#Scandal by Sarah Ockler
Unlike Griffin, who’s suddenly yanking me through the school’s front doorway.
“What the hell, Lucy?” she says. “I’ve been calling and texting all weekend. I thought you were dead.”
Play dumb play dumb play dumb . . .
“I saw the pictures,” she says, forcing me to meet her eyes. Confusion battles rage on her face, barely concealed, and I cringe at the memory of her Paul-maul pics. “Where’s Cole?” she demands. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing. I didn’t . . . I didn’t post that stuff.”
“It’s your Facebook.” She’s wearing the baby veal face again. “You were flirting with Cole all night, and—”
“Griffin. Why would I post pictures like that on my own page? Like, totally busting myself? That makes no sense.”
She snorts. “Unlike making out with Cole and spending the night in his bed? After you made out with Marceau, who by the way was sniffing around your locker earlier, all starry-eyed and ‘Where is Lucy Vacarro?’ That makes sense?”
“I’m just saying I didn’t upload the pictures.”
“Sorry, Luce, but the evidence is kind of stacked.”
“Someone swiped my phone,” I say, and Griff’s scowl is like, Yeah right. “What happened to innocent until proven guilty?”
Franklin and his nosy yellow pad pass through the doorway, eyeing us with detached politeness.
Griff crosses her arms and presses her back to the maroon lockers, waiting. When Franklin’s gone, she says dryly, “Okay, prove.”
I don’t deserve her trust, but the sudden lack of it stings.
“Don’t go all blackout on me now,” she says at my silence. “You were acting crazy all night, and now Ellie thinks I knew what happened and kept it from her, and she’s . . .” Griff’s white-blond curls seem to tighten with their own rage, and she shakes her head to untangle them. “I was kidding about you and Cole hooking up. I never thought you’d—”
“The kiss just . . . it happened. And Ellie . . .” Everything inside me burns. I want to ask Griff if she knew they’d broken up, if Ellie had said anything to her before prom, but the accusation in her eyes silences me.
Three days ago, I had two best friends. We weren’t perfect, but we were mostly close. And now?
“Listen, Luce.” Griffin folds her arms again. “Ellie wants her dress back.”
• • •
Last year the administrators had the bathroom at the end of the art wing painted orange, and they wired it with a commercial-free XM feed from the easy-listening station. They said it was to “discourage student loitering, smoking, and socializing,” which they believed its tucked-away location made all too easy.
Instead, it became the default emo hideaway, private and cold, our daily little miseries set to the smell of bleach and their own tearful soundtracks.
Lav-Oaks is a silver linings kinda place.
A place where Phil Collins is now cautioning me with dire emphasis: Oh! Think twice . . .
“Lucy?” Griff’s head prairie dogs over the top of the adjacent stall.
“What if it wasn’t?” I say. ’Cause it’s another day for you and me in paradise . . .
“Educated guess. I heard your ugly-cry.” Griff climbs down and barges into my stall. “I didn’t mean to get all Mean Girls out there, okay? I’m just shocked.”
I yank a strip of toilet paper from the dispenser and blow my nose.
“I was on the phone with Ellie all night,” she says. “She’s a complete mess.”
“Did she say anything about Cole?”
“Hmm.” Griff presses a finger to her lips. “Liar, cheater, dickhead. Some other names I had to look up on Urban Dictionary.”
“He told me they . . .” It’s a weak excuse before the words are even out, and I let the rest—broke up—die. A wave of sadness rises up, and I ball another wad of toilet paper around my hand, blot my eyes until it’s too black to do any good. “I suck for putting you in the middle. If you bail on me, I get it.”
Griff tears a fresh hunk of paper from the roll and hands it over. “I’m a lover, not a bailer. I just . . . I don’t know what to do, honestly. I am in the middle. You guys are my best friends—no way I’m taking sides.”
“Does this mean you believe me about the phone?”
She rolls her eyes. “You think?”
I blow my nose again. Translation: Thanks.
“Who would do this?” Griff asks. “It’s not like the whole world was at Cole’s party. We knew everyone there.” Griff shakes her head. “It makes no sense.”
