by Sarah Ockler
“We can’t sneak in—they’re expecting it. We’re, like, official disturbers of the peace.”
“We came to rise above, Vacarro.” Cole’s smile, a perpetual invitation to some madcap adventure, captures me in its irresistible current. “Rise we will.”
• • •
“You’re very literal tonight,” I say through a mouthful of honey-vanilla bundt cake.
Cole and I have risen above, as promised, and we’re watching the sun melt behind the front range, legs dangling over the ledge of the school roof. Zeff surely has a policy against this, but no one saw us climb the fire ladder, and no one knows we’re here.
The Lav-Oaks campus is much more peaceful from a distance.
“If we’re back on metaphors,” Cole says, “I now understand the comparison between high school and the zombie apocalypse.” He sticks out his arms and moans, a slack-jawed impersonation of our classmates. “Pranks, praaaaanks!”
“I wish. If they were actual zombies, I’d know how to defeat them.”
“Makes one of us.” Cole scoops out a red velvet bundt from the box, wolfs it down in a single bite. “I could handle basic survival—purify water, build a shelter out of tree boughs. But zombie combat? I’d need serious training.”
“Rule number one?” I say. “Stay together. You split up, you die.”
“Stay together.” He licks the crumbs from his fingers. “Go on.”
“Flamethrower is my weapon of choice.”
Cole’s eyebrows jump. “Really? I always figured you as an ax-to-the-face kinda girl.”
“Well, yeah, for really close combat. Shovel works too.”
“Shotgun?”
“Totally.”
“What about those bottle things where you stuff in a rag and light ’em up?” Cole’s arm arcs over our heads, and we both look out across the soccer field, waiting for the explosion.
“Mollies,” I say. “Sure.” My eyes are fuzzy in the dying orange light, blurred and content. I don’t bother adjusting them. “Bowling ball. Golf club. Wooden leg. Use what you’ve got.”
“Good to know, and by the way, you don’t really wanna waste the senior class, right, Vacarro?” He elbows me and leans close, breath hot as the sun on my bare neck. “Just in case the spy satellites are rolling.”
I exaggerate my laugh to hide the shiver that inevitably follows Cole’s closeness. “Of course not, Foster. This is strictly theoretical, Break-Glass-In-Emergency–type stuff.”
He shoves in a chocolate bundt, crumbs dotting his gray Led Zeppelin tee. He brushes them off, smiling when he catches me watching, and in the setting sun his eyes give off their coppery glow. For a moment I close my eyes, tell myself it’s real. That I called Ellie four years ago, the first day I saw Cole in the woods with Spike, and told her right then: I think I really like this new boy.
Cole doesn’t say anything else, content to eat bundts and watch the jagged purple horizon, and in the comfortable silence between us, my thoughts drift to Ellie. It’s like I can feel her friendship slipping away, and in the death of it, its life flashes before my eyes.
There’s this nacho cheesefest of a musical called The Mermaid of Crystal Cove, and in sixth grade, our music teacher, Miss Killian, decided we’d perform it. The entire class had to participate onstage, like, singing and dancing.
I was a walrus. I had a bulky burlap costume with paper towel rolls for tusks, and my job was to crawl to the middle of the stage, flap my fins, and recite four lines:
There lives a maiden in the deep blue sea
With scales like a fish and a tail like me
With shimmering shells in her raven hair
And a coral throne in an underwater lair
Jayla was already in California by then, but she practiced on the phone with me every night for a month, until I could recite it forward and back.
On opening night, when it came time for my fin-flapping debut, I froze.
Miss Killian nudged me toward center stage, but I couldn’t move. Stiff and ashamed, I hugged myself with my burlap fins and braced for the dramatic wreckage, for everything to fall apart.
Nothing did. When Killian’s efforts failed, she simply shouted my lines from the wings, and everyone kept on singing.
The mermaid, star of the show, found me backstage after. The others had cleared out, met up with their parents for congratulatory ice cream or whatever, but I looked up through watery eyes and there she was, all sea green and silver sparkles, shells in her hair like pale-pink jewels.
“What happened to you?” she asked. “Stage fright?”
