“That’s entirely wrong. This isn’t just some Battle of the Exes game for me. How we’re treated matters to me. How stereotypically sexist can you be? Dudes do math better? Ask Leo if he really thinks that’s true.”
Quinn appeared to want to say more on this but refused to elaborate. Instead she shifted direction. “To those who tell us to lighten up, I say, imagine how it feels to get up in class to write on the board or go to the bathroom and think: all these guys are checking out my [buttocks]. Sizing me up, choosing what donut hole makes the perfect boob. I know these guys, some are my friends, some are . . . were . . . more than that. It’s not just degrading but a total betrayal of those friendships. Two-faced. They should be ashamed of themselves, especially Leo.”
Torres declined to comment, but one of the students involved in this morning’s incident, who spoke only under the condition of anonymity, said, “Yeah, Torres laughed. Who wouldn’t? It’s a freakin’ Franken-donut. But that’s all he did. It was Marcus and the rest of us—them. I mean, them.”
We reached out to Principal Schwartz, who gave us an unofficial statement declaring that while the administration is looking into the incident, it remains unclear as to what if any school rule had been violated. “That the donuts represented female students at the school is an assertion made solely by Ms. Quinn.”
That may be the case, but the majority of those commenting on Quinn’s post believe her, including a celebrity.
Evelyn Lee, New York Times bestselling author and founder of the Evelyn’s Epic Everyday brand, wrote: “Well done. The only way one hears is if others speak.”
Quinn is talking. The question is whether talk translates into votes.
13
When Cat Gets Lucky
16 DAYS TO THE ELECTION
Cat strode into the newsroom waving a check with a shamrock on the front. “How do you feel about pots of gold?”
Ravi spun his chair. “Pro, always.”
“Luck o’ the Harbor.” Cat plunked the check down on the table. “Our new advertiser.”
“Ah,” Grady said. “Must have been all those scones I bought. Baristas there love me.”
“Uh-huh.” Cat raised an eyebrow. “Must have been.”
“Then again . . .” Grady’s tone lost its boasting edge. “Your article on the Franken-donuts got nice traction on Twitter. You really are doing a great job at drumming up interest in StuCo, Chief. Readers want a follow-up. Maybe something more multimedia this time?”
“No,” Cat said.
“I’m ready,” Grady said.
“Not yet.”
His large eyeglasses fell down the bridge of his nose as he hung his head. “But, Cat . . . the big stories like the Frankengirls are the only ones anyone reads. If I don’t write one, no one’s going to know who I am to follow me.”
“That’s not why we’re reporters. We cover the stories, we aren’t the stories.”
“Not according to my cousin.” Grady showed Cat a picture of a tall, more fleshed-out version of himself next to Mark Wahlberg at a Boston movie premiere with And that’s news to you written along the bottom. “His social’s as big as what he’s covering. People are following him for him.”
Like Angeline. Who was the furthest thing from a reporter. “Your cousin runs social media for . . . what? Is that the local TV news? That’s fluff. If that’s your goal, you’re in the wrong place.”
“But there’s no BuzzFeed equivalent here.” Grady lowered his phone. “Don’t you want more reach than this?”
Outside the newsroom, Angeline led a group of sophomore and junior girls down the hall. “Normally you’d have to submit a question like that via the appropriate form on my website,” Angeline said. “But since you’re my constituents and I know you’re all fluttering your wings . . .”
That familiar prickling simmered under Cat’s skin. Angeline was fluff, through and through. No wonder she weighed so little.
Accurate, fair, and thorough, Gramps always said. The core tenets of journalism. The opposite of everything Angeline did.
Clickbait headlines, incendiary posts, inflammatory trolls, Angeline as an influencer, anyone with an internet connection could post opinion as fact. The more salacious, the better. Truth had become secondary. With presidents gaslighting on Twitter and newspapers laying off thousands of journalists each year, real reporting was on the verge of extinction.
Someone had to care. Old-school journalism wasn’t dead. Grady needed to see that.
“I want to run a story about the average Acedia voter in the next edition,” Cat said. “You up for some student interviews?”
“On it, Chief.” Grady saluted.
Cat fought the urge to roll her eyes. “Remember to record them, but ask permission first.”
“On—”
“And remember, if you can’t write worth a damn, the least you can do is spell the names right.”
Gramps always said that too.
This time, Grady silently saluted and bolted out of the newsroom.
Instantly Cat second-guessed her decision. “Tell me I’m not creating a monster?”
“Creating, no. Feeding, on the other hand . . .” Ravi flashed a smile, and his lips formed a heart shape that Cat hadn’t noticed before. “No shame in going after what you want, is there?”
An unfamiliar flutter in Cat’s chest made her turn to the accounting ledger.
“I sure hope not because . . .” Ravi came up beside her, spreading out four freshly printed pages. “I’ve got my favorite, but you go first.” Each was a different spin on the front page of the last Red and Blue. “I played with the fonts and sizes but also the white space.”
Cat took in the changes. “And the column width.” She pointed to one on the end. “Makes this one seem . . . bolder.”
