#scandal (11 page)

“Did she call me Juicy Lucy?” I say.

Asher’s eyes are full of fresh sympathy. “See? Who better than you to speak out about the dangers of social networking? Of online trials in a world where ‘like’ is a noun and sentencing is passed with the click of a mouse?” There’s a headache creeping in behind my eyes and its name is Asher Hollowell. Also, Asher Hollowell has a point.

Maybe I do have some allies in this. Maybe the Lucy illustrations are supposed to be ironic.

Then again, one time Jayla gave an interview to

#TRENDZ
, this entertainment rag that had posted pics of her doing the walk of shame from her studio intern’s place the week before. They promised her a chance to clear things up, but all they did was take her quotes out of context and amp up the scandal.

“I should get to homeroom,” I say.

“Then you leave me no choice.” Ash opens his folder, 125

revealing an impressively crazy collection: website printouts, handwritten notes on napkins, color-coded Post-its, CIA-style photographs.

“If you don’t believe in technology,” I say, “how do you even know about my scandal? And where did you get all the stuff in your little folder?”

“It’s a
dossier
.” He leans in close, lowering his voice.

“Know thine enemy, Miss Vacarro. We have people on the inside. Counterintelligence on the vast machine.”

“Machine? I thought it was a regime. See, there’s your recruiting problem—too many codes and buzzwords. It intimidates people.”

He bows his head, procuring with great ceremony a two-page color printout. I recognize the Facebook logo, and when I see the fan page title, my mouth goes dry.

Juicy Lucy: Give Her a Squeeze!

I tap the URll into my phone’s browser. The pictures of me and Cole are just thumbnails on my tiny screen, but the fan numbers are a megaphone of suckage. The page just launched this morning, and it already has more than two hundred likes.

“For the record,” Ash says, “no one on my team liked it.”

“No one on your team has Facebook.”

“Technicality.” He slips the printout back into his 126

dossier, tapping all the loose papers into place. “Our flyer drawings are
meant
to be shocking—a recruiting technique. The fan page is just cruel. We want to help you, Lucy.”

I lean against the lockers. There’s a small voice in my head telling me that Ash, unlike #
TRENDZ,
is good people.

A little out there, maybe, but not conniving. Not paparazzi.

“Can I trust you?” I ask.

“Is Elvis alive and well in Ell Segundo under Witness Protection as an FBI drug informant?”

Blink. Blink.

“It means yes,” he whispers. “You can trust us.”

“What about Kiara?”

He looks at the floor, blood rushing to his face. “Proba-tion. You don’t have to worry about her.”

“I’m not
worried
. I want her reinstated. I only took that picture for her because her mom wanted it.”

“Kiara knew the rules when she signed up,” he says.

“It’s a rite of passage, Ash. You can’t deny moms that kind of stuff.”

He rubs his chin, weighing my argument. “Is that the extent of your conditions?”

“Will you put an end to the drawings too?” He meets my eyes, hesitates only a moment to let a group of vampire bros pass. Unlike the girls, they don’t 127

stop to howl, but they’re definitely looking at us, definitely bro-ing it up with a few lewd gestures.

“Fine,” Ash says. “Kiara’s in, drawings are out. Consider it done.”

“Good. Consider it . . . considered.” What does one say in these situations? Affirmative? Roger? Rock on? “Um, thanks. I’ll—”

A familiar sight at the other end of the corridor hijacks my brain-train: Griffin has entered the building.

With Ellie.

“You guys! Wait!” I ditch Asher and motor through the crowd to catch up, breathless when I reach them. “You . .

. you’re back.”

“Yeah. Hey.” Ellie won’t look at me. “I’m not on there, you know. The Juicy page? I think it’s awful.”

“Of course not.” My eyes fill with tears at the defeated sound of her voice, the still-rumpled knot of her hair. “I’m sorry if I pushed you yesterday . . . with the tarts? I just wanted to talk, and . . .”

Her eyes stay fixed on my white Converse, the skeletons I’d been sketching on the canvas all year.

After an eternity of pained silence, Griff slips her arm around Ellie’s shoulders, the very definition of support system. To me, she says, “Tell Mrs. King I won’t be in homeroom.”

