#scandal (31 page)

More laughing.

“But since I’m supposed to give you some wisdom from my post-high-school reality, let’s start with the things I know. I know that on any given Saturday, most of you 384

are laughing
at
me rather than
with
me. I know that unless you’re a fourteen-year-old boy, you’re not professing any real love on my Heartthrobs fan page. I know that people have turned my life’s work into a drinking game, an Internet meme, a practical joke. I know that despite how hard I work, how much I try to find meaning in my career, I’ve spent more time on the
#TRENDZ
front page than I have on any awards shows, on any interview outlets. I know that like many of you, I had huge dreams on my high school graduation day, and I followed and achieved them. But now I can say this with complete authority: Dudes, being a television star is nothing like what you see on television.” People are still chuckling, but there’s a whisper making its way through the masses, confusion laced with mockery.

They don’t know if this is supposed to be funny, if they’re supposed to laugh, or if Jay’s having a public, tweet-worthy meltdown.

The cell phones are out again, clicking and tagging, posting and sharing, a hundred silver devices turning my sister’s honest words into another practical joke, another J-Heart tabloid smear.

I shrink in my chair.

“Advice from a so-called grown-up?” Jay says. “If you have a dream in your heart, no matter how impossible or silly or expensive or far-reaching, you
have
to go for it, 385

to find a way to make it happen. Anyone will tell you that, right? That’s what graduation is all about. Looking ahead. New beginnings. Finding your voice, like your esteemed valedictorian said.” She holds up the torn pieces of her speech cards. “Like I was supposed to say. But no one ever tells you how hard it is when you get what you want. That even if your dreams come true, you’ll still face a mob of people waiting to take them away from you, desperate to see you fail, ready to take pictures of the whole thing and tell the world how screwed up you are.”

She turns a pointed smile on Quinn, sitting in the front row with her cell phone out.

“Thank you, Miss Heart, for that inspirational reminder.” Principal Zeff is on her feet again, already applauding, giving Jayla a gentle nod. Translation:
Time to
go! This school doesn’t need another scandal!

“Ms. Zeff, if you’ll allow me just one more moment.” Jayla’s all poise and confidence, more real than I’ve ever seen her. “When the spotlight shines on you—whether it’s because you’re a celebrity or just a person following your own personal dreams—you don’t get to choose which parts it illuminates, good or bad, false or true. But you
can
choose to remain true to yourself, to be who you are, no matter what people think. That’s really the best advice I 386

can give you. Stay strong, Swordfish. Stay real. And yes, you can quote me
and
Angelica Darling on that.” Jayla blows us all a kiss, and the paparazzi surges again, waving their camera crews forward as Ms. Zeff tries to usher them back to the sidelines. The spotlights are on Jayla, lighting her up like a fallen pop-culture angel, beautiful and broken.

Jayla and I lock eyes for one more second, but I look away before anyone notices, before anyone reads into it and makes the connection.

I have to clear my name . . .

She steps back from the podium, turns it back over to Ms. Zeff, and takes her honorary seat at the side of the stage. The reporters follow her, clumped and bobbing like rotten seaweed at her feet.

“Ladies and gentlemen, graduates and families,” Principal Zeff announces. “There’s one more thing we’d like to share during our ceremony today. It’s unconventional, but we believe it’s an important message for everyone living in these digital times. Please welcome Lucy Vacarro and the student-run Electronic Vanities Intervention League: Asher Hollowell, Kiara Chen, Thomas ‘Tens’ Girard, Stephanie Wilcox, and Randall ‘Roman’ McCorkhill.” My classmates stir in their seats, but thankfully no one’s hurling insults. Maybe it’s the specialness of the day, 387

the sanctimony of the graduation ceremony that’s keeping them all respectful. Or maybe Cole was right—maybe this is already behind them, our fifteen minutes over, our lives moving forward whether we want them to our not.

Or maybe they’re just too busy taking smooshed-face selfies in their caps and gowns to care.

I line up with my group, me with Dad’s laptop at the podium, (e)VIll in formation behind me, heads down, awaiting their cue. PowerPoint is on the screen, projected for all to see, and I click the flash drive into place.

Error in connection.

My palms are sweating, my stomach a tangle of knots and weeds. I pop the drive out, push it back in. Relaunch PowerPoint as the crowd fidgets and groans.

