I’m sixty percent sure I’m ditching my yearbook anyway, but it’s already paid for, so I brave the hostile territory of the cafeteria and get in line for the pickup.
Right behind Olivia and the sprite sisters.
The line moves at an agonizing pace, and the girls keep whispering and turning around and laughing, making a big production of it just in case I miss the point.
“Yes,” I say. “You’re all quite cool, and I’m a horrible person. Moving on.”
“Did you hear something?” Quinn asks Olivia.
Olivia looks right at me, scans my zombie food pyramid shirt. The scowl looks funny on her sweet face, like she borrowed it from one of her friends and it’s not quite her size. “Probably just the wind,” she says.
“Why does the wind advocate zombies eating people?” Haley says, absently tapping her phone screen with a seashell-pink fingernail. “The wind is so, like, morbid.”
I’m all, Whatevs. You three would be the first to get eaten if I were in charge of feeding zombies, but getting middle-schooled by Olivia and her friends stings. Kiara’s creeping on their Facebook profiles, but she’s yet to find any connections to the Juicy Lucy page owner. I haven’t cornered Clarice, either—she’s been too busy handing out flyers about staying sober at the upcoming graduation parties. Avoid a scandal, the flyer urges. Party with pride!
None of my allies are present either. Ironically, they’re suffering through their mandatory cyberbully training today. Zeff let me out of it since I’m doing the presentation with (e)VIL, but word on the street is that Zeff’s trotting out her personal Facebook feed again, complete with babies and inappropriate messages from her mom.
“Oh my God, prom pics!” Haley squeals when she reaches the table. The yearbooks are stacked in a pyramid, and on the other side, there’s a file box with eight by tens of our unicorn pictures. In all the craziness that happened after prom, I forgot about them.
Say magic pixie dust. . . . Cutest couple ever . . .
I wait for the girls to finish collecting their stuff before I hastily sign for my yearbook, locate my prom photo. Anxious, I slide it from the box.
There’s Cole, green eyes sparkling brighter than the unicorn’s golden horn. I’m laughing at something he said, and he’s got one arm over the horse’s back, a hand on my shoulder, and it’s almost the kind of picture you frame on the mantel to show your kids when you’re fifty.
Almost.
If not for the angry black letters scrawled across my face.
#SLUT.
Everything inside me shrivels and aches. I tear the defiled photo in half and drop it in the trash.
“Don’t throw it out,” Haley says from behind me. It’s obvious now that they knew, that they were watching me, waiting for the reaction. They must’ve planned it—probably got their hands on the photos earlier, left their mark. “Don’t you want something to remember him by when he dumps you?”
“Hot tip for you, Haley,” a voice says from behind us. I’d recognize it anywhere. “Cole and I broke up way before prom,” Ellie says. “So I suggest you and your posse of haters recheck your facts and quit abusing Lucy. It’s none of your business, anyway.”
“It’s our business,” Haley says. “We have a right to know who’s skanking around, trying to steal our boyfriends.”
“None of you have boyfriends,” Ellie says, grabbing my hand. It’s so unexpected, I have to fight my instinct not to flinch. “We’re all women, aren’t we? We should be sticking up for our sisters, not perpetuating the patriarchy by tearing one another down.”
“She’s the one sticking things that don’t belong to her into places where they don’t belong,” Olivia says.
“What happened to you, Olivia?” Ellie says. “Lucy’s a person. She has a heart and a soul and she makes mistakes. You want someone talking to your little sisters like this? Or your mothers? What is wrong with you guys?”
“We’re trying to help,” Quinn says. “You should be glad.”
Ellie snorts. “You’re trying to cause drama, and it’s pathetic. Show a little love and respect for your Lav-Oaks sisters. For yourselves.”
I turn to Ellie with grateful tears in my eyes.
She drops my hand as the girls slink away, waves the air like it was nothing special. Nothing she wouldn’t have done for anyone. “I can’t stand seeing girls hate on girls. There’s enough of that in the tabloids.”
There must be something meaningful and important to say, something to make her stay. . . .
We’re supposed to go to college soon. To buy coordinating bedspreads and posters. To pack up the car with snacks and playlists and heart-shaped sunglasses in every color, Cali-bound, future-bound, best-friends-for-the-rest-of-forever-bound.
But all I come up with is, “Tell me about it,” and then she’s taking her yearbook from the stack, stuffing it into her backpack without asking me to sign it.