An eager head bob from Ravi. “Modern without being edgy. But the one next to it . . .”
“Razor-sharp,” Cat said.
“A real risk, that one. So different from the current look.”
Cat barely managed a nod, overwhelmed that Ravi had become so invested.
He misinterpreted and dialed back his enthusiasm. “Not that there’s anything wrong with our current layout. These were just some ideas. I should get started on designing that new Luck o’ the Harbor ad anyway.” He pushed a lightness into his tone. “Question is, are leprechauns cheesy or retro? Never can tell with the kids these days . . .”
“Wait.” The hairs on Ravi’s arm tickled Cat as he reached for the pages, and goose bumps erupted despite the newsroom being as hot as an Arizona desert. “I, uh, haven’t chosen my favorite.”
“You have one?”
“Not exactly,” she said, and his face fell. “The problem is, I have more than one. These are really good, Ravi. It’s nice to have you here.”
His hand was no longer gathering the printouts, but his arm had yet to move away from hers.
“To be honest . . .” Cat spoke slowly, unaccustomed to revealing any cracks in her exterior. “I was worried about going after Fit to Print without Stavros and Jen. Even with the student council election suddenly hot, nabbing the win is going to take every spare moment I have. But I feel so much better knowing you care about The Red and Blue as much as I do.”
“No one cares about this as much as you, Cat.”
Ravi shifted to the side, and Cat felt a coolness replace the warmth of his skin.
“Right then.” She straightened her spine. “This one.” She pointed to the modern but not too edgy redesign.
“You made a good choice,” Ravi said.
Cat nodded, feeling like she had and she hadn’t.
* * *
The locker room buzzed with chatter.
Cat traded her khaki skirt and black long-sleeve for gray knit shorts and a red Acedia athletic tee. Someone had set out vases with sm
elly sticks atop the three rows of lockers but hadn’t coordinated the scents, and the place smelled like a grapefruit pine forest dipped in sugar cookies.
She rested her foot on the wood bench in front of her, just down from Sonya and Riley.
“Two hundred and fifty dollars a ticket?” Riley waved a set of stapled pages. “Perhaps my stellar math score on the SATs needs adjusting, because I can’t even calculate something as basic as this. How could last year’s student council have mismanaged funds so spectacularly that prom’s going to cost as much as my last pair of jeans?”
“That we’ll tackle later.” Sonya brushed back her braids and removed the pages from Riley’s hand.
Riley picked up a clear reusable bottle with fluorescent green liquid inside and turned to Cat. “Is this true?”
“Got me.” Cat continued tying her sneaker. “Angeline’s your prom expert.”
“But isn’t this yours?” Riley said.
Sonya waited for Cat to finish tying and then handed her the pages they’d been reading.
Council Needs Counsling: Send in the Shrinks, Stat!
Cat frowned at the glaring typo and scanned the rest of the 8 ½″ x 11″ sheet of paper, sloppily laid out in two columns, probably using Microsoft Word, with a heading that read, The Shrieking Violet.
“What is this?” Cat said.
Riley sipped her drink, which added a minty algae smell to the already nauseating room. “Isn’t it, like, a special edition or something?”
“Of my paper?” Cat said. “Yeah, no.” She leaned against the locker and skimmed the top story.
Two hundred and fifty smackers for prom?
Gasp with me, Acedia!
We hate to be the one to light a fuse with our breaking news (oh, who are we kidding, we love it!), but sources say last year’s student council embizlled funds—–your funds—–and now we’ll have nary a penny leftover for a single apple p‚ie ball!
Sources? Like who? Cat gritted her teeth and moved on to the next story.
Saving Cows, Sacrificing Guinny Pigs
When the rumors fly, we here at The Shrieking Violet make it our mission to catch! Word in the halls is that the whole vegan bacon fiasco comes from a certain female teacher trying to grease her way into early retirement on the Cape with an artisanal “beets not beasts” product line.
“Us kids at Acedia are her guinea pigs,” our mystery (even to us!) source said. “Which, like, goes against her whole ‘save the cows’ thing, doesn’t it?”
However many cows may be saved by eating vegan bacon aside, the decision of what to consume and when must remain an individual choice, many students believe, same as our student council presidential hopeful Leo Torres.
Cows.
Cows.
“Bacon comes from pigs!” Cat tossed back the first page and read the second.
Hear Us: A Shrieking Violet Editorial
As if this whole thing weren’t an editorial?
Prom, bacon, what’s next?
The whispers tickling our ears tell of a planned live-streamed streaking event at homecoming that has the administration in hush-hush consideration of canceling the whole shindig.
Which makes us think . . .
Hmm . . . maybe we shouldn’t say.
But maybe we *could* say . . .
If you pinky-swear promise to keep it just between us?
You do?
Okay then.
Go.
We mean now. Bend those little pinkies, Acedia!
Good job.
Now then, in a race where one candidate’s saying “don’t” and one’s all about the “do,” who do you believe will save homecoming?
The one with the better hair?
Us too.