I nodded.
“I kept waiting for you out there, but you didn’t come.”
I shrugged, not sure what to say.
“Well.” She seemed to consider my costume, the whole sad little lump of me, and then she said, “My moms are taking me to Cold Stone. They have this ice cream, brownie batter? You’re coming with us.”
She held out her hand and pulled me up, and just like that, I had a friend. After that, it didn’t matter that I didn’t shimmer and shine, that my sister took center stage in my parents’ eyes, that I never had group sleepovers or birthday parties for fear that someone would find out about Jayla and use me to get close to her or worse, make fun of our family. I made myself invisible, mostly, and that was okay; I was never invisible to Ellie.
That’s why I agreed to go to prom. Despite my reservations, I accepted without question. I’d do anything for her, and she’d do anything for me, and the thought of Cole or anyone else coming between us sends a hot blade through my insides.
“I’m worried about her too,” Cole says, sensing the direction of my daydreams. His voice is confident but soothing, eyes full of understanding and hope. “She needs time, Lucy.”
“Maybe,” I say, but my voice floats away untethered, disappearing behind the mountains. Cole knows Ellie almost as well as I do, but he’s not a girl. He doesn’t know the unspoken rule about boyfriends, ex or otherwise. The line best friends are never supposed to cross.
The pictures told Ellie I slept with him.
I snag another bundt cake, red velvet this time, and nibble along the edge, thoughts ping-ponging from the cabin, the kiss, Ellie, Cole, back to the kiss, our UCLA plans, back to the cabin. It’s bad enough that my Facebook profile got everyone at the party in trouble, but the whole school thinks I slept with Cole, that I broke them up. Even people I don’t know, like Margo’s intern and all the crosstown randos on the Juicy Lucy fan list.
Miss Demeanor advised the wronged party to fully investigate things before ending a friendship. But if Ellie believes that I broke the unspoken rule and then, like Margo’s intern said, posted the evidence for her to find on Facebook, there’s no way she’s going all Veronica Mars on my account.
If I want the truth to set me free, I have to track it down myself.
By the time Ellie and I hit the road to Cali this fall, my #scandal needs to be a distant, cautionary tale, a minor detour on the otherwise long and scenic friendship highway. My feelings for Cole, sadly but inevitably, will sink into the well of my heart; my favorite memory, my most deeply cherished secret.
“The three of us,” Cole says, “have been together too long not to figure this out.” He tucks a braid behind my ear, smiling his triumphant smile. The touch lingers on my neck, memories of the kiss feathering my lips. . . .
Behind us there’s a rapid click-click-click-click, and then a spotlight blinks on, bathing us in an accusatory glow.
I rocket launch to my feet.
Cole’s laughing, unfazed, still perched casually on the ledge. “Security lights. They’re on timers.”
“Now you tell me.” Paranoid much? God. My heart’s all, wooo! Who knew sneaking up to the Lav-Oaks school roof with my best friend’s ex and a metric ton of baked goods would be such an adrenaline rush?
“You’re thinking again,” Cole says. “It’s in your eyes.”
“I kind of . . . I might have a plan,” I say. �
��For Ellie. Well, not so much a plan as a collection of goals.” I return to my spot on the ledge next to him. “Ellie needs proof that I didn’t post those pictures and that you and I didn’t . . . that it wasn’t . . . that it was just kissing. Basically.” I take a deep breath, cool the spiraling heat. “But I can’t expect her to find the proof, right? That’s on me.”
“Us.” Cole’s leaning back on his hands, face turned toward the pink sky.
“Us,” I say. “So we smoke out the perp, force a confession, clear our names, and expose the . . . dastardly plot?” Undetected, my eyes trace the shape of his lips, the scruff along his jaw. The curve where it meets his ear looks warm and soft. Touchable.
“There’s a dastardly plot?” he asks.
“If you guys are plotting,” a familiar voice says, “count me in.”
“Griffin?” I turn to catch her cresting the top of the ladder. Guilt radiates down my spine as she hauls herself onto the roof, and I immediately scold myself. We’re not doing anything wrong up here, anything worthy of guilt.
Are we?