I close my eyes against the flicker of faces, everyone at the party a suspect. Olivia, her friends, Clarice. Miss Demeanor’s always looking for a scandal, and she could’ve been there too—no one knows her true identity.
The warning bell rings, T minus one minute to homeroom and widespread eternal damnation, and outside the tiny world of our stall, the bathroom door swings open and closed, the wave of hallway chatter cresting and receding.
“Lucy?”
Cole.
I make a grand effort to erase my mascara tracks, but it’s no use. My eyes are so puffy I can hardly see, and my heart races at the thought of facing Cole again, at the memories of this weekend. At Ellie on the porch in her bathrobe, the door slamming before I found the strength to apologize.
“I’m going to homeroom,” Griff says. “I’ll tell Mrs. King you’re sick.” Her smile is small and dim, but it seems genuine, and I follow her out of the stall. She throws an icy glare at Cole.
To me she says, “See you in calc,” and then she’s gone, leaving me alone with Cole and a real crooner of a song about making brown eyes blue.
Cole’s eyes, neither brown nor blue, have lost some of their sparkle, filled instead with worry.
“Margolis saw you head down this way,” he explains. “I wanted . . .” To kiss you again. “I had to see if you were okay.” His hands push through his hair, which has reached epic levels of sticking-outness, and I curse my beating heart for being so obvious.
“I didn’t post the pictures,” I say. “My phone—”
“I know.” He’s pacing, almost frantic. “I just found out, like, an hour ago. John and I crashed at the cabin last night. We were cleaning all day, didn’t even check our phones. This morning in the car he was all, ‘Dude, the Internet exploded.’ ”
“Did you call Ellie?” I ask.
“She’s straight voice mailing me. Oh, I found some of your stuff.” From a low side pocket in his olive cargo shorts, he pulls out a Baggie with my earrings, hairpins, license, makeup, keys.
“No phone,” I say.
“No phone.” He pinches the bridge of his nose. “This is insane. Ellie must be freaking.”
I fill him in on my Black & Brew breakfast fail, and my stomach churns with fresh nerves. I backed down this morning at Ellie’s when I should’ve spoken up. When I should’ve fought harder, made her listen to the explanation and apology she deserves.
“I can’t believe she found out on Facebook,” Cole says. “And you . . .” His voice softens as he meets my still-puffy eyes. “You shouldn’t have to deal with . . . I mean, your Facebook’s a war zone.” Cole jams his hands into his pockets, shorts tugging low on his hips. “No one said jack on mine—just the tags . . .” He trails off.
“I’m the girl. It’s just how it is.” I turn on the water and try my best to clean my smudged face. Purple smoky eye on the day of my public stoning? I’ve had better ideas.
Behind me, Cole sighs. “Doesn’t make it right. I was there too.”
“I could always join forces with Team Tinfoil Hat.” I tell him about the protest (e)VIL organized for me, but instead of laughing, he cringes.
“They’re not . . . Luce, they’re protesting you.” Cole yanks a crumpled yellow flyer from his back pocket and hands it over.
LUCYGATE!
ONE MORE EXAMPLE OF HOW OUR NARCISSISTIC OBSESSION WITH SOCIAL NETWORKING VIOLATES PRIVACY, DESTROYS INTERPERSONAL RELA
CAPITALIZING ON STUDENT INDISCRETIONS TO BOLSTER ONE’S POPULARITY AND INCREASE THE SURFACE AREA OF ONE’S ELECTRONIC FOOTPRINT IN THE CLOUD IS NOT OKAY. WANT TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT? JOIN (E)VIL FOR OUR PRESUMMER PLENARY. NO CELL PHONES. ASK ASH HOLLOWELL FOR DETAILS, FACE TO FACE.
CLOUD FREE, THAT’S HOW WE ROLL.
“They were giving them out in the parking lot,” Cole explains.
On the back there’s a Sharpie sketch of what can only be me—red hair, black boots, the dress—taking pictures with a giant phone. The whole thing is covered by a huge red circle with a slash.
No Lucy.
“Their drawing skills suck.” The flyer reeks of markers—they must’ve pulled an all-nighter to make them by hand. I pitch it into the trash.