128

In first period calculus, the Jell-O mold has been replaced with Colorado peach “Pi,” and Mrs. Smolinski composes a love story on the whiteboard between differential equa-tions and baked goods. This is exactly the sort of academic comedy Griff and I should be secretly texting about, but now that Ellie’s back on the scene, Griff’s stonewalling me.

So much for not taking sides.

“And the solution is pure elegance,” Smolinski’s saying, but instead of taking notes, I’m hiding behind my textbook with my new phone, scanning the Juicy page.

Confirmed: Ellie, Cole, Griff, Marceau, and the members of Vanitas aren’t on the fan list. But with more than two hundred likes, that still leaves most of my classmates, not to mention a dozen kids who don’t even attend Lav-Oaks.

The usual Lucy-bashing pictures are there, plus a shot of me and Asher from this morning—
I’ll show you my secret
bunker if you show me yours.
My apology note was reposted too, complete with critical reviews such as,
Your example is
sleeping with your best friend’s boyfriend!
and
u should be apologizing for being born!
and the simple yet classic,
SLUT!

Maybe I should’ve used Jayla’s ass-vampire speech.

“There’s not a problem in the world that calculus can’t solve.” Smolinski’s still scribbling on the whiteboard with furious determination. My phone blinks with a text.

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Cole:
saw on fb u got a new phone. hope this is ur 1st text. :-)
OH HAI LUCY’S PHONE!

Me:
u win. ur saving me from smolinski’s calc lovefest right
now :)
I leave out the part about how seeing his name on my phone makes my insides go all firecrackers.

Cole:
zzzzz. ;-) so . . . u ok? john & i are trying 2 figure out
who made “ fan” page. nobody seems 2 know.

Me:

What am I doing?
Ellie still isn’t speaking to me. Griffin’s being a flip-flopper. The scandal is crossing interschool district borders. If Cole gets any more involved, it’ll just feed the rumor mill and make things harder for Ellie.

Whatever happened between me and Cole, whatever lingers now . . . it needs to go back into hypersleep.

Cole:
please talk 2 me. worried abt u. want to help. :-|

Me:
i’m ok. gtg.

This #scandal
so
needs to vanish, but how? The Zeff-mandated apology was a dead end. No offense to Mrs.

Smolinski, but advanced math won’t help me out of this mess either. Asher’s offer flits through my mind, but . . .

no. The last thing my rep needs is an affiliation with Team Tinfoil Hat.

I need solid backup.

Otherwise (formerly?) known as my friends.

After dragging myself through the rest of calculus, 130

through British lit and physics, through a brief tearfest with the Indigo Girls in the emo bathroom, I hightail it to the cafeteria to catch Ellie before lunch.

We’ve got six years of loyal BFF-ship together—how long can she ignore me? Especially on Tater Tot Tuesdays, when we always team up to steal Cole’s and John’s? We’ve got a road trip to plan, dorm decorations to pick out. The rest of our lives to map.

Together. Inseparable.

Leave me alone, Lucy!

Ellie’s anger hovers like a storm cloud as I trudge to the stables. I hate going all walking cliché two days in a row, but the cafeteria is way behind enemy lines, total red zone.

I’d probably get drone striked with Tater Tots.

Lunch bag and sketchbook in hand, I pass the other horses and reach Prince Freckles’s stall, immediately relaxed by his presence.

I’m not the only one.

Franklin Margolis is paling around with my equine bestie when I arrive, scoping out the scene and scratching notes into his yellow pad. His messenger bag rests on a brick of hay just outside the stall.

“What’s the scoop, paper boy?” I drop my backpack and plop down on the ground.

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Franklin looks neither amused nor surprised to see me.

He hesitates, polite smile firmly fixed, probably scanning his journalistic vocabulary for a synonym for
whackjob loo-nypants
so he can properly describe me in his article.

“Lucy Vacarro. Perhaps you can assist,” he says. The British accent increases his genius vibe the same way Marceau’s increases his yum factor. “I’m interviewing the equestrians about prom night mistreatment. Rather,
alleged
mistreatment. I’ve yet to locate the rumored golden horn, but it appears that the committee used superglue to decorate the hooves.” He nods toward Prince Freckles’s feet, still bedazzled with glitter. “Thoughts?”

“I plead the Fifth.”

Franklin sits next to me in the dirt, trading the notepad for a packed lunch from his messenger bag. “The truth is I’ve been looking for you, love. I saw you walk to the stables for lunch yesterday and hoped I’d find you today. And here you are.”

