“No, not that.”
“Emmie? Emmie Hayes? You two are friends now, aren’t you? That’s who you’ve been texting with?”
That sensation of being naked returned. She and Emmie had settled into a friendship, their texting letting Cat open up in ways she hadn’t to anyone in a long time. And that was supposed to be hers, alone. She started to sit up. Angeline held her and switched out her fingers for an actual brush from her tote bag on the floor.
“It’s okay,” Angeline said. “At least you waited until after the primary. Doesn’t look so bad.”
Cat’s senses piqued. “An endorsement? Is that what you’re after? You didn’t have to butterscotch me up, you could’ve just asked.”
“Oh, I wasn’t . . . that’s not why I . . .” Angeline fell back on her heels. “Why is this so hard?”
Cat already missed the feel of her sister’s hands in her hair. She retreated to her end of the couch and grabbed the stupid pair of angel wings. “I don’t know.”
“Listen, truly, Cat, I’m just glad you have someone to talk to.” She gestured to the angel wings. “Someone to be your wing girl with Ravi.”
Cat’s eyebrows shot up. “My what?”
“You’re into him.”
“Into—”
“It’s okay, Cat in the Hat.” Angeline’s eyes lit up. “He’s cute. Totally got an artsy surfer soccer player vibe going. And he’s into you too, I can tell.”
Cat’s face burned, and she wanted to brush her off, but instead blurted out, “You think?”
Angeline nodded eagerly. “That drawing he made of you? Total love letter.”
“That was just so I’d let him put editorial cartoons in the paper.”
“Last week’s with Slothy behind the voting booth curtain was hilarious. But, sorry, still not buying it.”
Cat traced a line of tweed on the couch. Her sister knew more about this than she did, but she wasn’t operating with all the facts. “Even if he was, he’s not anymore.”
Before she could stop herself, Cat told Angeline about Ravi’s text and the trip to Boston and Natalie Goldberg.
“Aha, that’s why you were so upset about the seaweed thing.”
Was that why? Cat had never really been interested in someone before to know if she was the jealous type.
Interested. Was she?
“I don’t . . . I guess . . . Maybe? . . . But I also thought . . .” This was the longest conversation she and Angeline had had in months, maybe longer.
“Go on. I want to know what you think.”
“Really?”
Angeline nodded again, and a warmth spread through Cat’s chest. “Well, you’ve just got all these people, all these women, behind you, outside of school. The things you’ve been saying about girls being treated with respect, you’re like this role model or something. You don’t need to cheapen it by covering your face in regurgitated seaweed.”
“Macerated.”
“So not the point.”
23
When Angeline Gets It
10 DAYS TO THE ELECTION
Angeline shifted on the couch across from her sister. “Fine, I get it.” Maybe this was a mistake. She didn’t even know what she was doing.
Her and Cat.
Talking?
“Forget it,” Cat said. “I didn’t mean anything. You need votes, right?”
Angeline set her gaze on the coffee table, on all the work her sister was putting into the thing she loved. But when it came to Angeline, Cat had a blind spot as big as a black hole.
“I work hard too, Cat. Maybe not in a way you respect, but I do. And, yeah, when the election attention first hit, I did and said things because those hashtags about female empowerment were just ripe for the picking.”
Cat played with the tip of an angel wing. “I never said I didn’t respect you.”
“You didn’t have to . . .” Angeline paused. Because something had been brewing inside her ever since the donut breakfast. Then with the way those guys were teasing Olivia . . . those hashtags started to become something other than just a road to more likes. She might not really know what she was doing, but she sort of wanted to try. “I’m starting to think that Emmie was right. About having a voice. That Ask an Angel app I promised was just a ploy for votes. But maybe it shouldn’t be.” She sighed. “Or maybe I’m just exaggerating my reach. Blame too much time around Riley. You know how she is.”
“Not really.”
“But that was your choice.” Cat had never hung out with Angeline and her friends, even before her friends were Riley and Sonya and Maxine. She was a year older, and everyone else was beneath her. Including Angeline. She’d made that clear in fourth grade after the school play. Angeline had given her a wish rock as a peace offering. She’d said that “Fraidy Cat” in the moment, a joke to lighten the tension, and everyone laughed, and she’d thought it was all good. She never once thought the name would follow Cat around for weeks, months.
She’d scoured the beach for the roundest, most perfect wish rock she could find. She gave it to Cat, saying, “Now you can wish not to be afraid.” Cat looked at her like she’d given her a handful of live bees. She went straight to the bathroom and flushed it. The whole bathroom flooded. Angeline was done. She’d tried to apologize. And Cat hadn’t cared. So Angeline didn’t either. That was how easy it was for habits to form.
Cat began to pile up the papers on the coffee table, but Angeline wasn’t ready for this . . . whatever this was . . . to end just yet.
“Leo’s mom had some emergency meeting with Schwartz at the end of last year,” she found herself saying, sharing what Sammy had told her in confidence.
