#Scandal (28 page)

Like I’m not even here, not even a blip on her radar, she goes back to washing her hands.

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Olivia hates me for kissing Cole. She hates me for posting the picture that got her in trouble with her parents, even though I didn’t post it. She just admitted to starting an online bullying campaign against me. She and her two best friends fueled it with new photos, captions, commentary, and lengthy discussions about my skankiness.

But one thing is suddenly clear: Olivia didn’t steal my iPhone. She didn’t take pictures of me and Cole kissing on the deck, embracing in his bed. She didn’t upload incriminating evidence to my Facebook profile. Maybe one of her friends did it. Maybe Haley dropped the phone in her bag, set her up to retaliate for being left out of the senior campout. Maybe Griff just assumed the bag in gym class belonged to Olivia, but it was someone else’s entirely.

Someone we overlooked.

Maybe I’ll never know who did it. Maybe it doesn’t even matter anymore, because it’s the last day of school, my friends are scattered, my reputation is shot, and the formerly kind and happy girl at the sink is graduating with her own scandal, her own disappointments and broken hearts.

“I’m sorry about the Facebook pictures, Olivia,” I whisper. “I honestly don’t know who posted them.” Olivia shrugs, meeting my eyes once more in the mirror. “What’s done is done.”

All the momentary fury I felt walking in here breaks on 347

the shores of my heart, settling into a low, throbbing ache that no one can feel but me, and when I retreat to the gray-and-maroon halls to clear out my locker, to disassemble four years of pictures and quotes and magnets and long-lost, coffee-stained homework, I’m alone.

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PRIVACY IS DE AD. GE T OV ER IT.

D
oes the phrase ‘restraining order’ mean anything to you?” I snap. “How about ‘hungry German shepherd?’”

There’s a dude with a camera sniffing around my garage when I get home, trying to get shots of Jay’s Porsche through the dusty windows. He jumps when he sees me, mutters something about the wrong address.

Inside, the TV room is a cave, total darkness broken only by a single ray of light slicing between drawn curtains.

Jayla’s asleep on the couch, mumbling and murmuring, her thin body curled up and wrapped in one of Mom’s afghans.

Six out of ten manicured fingers poke through the cro-cheted holes.

On the table in front of her, there’s a stack of tabloids, 349

wrinkled with water stains. The top one is an old issue of

#TRENDZ
, and Jayla’s on the cover, the Cali sun bright behind her. In one hand she’s holding a to-go carrier with two coffee cups and a small pastry bag. Her hair is a wild nest, makeup smudged, something dark spilled down the front of her white blouse. Her expression is both shocked and annoyed, like she didn’t realize she was being photographed until the exact moment the shutter clicked.

CAUGHT ON CAMERA: GET THIS GIRL TO MAKEUP, STAT!

Beneath the headline, in smaller print:
Your favorite
celebs doing the walk of shame. Would you want to wake up next to
them? Cast your vote on our Facebook page!

There’s a whole pile of old issues—
#TRENDS
and

CelebStyle—
each one featuring a photo of her on the cover or in a sidebar.

None of them positive. None of them nice.

I pick up the stack and chuck them in the kitchen garbage, dump in a glass of water for good measure.

Back on the couch, Jayla’s still asleep. Her skin is pale, the shadows under her eyes dark and deep, and the whole scene reminds me of last summer.

The last time I saw her in California.

Before that, I hadn’t seen her since Christmas, and that was only for a day. When she invited me out to California after school ended, I couldn’t wait to spend time alone with 350

her. We’d have two whole weeks, I thought. Two weeks to catch up, to be together.

Jayla’s life didn’t stop when I arrived—shoot after shoot, dinner parties, bar meetings, agent calls. Most nights, she left money for pizza or Thai, and I spent my dinners alone, streaming
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
.

Two nights before I was supposed to head home, she promised she’d stay in. Only instead of spending the night alone with me, she insisted on throwing a party.

“I want you to meet my friends, Luce. You’ll
love
them!” All these fake plastic people showed up, half of them assuming I was a caterer or coat-check girl, some even stuffing money into my pockets. Jayla quickly disappeared in a cloud of drunk jokes and forced smiles.