This time it works.

Show time
.

The air around us has gone still in the heat, and a drop of sweat trickles down my back. Save for the paparazzi still bugging my sister, all eyes are on me, and I know the moment is here. My one last shot to rid myself of scandal.

I scan the crowd and find Griff’s eyes. She’s near the front, her face expressionless, arms crossed. A few rows behind her, Ellie watches me with the same bored, distracted look. Olivia’s not too far away, looking sad and grim.

388

One section over, I find Cole, and in his eyes are all the pleas from that day in the woods, the last words he spoke to me.

. . . nothing like the Lucy I fell in love with . . .

He’s right. Revenge is nothing like the old me. But things are different now; we’ve all crossed so many lines that it’s impossible to untangle them, to find our way back to the original starting points. I crossed lines when I kissed Cole, when I got into his bed that night, when I passed judgment on Griffin before any of this started. Griff crossed lines when she took my phone and uploaded those pictures.

Even Ellie crossed lines, keeping her breakup from Cole a secret, urging me to go to prom in her place as if she really did have a simple case of the flu. When the scandal hit, she automatically assumed the very worst, that I’d posted pictures of me and Cole—and everyone else—just to avoid telling her face-to-face.

I’m not sure we can ever recover from that.

Cyberbullying: A Cautionary Tale
, the slide reads behind me. The crowd goes silent. (e)VIll doesn’t know I changed the presentation. I hope they understand.

My finger hovers over the button to advance the next slide. The one with Griffin’s picture, a candid shot of her holding up her phone. Back when all of us were still friends.

Back when I still had my own secrets, my own dark desires, 389

none of them plastered all over the Internet.

“Miss Heart, is it true you’re being fired from the show?” one of the reporters asks my sister, low enough that only those of us onstage can hear it.

“Is this your last season on
Danger’s Little Darling
?” another says.

“Lucy?” Ash whispers behind me. “You okay?” Roman leans forward, a flash of red Mohawk in the corner of my vision. “Start the show, Lucy. We’re ready.” I nod, look from the paparazzi to my sister. She’s waving her hands to shoo them off like flies, but they’re relentless. A few seniors are watching them now, too, snapping cell phone shots of the whole scene, texting them off into cyberspace, ready for the next scandal or photo caption contest.

If they knew Jayla Heart was my sister, they’d be snapping
shots of me, too.

One click. That’s all it will take. One click and a few words to clear my name, to shift the blame to Griffin, to get off the stage before anyone realizes the scandalous Vacarro at the podium is the sister of the scandalous Vacarro in the honorary chair nearby.

. . . nothing like the Lucy I fell in love with . . .

“Any truth to the drug rumors?” The reporters are relentless. “Is rehab an option?”

390

“Lucy?” Ash asks again. Ms. Zeff is looking at me, waving her hand in the international gesture for
roll the tape
.

I look out across the crowd once more, find Griffin’s eyes and hold them.

It was laced with something . . . It hurt . . . All the times you
scoffed at me . . .

“Any party plans this summer, Miss Heart?” That guy is loud, louder than the rest, and a bunch of students in the front row snicker. Their attention shifts from me and (e) VIll to my sister, and in that moment, in all that laughing and cell phone clickage, I know it’s time to let my voice be heard. To stand onstage before this huge, captive audience and finally, without any more doubts and speculation, make things right.

I turn and catch Kiara’s attention. “Message from the Mockingjay.”

She cocks her head, confused.

“Change of plans.” I explain the situation, my desperation fueled by the crowd’s pressing impatience. The heat.

The paparazzi machine-gunning Jayla. Griffin’s eyes, now boring into my face. Cole’s eyes, dim and disappointed.

“Leave it to (e)VIL.” Kiara ducks into a commando roll behind the stage, narrowly avoiding the sound system.

Tens follows her, also almost taking out said sound system, seashells clicking as he rolls.

391

“Fellow graduates,” I boom into the microphone. Certain I’ve nabbed their attention, I play a background track Stephie made with a few imposing, Borg-like theme songs and recite my canned intro about the dangers of cyberbullying, the difference between having fun online and having fun at the expense of other people’s feelings. There’s a whole pile of statistics and definitions, and while Roman, Stephie, and Ash perform their baffling interpretive dance of colliding electrons, I rattle off the facts, memorized from all my time bonding with Zeff’s manual.

