet, trim and muscular from running – his exercise of choice. He had an oval face with high cheekbones, strong brow and jaw, a small cleft in his chin. Very manly looking, my dad. Radiating confidence that I was sure convinced his clients he could walk on water for them. I wished I'd inherited some of that natural confidence. I did get his coloring: brown eyes and brown hair that bleached out in the sun, though I had my mom's heart-shaped face. We used to draw two hearts, Mom and I, on the inside of foggy car windows. A big heart for her and a smaller one for me, with dots for eyes and a big smile. Then she left. A smile turned upside down is a frown. A life turned upside down is devastation.

He spoke loudly so everyone could hear. “When my daughter is cleared of this baseless and slanderous allegation, and make no mistake, she will be cleared, you will remove the suspension and issue a public apology to her, or I will sue. Not only the school, but the parents of the students involved. I don't believe the Board of Trustees will look the other way when I bring this sort of nepotism before them. Do you understand, Mrs. McCarthy? I will have your southern ass in a sling and take the scandal public.”

Grabbing my hand, he yanked me off the couch so hard I nearly dropped my book bag, and out the doors we went.

We drove home in the big, black company car. Or rather, his driver drove. Another job perk. We sat in the back and stubbornly stared out opposite windows. He had his Ray Ban sunglasses back on. Hiding the expression of disappointment I knew would be staring out of his eyes. Of course, we fought. The argument running its now familiar course.

“
Why can't we go back to France?”

He kept his face turned away. I could tell by his voice he was frowning. “Is there even a point to me answering that question? You know how life works as well as I do. Money makes the world go round. My work is here.
We
are here.”

“I still don't understand why I can't just go to boarding school. The company would pay for it.”

He pretended to be watching the driver expertly maneuver the car around several trucks slowing down the fast lane.

“
Dad
.”

“I heard you, Lexie.” He pushed the sunglasses up into his thick, wavy hair and looked me in the eyes. I knew what he was going to say. “We're a family, we stay together.”

When Mom vanished from our lives, Dad filed a Missing Person's report with the police. Very shortly after that, I knew from eavesdropping, a lawyer contacted the police department on Mom's behalf, removing any doubts as to the reason for her disappearance. A policeman came to our house and I never forgot him saying, “She didn't commit a crime, Mr. Carpenter. This is not a police matter.” Years later, I decided he was wrong. To those left behind, it was an assault every bit as hurtful as a physical attack. Neither of us ever really recovered. And it wasn't just Mom who left. Mom's family dropped us like we never existed: Grandma' Eve and Grandpa' Ian, Aunt Bridget and Uncle whatever-his-name-was, Bernard or Benjamin, or something. Just gone. Thanks for the memories. Don't call us, we'll call you. No. Actually, we won't call you. Ever. Not even a birthday card. I couldn't understand what I'd done to make them hate me so much. Had I been such a bad girl?

“In what way are you and I a family? What part of our lives are
together
anymore?”

“You didn't complain in Paris.”

“I had
friends
in Paris. I did not go to the high school from hell in Paris.”

“Whose fault is it you don't fit in here? Not mine! You're smart, you're pretty and you're clever. Yet you don't even try. You just hide behind that blank stare of yours. Don't you think I see?”

“Why shouldn't I hide? What has life showed me that is so great I should be a part of it? Until France. Everything started to change, and you took that all away from me without a second thought. Your career always comes first.”

“Stop wallowing in self-pity and find something to do. This is a big city.”

“I hate you.”

“Well, hate me while keeping yourself busy.”

And so on and so forth.

Back home, I slammed the door to my room. I hated my room. Hated being in it. Most of the furniture in the apartment wasn't even ours. Dad's assistant from his last post picked it out from a leasing company catalog before the transfer (and the assistant before that and the assistant before that). Nobody ever bothered asking me what I might like. The current stuff was black: sleek, modern and totally featureless. All straight lines, even the couch. It's not easy to make a couch in completely straight lines. Somehow they'd managed. (I'd emailed pictures of the furniture to Brianna and Isobel when we first came and they agreed with me on the distinct lack of warm and fuzzy in the decorating scheme.) Everything right down to the dishes, sheets, towels, and blankets were leased. Sure, we shipped a few things every time. Mostly Dad's stuff. Chinese porcelain lamps, several Persian carpets woven by tiny children with bleeding fingers, a number of bird and shell lithographs, and a couple of paintings he picked up in Bangkok and Beijing. He always shipped a collection of my mom's books as well to put on the bookshelf in his room. Just to torture himself, I guess.

Mom was,
is
a poet and writer. Publishing under her maiden name, Grace Sullivan. Apparently very well known. Dad used to keep her books on the coffee table until he got tired of me always shoving them under the couch so I wouldn't have to see her name. I never opened the books. Never read a word she had written. Ever. I didn't search for her stuff online or in bookstores either. Why should I look at her words when she could never be bothered to write even one word to me, her own daughter? It hurt too much.