Hours passed. Long, boring, uncomfortable, synthetic.

Finally I decided to go to bed, and I pushed my way through the crowd to find my sister. She was in the kitchen, head thrown back in a laugh that didn’t even sound like hers.

Everyone there was talking with borrowed voices, flaunting tried-on clothes and faces. When they saw me in the kitchen doorway, they smiled like sharks.

“Oh, Lucy! Everyone, this is my baby sister, Lucy!” She made a big deal, shouting across the whole apartment, but I didn’t budge. It took her a moment to realize I was upset, and when she did, she gave me this huge frown.

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Come over here and hug me,
I thought.
Put your arm around
me and whisper that you’ll send everyone home so we can hang out.

But of course she didn’t, and when it was clear that I wasn’t moving from the doorway, she rolled her eyes.

“What’s wrong, Lucy? You don’t like when the grown-ups have adult time?”

Her friends laughed, egging her on.

“Have a drink,” she said, downing one of her own.

“Maybe you’ll learn something.”

I knew better than to argue with her in front of her pseudo friends, especially drunk pseudo friends, everyone laughing at me like I was some poor little twit Jayla got stuck babysitting.

Wordlessly, I stalked off to the guest room, flopped on the bed. I just wanted to close my eyes, not open them until the party was over.

But I wasn’t alone.

Someone had followed me, this bleach-blond wannabe actor I’d been half flirting with earlier that night—more out of boredom than intrigue. He sat next to me on the bed then, tried to kiss me. He was wasted, and I shoved him off. It really wasn’t a big deal, but I was already annoyed and tired of drunk people, and the guy freaked, raising his voice.

It was all talk. He’d landed on the floor when I pushed 352

him, and he was still there, holding his head, slurring.

Tease. Slut. Prude.

He got up slowly, stumbled to the door, yelled out a few more names.

Bitch. Dyke. Jailbait. Whore.

Jayla heard the shouting. When he opened the bedroom door to leave, she was walking in. He stumbled into her.

“What the hell’s going on?” she said.

“Baby sister’s a tease, that’s what.” He pushed past her, back out into the crowd.

“Lucy?” she said softly, and I thought she might hug me after all, might squeeze my hand and ask if I was okay.

But then her face turned sour. “This party was the worst idea ever. I should’ve known you wouldn’t be able to handle it.”

She slammed the door, slammed me inside the guest room and went back to her party like I really was the poor little twit she had to babysit.

I packed the next morning, called a cab before she could stop me.

“What’s your problem?” she said as I was hauling my suitcase out the door. “You’re acting like he raped you or something. Grow up, Lucy.” She laughed like the whole thing was a joke, like I needed to lighten up.

But she didn’t get it. No, he hadn’t attacked me. He was 353

just some drunk guy at a stupid party I didn’t want to be at.

He wasn’t the reason I was leaving.

It was Jayla. The sister I no longer recognized as mine. I knew it that night, confirmed when she slammed the door.

Janey-girl was gone, and I never even got the chance to say goodbye.

Now, standing before our couch, I shove Jayla hard in the shoulder. “Wake up.”

Her eyes flutter, sticky and uneven, squinting.

“There was a photographer outside. Should I let him in?

Get a few behind-the-scenes shots?”

Her eyes finally focus, huge and blue, and for a second it’s like she forgets everything that happened in the last few years. She’s sweet and beautiful again, innocent, happy to see me. She smiles, stretches her fingers through the holes in the afghan, flutters them against my knee. “Is it time for dinner? Where’s Mom?”

I want to scream at her. To cancel her graduation appearance, pack up her Louis Vuitton bags and get her on the next flight out. Back to California, to her fake friends, to anyone who wants her. I want to yell, demanding to know how the golden girl who had everything could lose it all so fast.

Reckless. Ridiculous. Impossible. Selfish.

The labels float before my eyes.

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But under all the anger and denial and brattiness, the real truth rears its ugly head.

Jayla is alone.

Hundreds of thousands of Heartthrob Facebook fans, and she never once thought to talk to her own sister about how much she was hurting, about how dark her dreams had turned.