“See you around, Lucy.”
• • •
On the downside, by the end of the school day, my yearbook is MIA.
On the upside, I dug deep, and I’ve yet to unearth any regret about this. It was probably Quinn—she’s in my physics class and could’ve easy swiped it from my backpack when I was at the whiteboard calculating the velocity of an elephant sliding down a seesaw at a forty-five-degree angle.
Superrelevant.
The word of the day is . . . meh? By the time I stake out Clarice’s locker after last bell, I’m feeling more curious and less graymaily than I was yesterday.
“I need your help,” I say. “And before you refuse . . . 420. Photographic evidence.”
Beneath her sleek black bangs, Clarice’s eyes go wide, and an armload of flyers scatter at her feet.
“Relax.” I crouch down to help. “I just have some questions. I’m trying to figure out what happened that night and who started the Facebook stuff. It wasn’t me.”
“It wasn’t me!”
“You might’ve seen something.”
She holds my gaze for a moment, considering.
“Photographic evidence,” I singsong. “Fairy wings, pot leaf hats . . . could be the biggest scandal to hit Lav-Oaks since the other biggest scandal.”
She blows a breath through her bangs. “Fine. Because I respect Cole and I’m a huge proponent of truth, I’ll talk to you. Confidentially?”
“Off the record,” I say, which basically means it’s not confidential but it’s not going viral, either.
We grab her stuff and duck into an empty classroom, shutting the door behind us.
Clarice confirms that she and 420 were making out in the closet when Cole and I came in—they heard us arguing about Ellie, but didn’t want to get busted. After we fell asleep, they saw their chance. 420 left first, and she followed a few minutes later.
“No one was around on the second floor,” she says. “By that time, people were mostly chilled out in the living room and on the deck. Everyone was, like, wasted. Total I Love You, Man stuff, stupid parlor tricks.”
“Olivia with the Mike’s Lemonade,” I say.
“Exactly. No, wait . . .” She shakes her head, presses her fingers to her temples. “That was later. I didn’t actually see it. When I was in the living room, she was sitting with her girlfriends, all smooshed together in the big recliner. They were playing ‘I Never.’ A few minutes later, Farrah came in and told people that you and Cole were doing it upstairs.”
“Doing it? God. Was there a stampede?” I say. “I’m surprised there weren’t more pictures.”
She shrugs. “Most everyone was so blasted by then, it didn’t really register. Olivia and Quinn got up, just kind of giggling and whispering about it. But then Brian and Ryan got into a wrestling match on the deck with these two werewolves, and after that someone brought Prince Freckles inside, and . . . I don’t know. I think people kind of forgot about you and Cole. Seriously, it’s not like you really were doing it. You were asleep. It was just one of those ‘what happens at the party stays at party’ things.”
“Can you say for certain whether anyone went upstairs after that?”
Clarice nods. “A few people. Olivia for sure, and maybe Haley and Quinn. I don’t know them all that well, and everyone had wings, so . . . I just . . . People were kind of coming and going, and I found . . .” Clarice’s face goes from pale to puce in a second flat. “I was doing something else. In the mudroom.” She waits for me to get the drift.
Pause button on my own drama, because . . .
“You and 420, huh?” I say playfully. “He called you a Doritos kind of girl, right? In 420 lingo, that’s practically a sonnet.”
She blushes again. Despite our tense history, it’s hard not to like this smitten version of her. “He’s charming once you get to know him.”
“How will you cross the drug divide?” I ask. “I don’t mean that as an insult. But really. Clarice, you don’t even like my boots. You’re, like, hard-core straight-edge. And he’s . . . more of a squiggle.”
“Honestly? It’s an issue.” Clarice’s voice is thoughtful, but her smile doesn’t fade. “Look. I’m not one of those girls who thinks she can save the boy, or even make him change. I’ve been trying for years with no results. The thing is, all that time I spent lecturing him and following him around, I got to know him—even more than I got to know John. There’s a lot more to 420 than just . . . Well, for starters, he has an actual name. Lucas.”
Lucas. Such a little thing, knowing a person’s name. A simple, everyday thing that changes my entire perspective.
Clarice smooths the back of her hair. “It’s not perfect, Lucy. But you can’t help who you love.”
• • •
I text Franklin to meet up at the lab for the Clarice update, but we cross paths in the hall at my locker.