“Hey.” Cole slips his hand behind my neck, a once-friendly gesture that in the wake of our kiss is everything but. “They can say whatever they want. Far as I’m concerned, this is between you, me, and—”
“Well, isn’t this precious.” The voice is sharp, laced with scorn.
I didn’t hear the bathroom door, but Olivia’s reflection glowers in the mirror, her eyes red.
Putting the hard in Mike’s Hard Lemonade . . .
“Olivia!” I step back from Cole, ignore the shiver creeping up my spine. “I’m so, so sorry. Someone stole my phone and—”
“Save it.” She slips past us and yanks a paper towel from the dispenser.
“It was just a party thing,” I say. What my words lack in conviction, they make up for in volume and speed. “It’ll blow over, right? Everyone does dumb stuff at parties.”
Olivia wets the towel and presses it to her face, muffling a sarcastic snort.
“Think of all the crazy shit people will do at grad parties in a few weeks,” Cole says. “No one will even remember your picture.”
She reveals her eyes, wild with a deep menace that belies her tiny frame. The spent paper towel, wadded carelessly and chucked too far from the trash can, hits the floor with a thwack. “My father saw it. He has an excellent memory.”
• • •
“The cloud is forever, Lucy Vacarro.” The chant echoes behind me.
I slam my locker door shut and whirl around, surprisingly disappointed that the (e)VIL girl taunting me isn’t Kiara Chen. Misguided mission aside, Kiara’s forced retirement from Team Tinfoil Hat was unfair. I owe her an explanation.
But this particular minion is just a girl whose name escapes me, a jock in a Swordfish warm-up jacket with streaked blond hair and the long, muscular legs of a swimmer. There’s an ocean of yellow flyers in her arms.
“Shouldn’t you be out looking for Atlantis?” I snap.
Undeterred, she offers a flyer with jazz hands flare, and for the rest of the morning this is me: creeping along the maroon-and-gray walls like a legit zombie hunter, ducking in and out of classrooms and closets, dodging Clarice, Marceau, and a bunch of other randos whenever I spot someone from the party.
Escaping the flyers, however, is not an option. They’re a paper virus, traveling across lockers, slipped under doors and desks, stuffed into backpacks and pockets. I can’t get through a single exam review without being harassed about “the cloud”—even Griff was snickering about it in calculus when we were supposed to be computing the force of fluid pressure on the marshmallows in Mrs. Smolinski’s Jell-O mold.
Unlike our teachers, the Lav-Oaks rumor mill is operating at full capacity, and by lunchtime it’s clear that dining at my usual courtyard table with Cole and John—especially with Ellie still out and those flyers covering every flat surface in the Centennial State—is not the way to make this scandal vanish. Instead, I make a date with the only classmate guaranteed to keep his maw shut about the cloud.
Prince Freckles snorts when he sees me enter the stables, but it’s a welcome snort rather than a judgy one. I drag the groom’s stool to his stall and unpack my lunch, glad to be ignored by the other horses and their soft, peaceful nickering. I’m probably breaking ten different health codes, and the taste of my egg salad sandwich and chocolate pudding cup are muted by the hay-and-animal smells, but the company is worth it.
“So you survived your first Lav-Oaks prom,” I say. “Golf clap for you, buddy. That’s no easy feat.”
Speak for yourself! Prince Freckles paws at the dirt, hooves still coated with golden glitter.
“At least you lost the horn. It wasn’t doing you any favors.” I laugh when I remember the magic pixie dust photographer, the whole stupid setup with the pen and the hay and the fake disco lights. Ellie would’ve died—she would’ve convinced the photographer to let us do bestie poses on the horse, Ellie and Griffin and me riding bareback in our prom night finery like a triple Xena, slightly more princess than warrior.
It wasn’t meant to be. If Ellie had been at prom, I would’ve spent my Saturday night with the undead instead of with the very-much-alive Cole Foster, absent the Xena pics but still in possession of my phone and my secrets and my best friend. The most important person in my life.
I have to fix this.
“Here’s some advice, horses.” I rise from the stool. In their stalls along the wall, the animals prick their ears, swat invisible flies with their tails. “Don’t ever get on Facebook.”
Prince Freckles whinnies. Also maybe let’s not fall for our best friends’ boyfriends.
