The Implosion of Aggie Winchester (13 page)

Chapter Twenty-three

THURSDAY, APRIL 23 / 12:28 P.M.

At lunchtime,
I recalled the whole bathroom story for Jess while we huddled together in the crowded lunchroom. Jess had forgotten to pack something to eat and claimed she had a hard time digesting fast food. It was the school salad bar or nothing.

“Sylvia admitted to stuffing the ballot boxes?” Jess asked, spearing a cucumber.

“Not in so many words. But I know she did. I saw her with those ballots
twice.
”

“Did she fudge Ryan’s name too?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. My guess is that he was pretty much a shoo-in for king, but she probably forged a few ballots, just in case.”

“And now Sylvia says everything will be cool if you just get your mom to call off a revote and make her queen?”

“Something like that,” I said.

Jess set down her fork. “What a mess,” she mumbled.

I pushed away the soggy pretzel and cheese I’d purchased. I wasn’t hungry anymore. A moment later, a janitor with a trash bag came by. “You finished?” he asked, pointing to my lunch.

“Yeah, sure,” I said. I tossed the remains of my lunch into the bag, catching a glimpse of his name tag at the same time.
Lionel Daniels
.

My eyes widened. “Hey, excuse me,” I said as he started off toward another table. “Sorry to bother you, but you’re new here, right?”

Lionel stopped and nodded. “Yeah, just a few weeks in.”

“Well . . . uh, hi,” I said. I knew kids were staring at me. Nobody talked to the janitors. Ever. “Sorry, but you have a daughter, right?”

Lionel looked around. His watery hazel eyes were set deep in his face, and his chin was covered in stubble. “Well, she don’t like people to know we’re related.”

I smiled. “It’s okay. I know her. It’s Beth, right?”

Lionel nodded. “I’m glad Beth is makin’ friends. She had a hard time in Walker.”

“You moved from Walker?” It was a town just a couple hours away. So much for moving from the Big Apple. Not to mention having a dad who’d left Wall Street.

Lionel nodded. “Well, probably said too much already. I’m glad you know my baby. Keep her on her toes for me.”

With that, he turned and continued the trash collection.

“What are you doing?” Jess asked. “Why were you talking to that guy?”

I couldn’t help but smile. “Oh, just poking more holes in Beth’s bullshit stories. You know she said her dad was the president of a Wall Street firm and that they’d moved from New York? But that guy—the
janitor
—was her dad. And they moved from freaking Walker.”

Jess harpooned a carrot on her fork. “That so?” she asked, studying her vegetable.

“Yep,” I said.

Jess bit the carrot and chewed. She was silent for a while.

“What?” I finally asked. “What’s going on in that brain of yours?”

“I’m just wondering, if he’s the janitor, doesn’t he have keys to just about everything in the school?”

“Probably. Why?”

“Well, what if those keys fell into the wrong hands?”

I leaned forward, suddenly grasping Jess’s meaning. “Wrong hands, like Beth’s?”

Jess nodded. “That’s what I’m thinking. I mean, we still don’t know how Sylvia got all those blank ballots.”

“What if,” I proposed, “Beth stole her dad’s keys, broke into one of the supply closets, and lifted them? It makes total sense.”

“It’s also total conjecture,” Jess said. “We have nothing but a theory.”

I rubbed my forehead. Jess was right. It was like my idea about Jefferson. It made sense, but I’d never be able to prove it. I needed something more concrete to back Sylvia off her quest to take down my mom.

“You know,” Jess said, “the worst part about all of it is that Sylvia and Beth probably didn’t have to lift the ballots in the first place. I think Sylvia might have had enough votes to be queen just because people supported her. She probably didn’t need to rig it, you know? Now she’s all worried about a revote when, really, she might already have half the school behind her.”

“Except it’s not like Sylvia to want her fate in other people’s hands,” I said, thinking about how much she liked to be sure of things for herself.

We were silent for a second. “Can I say one thing without you flying off the handle?” Jess asked.

“What?”

“Are you sure your mom had nothing to do with the election? I mean, are you positive she didn’t tell Mrs. Wagner to burn the ballots? Do we know for a fact that Mrs. Wagner acted alone?”

“My mom didn’t do anything.”

“Fine, but then you should know that for sure. If Mrs. Wagner did what someone higher up told her to do, that means the
administration
is involved in this. Sylvia may have forged ballots, but the school officials might have stepped all over the democratic process, too.”

“The democratic process? What are you talking about? This isn’t a presidential election, it’s the prom.”

