#Scandal

by Sarah Ockler

I rest my head on his chest. Just as my ear finds his heartbeat, his breath catches, his fingers trailing lightly down my neck.

  An electric shiver races to my toes, and wow, mystery solved. This is why I sent two previous boyfriends packing after a month of lackluster make-out sessions, why every one of Griffin’s football practice oglefests and Ellie’s attempts at fixing me up with Cole’s friends are epic fails.

  All along I’ve been holding out for this, the airy buzz spinning through my body as Cole presses closer. Butterflies.

  No matter how fleeting, the darkest part of me knows it’s worth it. Knows I’ll hold on to this for the rest of always, and as long as the song keeps playing, I don’t have to let go. . . .

  “Lucy.” Cole’s breath is hot in my ear, and I wonder if he feels it too, this current between us, charged and impossible. “I think—”

  “Excuse me to interrupt.” There’s a nudge at my elbow, and I turn to see Marceau, our pant-worthy foreign-exchange student. Devil horns crown his shoulder-length brown hair. “May I borrow this dance?”

  Cole hesitates, fingers pressing ever so slightly into my back, but with Marceau looking on, the spell between me and Cole is already broken, and later he’ll call Ellie and murmur her name into the phone, whispering that prom was just a dance without her, that Rent-a-Princess was no substitute for the real thing.

  “Sure, I’d love to dance.” The lie is thick on my tongue as I take Marceau’s hand and follow him into the crowd, far away from Cole and the dangerous things coiled inside me.

  Marceau is a familiar face in the halls of Lav-Oaks, but we don’t have any classes together. I know he’s from a far-off land where they say football instead of soccer, which he plays here as goalie, and Griff mentioned last week that he recently broke up with this spazzy sophomore due to irreconcilable differences over their Facebook relationship status.

  “I’m Lucy,” I say, in case he doesn’t know me with the same level of Wikipediac detail. “Last name Vacarro.”

  Last name Vacarro? Apparently we’re on a cop show now.

  “Tell me something, Lucy last name Vacarro.” Marceau’s lips are full and soft, his voice like hot chocolate. I should probably take the devil horns as a warning, but I just smile, like, Keep saying your words to me, beautiful boy with gourmet accent!

  “Why do they call us Swordfish?” he asks. “I have inquired. No one can say.”

  “It’s our mascot,” I say. “Like the Denver Broncos? We’re the Lavender Oaks Swordfish.”

  Marceau frowns, revealing a small dimple in his chin. “Yes, but in the mountains, where is a fish?”

  “We have mermaids,” I say, remembering Kiara. “And fish sticks in the cafeteria sometimes. Does that count?”

  “I do not know this fish stick. It frightens the soul.” He gives a mock shiver and spins me out, yanking me back just before I crash into Cole’s best friend, John, Vanitas’s singer and guitarist. He’s here with his on-again-off-again girlfriend, Clarice, president of Students Against Substance Abuse. She’s had it out for me ever since I discovered the gateway drug of black nail polish in seventh grade, and beneath her chunky black bangs she eyes up my boots with her typical glare.

  “Diggin’ the boots, Vacarro,” John says. He’s wearing fairy wings over his tux, and a smudge of glittery guyliner stands out against his dark brown skin. Clarice has the same costume, but it looks better on him. “Hot!”

  Clarice makes a clucking sound and yanks him into a crowd of yard gnomes. Or possibly Snow White’s dwarves. Hard to tell with all the fog and strobe-light action.

  Marceau is quick and confident on his feet, but after our third turn around the gym, my boots revolt. Marceau escorts me to the refreshment table—legit escorts me—and kisses me good-bye on the cheek, his amber eyes sparkling.

  Me to Ellie: danced 3 songs w/ marceau. le yum. 2 late 2 join french club?

  Ellie: !! eff french. try mile high club w/ that hottie, u vixen! rawr!

  “Someone’s got a crush,” Cole teases. I didn’t even see him walk up.

  “What?” I shove the phone behind my sash so fast I get, like, sash-burn. “I don’t have a crush. Ellie and I were just—”

  “I was taking about him.” Cole nods across the gym toward Marceau, who’s joined up with the gnomes and a leprechaun couple in matching green tuxes. They’ve all got their phones in the air, filming the outrageousness from above. “He’s been checking you out all night. Asked me earlier if we were together.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  Cole’s eyebrows shoot up, and I rush to explain. “I mean, you didn’t tell him I liked him, right? Because—”

  “Do you?” Cole’s eyes are fierce and fiery, the smile gone from his lips.