The entire audience—my classmates, our parents and relatives, the faculty, the administration, the paparazzi—is mystified and rapt, all eyes on me.

I take a deep breath, ready—after weeks of hiding—to drop the bomb.

“There’s something you need to know,” I say as the music fades. “Something I’ve kept under wraps for far too long.” My voice echoes across the field. I look at Griffin again. Then Cole. Then, finally, at Jayla.

“Jayla Heart,” I say. “Please join me again at the podium.” Her brow is pinched with confusion, but she smooths out her navy pencil skirt and rises from the honorary chair, crosses the stage to join me. The paparazzi follow, reassembling in a pile before us.

“Jayla Heart graduated on this stage seven years ago,” 392

I say. “Many of you didn’t know her then, and unless you have older siblings, you probably weren’t here to see it. But I was. She was going by Jayla Heart even then, but her real name is Janey Vacarro.”

I pause, letting it settle across the field of caps and gowns before me.

“She’s my sister,” I continue, “and she’s talented and beautiful. Whether you’re a fan of the show or not, you should know that behind Angelica Darling’s scheming, conniving backstabbery, there’s a real person. An amazing person with the biggest heart of anyone I know.” Jayla’s shocked into silence. I grab her hand and squeeze, don’t let go. Not when my parents stand and applaud. Not when Zeff blinks at me through confused but heartfelt tears. Not when the media surges forward again, blasting Jayla with more questions.

“Miss Heart, are you bankrupt?”

“What can you tell us about your contract? Is Angelica off the show for good?”

Still grasping Jayla’s hand, I twist her behind me, stand between her and the paparazzi piranha. Just when I fear I can’t hold them off another second, I spot Kiara in the audience, standing on a chair in the middle of the crowd.

She’s holding her megaphone, right on cue.

“Oh! My! God!” she shouts. “I can’t believe it! Right 393

here in Lavender Oaks! It’s the Sarah Palin 2020 tour bus!

They just turned down Dorchester Street, flags a-blazing!” The camera crew exchanges brief glances, then bolts away en masse, chasing Kiara and Tens onto Dorchester in search of the mythical bus.

Zeff seizes the moment and takes the podium from me and Jayla, rushing through her closing remarks, ending with an emotional send-off: “Allow me to be the first to officially congratulate you, Lavender Oaks High School graduates!”

“Lucy last name Vacarro!” From a chair in the back row, Marceau stands up to make an announcement of his own, one of (e)VIL’s megaphones pressed to his lips. “Lucy Vacarro, I’m—”

But a cacophony of tubas and trombones drowns him out, blasting us with an off-key marching band rendition of Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out.”

The crowd rebounds from the confusion and goes crazy, cameras flashing, parents cheering, horns blowing, black caps winging into the air like a hundred tasseled crows taking flight.

Freedom.

394

THE IMPRESSIV ELY GRUESOME

DEMISE OF ANGELICA DARLING AND

THE UNE XPEC T ED RISE OF RE ALIT Y-BASED REll ATIONSHIPS

A
flirty tangerine dress is the only thing my sister kept from Angelica Darling’s wardrobe collection, and it was
made
for Jayla. Stunning much?

Still, her eyes can’t lie. She’s nervous. A little sad, too.

“Sure you’re okay with all this?” I zip her up and tie the halter at her neck, just below her messy-on-purpose updo.

“We could go low-key instead.”

“And cancel our joint party? Where there won’t be any actual joints? No way.” She turns to face me. “Seriously, Luce. I’m superexcited for you to see the episode—you of all people will appreciate the artistic vision. Besides, new 395

leaf, remember? I’m done crying over one little canceled contract.” She waves her hand, like,
Been there, done that,
got the T-shirt, next?

“You’re beautiful. You know that, right?”

“I owe it all to Sephora,” she says with a cute shrug.

“And bee pollen smoothies. Also, wine is a factor—it’s good for the heart. Now, turn around. People will be here soon and your hair is a hot mess!”

Despite the crazy-coaster we’ve been riding this month, and the ongoing paparazzi fallout from last week’s graduation madness—including dozens of feature stories insinuating that Sarah Palin’s team was covertly recruiting campaign aides from the Lav-Oaks graduating class—Mom and Dad wanted to throw us a combined
Danger’s Little Darling
finale and grad party.