The apartment building itself wasn't so bad, and I had quite a catalog of previous leased living spaces to compare it to. The facade on the first two floors was made to look like white marble, giving way to a white brick pattern on the floors above. The lobby was glassed in, with entry by key card or pin number. It was set up sort of like a hotel lounge. Big overstuffed sofas and a buffet with a coffee maker and fresh fruit and cookies all day long. Every time I went in or out, I wished I could hijack the sofas for our apartment, they looked much more comfortable than the cutting-edge designs we had. On the top floor, there was a fully-equipped party room for residents' use that opened onto a large terrace. The concierge's office was staffed seven days a week. Most of their work seemed to entail polishing the lobby glass and endlessly hosing down the front of the building should any dust dare to infringe on the property border. We'd lived in much more luxurious places, but Dad said he didn't expect to be here long and wanted to keep it simple.

My bedroom had no non-leased identity other than the tall, gilt-framed Baroque mirror currently leaning up against one wall. It was actually Dad's. Scrambled communication had led the movers to set it up in my room and we just left it there. The thing was crazy heavy. He used to always have it facing the bed in his room, which I thought was weird. Mirrors scared me, especially at night. Why would you want to turn over in bed and see yourself? Or God forbid something
else
looking back. Then I watched several movies I was too young to see on a hotel channel and understood. Sex is so
strange.

I could have softened the room a bit with some personal touches of candles, colorful pillows, pictures, posters. Stuff Brianna, Isobel and I had collected in Paris. What was the point? We'd just be moving again. I used to keep a family picture on my dresser. We were at Disneyland with Cinderella castle in the background. The three of us smiling. Me, standing, my parents kneeling on either side, their arms wrapped around me. I'd finally put it away in Paris along with the silver Tiffany heart necklace. Tossed them in a box now sitting somewhere in storage. With Brianna and Isobel on my side, I could be strong. Mom didn't deserve a place on my dresser or in my heart, I told myself. Most of the time I believed it. Most of the time....

Throwing my books on the scratchy, brown, rented bedspread, I turned to my laptop for solace. Brianna and Isobel were both online and full of sympathy and tears. They had the day off from school tomorrow and planned to stay up all night watching horror movies as they loved to do. Brianna told Isobel the whole sordid tale.

“We are pining for you
cher
, we pine every day! You must find some friends. You deserve to have people who love you like we do.”

I'd settle for people who ignored me. These last few days had taken a toll.

“She could never find that, Isobel. We are
supreme
in the world of best friends.”

“D'accord
. Of course. A close approximation, yes? Tokyo is one of the largest cities in the world.”

I groaned. “You sound like Dad.”

Isobel and Brianna were lounging in their animal-print sweats. We'd bought them together for a few euros at an outdoor market from a band of highly sketchy guys. I say sketchy because every time the police would appear, they threw everything in a blanket and ran like rabbits the other way. We almost didn't get our outfits! Brianna's were zebra patterned, Isobel's tiger striped and I had a pink leopard print. We used to swap the tops and bottoms, mixing the patterns, which we found hilarious. Mine were languishing in one of the boxes in the spare room. I just couldn't seem to find the energy to unpack.

Isobel's computer sat propped up with pillows, camera on. A large bowl of popcorn in front of it rocked precariously back and forth as she shifted position. From the TV on Brianna's dresser, I could hear some random screaming. They both loved scary movies: ghosts, vampires, werewolves. Anything supernatural. Not me. I made no secret of my wimpdom when faced with scary stuff. I slept with a nightlight on until I was thirteen and still looked under the bed before I went to sleep.

Following my gaze Isobel shook her head. “No, no. You must not watch it, Lexie, or you will have to sleep with a nightlight on again!”

Brianna jumped off the bed and Isobel swiveled the computer to follow. She stood in front of the TV, arms stretched wide dramatically. “Don't look!”

Turning the laptop back, Isobel bounced on the mattress on her knees, straight blond hair flying up and down off her shoulders, popcorn bouncing with her. “I cannot wait to watch movies together again. I will cover your eyes in the scary parts, just like I always do.”

“But not the sexy parts!” added Brianna, and we all laughed.

The muscles around my mouth felt stiff from lack of use.

The view shifted crazily as Isobel dropped the computer on the bed and lay down beside it.

“Oh, oh, I have had a dream! About you and a club. The perfect club.” She announced dramatically. Isobel firmly believed in her psychic abilities.
And
that she could use them to channel spirits. I'd had my doubts until a horribly difficult poetry test in English Lit. She said the spirit of Yeats came to help her with the essay questions. She got an A plus. The only one in the class. I never doubted her again.