  Is he . . . jealous?

  High above, a glitter cannon explodes, and a huge canvas banner of Jayla Heart flutters beneath the basketball scoreboard, vomiting sparkles on our heads.

  “I don’t,” I whisper. “Like him, I mean.”

  It takes a second for the world to start spinning again, and then it’s like, Welcome back, Cole’s smile! Oh, how we’ve missed you!

  “You’re off-limits, anyway.” Cole brushes glitter from my shoulder. “I told him you’re my favorite groupie.”

  “You wish! Drummers don’t get groupies; singers do. Ask John.”

  “Drummers get all the groupies. And for your 411, I’m an excellent singer.” His green eyes lock on mine, and right as I’m about to pass out from lack of oxygen to the brain, Cole nudges my arm. “I’m ready to blow this disco inferno. You’re crashing at the cabin tonight, right? Ellie told you about the party?”

  Party?

  “I’m . . . I can’t. I have to go home.” Faking it through dinner and dancing was hard enough. Besides, Ellie didn’t mention it. Apparently the Rent-a-Princess list of duties stops just short of “attend intimate all-nighter at my boyfriend’s secluded mountain cabin.”

  “Your parents don’t trust me?” Cole says. “I’m totally trustworthy.” He holds up his fingers, Scout’s honor, but he knows my parents adore him—always have. When he and Ellie hooked up, Mom was all sad-faced and, “Huh. I always thought you two would get together, sugarplum. I didn’t even know Ellie liked him.”

  “There’s an Undead Shred tournament,” I explain. “My crew’s counting on me. You have to stay together or you die. Or get incapped. That’s slang for incapacitated, which you get when you don’t . . . stay together.” I shut my eyes, wondering if that useless fairy godmother is around. After five seconds I’m still standing here mortified, so . . . nope.

  “I know incapped,” Cole says. “I’ve dabbled in the undead arts before.”

  Mortification be damned. I open my eyes and cast a suspicious glare. “Did you just say ‘dabbled in the undead arts’?”

  “Don’t hurt me.” Cole holds up his hands in surrender. “Point is, using zombies as an excuse to ditch me? That’s beat, Vacarro. What kind of prom date are you?”

  “The beat kind, obviously.”

  Cole’s mischievous grin rises once again, custom-made by the fates to be my complete undoing.

  “It’s just a party,” he whispers. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

  FRIENDS DON’T LET FAIRIES DRINK, WAX POETIC, STRIP, AND SWIM

  Inquiring minds want to know, Lucy Vacarro.” Griffin discovered the video function on her phone, monster created, and now she’s filming us in the Fosters’ bathroom. “How far are you willing to go as Ellie’s prom surrogate?”

  I pause mid–eyeliner application and frown playfully at her reflection in the mirror. Somehow she ended up with Marceau’s devil horns. “Brunette Griffin was nicer.”

  “There’s no denying that Cole is adorable.”

  On the countertop, my phone buzzes with Ellie’s number, a call instead of a text. There’s a fire in me, guilt and desire, and I bury them both. The party hasn’t even begun, and it’s already my worst idea ever. Even though it was Cole’s idea.
<
br />   I rearrange my face into something like this: Cole? Adorable? Whatev. “True,” I say. “Yet irrelevant.”

  “I have a theory about you two.” Griff scopes out the buzzing phone, but when I still don’t answer it, she continues. “It’s not like anyone would find out if you . . . you know. Fulfilled Ellie’s postprom duties.”

  I slip and nearly blind myself with kohl. “What is wrong with you?”

  “Whoa, girl. I’m kidding. Obviously.” Griff watches me a second longer in the mirror and narrows her eyes. “I know that look.”

  “There’s no look.”

  “You like him!”

  My face burns. “Are you drunk already?”

  “Luce. You’re getting a little—”

  “I’m getting a little nothing, because I don’t like him. And please stop documenting everything I say. It’s creepy.”

  “Having closeted sexy-time thoughts about your best friend’s boyfriend is creepy. Just be honest for once. It’s so obvious.”

