“I am, I am!” She waggled her hands in front of her. “Is he coming to the winter formal with you?!”
It was all I could do to keep from shaking her. “Tizzy. We’re not dating.”
“But you made out with him!”
“I’m incredibly aware of that. But we’re not dating. It was a one-time thing.”
“Is he a good kisser?”
My brief hesitation was all she needed. “I knew it! I knew he would be! Sharon Eggleston was all, ‘I bet he totally sucks,’ but I was like, ‘Nuh-uh, no way, he’s British.’”
Sharon Eggleston. Fuck. She lived for this sort of popularity uprising, just so she could be the one to squash it. If our school ever performed a play about the French Revolution, she could play the guillotine.
I finally managed to disentangle myself from Tizzy, but only because I was going to be late to history, and when I walked in, Sharon had saved me a seat next to her. “Hi, Audrey!” she waved. “Over here!”
I was probably going to need someone to taste all my food from now on. Tizzy came to mind.
“Hi,” I said, and I sat next to her only because someone else was in my normal seat.
“So. Tell me everything.” She rested her chin in her hands and waited for story time.
“About what?”
“About what? About your fabulous weekend making out with Simon! What else is there?”
“Oh, that,” I said, and laughed a little. “It was just this … thing.”
“Thing?” she repeated. “C’mon, details—details, please.”
Okay, now that pissed me off. Like Sharon Eggleston was my own personal diary or something. Like she hadn’t spent months ogling my now ex-boyfriend from a distance and sending me creepy glances at me every chance she got. Like she wouldn’t spread the details about Simon Lolita all over the entire campus within fifteen minutes without even leaving her seat. Like I needed to give her another reason to hate me. Like we were even friends. “Well, I … I don’t really like giving out details, Sharon. I mean, it’s not a big deal.”
Her eyes narrowed. The queen was not used to being refused by serfs. “Not a big deal?”
“No.” I tried to smile a little. “You know, things happen, they pass. We’re not dating, it was just one time. It’s totally nothing.”
“Nothing.”
There was something in the way she said it that made goose bumps pop up on my arm. Somewhere, an executioner was sharpening his blade.
“That’s right,” I said, smiling wider. “Totally nothing. It’s all good.”
And then Mrs. Willis was yelling at us to turn around in our seats and pay attention for just once in our lives, and I became the most obedient student over. Sharon Eggleston’s eyes, however, burned two hot holes into the side of my head for the rest of class.
By the end of the day, I was exhausted from not talking to people. Aside from Tizzy, with her verbal explosion, and Sharon, with her “friendly” conversation, the only people who actually talked to me were Victoria and Jonah. Actually, Jonah just wanted to know if I had a dollar for Del Taco, but still. It counts as talking.
And not that I was paying attention or anything, but James was not at school.
On Tuesday, Sharon and Natasha managed to corner me on my way past the library. “Oh, hi,” I said, like I was greeting some really old relative who had tissues shoved up her sweater sleeves. “What’s up?”
“Are you ignoring us?” Sharon said. She had her arms crossed in front of her, the way she always did to shove her boobs up and make them look bigger. Like she needed help with that.
“Ignoring you?” I repeated. “What are you talking about?” I knew exactly what she was talking about, though. And if I lived in Honesty Land, I would’ve been screaming, Yes, I’m ignoring you, you twit! Get it through your impossibly shiny hair-covered head! But that wasn’t an option.
Yet.
She recrossed her arms and boosted her boobs even higher. “You know, Audrey,” she began, “my friends and I have been really nice to you.”
“Nice?”
“Yes, fucking nice. We invite you to lunch with us. When I first saw the pictures of you with Simon Lolita, I was worried about you. And then yesterday in history class, I tried to be a friend to you.”
Victoria brought coffee and a hammer, I thought. You just dug for details. I really wished Victoria was here right now, too, because she would’ve said that without blinking. “Look, Sharon, things have just been really crazy lately and it’s just that I haven’t—”
“Is this how you treat friends, Audrey? By ignoring them?”