“Ellie’s got a movie date with the moms, so I figured I’d crash the prankage, see if I could spice things up. Wrong-o.” She kicks off her ballet flats and sits next to me on the ledge. “They’re talking about camping. Where’s the mischief in that?”
Movie date. How could I forget? Heather and Kathy, Ellie’s moms, planned it weeks ago. Girls night out, Heather said, for me and my mom too. They missed their Texas firecracker, Kathy said. Hadn’t seen Mom in months. Ellie teased them about setting up mommy playdates once we left for college.
I fake a yawn, a logical explanation for the fresh tears, and rub my eyes.
“How’d you know we were up here?” Cole asks.
“Followed the trail,” she says. “I stopped by Lucy’s, but Jayla told me you guys were already here. Staff Sergeant Buzzkill down there gave me the lowdown on your D-list status, so I checked the gym, the art room, the playground, and finally deduced the last possible location. Also, I totally saw your feet. Are those mini bundts?”
“That was . . . thorough.” Cole passes me a box, and Griff and I both dig in. Cole takes another one too.
“So what’s this about a plan?” she asks, scrutinizing the user-modified sprinkles on her chocolate bundt. “The sooner we put an end to this epic mopefest, the better. I’m all, ‘Ellie, just call her!’ I’m getting, like, depression by osmosis.”
She shovels in the bundt, kicking her heels against the side of the building like it’s just another day, just three pals hanging on the roof, chatting about the good times. It’s almost . . . nice. Normal. Part of me resents the recent stonewallage, but neurotic BFF jealousy aside, I’m glad she’s been there for Ellie. And now she’s here with me, no judgments, no told-you-so snark.
“Still working out the logistics,” I tell her, “but CliffsNotes version? We’re gonna smoke out the perp, expose the truth, and win Ellie back.”
“Sounds like a party.” She takes another bundt from the box and shrugs. “I’m in.”
“Salud,” Cole says. The three of us clink our bundts together, not quite as scandalous as it sounds, and down them in a collective snarf.
“But truefax?” Griff says. “I know jack about being a detective.”
“Holla.” Cole gives her a crumb-covered fist bump.
“We’re in luck,” I say. “I know just the guy.”
TIME TO GO KEITH & VERONICA ON THIS BITCH
So that’s where you come in.”
I just finished updating Franklin on our rooftop plan-hatchery, and now I flop on my bed, phone pressed to ear, a lemon-ginger pooch snuggling beside me.
Franklin’s sigh whistles across the wireless wires. “Why does this sound suspiciously like a group project?”
“We’re doing all the work,” I say. “We just need some pointers. Like, investigative journalism tips. Detecting 101 stuff.”
“You’ve gone Veronica Mars.”
“I was thinking Buffy. Well, more like Faith. Dark slayer, side of angst, hold the perk?”
“You’re solving a crime, not slaying demons. Veronica is clearly the better analogy.” Franklin’s still sighing, but we both know that this is the most exciting action to come his way since sophomore year’s black Jell-O exposé, which turned out to be the result of Cook Ethyl combining the powdered cherry and lime mixes and not, as we’d all hoped, a school-shutdown-worthy contamination.
“Lucy,” he says, “how certain are you that the incriminating photographs were even uploaded from your phone?”
“Positive. I hardly ever used Facebook—only logged on from home and my phone. And the phone is MIA. Cole searched the cabin after they cleaned up, even out by the pond. Someone nabbed it.”
There’s a muffled groan, followed by the sound of papers rustling and then the unmistakable click-clack of a keyboard. “Not that I’m getting involved in these shenanigans, but if I were, the first thing I’d do is compile a list of attendees.”
“Cole knew everyone there,” I say. “It wasn’t a ginormous bash or anything. Maybe thirty or forty?”
“Good, that limits potential suspects. Your last name has two Rs, correct?”
I sit up in bed, startling Night from his nap. He gives me a clipped bark—his version of an eye roll—and trots away, curling up under my desk instead. “This isn’t on the record, is it?”
“Of course not.” Even his long pauses sound British. “Just jotting a few notes.”
