CHAPTER TWO

EIGHT DAYS EARLIER

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 22

Cough. Click!

Perfectly timed. I had to hand it to them. Shaniece and Abby—the girls who sat in front of me during American History—had their routine down. Shaniece knew just how to cup her hands and hide her cell phone while aiming its camera at the front of the room. And Abby knew just when to cough to hide the electronic click whenever Shaniece took a picture.

I leaned forward an inch, pretending to be really interested in what Mr. Ashbury was teaching at the white board. I snuck a glance at Shaniece’s phone when she flashed it at Abby, showing her their prize.

A picture of Mr. Ashbury in a rare pause.

Totally understandable. When he wasn’t a whirlwind of teaching motion, pointing to maps and gesturing for effect, Mr. Ashbury was easy on the eyes.

Okay, he was hot.

I’d heard this was his first year teaching, making both of us new to Monona High. Mr. Ashbury didn’t look any older than the rest of us. Piercing eyes behind hipster glasses, dark hair pointed in a faux hawk, chiseled jaw you could cut yourself on ... No way was this the first time someone had taken a secret pic of him.

Abby cleared her throat. When I looked, she was glaring right at me. Shaniece caught me glancing at her phone and immediately pulled it close to her chest. Embarrassed, I went back to listening to Mr. Ashbury’s lecture on the Bill of Rights. Not a good idea to upset the locals six weeks into the school year. If moving around a lot—eight schools in ten years—had taught me anything, it was to not make waves.

Once Shaniece was satisfied my eyes were off her, she stabbed at her phone’s screen with her thumbs, typing furiously. A second later, the picture of Mr. Ashbury was uploaded under the caption HOTTIE ALERT! Before she slipped the phone back into her purse, I glimpsed the bright red banner of the site she was at.

The Confessional.

From what I knew about Shaniece, she wasn’t the type to ask forgiveness for anything.

•••

“What’s the buzz?” Grant said, slamming down in the seat next to me. “Tell me what’s-a happening.”

Grant was an ambassador, one of the students the office assigns to show new kids around. Sweet guy, very helpful, took his job seriously. He popped up all over the place to make sure I wasn’t feeling overwhelmed. He’d even tracked me down outside of school, like here at the West Towne Mall food court, where I’d come for a milkshake.

“It’s nice of you,” I said, “but you really don’t have to check up on me so often.”

“I took an ambassador’s oath!” Grant said. “?‘Thou shalt not let the new girl feel alone.’ I promise I’ll stop in a few weeks. Until then, make this easy on yourself and tell me how it’s going.”

“Good,” I said.

“Making friends? Meeting people?”

“Right now, I’m more worried about catching up.” I pointed to the homework I was doing.

A second later, his two friends—DeShawn and Lia—sat down next to him. Grant and the rest of the drama club crew had adopted me. I wasn’t sure if they genuinely wanted to be my friend or if they just needed someone to work backstage for the fall musical. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that theater just wasn’t my thing. Still, it was nice to have some insta-friends.

“Does anybody know,” DeShawn asked, “why Shaniece Burton is throwing major shade this way?”

I followed his gaze to Shaniece, sitting two tables over and glaring right at me. No doubt about it. There might as well have been cartoon daggers coming out of her eyes.

“The death look would be for me,” I said, trying to ignore her. “I think I saw something I wasn’t supposed to.” I didn’t get why she was still mad. It’s not like I was going to narc.

“What did you see?” Lia asked, hungry for gossip.

I sighed. “She uploaded a secret picture of Mr. Ashbury to some website and called him a hottie. The way she’s staring, you’d think I killed her dog.”

My friends went quiet. Grant looked sick and Lia looked scandalized.

“Was it The Confessional?” Grant said.

“That’s the one.”

Lia oooohed and fanned her face. “That’s some hot stuff. No wonder she hates you, chica.”

Hates me? For looking at her phone?

“Can we please change the subject?” Grant said, taking a drag on his Dr. Pepper.

“Ashbury is the new guy, right?” DeShawn said. “The pretty one? Sounds about right he’d be all over The Confessional.”

“It’s all the gossip you could want about anyone at Monona High,” Lia said. “Who’s dating who, who’s having the most sex ... you know, the basics. You want the dirt on anyone, that’s where you find it.”

DeShawn pulled out his phone and showed me the site.

“Looks like Reddit,” I said.

DeShawn nodded. “Works the same way. Somebody posts a topic and then the comments start flying. You take it all with a grain of salt, but it can really open your eyes to the people you thought you knew.”

I glanced over, and Shaniece was still glaring.

“Ignore that skizz,” Lia said. She turned and gave Shaniece the finger. “She only goes to The Confessional for the attention. She loves to see everyone talk about all the guys she’s hooked up with.”

I was still learning the lingo at Monona. You could get in big trouble if anyone heard you use “the other s-word,” the one that meant a girl who sleeps around. So everybody just said “skizz” instead. And when people talked about Shaniece, they said “skizz” a lot.

Grant rolled his eyes. “Way too gossipy for me. That place is toxic.”

“You only think that because The Confessional voted you ‘Most likely to sleep with the Gargoyle for a lead role,’?” Lia said, jabbing him in the ribs with her elbow.

The Gargoyle was what they called Mrs. Krause, the drama coach. I had her for Contemporary Lit. She was about as pleasant as her nickname suggested.

“Whatever,” Grant said, rolling his eyes. “Really, Jenny, you don’t want to go anywhere near that site.”

“Got it,” I said. But of course, I was really thinking, I need to check this out.

I’d never had any interest in being popular. Any time I’d ever changed schools, I was never the only new kid. It was easy to spot the others. I could see the ways they worked the system. They figured out who the most popular kids were and tried to worm their way in.

Not me. Just isn’t who I am.

Now, fitting in—that’s something completely different. Don’t make waves. This was rule number one when trying to make friends at a new school. The second rule was to figure out the In.

The In was like a mass, shared interest. The one thing everybody (or almost everybody) talked about. Most schools, it was sports. Usually football, but not always. I’d develop a healthy-but-totally-fake interest in the In and pretty soon, I wasn’t the outcast anymore.

Trash talk. That was the In at Monona High.

Who knew?