“Friends?” I said. “Sharon, you and I haven’t been fr—”
But she wasn’t even listening. “You know, Audrey, I could ruin you at this school.”
I don’t respond well to threats. (No surprise there.) “Oh, really?” I said in my fake friendly voice.
By now, she was so in my face that I could smell her vanilla lip gloss. “You always get everything you want, don’t you? Or everyone. Evan, Simon fucking Lolita, and now James.” Her teeth were clenched so tight that it hurt to look at her. “What makes you so fucking special?”
“James?” I sputtered. “Wait, wha—?”
“Hey, what are they doing over there?” Natasha, aka Darth Vader, was peering past Sharon and me, and we all turned to look at four girls who were standing about ten feet away, their camera phones flipped open, giggling excitedly as they took pictures of me and Sharon.
“Um, excuse me!” I yelled. “Could you maybe not do that right now? Or ever?”
“New friends of yours, Audrey?” Sharon sneered. “Are those the ones you do call back?”
But the girls kept clicking away, and then Natasha proved to be mildly useful when she said, “Do they go to this school?”
Because no sirree, they most certainly did not.
From across the campus, I could see Victoria and Jonah walking together, their arms touching—hand-holding was one of the many things banned at our school, like guns and drugs and small animals—and Victoria saw me and her face changed when she saw the girls and their camera phones. I saw her mutter a string of expletives and then she untangled her arm from Jonah’s and stormed over.
By the time she got to my side, I was already confronting the girls. “What are you fucking doing?” I demanded.
“Are you taking pictures of her without even asking her first?” Victoria said.
“Do you go here?” I added.
“You don’t even go to this school, do you?!” Victoria screeched.
The girls looked somewhere between dumbstruck and giddy, like their adrenaline had frozen them into place. “Um, hi!” one of them said.
“Hi. What the hell?”
“You’re Audrey, right?”
I threw my hands up in the air. “No, it’s just a crazy coincidence. Yes, I’m Audrey! Why are you taking pictures of me?”
“Oh my God, it’s really her,” another girl said, covering her mouth and squealing a little. I knew this type of girl. She was a Teenie. The Teenies are the ones that always hang out by the tour buses after shows and scream, “I want to have your babies!” to the lead singers and only know the one popular song off the CD and totally humiliate the rest of us, who just want to say how much we love the music and how much it means to us. I hate those girls like I hate poison ivy and beets.
“Why are you taking pictures of me?” I said. “What are you doing here? How did you even figure out what school I go to?”
“Evan went here, right?” The third girl was pulling on her hair nervously. “We read it online and we’re just really big fans of yours!”
“And his too! We loooovveee the Do-Gooders!” The second one was almost swallowing her own tongue in excitement.
But I was still stuck on the earlier statement. “Fans of mine?”
“Oh my God, totally!” The first girl regained her power of speech just in time. “I mean, the song is so amazingly awesome and then we saw
that you’re dating Simon from the Lolitas and just … gah!” Then she looked at my arms. “Where are your arm huggies?”
“How long did it take you to grow out your hair?”
“Is Simon coming to pick you up?”
“Did you and Evan really break up? Or are you still dating?”
“Will you take a picture with us?”
“Here!” The second girl thrust her camera at Victoria. “Will you take our picture? For our website?”
Victoria and I looked at each other. “Are you being Punk’d?” she asked me.
“You’re being Punk’d?!” Now the girls were at the intersection of ecstatic and apoplectic.
“Excuse me, ladies!”
I looked over my shoulder and saw both our vice-principal and the school security guard running toward us, each of them with a walkie-talkie in his hands, Jonah not far behind. I also saw that a crowd had started gathering—but half of them were horny teenage guys hoping for a girl fight. Sharon Eggleston was standing to the side, arms crossed, looking bemused and annoyed. Not that she ever had another expression on her face.