  I go to smack her arm, but she dodges, still wielding her phone like the paparazzi. It almost makes me feel sorry for Jayla Heart, whose Hollywood shenanigans grace the gossip rags weekly. “Turn it off.”

  “These are the moments of your life, Lucy Vacarro. You should thank me for documenting them.” Griff has the movie announcer voice going, free hand framing my face, like, Action! “If it’s not on Facebook, it didn’t happen. You know that, right?”

  “You’re so gross right now. You know that, right?” I leap on the subject change. “They’re a corporation. They’re probably tracking us.”

  “Now you sound like (e)VIL.” Griff scrunches up her nose, same face she made at dinner when Paul explained where veal comes from. “Those people have no lives. It’s sad, really. Even sadder than your gamer marathons.” Griff turns her phone into a mock controller, frantically thumbing buttons.

  Securely off the Cole innuendos, I return to my eyelining. “You’d so lose your life in the zombie apocalypse, blondie.”

  “At least I have a life to lose. Did you see mermaid chick—”

  “They have no Facebook,” I say. Kiara, an antitechnology mermaid with a secret tech life? That has to count for something. “For all we know, their lives are fascinating.”

  Griff snorts. “Their idea of fun is reading old newspapers and looking for codes.”

  “And your idea of fun is sleeping with half the school and getting on Miss D’s scandal page. So?”

  Her smile drops down the sink, and my heart follows.

  “Sorry. I didn’t . . . That came out wrong.” I don’t know why I’m all defensive about (e)VIL. Before tonight, I never talked to any of them. And it’s not like Kiara and I are suddenly making plans to search for extraterrestrial life together.

  This whole unrequited Cole thing is fracking my brain. I shouldn’t even be here. It’s obvious Ellie didn’t want me to come to the party, and I’d rather not spend the night disproving Griff’s little theories—they’re not exactly wrong.

  I meet her eyes in the mirror. “Griffin, seriously. I don’t know why I said that. I’m sorry. It’s—”

  “Whatev. Not like you’re lying.” She slips the devil horns from her head and sets them on the sink with a casual shrug. Something wounded flashes across her face, but then it’s gone, replaced by her cool, sexy confidence. “I’m hot. What can I say? And I do loves me some boys.”

  I conjure up a smile to match, but it’s not about her hotness or how many people she hooks up with. When it comes to Griffin’s conquests, the tally is her business. I just hate how it changes her, how her revolving bedroom door is a constant topic for the fans congregating on Miss Demeanor’s page.

  Griff is like a piece of clay that never makes it to the kiln. Last week an ashtray, next week a vase, each new guy ushering in a personality and hairstyle to match. She’s been hanging out with me and Ellie for two years, but whenever we start to get close, the new Griff shows up and we have to learn her all over again.

  Oh, I’m over that now, she says. So yesterday.

  She smooths her curls before the mirror, tendrils licking her shoulders like white flames. “Do I look okay?”

  “I wouldn’t change a thing.” I hold her gaze, but all she’s got left is her nothing-can-touch-me smile.

  “Except for maybe Cole’s undying love for Ellie?” she says.

  “Griffin! I don’t—”

  “You should tell him. Or maybe . . .” Her lips curl into a smile, dark and devious.

  I hate when she gets like this, but guilt nudges me to play along. “Maybe what?”

  “I could tell him.” She taps her chin with a glossy red fingernail. “That might be fun for everyone.”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  “Drinks?” she says. “Paul’s a pro on the blender.” She flicks off the lights, and before I can remind her that she hates frozen drinks because they give her brain freeze, she’s gone.

  • • •

  The two-story timber-framed “cabin” is tucked into a grove that backs up to forest service land, miles from civilization. I’ve only ever been here with Ellie, and now it feels odd without her, like the place was redecorated and I just can’t figure out what’s different.

  Also, I don’t usually hang out in the foyer behind the floor-to-ceiling curtains, peering out the front windows like a shut-in.

  That makes ten. I sip my sweet “Piña Paulada” and count another set of headlights bouncing up the dirt path. Olivia, the art girl Cole danced with earlier, hops out of an SUV with her friends Quinn and Haley, a trio of winged sprites in blonde, brunette, and red. Disappointment settles in my stomach.