I relax. Unlike #TRENDZ, Franklin doesn’t seem like the type to trick his sources. He does, however, seem to enjoy taking notes. Must be a detective thing. I grab the iPad from my nightstand and launch the Notes app, pleased to find a non-Fruit Ninja use for Jayla’s investment.
“Two Rs,” I confirm.
“Great,” he says. “Next, I’d compile a report of the entire night, omitting nothing. Where you went, interactions you had, the last time you remember seeing your phone, whether anyone was acting out of sorts—”
“Franklin. Half the people were dressed like fairies.”
“More out of sorts than usual,” he clarifies. “No detail is insignificant. You never know what dots might be connected from seemingly random occurrences.”
I tap a few lines into the iPad. “Go on.”
“You’ll need visual evidence. Get on Facebook and download copies of the party photos to your hard drive. You’ll want to enlarge them and look for background clues: shadows, reflections, people’s clothing, time indicators, anything that might offer a hint about who took them, who couldn’t have taken them, and who else might’ve been around.”
“Shadows, reflections, indicators . . . totally.” I thumb it all onto my iPad in a bulleted list. It occurs to me that high school sleuthing wasn’t what Jayla had in mind when she bought this, or what Apple had in mind when they invented it, but it’s a surprisingly versatile tool. I can only imagine what Veronica Mars could’ve done with it. She’d be head of the CIA by now.
“Using the attendee list, the report, and the photographic evidence,” Franklin says, “you’ll narrow down suspects by cross-referencing the guest list with the names of anyone at school who might have a reason to humiliate you and Cole.” Tap-tap-tap goes his keyboard. “Or a reason to frame you as a narc.”
I wince at the word, but it makes sense, and two suspects jump to the top of the list: Olivia and Clarice.
Clarice has always hated me, and Olivia’s always had a thing for Cole. She was in the doorway when Cole bolted into the house after our kiss. Moments earlier, she could’ve seen us, snapped the first incriminating picture. She outed herself with the Mike’s Lemonade acrobatics, but that could’ve been a setup, all part of her master plan.
There’s also the vampire-zombie couple that Cole kicked out of the bathroom. People get touchy about interrupted make-out sessions, and they might be gunning for vengeance. Not to mention Paul St. Paul. Griff slipped him the Tarts of Apology Sunday morning; he could be trashing her fr
iends to get even.
And John . . . maybe he’s more upset about the career-ruining nudies than he let on, and he only helped me with the locker posters to throw me off his scent. Then there’s Spence. Cole was pretty pissed about him kidnapping Prince Freckles—maybe they had an argument. And what about Marceau? I left him high and dry after our kiss, and if I’ve learned anything from Angelica Darling, it’s that scorned lovers make motivated enemies.
That’s not even counting all the random people at the party who have no attachment or loyalty to me whatsoever, people who could’ve just cashed in a last-ditch, out-with-a-bang opportunity on Miss Demeanor’s #scandal page. . . .
This investigative stuff is a lot harder than it looks on TV.
“Once you’ve got your evidence in order,” Franklin says, “we’ll start interviewing suspects and witnesses.”
“Awesome. I’ll—did you say we?”
“Quid pro quo, love.” He lets the comment simmer, still typing. Then he says, “If I help you, perhaps you’ll grant me that interview.”
Now I’m the one sighing. He’s already given me such great advice—I’d love to return the favor. But this isn’t a crusade. It’s a plan to get my friend back. I’m not Jayla, eager to plaster my life all over the media world, online or off.
“Franklin,” I say, “what if I could score you an interview with Jayla Heart instead?”
It takes about a year for him to stop laughing, and then he says, “Even if that were possible, you’d have better luck pitching that to your mate Miss Demeanor.”
Little does he know, Jay’s in my kitchen right now, communing with her many online fans.
“You’re not interested?” I ask.
“In Jayla Heart? Goodness, no. However . . .” Franklin’s typing again, fast and furious. “What about a compromise? Something that won’t require you to go on record?”
“I’m listening.”
“I’ll grant you and your team full access to my investigative services,” he says. “In exchange, you’ll allow me to do a story based on our findings. No direct quotes, no interviews, just facts.”