“And here I am. Care to tell me why I’m being stalked by the newspaper editor? I’d like to chill on the publicity awhile, if you don’t mind.”

Prince Freckles lets out an emphatic shiver-snort, like,
I got your back, Lucy Belle.

“I’m not interested in publicity,” Franklin says. Beneath his chestnut curls, his brown eyes are alert and genuine, 132

and he doesn’t look away when he speaks. “I’m interested in story. Obviously I’ve seen the photographs, the Juicy page. Not a fan, by the way.”

“That’s what they all say.” Admittedly, it sounds better in his accent. Like, more official.

“I don’t go in for the online popularity rubbish,” he says. “And for the record, I think it’s bollocks what they’re doing to you over a few regrettable photographs.”

“For the record, I didn’t post them.”

Franklin nods. “Let’s say I believe you.”

“I believe you,” we say simultaneously. I laugh with him, which is unexpected, considering I also just discovered that Jayla put olives in my egg salad. Totally grateful that she made my lunch, but
olives
? What are those Hollywood weirdies doing to her?

“Any idea who did it?” he asks.

I’ve been over it a hundred times, but I just can’t figure it out.
Everyone
at the party was outed by the pictures. Drinking, hooking up, butt shots, smoking—no one escaped unscathed. For all I know, a bear snuck into the cabin, swiped my phone, took the shots, and vanished, uploading the evidence from his safe, underground lair in Wyoming.

It’s about as plausible as anything else.

I shake my head.

“Still.” Franklin procures a can of ginger ale and a 133

falafel wrap from his lunch bag. “I’d like people to hear your side of the story.”

“How? My own friends won’t even listen to me.”

“A feature interview.” He takes a few bites of falafel, expertly navigating the wrap. I’d be wearing it by now.

“Present your evidence. Talk about the dangers of judging without facts. Invite fellow students to engage in a healthy discourse about—”

“That’s so cute.”

Franklin cocks his head.

“Your blind idealism,” I explain. “Faith in our classmates.”

“You think they’re not capable of intelligently debating an issue in a neutral public forum?”

I bite back a laugh. “Pretty sure all the discourse is happening on Miss Demeanor’s page. No offense, but if I want advice from my peers, I’ll message her.”

“Odd. You don’t strike me as the Miss Demeanor type.” He wolfs down the last of his sandwich and folds up the napkins and wrappers, neatly tucking them back into the brown bag. “Look. You can’t ignore this. I mean, you could, but then you’ll graduate with this scandal as your last memory, and in twenty years at the reunion, they’ll still be calling you Juicy Lucy, because people are cruel and petty and bored. Is that what you want?” 134

“I have no plans to attend the reunion.”

“Just an example. I fail at American irony.” I shove the uneaten bits of my sandwich back into the bag and fish out a granola bar, which is actually a fiber bar.

Last time I let Jayla make lunch.

“Thanks for the offer,” I say. “But I’m not interested in an interview.” Adding more fodder to the fire? In zombie-slaying circles, that’s called ringin’ the dinner bell, and it’s the fastest way to get yourself munched.

“You’re certain?” Franklin says.

“I just want to fix things with my best friend. Ellie Pike? She’s the one who . . . she’s Cole’s . . . Cole’s the one I . . .” I shake my head to unclog the words. “She’s not speaking to me.”

“And you think Miss Demeanor can assist?” Franklin asks.

“Maybe. Fiber bar?” I hold it out to him.

“I’m quite regular, thanks.” Franklin’s brow is pinched.

He taps the side of his soda can, eyes meeting mine again.

“So you won’t grant me an interview, but you’ll muck about with an anonymous online gossip?”

“Why not?”

“You’ve a much better chance at being heard with the

Explorer
.”

“Is that a fact?”

135

“Technically an opinion, but a valid one, which—

unlike that horrid gossip column—deserves serious consideration.”

Franklin folds his arms, his gaze unwavering. He’s good-natured about it, but his utter certainty feels like a challenge, like the noobs who come on
Undead Shred
talking about kicking ass only to march off alone and die.

“Don’t judge Miss D just because she’s not all, ‘Ooh, I’m the valedictorian and I have important sorts of bloody discourse,’” I say.

“Your English accent isn’t half bad,” he says with a crooked grin. “Then, it’s not half good, either.”