I hadn’t expected it to be easy to get next to Angie, but it proved to be even more difficult than anticipated. I didn’t want the whole world to know what I was doing.
I knew she ate lunch at Wicked Jack’s, sometimes even without Connor, but that wasn’t an option. I still couldn’t bring myself to show my face there. Not after the dance humiliation, although that scandal had died down a bit, thanks to an STD. The victim was varsity cheerleader Jackie Johnson, the abstinence queen who used to hand out sexual Just Say No pamphlets at lunch.
They couldn’t shut up about it in English class. We had a sub. Sometimes we got lucky and had substitute teachers who really wanted to teach, but today’s candidate assigned us to read a chapter and then promptly got out his newspaper.
“Did you hear about Jackie?” Olivia whispered.
“Yes,” I said. “What’s the big deal?” Don’t get me wrong, I was delighted that the focus was off me and the debacle at the dance, but I wasn’t going to revel in someone else’s misfortune, especially not with that harbinger of doom Olivia Kaplan. I had a pretty good suspicion she was the one who had plastered posters of me all over school.
“She has crabs,” Olivia replied indignantly.
“Olivia, that could happen to anybody,” I said. “It could even happen to you.”
I didn’t think it was humanly possible, but for some reason, that shut her up.
I finished reading the assigned chapter in about ten minutes and had the rest of the period to kill. I made a list of the information I’d managed to glean about Angie.
Drama was the most important extracurricular activity she was in.
She was an only child, like me. Her parents were rich.
She’d gone to Adams Middle School.
Slim pickings as far as information went. I tapped my pencil against my teeth as I thought about my options.
Adams Middle School. That was it! I started thinking about my own hideous appearance back then. There had to be something I could use there.
During morning break, I pulled out my cell phone and dialed Stephanie’s number again. I left a brief, innocuous message on her home phone. She and Angie had seemed chummy at the swim meet. Maybe she knew something I could use.
Stephanie still hadn’t called by the weekend. On Saturday, Monet and I were hanging out in her room when the doorbell rang, but she didn’t move to get it.
I looked at her inquiringly.
She shrugged. “It’s for Dev. Beth’s coming over.”
“I thought they weren’t serious,” I said. I don’t know why the thought of them alone in Dev’s bedroom bothered me so much, but it did.
“They’re not,” she said. “I don’t know what he sees in her, anyway.”
“She’s cute,” I replied. “And athletic. So they have that in common.”
“She has the personality of wet spaghetti,” Monet replied. “I never thought Dev would go for the doormat type.”
When we went downstairs to get snacks, Dev was sitting at the kitchen table reading a comic book.
“Where’s Beth?” Monet said.
“She left,” Dev said. “She just came by to get some history notes.” He went back to his comic.
“Shouldn’t you be studying your blocking?” I said, rejoicing in the fact that they weren’t holed up in his room with the door closed.
“Got it nailed,” he said. “What about you?”
“Almost,” I said. In reality, I was memorizing Angie’s stage moves as well as my own, which meant it was taking me a little longer.
“Give me a call if you want to study,” he said. “I could always use the extra practice.”
Monet grabbed a bag of Cheetos and some sodas. “Are you done monopolizing my friend?” she said.
He said, “Not quite. So, Sophie, what did you think about—?”
He didn’t finish his sentence because Monet smacked him with the Cheetos bag.
“Hey, I was going to eat those,” I said.
Dev snickered. “Be my guest.”
When I got home, the answering machine in the kitchen was blinking, but I ignored it. No one called me on that line.
I checked for messages on my cell, but there weren’t any, yet another sign of my waning popularity. But even more vexing was Stephanie’s lack of response. I mean, it wasn’t like she had anything better to do than call me.
I was in my room when Mom got home from work. “Sophie, there’s a message from Stephanie on the phone downstairs.”
Stephanie turned out to be the information jackpot. Angie had gone to Adams with her and they had both attended Eisenhower before Angie transferred to Kennedy.
I did my nails as she talked, listening with only half an ear while she rambled on and on about how wonderful Angie was. I was trying to decide between pale pink or a bright orange when something she said caught my attention.
“And we even went to fat camp together the summer before eighth grade. I lost fifteen pounds,” Stephanie bragged, “but Angie lost thirty.”
Fat camp? I didn’t have any room to talk, especially since I hadn’t been exactly model thin myself in those days. Still wasn’t, but I’d learned to make the most of what I had. So had Angie. But could I use it against her? I couldn’t sink so low, could I?
Apparently, I could.
“Do you happen to have any pictures of you and Angie lying around?” I tried to keep the excitement from my voice.
“Forget I said anything,” Stephanie said quickly. “I heard all about those photos of you that Haley Owens plastered around school. I don’t want anything like that to happen to Angie.”
“You heard wrong,” I said sharply. “Haley is a friend of mine. She’d never do that.”
“Some friend,” Stephanie said. “If that’s how the popular kids treat their friends, I’m glad I’m not popular.”
“I’m telling you, you’re mistaken. It wasn’t Haley,” I said, but even I could hear the lack of conviction in my voice.
“I’m sure you’re right,” Stephanie said soothingly.
“I am right. Now, do you have any photos, or what?”
“I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone about fat camp,” she fretted. “Angie asked me not to. Don’t say anything, please.”
I thought quickly. “I’m writing a piece about her,” I lied. “It’s a surprise—an inspirational piece about how she triumphed over her weight problem. It’s for church.”
There was silence on the other end of the phone.
We didn’t even go to church, but Stephanie obviously didn’t know that.
“I guess it would be all right. I’ll scan them and e-mail them to you.”
“Can you do it tonight?” I said eagerly.
“Sure,” she said. “I’ll do it right now. What’s your e-mail address?”
Ten minutes later, the incriminating photos were delivered to my in-box.
I stared at the photos. One was a group shot of the entire camp. In the other one, a much larger Angie wore shorts and a T-shirt. You could clearly see the words ANDERSON HEALTH CAMP FOR GIRLS stamped across the front of her shirt.
I hesitated for about a second. Angie would know where those photos had come from and Stephanie would be in deep trouble. Angie didn’t strike me as the forgive-and-forget type, but I had to do it. I told myself that Stephanie had to know that I had been lying. She was on her own.
Would trashing Angie make me feel any better? She’d been fat in middle school? So what? I had been a pudgy little dweeb. Did that mean she deserved to have her secret revealed to the entire school?
I stared at the photo. Angie’s hair had been different then. Apparently, she was a bottle blonde, but it was the absolute self-loathing on her face that captured my attention. I had known that feeling well, especially in middle school.
Part of me wanted to forget about it and move on. But I couldn’t. Angie Vogel was going to find out who the real queen bee was at Kennedy High. Those pictures would make sure of it.