“Okay, ladies, what’s going on here?” Our vice-principal, Mr. Nielson, arrived, looking a little out of breath. The security guard arrived a second later, ready to kick ass and take names. It was understandable, considering that there was very little to do at our school besides catch kids sneaking off at lunch and smoking in the woods. This was going to be the highlight of his year, I could tell.
But back to the question at hand. It was a good one. What was going on? I decided to put it as plainly as I could. “These girls snuck onto campus and started taking pictures of me for their website.”
“They’re big fans of hers,” I heard Sharon say behind me, and I didn’t even have to turn around to know that Victoria was giving her a Look of Death.
Mr. Nielson turned to look at the girls, who were starting to realize their mistake. “Um, we just thought—” the first one began.
“What school do you girls go to?”
They got even smaller-looking. “Um, Kennedy?” The other public high school in our city.
“What kind of moron ditches school just to go to another school?” Victoria exploded. “At least you could go buy some CDs or go shopping or something!”
“Okay, Victoria,” the security guard said. “That’s enough.” I could tell he kind of dug her, though, like he was thinking the same thing. I bet he was a total stoner in high school.
Mr. Nielson glanced at me briefly before turning to my fan club. “You three, follow me to my office. Audrey and Victoria, the bell’s ringing in”—he glanced at his wristwatch—“thirty seconds, and I assume you have a class to go to. AS DO THE REST OF YOU!” he yelled to everyone else watching our little drama. “PLEASE FIND SOMETHING ELSE TO DO BESIDES BEING CASUAL OBSERVERS!” There was a rumor that Mr. Nielson had gone to Yale Drama School, a rumor I was starting to believe.
The girls looked back at me. Two of them had tears in their eyes. “Sorry, Audrey,” the third one said. “We were just … excited.”
And then I felt really bad. I mean, I was a fan too. It had only been four days since my own personal rock star humiliation. But I had done it because I was excited too. I hadn’t thought about cameras or consequences, and now look what had happened. I couldn’t blame the Teenies, because sometimes I wasn’t much different than them.
But at least when I ditched school, I didn’t go to another one.
And to make my bad day worse, James was absent. Again. Two days in a row. Just an observation on my part. I’m a very observant person.
If you think Monday and Tuesday were exciting, though, wait until you hear about Wednesday.
Wednesday takes the cake.
Because that’s when the magazines came out.
17 “Have you ever been alone in a crowded room?”
—Jack’s Mannequin, “Dark Blue”
THE FIRST PICTURE I SAW of myself on Wednesday was scratched into the door of the second stall in the girls’ bathroom. The bathroom that everyone used, of course. It was still early in the morning, not even 9 A.M. yet, and I went into the stall, closed the door, and lo and behold, someone had drawn a girl blowing a guy with the words AUDRY SUX DIK scrawled below it.
Victoria came in while I was washing my hands and she stopped short. “Don’t use the second stall!”
“Too late.” I pumped the soap dispenser extra hard. “You saw it?”
“Heard about it.” Victoria disappeared into the stall so she could inspect it herself. “This doesn’t even look like you!” she called out.
I rolled my eyes. “I don’t think they were going for artistic integrity.”
“And they misspelled your name!”
“I know! And for the love of all that is holy, how hard is it to spell ‘dick’?” I shook my hands dry since we were out of paper towels.
“Geniuses, they are not.” Victoria came back out and watched as I sent water flying everywhere; then she pulled some lip gloss out of her purse and started to apply it in the mirror.
“Hey,” I told her. “Do you want more gloss? Some company sent a case of their new Kiss-Off lip gloss to the house yesterday. They’re trying to get me to endorse it. They saw the Simon video, apparently.”
Victoria’s hand froze midway to her mouth. “People are sending you free cosmetics?” she screeched. “Oh my God, you’re living my dream life. Are you gonna do it?”
I shook my head. “Hell no. They all taste gross and they come off in, like, thirty seconds.”