Jess shrugged. Her collarbone stood out underneath her pink T-shirt. “You felt strongly about Sylvia not messing with the election, but I think it goes both ways.
No one
should mess with it. Period. I mean, here at school we vote because supposedly our opinion counts. If the administration doesn’t think our opinion matters, then fine. Then they should just tell us who’s queen. But if we vote, then it should matter. That’s all I’m saying.”

I sat back a little. Jess was right.

“You should try talking to your mom again,” she continued. “Maybe tell her about seeing Sylvia with the ballots. I’m guessing she’ll know what to do.”

Just as I was about to try and tell Jess I didn’t think that was a good idea, a commotion erupted by the lunchroom window. Kids started shouting and pointing, and pretty soon bodies started streaming in from everywhere.

“What the hell?” Jess asked.

We both got up and managed to push our way to the front of the mass—Jess because she was small and could squeeze, and me because I was bigger and could barrel through.

Out on the school’s front lawn was KBNT Television, St. Davis’s TV station. Rhonda Pritchard, a local reporter with a helmet of blond hair, was directing her cameraman to focus on this angle or that.

I looked over at Jess, who reached out her deformed hand and grabbed my arm. Her lips moved, but I didn’t hear what she said. The noise around us was deafening. Rhonda Pritchard was here. This couldn’t be good.

Just then, three or four teachers came running forward, yelling and clapping their hands. “Break it up!” they hollered. “Get to class,
now
!”

The mass of people started breaking apart, and I fought against the flow of them to get to Jess. But I stopped short to stare at the lockers along the hallway outside the cafeteria. SYLVIA NESS IS THE QUEEN was scrawled in thick black marker down the length of them.

This was getting insane. Where did any of us go from here?

Chapter Twenty-four

FRIDAY, APRIL 24 / 7:25 A.M.

Friday morning,
I caught a glimpse of the front page of the
St. Davis Letter
before I left for school. They’d run a small article, below the fold, on the prom. The title read, PROM UNREST AT ST. DAVIS HIGH SCHOOL. The byline was Rod Barris’s.

Allegations have surfaced accusing St. Davis High School administrators of fraud in this year’s election of prom queen. St. Davis junior Marissa Mendez was crowned queen on Monday by school officials, but some students are arguing that their votes for a different junior, Sylvia Ness, went uncounted. Members of the St. Davis High School administration were not immediately available for comment.

For once I wished my mom was around so I could ask her more about the election, but she hadn’t been coming home until late at night and had been leaving early in the morning. My dad had pretty much been doing the same thing, and a thick, awkward silence had settled over the house. No one was speaking, but everyone was saying the same thing:
Don’t bring up the prom. It’ll all work itself out.

As I drove to school, I checked my messages and found out Neil had e-mailed me.
Looking 4wrd to 2nite,
he’d said.
C u at midnite.

My hand had gone numb around my phone when I’d seen those words. I knew, like Kate Winslet’s character in
Sense and Sensibility
, that you could pine after someone even after he treated you poorly. In this case, the person who’d done the hurting was asking for another chance, which made me wonder how
Sense and Sensibility
had ended. I’d stormed away before finding out. Had Willoughby shown up and professed his love, and did Kate’s character take him back? I tried to picture her doing that, tried to imagine what Willoughby would say to convince her he’d changed, that things were different.

He’d probably say all the same things Neil had said to me.
I love you. I want to be with you
. My grandma Lou Belle always said a leopard never changed its spots, and I wondered if Neil’s spots really were any different. I wanted to believe they were, but I just couldn’t wrap my head around why Neil had picked now to get back together with me.
Nothing’s changed
, I told myself.
He’s loved you this whole time. You just hit a speed bump
.

Or a goddamn mountain was more like it.

I wanted to focus on Neil and let prom drama take a backseat for a few hours, but no such luck. The minute I stepped into school, I knew things were only going to get worse. Overnight, the Marissa supporters had bonded together and plastered the hallways with posters that said CONGRATULATIONS MARISSA! and WE LOVE OUR PROM QUEEN MARISSA!

When one of the Sylvia supporters tried to tear down a pro-Marissa banner, fists flew until the teachers came running. First period was a bust, since a bunch of kids decided to wage a sit-in. Before the first bell rang, half the junior class had parked themselves in the hallways and refused to go to class until the administration came forward with the ballots or made Sylvia the queen. The other half of the junior class went to first hour and said Sylvia was a sore loser and a drama queen. It wasn’t until the teachers had gone through the hallways, handing out detention slips to the kids who weren’t in first period, that the protest stopped and classes resumed.

I took a tiny bit of comfort in the fact that Fitz held his seat first hour, even though we hadn’t really talked since he’d asked me to prom.

