The Kiss Off (24 page)

“Lying to my face…what rhymes with lying to my face?”

“Ooh, that’s good. I can work with that,” Mads said. “Let’s see…”

I pictured all the times he had smiled so wide when he had seen me, given me such tender hugs and the sweetest kisses. He had liked me, he really had, I knew he had. And he showed me just how much he liked me by kissing another girl – a freaking movie star – several times. And exposing my nakedness to the world. My nakedness that wasn’t supposed to even exist anymore. And what else had he and Roxy done aside from kissing, huh? I had some guesses.

I shook my head. I was so stupid. Why had I sent him that smut? What had made me seriously think it was a good idea? And what had I done to him to make him post it online? Post it
everywhere
.

I crossed my arms against my chest. I wanted a shower, I wanted to scrub myself clean, but first I had to respond.

“You were lying to my face, oh I’ll make you fall from grace,” Mads said. “Or um, you were lying to my face, next time I see you better believe I’ll have mace…no – I’ll punch you in the face. Better believe I’ll punch you in the face.”

“Yeah, that’s good,” I said.

Mads blinked at me, and wrinkled her nose. “Really?”

“Yeah. No – the first one, I’ll make you fall from grace. That’s good.”

“Oh,” Mads said. “Yeah. It was, wasn’t it.”

“He’s not getting away with this, Mads,” I said quietly.

“I know hon, he won’t.”

And at that moment, my cell phone rang. I looked at the readout, scowled at it and held it up to show Mads. It was him. Guess the show was over and he’d noticed I was missing.

“Don’t answer it,” Mads said. “Block his number.”

“Yeah,” I said. “You’re right.” I ignored the call and with a few button presses, I would never be hearing from him again. So I did it, and just stared at the screen for a minute. The room was quiet, the phone silent. He was probably trying to call again, but couldn’t. I hoped he was trying to call again. He was probably wondering what was wrong.

“He probably doesn’t even know what he did,” I said.

“Well he should. Once he figures you’re pissed at him, then he’ll know he was busted. Both of them. And I bet Little Miss “Ty Loves My Lip Gloss” will tell him what went down.”

“Yeah,” I said. “You’re right.”

“And besides, if he doesn’t know now, he definitely will tomorrow when he wakes up to your video.”

“Mmm,” I looked at the computer screen. YouTube was open and waiting. “I’m sorry we had to leave early,” I said. “I’m sorry you didn’t get to, I don’t know, make out with a movie star or something.”

Mads smirked and stared thoughtfully at my guitar. “It doesn’t matter. I’m not as disappointed as I would have thought I’d be.”

I nodded as she thought a while longer. Forming opinions, coming to conclusions. “Maybe it turned out to be a good thing.”

“What did?”

“This whole drama tonight. Not for you, of course, totally not a good thing for you, but maybe for me…it stopped me making some bad choices, don’t you think?”

“Yes,” I said. “I absolutely think.”

“You know what we should do?” Mads said. “We should release the song on iTunes. As a single. Make some money out of your pain. Ty made money out of you.”

“How do you mean?”

“The Kiss Off, duh.”

“Oh yeah. You’re right.”

“I know. I say he should return the favor. He breaks your heart and betrays your trust? He makes you a millionaire as the pay-off.”

I grinned. Millionaire was pushing it. Maybe I’d be able to shout pizza sometime. “We’ll have to take this down to the basement, though,” I said. “Mom’ll kill me if I wake them up again.” I grabbed my guitar and Mads took the tripod and camcorder and we snuck down the stairs. I was extra quiet passing Rory’s room because I just knew he’d want to come and watch. He was so annoying.

The Douglas basement wasn’t as creepy and spider-infested as you’d think. I mean yes, it used to be this big junk heap until last year which was when all the junk was transferred to the attic and Dad spent about a month locked down here doing renovations. He turned it into a chilled out living room with an exposed brick wall and a leather couch in one corner that he picked up in a yard sale, and a poker table on the other side where he and his buddies from college played once a month or so.