“You’re getting a little too smart.” I hand over the last of my lunch, an apple he gladly devours, and nuzzle the velvety gray patch between his eyes. “See you tomorrow, buddy.”
I’m back in the main building a total of thirty seconds, supremely mellow after my equestrian lunch date, when the death knell of the intercom buzzes through the halls:
“Lucy Vacarro, please report to Principal Zeff’s office.”
THE PAL IN PRINCIPAL
Is that hay?” Jayla drops all pretense of composure and crinkles her nose as I enter the office. She’s perched on a chair across from Zeff’s oak desk, and beneath a floral headscarf and sunglasses that cover half her face, she looks like a kid playing dress up.
I cross my arms over my black tank top. “What are you doing here?”
“Have a seat, Miss Vacarro.” Zeff motions toward the adjacent chair. “I understand your parents are out of town. Your sister kindly rearranged her schedule so that we might discuss the situation in person.”
Out of town?
Kindly?
Schedule?
“Situation?” I ask. Play dumb play dumb play dumb.
Ms. Zeff looks from me to Jayla, then back to me.
Normally I like Zeff. She’s been principal only five years, so she’s not all jaded and hateful yet, never invents reasons to bust us. She’s only about ten years older than Jayla, and just as pretty, with shoulder-length wavy brown hair and honey-brown eyes. Decent, I usually say when my parents ask about her. Cool.
But for the first time in my life, I’m standing in her office, looking across the polished expanse of the desk, my throat constricting in a decidedly not cool way.
“Would you like a chocolate chip cookie?” she finally says, holding out a plate of them. “I find difficult conversations go better with treats.”
I wonder if she got that theory from Griff, or if Griff got it from her. Either way, I flop into the chair like a noodle and reach for a cookie, first bit of good news all day.
Soon enough, I realize my grave error. Effing oatmeal raisin.
“I understand you attended quite a party this weekend, Miss Vacarro.” Ms. Zeff slides the cookie plate behind her monitor and pulls out a stack of yellow papers, (e)VIL’s handiwork.
“It’s okay, Lucy.” Jayla removes her sunglasses and eyes me with practiced compassion. “This is a safe space.”
“Really?” I shoot flaming eye-daggers at her. To Zeff, I explain, “It was just a few friends.”
“I see.” She thumbs through her papers and tugs a white one from the bottom. “
I lean forward to read the title. “ ‘Lavender Oaks School District Cyberbullying Policies.’ Cyberbullying?” My pulse ticks from trot to gallop. Yeah, it sucks that someone took my phone and posted smarmy pics, but I don’t need the principal fighting my battles. Miss Demeanor would probably create a special place in fan page hell for that. “I’m not being . . . It’s not a big deal. Not like that.”
“I’ve seen the pictures,” she says. “It’s a big deal.”
I break the cookie in half and shove in a bite, forcing myself to chew.
“I want to show you something.” Zeff’s fingers fly over the keyboard; she turns her monitor so all three of us can see it together.
Facebook.
Ick. Ms. Zeff’s not supposed to exist outside this building. Spying on her profile feels like catching my parents making out on the couch.
“I’m giving you a peek at my personal life,” she says, “because I want you to understand that social networking can be a positive—”
“Jayla Heartthrobs!” Jayla squeals when she sees her own face under the likes list. “And Danger’s Little Darling! Yay!” She narrows her eyes at the screen. “Who’s Miss Demeanor?”
“She does the Scandal-of-the-Month stuff,” I say when Zeff doesn’t respond. “No one knows who she is.” I raise my eyebrows at Zeff. “You’re a fan?”
“It’s important to monitor the school grapevine, yes. But I never comment. There’s a line, Miss Vacarro, and adults need to—”
“Coach!” Jayla’s still beaming over Zeff’s likes, another match made in social media heaven. “You like Coach bags!”
“And Fifty Shades of Grey,” I say. Awesome. Now I’ll have to look straight into the sun to burn those images out of my retinas. I shove in another bite of cookie. The oatmeal turns pasty on my tongue.
“Weird.” Jayla’s nose crinkles again, ragingly adorable. “All your friends are babies.”