After what felt like a drama-filled morning, I was looking forward to seeing Jess in fencing (and wondering if Sylvia would be in class), when my phone buzzed. It was Rod Barris.

“What?” I said, ducking into a bathroom stall so I could focus.

“Hi, Aggie. You got a sec?”

“No.”

“Listen, I know we kind of got off track about the prom story. I was wondering if we could try again. I really would like to talk to you.”

“Too bad for you,” I said, ready to hang up.

“Wait! Just hold on a second. I was insensitive when we first met. I admit that. I should have realized this prom issue is probably affecting you very personally. Your mom is on one side, your best friend is on the other. As a reporter, the least I can do is hear your side of it.”

I was ready to tell him to screw off when I reconsidered. If I couldn’t tell my mom the truth about Sylvia and the fake ballots because then I’d be a principal’s bitch, then I could at least tell Rod. As a reporter, he could put all the information on the table—or in the paper, as it were—and let the chips fall where they may. Rod was a snake, there was no doubt about that, but even so, he could still print a story with the right information in it. Maybe the
St. Davis Letter
was the key to all of this.

“Fine,” I said. “I can meet now. At Tickywinn’s.”

“You sure?” Rod asked. “Aren’t you in school?”

“Trust me,” I said, peeking out of the bathroom and checking for teachers, “it’s not a problem.”

“See you in fifteen, then.”

With the coast clear, I made a run for the parking lot.

Rod sat at the same table we’d used Monday night. “So, Aggie,” he said, “tell me a little more about yourself.”

I studied his checkered shirt and tie, took in the thick hair on his forearms. “You don’t have to do the ‘let’s get to know Aggie’ dance,” I said after a second. “I just want to talk about the election.”

“Suddenly you’re so forthcoming? What’s changed?”

“I don’t know. I just want you to know some things.”

Rod nodded. “Specifically?”

“The truth.”

“And you have a clear idea of what that is? Regarding the prom situation, I assume?”

“Yeah. But I have one question for you before we start. Will
everything
I tell you go in the paper?”

“Do you
want
everything you tell me to go in the paper?”

“Well, yes. I mean, I want the truth in the paper. But I don’t want my name in the paper.”

Rod nodded. “So you want to be an anonymous source.”

“Yes.”

“I haven’t heard what you have to say yet, but if it’s valuable, then I’ll print it without using your name. Fair?”

I nodded. “Fair.”

“Okay, then. So where do you want to start?”

A coffee grinder purred. I heard the clank of dishes. There was so much to say—and I had no idea where to begin. Rod spoke up after a moment.

“How about we start with you and Sylvia.”

“Okay,” I said, relieved to have a jumping-off point.

“Best friends?”

“Used to be. But she dumped me last week.”

Rod scratched at the back of his neck. “I’m sorry to hear that. I know how brutal high school friendships can be.”

“Well, it wasn’t just that we grew apart or that, you know, we totally had a fight or something. It’s like she dumped me because she didn’t want me close to what she was up to. Because of my mom.”

“Because she was doing something wrong and she thought you’d tell your mom?”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

Rod’s forehead creased. “What was Sylvia doing?”

“Stealing ballots from the school and rigging the prom vote. I caught her with a whole bunch of ballots on Monday.”

“How did she pull that off?”

I took a sip of coffee. My throat felt like it was on fire. “I don’t know for sure. My best guess is that she had help from this girl, Beth Daniels, whose dad is a janitor at school. And maybe this other guy, Jefferson Talbot, who helped her swap out the votes. But it’s not like I have proof.”

“I see,” Rod said. He pulled out the same notebook from the other night and scribbled a few words. After a second, he looked back up. “What’s the hardest thing about this for you?”

I clenched and unclenched my jaw. I wasn’t sure how to answer that. I wasn’t sure if it was losing my best friend, or feeling like I couldn’t be honest with my mom, or something else entirely.

“Let me try a different tack,” Rod offered when I didn’t say anything. “Where is your mom in all this?”

“She’s busy,” I replied.

“At school? Trying to get to the bottom of things?”

“Yeah. Probably. She says the school wants to handle it internally.”

Rod tapped his pen against his notepad. “Listen, I can imagine it’s been hard for you to communicate with your mom about any of this, but have you guys talked at
all
?”

“Well, she told me on Monday the ballots were missing. That Mrs. Wagner had burned them. I guess this cheerleader, Tiffany Holland, helped her count the ballots, which is practically its
own
story since Tiffany was a prom nominee herself. Anyway, she said there were more ballots for Sylvia than for Marissa, but before anyone could verify anything, Mrs. Wagner burned the evidence.”

“I talked to Tiffany already, actually. She’s very forthcoming and she’s held fast to her position despite people questioning her motives. But there’s one thing I can’t figure out: why would she bust her own cheerleading coach?”