“Oh, there you are,” she says, all fake nice. She holds out a yearbook. “It was on the condiment table in the cafeteria.”
“I didn’t leave it in the cafeteria,” I say.
Her face pinches. “Well, that’s where I found it. Do you want it or not?”
Franklin’s giving her this look, like he’s trying to puzzle something out, and when I reach for the yearbook, he makes a move to do the same. I’m faster though, and the second it’s in my hands, Olivia motors out of there.
“She’s up to something,” Franklin says. “Maybe you shouldn’t—”
“People signed this? For me?” Every page, every inch of white space is covered with signatures.
But they aren’t signatures. They’re messages. Identical.
Have a #JUICY summer!
After all the name-calling, the spitballs, the Facebook page, this is the thing that breaks me, the final act that sends me over the edge. Tears slip down my cheeks unbidden, splashing onto the yearbook.
“Original,” I choke out. All the lightness I felt with Clarice is slipping into shadow, all the camaraderie with (e)VIL a distant memory.
Franklin takes the yearbook, flips through the pages. “Bloody hell.”
He slams the yearbook shut, and I grab it and chuck it into a trash can.
“We could talk to Ms. Zeff,” he says, “ask if they have extras—”
“I don’t want one. What’s the point? No one will sign it.”
Franklin’s deep brown eyes are full of concern. “We’re almost graduates. You can’t let these petty acts of vandalism convince you that you’re a bad person. You’re not, Lucy.”
“I hooked up with my best friend’s barely-ex-boyfriend.”
“One, I know there’s a lot more to the story than that. And two, even if there weren’t, that still doesn’t make you a bad person.”
“It just feels like no one’s willing to stick up for me.”
“Lucy, I was at your flat yesterday. The place was full of people.”
I shake my head. “Ash and those guys just want someone to fight for their cause. You know? To make a point, like, ‘Ooh, social networking is bad!’ But what about my cause? Someone stole my phone, first and foremost. This is practically a criminal matter.”
Franklin squeezes my arm. “Don’t get mad at me for saying this, love, but you can’t expect people to stick their necks out for you if you won’t speak up for yourself.”
“No one gave me a chance!” I break away from his touch. “They just attacked. Everywhere I look, people are whispering about me or throwing stuff. Since this started, I’ve had to cut gum out of my hair, wash ink out of my gym shorts, tear posters off my locker, pick noodles out of my bag. You saw the yearbook.”
“I’m not defending their behavior. I just mean . . . you could’ve gone on record and said something in the paper, if not to Zeff. But you chose not to.”
“I’m trying to figure out what happened first. I can’t defend myself without evidence. Someone stole my phone and deliberately posted those pictures on my account. I’m trying to find out who. And every day, it gets a little more obvious that it’s Olivia.”
“Okay,” Franklin says. “Let’s say it is Olivia. Let’s say you get your evidence—irrefutable, even. What then? All of this is pointless if you’re not willing to take a stand. This is bigger than you, Lucy. It’s not just about a stolen phone and a few embarrassing pictures. It’s not even about Olivia and her friends bullying you.”
“Then what?”
Franklin’s pacing, his curls springing out everywhere. “It’s about people using the anonymity of the Internet to make a public spectacle, to sanction harassment. Asher Hollowell’s methods may be unconventional, but his point is valid. Social networking should bring people together, not serve as an online gladiator arena.”
My mind drifts to Russell Crowe in his gladiator outfit, but even that picture of perfect badassery can’t keep the knots out of my stomach. I want to do the right thing, to say what I need to say, to stand up for what’s right—not just for me, but for everyone who goes through stuff like this.
But I’m not strong enough to do it alone.
“You have to trust people, Lucy. Maybe not everyone, but someone.”
“I trust people. You, and I told (e)VIL about my sister, and. . . . Hey.” At the meeting yesterday, Franklin walked into my house, saw Jayla in the TV room. He wasn’t surprised, and I forgot that he should’ve been. “You knew Jayla Heart was my sister?”
Franklin nods. “I’ve always known about your connection to Jayla. What kind of investigative journalist would I be if I didn’t, you know, investigate?”
“But why didn’t you say—”
“Bloody hell, Lucy, I’m not talking about trusting people with Jayla’s identity. I’m talking about trusting your friends with the truth. We all want to help, but none of us knows what happened that night because you haven’t told us.”
“Trusting my friends?” I say. “You’re only helping because I promised you the story.”