Yes, yes, we’d all rather be lounging around, hanging upside down in our trees, but sometimes you gotta get on those long-clawed foots and stand! Tip for ya, dearies, the hard thing about doing nothing’s that you never know when you’re done. So take it from us and do SOMETHING.
Rise up, Sloths!
Student council is yours because your students. You’ve got two things to do this semester: read The Shrieking Violet and vote (for Leo!)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
One, two, three, four . . . twenty-nine. Twenty-nine exclamation points?
Cat’s pulse nearly exploded out of her temples. She flipped through the stapled pages. No name. “Where did you get this?”
Riley shrugged and passed her bottle to Sonya, whose nose scrunched upon smelling it.
“You have to know where you got this,” Cat said. “It didn’t just materialize out of thin air.”
“Oh, I see,” Riley said, propping her phone in her lap.
“See what?”
“Nothing.” Riley leaned toward Sonya and whispered, “Attitude. Angeline’s totally right.”
Cat gripped the edges of the . . . the . . . what the hell was this? “Riley . . . can you . . .” Cat forced a breath. “Would you mind thinking about where this came from?”
“Stacks in the lunchroom. Didn’t you see?”
“I was in the newsroom.”
Riley used her phone’s camera app as a mirror as she wound her hair into a messy topknot. “Of course, all alone.”
“I wasn’t alone. Ravi was there.”
“Ravi?” Riley’s eyes widened. “The artsy dude? Angeline didn’t say anything about a Mr. Cat. About time. Plus he’s pretty cute in a dorky camp counselor way.”
Sonya frowned at Riley.
“He’s not dorky,” Cat said.
“Way to defend your man,” Riley said.
“He’s not my man,” Cat said quickly. “There’s no Mr. Cat.” Did she actually say “Mr. Cat”? “Lunchroom, that’s where this was?”
The bell rang, and Riley and Sonya finished stowing their clothes and bags. Cat hung back and pulled her phone out of her locker.
Cat: Have you seen The Shrieking Violet?
Grady: Seen and read. Hilarious.
Cat: It’s in the lunchroom?
Grady: Lunchroom, bathroom, locker room, hallway, where u been? Insta and Snap too. My bud texted me a pic before I snagged my own.
Grady: They’re eating it up. This is the kind of newspaper we should be doing, Chief.
This? This printed-on-a-home-printer, photocopied, error-riddled . . . thing.
Cat: If you think this is a newspaper, you haven’t been paying attention.
Cat shoved her phone in her locker and slammed the door shut.
Rumors, false statements, unnamed sources, inflammatory statements. This was no newspaper. This wasn’t journalism. It was such a mockery of everything Cat had ever been taught. And students were devouring it? Snapping photos and sharing it on Instagram?
No freakin’ way.
She crumpled The Shrieking Violet.
Those were her readers. She’d worked hard to get them. And they liked her paper. The town . . . the advertisers liked her paper.
But how could those same readers like this?
No, no, no, no, no, no. This wasn’t just inflammatory, it was outright lies. Something done by Baked Baker or Tad Marcus or someone selfish enough to not care about what they said and who it hurt. She wouldn’t let them. She’d find out who was responsible and have them stopped under the school honor code. Lying had strict consequences—it said so right in the student handbook.
Cat flung the wrinkled ball into the trash and marched past the row of lockers.
She paused inside the entrance to the gym and hurried back into the locker room. She pulled the pages out of the garbage and set them on the bench to be recycled later. She had standards.
14
When Angeline Becomes an App
15 DAYS TO THE ELECTION
Angeline’s arm throbbed from holding her phone at such an awkward angle. But if she didn’t, all her viewers would see she was filming alongside the outdoor track behind the school rather than in her room with her LED light wand that gave her videos their softer vibe.
“Hey, hey, that’s all for today, my angels!” She ignored the bored look on Maxine’s face. With all the time Angeline had been spending on the election, multitasking like this was the only option. “So the key fly-aways are to never mix a flowered print with plaid, listen when your BFF says you’ve been spending all your time locking lips with that new hottie, and never try to remove a pea from your little brother’s nostril without wearing a full hazard suit. Until next time, flutter your wings, my angels!”
Maxine hopped up from the grass alongside the red track lane, where she’d been impatiently stretching her hamstrings. “Peas, Ang, really?”
“I barely have time for an exfoliating mask, let alone sifting through questions for the best ones.” Angeline shoved her phone in the band around her upper arm and pushed off on the balls of her feet. “Which that BFF one is. Do you need me to remind you of the whole ‘Maxana’ thing?”
Maxine sighed and fell in step beside Angeline. “I should have followed Lana to San Fran when her family moved. I miss her. I miss dating. I miss surfing. I miss doing anything other than working on your voting app.”
“Yeah, nice try, but I know for a fact you’re looking for a way to market it.”
The blue tips at the end of Maxine’s ponytail grazed her neck as the two of them picked up speed. “I’m expecting connections from that boot camp. Do you really think your mom would stop you from going?”
Angeline shrugged. Probably not.
She struck the ground, digging in deeper.
Sources Say Page 11