I flicked on the basement lights (a bunch of halogens that did a billion times better job than the single bulb that used to hang from the ceiling) and closed the door quietly behind me before descending the stairs. I wasn’t actually allowed down here, this was my dad’s man land, his sanctuary, but what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. Besides, would he prefer I woke him up at 3am with some angry chick rock blasting from my amp, or I spent an hour in here?

We set ourselves up - Mads aimed the camcorder, I plugged Stella into the amp and stood with the exposed brick behind me. I strummed a chord. We were good to go.

“Okay, you ready?” Mads asked.

“…Yeah.”

“Don’t get soft on me, Poppy,” Mads said. “He’s a scumbag.”

“Yeah,” I said. “He is.” My face flushed with embarrassment as I thought about that photo. Mads and I had jumped online the second we got back from the show. It was out there, and there were copies. It was reproducing. There was no getting rid of it.

“What if my mom and dad see it?” I said. “God, what’ll I do then?”

“Don’t think about it, Pops,” Mads said quietly. “Try not to think about it. Cross that bridge when you come to it. In the meantime, you’re doing something about it.”

I nodded. Yeah, I was. What had he been thinking? Had he even thought about what this would do to me? To my family, to my future? That guidance counsellor woman had been so right. I was stupid. But he was an asshole. If I knew one thing at all, it’s that he was
not
getting away with it.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s get back to work.”

***

Mads and I woke up mid-morning to a door slamming and some shouting downstairs. It wasn’t the usual shouting of the Pest and his friends sucking at video games, but my mom and dad shouting. And Poo Bum getting all excited and barking and Dad shouting at him to be quiet. Then Bex started crying and I heard Mom trying to soothe her, and there was a distinct phrase that travelled up to my room. My dad said, “Well I’m not talking to her, you talk to her!” and there was quiet and I filled with dread as footsteps thumped up the stairs. Oh God. I looked over at Mads, sleeping on the floor to see if she was awake. She was definitely awake, propped up on her elbows, watching the closed bedroom door and the approaching footsteps. She gave me a panic-stricken face and slid down into her sleeping bag again and closed her eyes just as there was a loud knock on the door. There was no way we could have slept through that. Which I guess was why they knocked so loudly.

Without even waiting for a reply, Mom opened it, looking furious. Mads stopped pretending to be asleep and sat up guiltily, smoothing her hair down from the sleep-induced beehive it had turned into.

“Good morning Mrs. Douglas,” Mads said cautiously.

“Save it,” Mom said. That was it. We were dead.

“What have you gotten yourself into, Poppy?” Mom said, clenching and unclenching her hands. “What are you doing? Both of you – because I know you had to have something to do with it, Mads.”

Mads opened her mouth and closed it again and turned to me, her panic-stricken face back in place.

I wasn’t sure which bad thing she might have been talking about, was she talking about the sext or the bitchy song dedicated to my
ex
-boyfriend the super star? Or jeez, was it something else entirely? I felt the conversation needed some clarification and I wasn’t admitting to anything until I had it. How had she found out about it so fast? It felt like my intestines were practicing sailing knots. Really painful, really complicated sailing knots.

“What
exactly
are you talking about?” I said.

“Your father was listening to the radio on the way to tennis this morning and they were talking about how Tyler Madigan the front man of the band Academy of Lies was outed on the internet by his girlfriend, as being a, cheat and a…” she raised her hands in the air and did angry air quotes, “‘douche, womanizer and man whore’, after a
naked photo
of her was leaked to the internet. And we’ve just seen it all in the Hollywood roundup on The Breakfast Show.” She stopped and licked her lips. Forcefully. With teeth involved, I was surprised she didn’t draw blood.

“Mom-” she held up her hand and I was quiet.