“Tiffany found out Marissa was hitting on her boyfriend, and she couldn’t stand to see Marissa win
.
”

Rod shook his head. “Man, there are days when I am so glad I’m not back there.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Your mom, she just had cancer surgery. Is that right?”

I stared at Rod. “Yes. But what does that have to do with anything?”

Rod looked up from his notebook. “Nothing. I’m just trying to make sure I have all my facts straight.”

“She had a lumpectomy, but it was outpatient. She’s fine. They say she has ‘clean margins,’ and I guess that’s good.”

“Undergoing radiation?”

“No. Not yet. She needs a couple more weeks to heal before they do that. Or at least that’s what my dad said.”

I took another drink of coffee. Rod did the same.

“So, the part about Sylvia tampering with the ballots,” I said. “Are you going to print that?”

Rod looked at the bottom of his mug, then at me. “Out of everything we’ve talked about, I’m not quite sure that’s the most interesting.”

I blinked. “Then what is?”

“Well, essentially you’ve confirmed that your mom has known about the ballots being burned since Monday, and she’s done nothing. Not one thing. And today is Friday. Why do you think that is?”

I struggled to keep my thoughts ordered. “Well, not because she’s guilty, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“I have Mrs. Wagner on record saying she was told by your mom to burn the ballots and crown Marissa queen.”

“Wait, you talked to Mrs. Wagner already?”

“Yes. She called my office this afternoon. She explained her side of the story and said that the school was going to make it look like she’d acted independently to try and keep Sylvia off the throne.”

“She
did
act independently!”

Rod set down his pen. “Except you just confirmed your mom knew about the ballot burning.”

“Knowing and condoning are two different things,” I said.

“That still doesn’t explain why your mom hasn’t done anything yet, Aggie. No disciplinary action, no revote, no nothing.”

“Maybe she and the other administrators are just—I don’t know, trying to figure it out or something.”

“Trying to figure it out or trying to cover it up?”

“Even if that were the case, which it’s
not
,” I argued, “you still have bogus ballots in play. I saw Sylvia with the fakes.”

Rod tucked his notebook back into his shirt pocket. “It’s a tough sell. Much like Tiffany Holland, you have personal motives in this. Unlike Tiffany, you won’t go on record.”

“What? You didn’t tell me that was going to be an issue.”

“It’s just harder to quote an anonymous source with no proof.”

“You’re not going to have a hard time quoting me confirming the ballot burning, though, are you?”

“In the case of the burned ballots, you’re both a source close to the person in question—i.e., your mom—
and
you’re confirming something Mrs. Wagner already said. But accusing Sylvia of tampering with the prom ballots is a whole different ball of wax. Do you know of anyone who can confirm what you’ve told me? Anyone else who might have seen her?”

I thought about Beth and Jefferson—but they’d never come forward. “No.”

“Then I’m not going to print it.”

My head was starting to throb. “You’re piecing together what works for you!” I cried. “You’re not being fair!” From across the café, people turned to stare. I lowered my voice. “Look, run your story, but don’t throw my mom under the bus. Okay?”

Rod shrugged. “I’m sorry, Aggie. But I’m thirty-two years old, and I don’t want to write for the
St. Davis Letter
forever. I need a story that’s going to get my name out there. I want to make it good, but make no mistake, I’m not so desperate that I’ll print misinformation. I’ll lay the facts out, and then readers can draw their own conclusions about your mom’s guilt or innocence. But I can’t—I won’t—get lost in a lot of conjecture about stolen ballots.”

“What, suddenly you now have journalistic integrity? That’s funny because I didn’t see any of that when you were tricking me into believing you were writing a bass-fishing story a couple days ago.”

Rod stood. “I should go.”

He pushed his chair back, but I reached for his arm. “Wait.”

“What?”

“There’s—there’s something more. If I tell you this next thing, which is huge, will you please put in the part about how Sylvia stole the ballots?”

Rod frowned. “Aggie, as I told you, I’m going to write the facts as they stand. I can’t print speculation.”

“Okay, but even if this thing is really, really good?”

Rod didn’t say anything for a second. “How good are we talking?”

I looked down at the table, then back at Rod. “It’s the thing that explains Sylvia’s reasons. For stealing the ballots and wanting to be queen, I mean. She’s—”

I stopped. I was on the cusp of telling a slime-bag reporter that Sylvia was pregnant with Ryan’s Rollings’s baby. No matter what Sylvia had done to me, I couldn’t betray her like this. It wouldn’t make any difference to the story now anyway. Rod had his so-called facts, and he wasn’t changing them.