  Want some whine with that cheese? Here goes: My hair hurts. My feet are killing me. Griff’s ignoring me. Cole’s been looking for me, but whenever I see him I disappear, hoping against the odds Griff hasn’t carried out her pseudothreat.

  The doorbell rings—Olivia and company—and I think about the Undead Shred tournament I’m missing, the rush that comes with tossing a Molotov cocktail and bolting to the nearest safe room. My online crew’s gonna freak when they hear I ditched them for a party. Half of them are in college or older, way beyond high school ridiculousness.

  That’s what rocks about it. As long as you can kill walkers and keep the team safe, you can be anyone you want in the gaming world. Princess. Warrior. International girl of mystery. Unlike in the real world, where everyone can see you bumbling around like an idiot in a dress, live and uncut.

  A prom party! What was I thinking?

  Cole. That’s what I was thinking. And in the hour I’ve been here, I’ve done nothing but avoid him.

  Maybe . . . I could tell him . . . fun for everyone . . .

  My phone buzzes again just as Cole passes behind me to collect the car keys from Olivia’s friend, and my neck prickles. Ellie didn’t leave a voice mail before. Her texts are getting impatient.

  where r u? y no more pics?

  at cabin, I type. cole playing host. but zzzzz! party is snoozefest w/o u!

  She replies instantly: u went to party? thought u had game stuff 2nite?

  I hesitate. Another text follows: hello, u h8 parties. what’s going on?

  last minute decision, I type. no worries. prolly find a ride home early. u mad?

  A few minutes pass before she responds, my breath fogging the window as I wait.

  just surprised, she finally says. & cranky w/ super big bird flu. sux.

  :-( wish u were here, el.

  me 2, my goth princess. so where’s frenchie? u in total amour yet?

  The window is cloudy, and with my free hand I trace a heart in the fog. Ellie’s next text arrives before I respond.

  u better b! i’m living vicariously, watching TVD reruns & eating crackers in bed. send more pix! esp. if frenchie shows! maybe he’ll take u home?

  “Duuuude.”

  The word floats on a moss-scented current, and I turn toward the source, ducking out from behind the curtain. Clarice’s substa
nce-abusing nemesis, a kid who earned the nickname 420 in middle school, blinks from beneath the rim of a dingy orange hat. The rest of his mythical creatures attire consists of tuxedo pants and a black T-shirt with a picture of a Gelfling that reads, I thought I was the only one!

  Conversing with 420 is like playing Mad Libs, but it’s more entertaining than cuddling with the drapery and faking my way through Ellie’s texts, and anyway, I love The Dark Crystal.

  “What’s up?” I say through a too-bright smile. Cole passes behind him, scoping out the foyer and the living room beyond, but he doesn’t see me.

  “This place is like . . .” 420 blinks. I give him my full attention.

  “A mountain oasis?” I ask helpfully.

  He shakes his head and giggles.

  “Retreat-like?” I say. “Cozy?”

  He closes his eyes.

  “Woodsy,” I press. “Outdoorsy. Secluded?”

  Time passes. Mountains erode. Streams merge into rivers. Six new species evolve, and I’m pretty sure this kid just fell asleep standing up.

  “Good talk, 420.” I leave him to contemplate the mysteries of the Foster cabin and relocate to the kitchen. Chips and dip, rescuer from social ineptitudes great and small!

  “That kid is wasted.” Clarice scowls at me over the munchies table as if I’m responsible for 420’s life choices. “I can’t believe they’re letting him graduate—”

  “Attention, attention! I’ve got a song in my heaaaaart!”

  Clarice and I turn toward the sudden commotion in the living room. John, the only member of the class heading to Harvard, is standing on the coffee table in nothing but tuxedo pants, a turquoise cummerbund that matches Clarice’s dress, black socks, and his silver wings.

  “Perfect.” Clarice abandons a plate of apple slices and cheddar and marches into the living room, her wings stiff and commanding. Why she’s so concerned about 420 when her own boyfriend has already stumbled into the karaoke stage of debauchery is a mystery, but so are most relationships in Lavender Oaks, and I follow her angry footsteps, switching on my video capture for Ellie.

  John’s thumbs hook behind the wing straps stretched over his muscular shoulders. “ ‘These are the tiiiimes to remember,’ ” he sings. “ ‘And they will not last foreverrrrr.’ ”