“You are Tyler Madigan’s girlfriend, are you not?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“So it’s a naked photo of you,
my sixteen year old daughter that
has been leaked onto the internet? That the guys on the radio and the freaking Breakfast Show have seen? You sent him a naked photo of yourself? Actually it doesn’t matter who you sent it to because it’s all over the bloody internet and-”

There was a god-awful screech from downstairs. “Mom! Poppy!” Rory said. “Come, quick! Poppy’s on TV!”

We froze for a moment, staring at each other. An image of the sext flashed into my mind’s eye, and my brother sitting in front of it on the TV. Oh no no no. It was probably only a second of staring before Mom was out the door and I threw my covers off and jumped over Mads as she struggled and scrambled, trying to shimmy her way out of the sleeping bag.

The living room was packed. Rory’s friends were all there – why were they always there? – and Bex was sitting on the couch. The only way I knew Bex was there was because her favorite doll, Kevin, was on the arm rest. My little sister was barely visible underneath Poo Bum who lay stretched out on top of her. Dad was conspicuously absent, probably he’d gone for a drive or was down in the basement with the door locked. Doubted he was at tennis.

I caught the end of some camera phone footage of me and Ty from that day he was mobbed, followed up by some paparazzi footage of Ty and some girl and the band surrounded by photographers and cameramen as they came out of some night club. Then there was more footage still of another night and another girl. Then daytime of Ty standing on the street with a girl – ugh, I felt sick, it was Roxy Washington – and he reached behind her ears and flicked her sunglasses up and down a couple of times until she batted him away, both laughing. It was an adorable, intimate moment. With another girl. With
her
.

The reporter’s voice came over the footage, saying “It appears that all the rumors are indeed true, with Ty’s girlfriend recording a very brutal and very public breakup with the musician in the late hours of last night.” It cut to footage of me singing my heart out in the video I had uploaded mere hours ago. While I had been sleeping, it appeared the Sunday Morning Hollywood Wrap had been hard at work, scouring for footage. Footage of me. I grabbed the remote and muted the TV. If they showed much more of the song, I was about to say some words I didn’t want Bex learning from me. I stepped in front of the TV, blocking it just in case they showed my nakedness. Please don’t let them show my nakedness.

“Hey!” Rory said, he and his pervy buddies craning their necks, trying to see around me to the TV.

“What were you thinking, Poppy!” I flinched as Mom turned around and kicked the doorframe and swore because she hurt her foot. I guess Bex was learning the word from Mom, then.

“It could be worse,” Mads said. “I mean they’re on Poppy’s side, they’re pretty much saying Ty’s the bad guy here. Which he so is. And that Roxy chick.”

Mom shot Mads a hateful stare and Mads looked at her toes, which she was scrunching into our discount oriental rug. “Sorry,” she said. “Maybe I should go.”

“Oh no you don’t, this video of Poppy’s was made last night, don’t think I don’t know you had something to do with it. What are you doing talking about private things on the internet, where anyone can see? We can all see that the media have already caught onto it, I can’t believe you would do something so irresponsible and foolish!”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “But he lied to me, cheated on me, he said he’d deleted the photo and instead he puts it on the internet!”

“What photo?” Rory asked.

“He’s an asshole and he deserves what he gets!” I cringed and glanced at Bex. She seemed to be thinking. Great. She’d be saying things were assholes at school next week, for sure.

“What about
you
, Poppy?” Mom said. “This isn’t just reflecting on him. You stupid, stupid girl!”

Mads stared at the carpet, her toes were so curled up under themselves it looked like they had been cut off. Mom noticed and breathed out heavily. “Alright, get out of here Mads,” she said. Mads scampered toward the front door. Wearing boxers and a tank top. She wasn’t even going to get changed she was just going to get gone. “Don’t even think this is over,” Mom called after her. Mads grimaced, said bye and the door closed behind her. Mom surveyed Rory and all of his prepubescent friends. Some of them were looking kind of pubescent, actually. I think one of them was starting to grow a moustache.