“Strange, I agree,” Cat said, shifting to the edge of the couch. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but are you sure about trusting Leo? Because it really does seem like he’s behind all these rumors and fake stories. And if it’s not him, who is it?”
“I don’t know . . . Baker? Maybe Tad.” Angeline didn’t really believe that. Baker cared too little and Tad too much—his ego would never let him be anonymous for this long. “I just know it’s not Leo. You should have seen him today, Cat. He was . . . we were . . .”
“Like you used to be? Is that really what you want? Still?”
Angeline hesitated. Because this election had shown another side of Leo. But they’d both done things they shouldn’t have.
Cat stuffed her papers into her backpack. “I always liked Leo. But the evidence is there, Ang. You might be too close to see it. Just be careful, okay?”
Later, lights off, under her white comforter, listening to Cat’s heavy breaths of sleep, Angeline spun her claddagh ring around and around. Because more than the election, more than the YouTube channel and boot camp that had gotten her into all this, she wanted Leo to be the same person he’d always been, because that way, they’d have a chance.
(Well, maybe more than her YouTube channel is a stretch. As much? Yeah, as much.)
24
When Angeline Becomes a Witch
9 DAYS TO THE ELECTION
The cold penetrated the lace back of Angeline’s salmon-colored tank. Yet she couldn’t trust her legs to support her without help from the metal partition in the bathroom stall. In what had become her morning routine after arriving at school, she’d been checking The Shrieking Violet. Better to learn of an ambush alone. Today, she was, and she did.
Somethin’s Brewing in Quinn Coven!
Hide your broomsticks and eyes of newt! Sources say some mojo of the witchy-woo kind’s swooping through Acedia.
Toil’s trouble, caldron’s bubble, potions that look like lotions, we’re chanting all things pointy hats today with the news of a certain student council presidential candidate’s recent poisoning.
(Spoiler alert! It’s Leo!)
Today, we leave no wand un-swished a
s we dig deep into the case of Angeline Quinn and the Sorceress’s Smoothie . . .
The whoosh of flushing in the adjacent stall was quickly followed by the same farther down. Doors creaked, and then a girl’s voice said, “Poisoned.”
“Totally a woman’s weapon.”
“Could’ve been a spell or something.”
“Sources say she’s got the birthmark to prove it.”
Giggles from both, and Angeline retreated onto the toilet lid, floating her feet in the air.
The sound of water running nearly covered the girl with the nasal voice saying, “Have you seen the mark?”
“Not even at Maxine’s party,” her vocal fry friend said. “That super cute gold bikini was to die for.” A gasp. “And Leo almost did.”
“No wonder she doesn’t recommend thongs.”
On the wall beside Angeline’s head, No thongs was written in permanent marker. It came in third on the rundown of her top Ask an Angel tips, right after Be your own motivational quote and right before Gastrointestinal issues are TMI. It grew each week. It was why this was her favorite stall in school.
“Everyone would’ve been able to see,” Vocal Fry said.
Wait, what?
“Totally. A thong couldn’t hide the shape of a lightning bolt on your left butt cheek.”
Oh my God.
“Went around telling people she was Harry Potter and mooned them when they didn’t believe her?” Vocal Fry snorted.
“No wonder her ass wasn’t in any of the Frankengirls pics.”
“How lucky are we to have The Shrieking Violet?”
“If only someone could have warned poor Leo . . .”
The outer bathroom door groaned open.
Jagged, sure. A bit of a zigzag, really. But she’d never called it a lightning bolt.
Angeline hopped down and quickly skimmed the rest of the ridiculous article before texting Maxine.
Angeline: The Shrieking Violet?
Maxine: Bogus to the bogus max. I mean, if they’re going for witchy, broomstick maybe. But lightning bolt? Who’d come up with that?
One person. Who knew how much she loved Harry Potter. She felt sick.
Angeline: Can you hack into it? Need to know who’s behind it.
Because it can’t be who I think it is. It just . . . can’t, Angeline thought.
Maxine: Give me the day.
* * *
Ms. Lute adjusted the star-speckled headband in her dark hair. “Before the Revolutionary War, votes were cast by voice, often at local carnivals. Does anyone know what that means?”
“Clowns voted for the president?” Josh Baker answered.
“Not quite,” Ms. Lute said. “Since prior to the Revolutionary War, there was no office of president to vote for.”
“Hundred percent trick question,” he said.
Ms. Lute’s eyes fixed straight ahead as if she were using all her strength not to let them roll. “Two things. One, votes were cast under varying states of sobriety, and two, voting was easy to corrupt.”
If Leo were here, he’d be sharing his fact about George Washington.
Ms. Lute transitioned into a discussion of voting security, while Angeline studied the empty seat in front of her. Was Leo actually home recovering from his allergic reaction or using his time to concoct more stories about her for The Shrieking Violet?
Angeline had often wished her sister to be wrong but never more than with this.
Emmie raised her hand. “How do we know our votes in the student council election won’t be corrupted?”