“Yes, well . . .” He rests the back of his head on the locker and closes his eyes. “Perhaps I’ve changed my mind.”
I’m not sure whether he’s changed his mind about running the story or about helping with the investigation, but I don’t stick around to ask.
I’ve got evidence to collect.
• • •
In the last stall of the emo bathroom, under cover of a wretched song about a woman named Sweet Caroline, I read Kiara’s message on my now-contraband iPad.
From: Code Name Hackalicious
I’ve written up the details in a separate official report in case the authority figures need something more specific, but in laymen’s terms:
We already know that the self-named creator of the Juicy Lucy page is Narc Alert—obviously, an alias. By comparing the time stamps (login/logout times, message and comment post times, date and page creation time) of Narc Alert and of the likely suspects from Cole and Griffin’s lists—both on the Juicy page as well as on their own personal profiles—I was able to significantly narrow the suspects.
From there, it was a simple matter of correlating common linguistic patterns, crutch words, slang usage, tone, average message length, and style on the Narc Alert page with the personal profiles of those on the suspect short list.
And ding ding ding! We have a match.
I’ve identified the creator of the Juicy Lucy fan page with a 99.8% confidence level: Olivia Barnes.
I will provide hard copies of all evidence in person. Please destroy this message on receipt.
I was never here.
—Hackalicious out
From: Lucy Vacarro
Hackalicious:
Your findings are both thorough and interesting. Thank you for your service. I’ll destroy your message, per your request. We’ll never speak of this e-mail again.
—Vacarro out
From: Code Name Hackalicious
By replying to previous message, you’ve created an electronic trail of our communiqué on multiple servers, thereby making it easier for the NSA to track, flag, and store indefinitely.
Please delete this and all related messages in your sent and received mail folders.
—Hackalicious out
From: Lucy Vacarro
Sorry! :-( I’m new at cyber espionage. Consider them deleted. Mum’s the word. Um, words.
—Vacarro out
From: Code Name Hackalicious
!!!
Oh, right. God, this superspy gig has a lot of rules. I don’t know how (e)VIL does it.
A new song floats through the XM feed, some girl dreaming about an eternal flame, and I delete Kiara’s messages, trying to decide what to do with the information. I don’t have enough evidence to prove Olivia stole my phone and posted the original #scandal photos, but I can at least prove she launched the Juicy Lucy campaign and turn her over to Zeff.
But to clear my name for good, I need more evidence.
Far as I know, the Prince Freckles #scandal award idea was a bust—no one’s come forward to claim it.
I click over to Miss Demeanor’s page and start composing a private message, explaining the situation with the Juicy Lucy page and asking if she has any information that might connect Olivia with the #scandal photos.
The note was supposed to be brief, a quick request, but once I start tapping in the words, I can’t stop.
You have to trust people. . . . Maybe not everyone, but someone . . . None of us knows what happened. . . . You haven’t told us. . . .
Franklin’s voice is in my head as my fingers fly over the iPad. As if they’re being guided by some otherworldly force, some instinctual reaction to Franklin’s words, a full confession takes shape beneath my hands.
I admit everything. Cole. How I’ve loved him since that first time in the woods behind our houses, when he met me and Night. How every moment with him is this crazy adventure, a promise of sunshine and something more. How he smiles at me and I’m simultaneously lost and found.
I tell her about kissing him in his bedroom at the cabin, about our walk in the woods. How I’m so scared of losing Ellie, but that deep down, if it really comes to it, I’d choose Cole. How in so many ways, I already had.
I’m not a good friend.
My heart is broken, but that’s the truth.
And I’m still hiding, still doing exactly what Franklin accused me of. Staying in the shadows, too scared to take a stand.
My fingers finally stop, the iPad smudged and dim.
The confusion. The feelings. The mistakes. It’s all there in the unsent note, the most I’ve ever admitted to anyone, including Jayla, including myself.
The message waits patiently, my thumb hovering over the send button.
Maybe it’s because Miss Demeanor doesn’t have a face. Maybe it’s because out of all the people who’ve come into my life postscandal, she’s the only one who doesn’t gain anything by helping me. And maybe it’s because, best of all, I won’t have to see the judgment in her eyes when she finds out who I really am, no filter.
Maybe there are a million reasons to send it and a million more not to, but beneath a heartbreaking glam band soundtrack about roses and thorns, I hit the button, sending my deepest secrets through cyberspace to a person who doesn’t even exist.