And her own sister—aka
me
—was too wrapped up in drama to figure it out. To offer one encouraging word. To draw her a hot bath. To bring her chocolate mini bundts with sprinkles. To challenge her to a game of Fruit Ninja.

To give her one sincere, everything’s-gonna-be-alright hug.

To forgive her.

“Die, beasty hellions!” I slam on the keyboard and lay waste to a rabid horde. The screen is doused in blood splatter.

“That’s right. I’m a
survivor
, bitches.” And a princess. Warrior. International girl of mystery.

Back to the safety of online anonymity, where my toughest dilemma is choosing between a weapon that’s sharp and one that’s blunt, judged only by the number of walking corpses I slay.

No what-ifs and maybes.

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No huddling around the coffee table, helping investigate a
scandal.

No shades of gray.

No swapping videos of baby animals.

No drama, no #scandals.

No bundt cakes and nerd debates. No Fruit Ninja champs. No
Keith and Veronica jokes.

“Kindly welcome your face to my shotgun!
Blam!
” I ice a few more zombies, exchange a round of digital high-fives with my crew.

I’m toggling through my weapons when my e-mail notifier pings on the task bar, demanding to be clicked. It’s from Miss Demeanor. Miss Franklin Margolis Demeanor.

Subject: EVIDENCE.

I pull out my flamethrower and torch another zombie, creep around in search of more carnage.

This is me, Franklin. Not clicking on your e-mail. Not clicking, not caring.

Movement on the screen—another horde. I light up a molly and toss it at a nearby gas tank, watch the whole shit blow up.

Survivor, that’s me.

EVIDENCE.

Click-click BOOM!

EVIDENCE.

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Rat-a-tat-a-tat! BOOM!

EVIDENCE.

EVIDENCE.

EVIDENCE.

From: Miss Demeanor

Dearest Lucy,

If we were on the phone, here’s the part where I’d say, “Don’t hang up!” So, don’t hang up.

I think I’ve got a way to identify the

perpetrator beyond the shadow of a doubt.

Please hear me out.

I wasn’t withholding information; I just didn’t connect the dots until now. I only suggested tracking down Miss D that day at the pep rally because it seemed like a Keith Mars sort of thing to do. I didn’t realize that she—that I—had real evidence.

But I do.

The morning after prom, someone

sent Miss Demeanor a set of photographs

from an anonymous e-mail account called

#ScandalWhore. The person explained that she didn’t have a Facebook account and requested that I post the photos directly to the #scandal 357

page. It was both a red flag and against the rules, and I politely refused.

Obviously, #ScandalWhore later deduced

that your FB password was stored on your phone, so she uploaded the photos taken with your phone directly to your account, sharing them on Miss Demeanor’s page and tagging them with #scandal.

But there were also photographs posted

that weren’t taken with your phone (the ones of you and Cole on the deck and the ones with Marceau—your phone is in those shots). This person clearly took them with her own phone, then either sent them to your phone and

uploaded them that way, or pulled them up on a computer screen and photographed them with your phone, uploading everything in one batch.

I never gave it a second thought, because we didn’t have your phone to confirm.

BUT . . . clearing through the old Miss

D e-mails tonight, I found the photos

#ScandalWhore first sent me—the ones taken with her phone. They were original, unedited files, so they still had the associated metadata (technical details that cell and digital cameras 358

store with the image file—file size, the time it was taken, location info, and the type of phone or camera used). I can’t believe I overlooked this before.

I’ve attached those originals here.

With this metadata—particularly the cell phone details—you can prove it’s Olivia with real evidence instead of hearsay. Then you can turn it over to Zeff, clear your name, and officially close the case.

I’m sorry. Until now, it didn’t occur to me that the photos in Miss D’s inbox contained data we could use, or I would’ve found an anonymous way to get it to you.

Hope it helps.

Yours

truly,

Franklin

“Huh. Weird.” Kiara frowns at the data onscreen, a jumble of letters and numbers that might as well be launch codes for nuclear missiles.

It took me a while to find her home number in the Internet wormhole of our student directory, but as soon as I tracked her down and explained the situation, and swore that I didn’t hold Ash’s secret Miss D experiment against 359