Ms. Lute smiled. “Checks and balances. Thanks to Maxine Chen, we’ll have a brand-new voting app to use, but we’ll also be employing traditional paper ballots. An experiment to allow us to discuss the flaws and benefits of each, which share a common trait: secrecy. Today, no one has to know your vote unless you tell them. Not parents, partners, friends—”
“Witches,” Tad Marcus taunted underneath his fake sneeze.
Angeline bit the inside of her cheek.
Emmie again raised her hand. “That can help. I saw it with my grandmother. One of my dads, his father never fully accepted that he had a gay son, let alone that his gay son could get legally married. Took a lot for my dad to stand up to him, but my grandmother never could. She told me after he died that he’d sit down at the kitchen table with her before every election and tell her who to vote for.”
“And did she?” Ms. Lute asked.
“Not once. She’s the reason why I got into all this. I want to help people stand up for themselves.”
“Thank you for sharing, Emmie. That’s a good example of why anonymity has come to be thought of as imperative for our democratic process.”
Sonya wrinkled her brow. “But it also lets people make a choice without having to stand behind it. They can lie about who they voted for, in polls, to their families, whoever.”
“True,” Ms. Lute said. “An unpopular opinion can gain traction under secrecy. Privacy versus open debate, that’s what we’ll be discussing today . . .”
Angeline’s phone vibrated.
Maxine: Got ’em. Not even a challenge. Like they wanted to be caught.
Maxine: But . . . are you sure you want to know?
She already did.
Anonymous though it might be, she’d heard this voice loud and clear.
* * *
Later, after dinner, while her mom made a PTA phone list, Gramps and Cat flipped through one of the oldest scrapbooks that Grams had made. He’d written some of those stories sixty years ago. Angeline tried to listen but couldn’t focus on anything but what Maxine had confirmed.
She set aside the mountain of angel wings that continued to arrive at school and scooped up Tartan. Once she settled herself on her bed, her pillow propped behind her and the cat purring in her lap, she texted Leo.
Angeline: Feeling okay?
Leo: Except for the stomachache from the undercooked arepas Sammy made me.
Maybe she deserved it.
Maybe she didn’t.
Angeline: Good.
Angeline: Oh, and by the way, you should learn to cover your tracks better.
Leo: ???
Angeline: IP addresses don’t lie.
The Shrieking Violet and the Torres network were a match. Which Maxine discovered by digging into the paper’s and Leo’s email accounts.
Cat had been right. But Leo wasn’t just feeding stories to The Shrieking Violet, he was The Shrieking Violet. Not only to dismantle Angeline’s campaign, but to take her down—her, personally.
He’d wanted her to know it was him. There was no other reason for him bringing up her birthmark.
She should have been livid. She should have screamed at him in all caps.
Her breaths came quick, each one stinging deep.
How did they even get here?
She didn’t bother to blink away her tears and texted through blurred vision.
Angeline: I know The Shrieking Violet is you.
Then she blocked his number and deleted his contact information, her body folding in on itself, her face buried in the soft fur of the purring cat, her heart heavy in her chest the way it had been only twice before: the morning that Cat flushed her wish rock and the night after her dad had left.
25
When Cat Wraps Herself in Yellow Caution Tape
9 DAYS TO THE ELECTION
Cat passed by her bedroom door, closed more than an hour ago by Angeline. She helped Gramps return the scrapbooks to his closet and asked, “Think Grams would approve of me following in your footsteps?”
“Likely, though she’d steal your passport and stash it in the freezer.” More nostalgia than usual dampened h
is smile. “Ah, she’d want you to be happy. That’s all she ever wanted for any of us. But I swear she’d smack the back of your dad’s head if she were here. Can’t help but feel responsible. I raised him.”
A tightness gripped Cat’s chest. “Well, you raised us too, and I think we’re mostly doing okay,” she said while silently cursing her father.
“Not okay. Great.” Gramps settled on the edge of the bed and gestured for Cat to sit beside him. “Both of you. Angeline’s got your grams’s verve and sass and isn’t afraid to show it. But you know something, Cathleen, so do you. Maybe you use your talents differently, but you are just as brave and smart and witty and ambitious as your sister.” He kissed her forehead. “Couldn’t be prouder of you.”
Love and appreciation for all her grandfather had done bloomed in her chest. If only her grams was still with them. Cat’s chest tightened as her eyes fell upon the framed photo on his nightstand. Grams standing behind Cat and Angeline in matching rash guard shirts and cowboy hats on Eggshell Beach. Cat was holding a toy Woody, and Angeline, Jessie. They’d just jumped the waves, the whole time Angeline unafraid, which had made Cat unafraid.
“Sometimes we see what we want to see instead of what is,” Gramps said. “And the danger is it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. But you know what’s fortunate? Those who set the prophecy have the power to change it.”
* * *
Change things with Angeline? Could she? Fill an Instagram with photos of the two of them on Eggshell Beach, in the hatchback, on . . . double dates? Would that be the life she wanted? All the things the Fit to Print award and Northwestern and her goal of being a correspondent never made room for?
Sources Say Page 18