“Who cares?” She was aghast. “If you endorse this, then you’ll get other products, and then maybe you’ll even get your own fragrance! I am totally coming over to get free lip gloss from you! Did they send mascara too?”
“No mascara yet. Maybe at the bottom of the box.”
Victoria just shook her head. “Took you long enough to tell me,” she muttered, trying not to move her mouth as she put on her own gloss. “That’s why we have technology, Audrey, so friends can share exciting details about their lives with other friends. You’re dropping the ball.”
“I’ll do better next time,” I promised. “You’ll be the first to know about the next product launch.”
Victoria held the door open for me as we walked out. “Damn straight, I’m gonna know. I’m going to bribe your mailman to—”
Two girls suddenly walked up to me, holding a magazine and a Sharpie pen. “Um, Audrey, can you sign this?” I vaguely recognized them as freshmen. (Traveling in herds is one of their trademarks.) “Please?” They had the same starry-eyed look that the three girls from Kennedy had had the day before. I was becoming a pro at recognizing it.
Victoria immediately shoved her way in front of me and crossed her arms, ready to go off on them. Then she saw the magazine and her eyes widened. “Oh. My. God.”
“What?” I looked over her shoulder and glanced down at the page.
A picture of me making out with Simon stared back. “Star Muse with Star Musician!” the bubbly pink headline read, and below, in smaller type, “Audrey Works Magic with British Guitarist!”
“Lemme see that,” I said, and grabbed the magazine out of the girls’ hands. There were four pictures at the top of the page, all of them screencaps from that damn video. Simon and I were locked together, one of my legs wrapped around his hip, his hands in my hair. In other words, they weren’t Photoshopped. “Victoria?” I barely recognized my own voice.
“Do you need to sit down?” She was at my side in an instant. “Here, let’s sit down. You’re kind of pale.”
“No, I don’t need to sit down. I need a gun.”
“No, you don’t. You’re very peaceful. You like fluffy animals and rainbows. No guns for you.”
“Then a knife.”
“Nothing with sharp edges. Here.” She began steering me toward a low wall, leaving the freshmen girls behind us.
“Nunchuks, then.”
“Oh, please. You’d knock yourself out col
d before you hurt anyone else.”
The magazine was starting to crinkle between my hands, and I smoothed it out so I could read it better. “Do you think that this is everywhere?”
Victoria sat next to me and looked at the pictures like we had done online several days before. “Um, yes. It’s a national magazine.”
I groaned and covered my mouth. “Am I on the cover? If I’m on the cover …” I couldn’t even imagine what I’d do.
Victoria pried the magazine out of my hands and glanced at the cover. “Celebrity Weight Loss Secrets!” she read. “Nope, not you, you’re safe—oh. Wait a minute.”
“What?”
“There’s a small picture of you in the upper corner.”
“With Simon?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“I need a gun.”
“We’ve talked about this.”
“Oh my God! My parents are going to see this!” My legs were alternately hot and cold. “They’re going to go the grocery store and buy apples and milk and they’re gonna stand in the slowest checkout lane and look to their left and wham! It’s me! Making out! With a guy!”
“Maybe you could offer to do all the shopping this week,” Victoria suggested. “Or eat out a lot.”
“My mother is gonna get a pedicure and read the article!” A horrible thought slammed into my head. “Is there an article? What does it say?”
“Okay, hold on, hold on ….. Here.” She skimmed the page, nodding to herself. “Nothing bad. Nothing that we didn’t already know. You’re the new music muse, Simon plays in the Lolitas, et cetera.” She kept reading. “It says here that Evan is currently on tour in Japan and had no comment through his spokesperson. Wow, Japan! Way to go, Ev.”
“This is all his fault.” I buried my face in my hands and rested my elbows on my knees.
“Hey … wait a minute.” She was peering more intently at the magazine now, and then she shoved it under my nose. “Is that you in English class?”
I grabbed it from her so I could see for myself.
Oh. My. God. Yet. Again.
“That is you in English class!” Victoria crowed. “And you’re sleeping!”