by Saba Kapur
“We’re not being weird,” Veronica replied almost immediately.
“Yeah!” Aria added. “We just thought it might be nice for us to get your books for a change. We’re providing a public service.”
“Aria,” I said, giving her a knowing look. “You can barely find your own locker. You have no chance finding mine.”
I took a step forward to try and walk past them, but they immediately came closer together, shoulders touching, barricading the entrance. I raised my eyebrows and took a step to the right, thinking I could go around them if not through them, but Aria jumped in front of me, her smile still plastered on her face.
“Seriously, what’s going on?” Jack asked from behind me, and I looked at my friends expectantly.
“I—I heard there’s going to be a crêpe guy at school today. Flew him up from France and everything.” Veronica announced.
“Okay, you guys need to move. You’re starting to freak me out a little.”
I took another step to the right when Aria was exchanging more worried looks with Veronica, managing to barely slip past her before she stopped me once again.
“No!” She exclaimed with urgency, grabbing onto my wrist.
“What?” I cried.
Aria released my wrist with a frown. I glanced at Jack, who gave me a shrug, and took another step forward, challenging my friends to stop me again. They didn’t.
I had taken barely three steps inside the building before I felt everyone’s eyes settle on me. Sheets of paper carpeted the floor and were stuck to the lockers, turning the whole building white. The papers had some kind of pictures on them, but I couldn’t tell exactly what they were. I was too busy wondering why everyone was looking at me with suppressed laughter. Oh God, why were they all staring? I was definitely wearing clothes; I had just checked. Was there something on my face? I didn’t trust Jack, but one of the girls definitely would have mentioned it.
“What the hell is this?” Jack asked, emerging from behind me, looking around the hallway with the same confusion.
“Why are they all looking at me?” I whispered to him.
“Oh shoot!” I heard someone hiss behind me. It sounded like Aria.
“Gia!” Lincoln came rushing up to me, holding a sheet of the white paper in his hand with a concerned look on his face. “Gia, I have no clue who did this. But don’t worry. I’ve taken all the ones down from the boy’s bathroom.”
Jack took the paper from Lincoln without asking, and I leaned in closer to see what it had on it. There was a picture of the Golden Globes stage from last year. I recognized it from all of my non-stop studying of actress’ speeches, trying to find the perfect way to “glide” and not “trot,” as Carol had so kindly put it. Except instead of a beautiful actress, there was a photo-shopped picture of a killer whale in an evening gown, standing upright on the stage next to Christian Bale. Instead of its actual head, my smiling face had been photo-shopped onto the body in its place. The picture had probably been taken from one of Dad’s premieres a few years ago, because I looked a little younger. Not that anyone was really going to notice that. They were going to be too busy imagining me looking like a humungous underwater mammal on what was perhaps the most important day of my life. My wedding doesn’t count, because based on the way I was going, I was never going to have one.
I snatched the poster from Jack, rooted to my spot. I mean, sure I had been eating a little extra chocolate. But that was just due to all the stress from Dr. D and my constant emotional battle with Milo and Jack. Chocolate calms me down, so sue me. I was by no means a killer whale!
“Gia . . .” Jack began slowly, his smile now completely absent from his face.
I pushed him out of the way and tore another piece of paper off the nearest locker. This one had a photo of me smiling, from Aria’s birthday party last year, only it had been zoomed in to practically take up the whole page. I recognized it because I had been wearing Veronica’s purple feather earrings that I had been in love with, and had gone perfectly with my purple Steve Madden heels. It was a pretty flattering picture if I may so myself. It would have remained flattering if someone hadn’t colored some of my teeth in black, added warts all over my face and devil horns on either side of my crown. Scrawled across the top in thick black text was the heading The New Face of the Golden Globes.
“It’s not that bad,” Jack said, as if replying to the horrified thoughts passing through my mind.
“NOT THAT BAD?” I practically shrieked. “Jack look at this!” I motioned toward the students pouring out from everywhere, edited pictures of me in their hands. “I’m the school joke!”
“Don’t let her see this one,” Veronica whispered behind me, and I spun around to face my two friends eyeing a sheet of paper taped to the locker behind them.
“Great,” I declared, sarcastically. “There are more than two versions of this! Fantastic! If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to lie on a very busy road now.”
I tried to head for the entrance but Jack caught my elbow, stopping me from running out the doors and hiding in the bushes for about fifteen years until I was convinced the humiliation had passed.
“No you’re not,” he said sternly. “You’re not going to hide, Gia. It’s not even that bad! We’ll just take all the posters down and clean up the floors. Problem solved.”
“I’ll help,” Lincoln offered.
“Same,” Veronica said.
“Same,” Aria agreed.
“Hey, Gia!” I heard Aaron’s voice, and I looked behind me to see him running down the hallway toward us. “These posters of you . . . Man, that one with your face on that obese body is really harsh.”
“You mean the killer whale,” I corrected him with a sigh. “Yeah, I saw.”
He raised an eyebrow and said, “No, I mean that obese body stuffed into a bikini. What’s this about a killer whale?”
I slapped a hand over my eyes as if that would help shield the embarrassment and sudden trauma my poor brain had been forced to deal with.
“Oh my God!” I wailed. “Make it stop!”
“Okay,” Jack said, uncertainly. His confidence in just how bad the situation was had clearly faltered. “I’ll get Gia out of here, you just deal with the posters.”
My friends all nodded aggressively, swapping pitying looks that I knew were meant for me. Lincoln stopped a group of freshman boys picking up a pile of papers off the floor and grabbed the posters off them.
“What are you even doing in our hallway?” he asked a scrawny one with big, green eyes.
“There were some on our lockers as well,” he explained in a nervous voice. “But we heard the good ones were on the senior lockers.”
“In the freshman hallway?” I yelled, my voice becoming shrill. “WELL GEE. That’s just freaking fantastic!”
“Beat it, kid,” Lincoln told the scrawny boy. “And take down all the posters in your hall and throw them away.”
“Come on,” Jack said, tugging on my hand as he led me toward the entrance. “We’ll skip first period. I’ll get you a Krispy Kreme to make you feel better.”
“I can’t eat a Krispy Kreme, Jack!” I cried, fighting back tears. “People already think I look like a whale! What, are you trying to ruin my life completely?”
Jack sighed as Veronica pulled Aria toward a set of lockers, ripping off sheets of paper as she went along. I gave my friends what I hoped was a grateful look, but probably came across as majorly depressed, because Aaron and Lincoln exchanged frowns.
“Come on, Gia,” Jack said, tugging on my arm lightly.
“SHOW US YOUR TEENY WEENIE BIKINI GIA!” Someone yelled out from behind me, and I was certain a part of my insides had died.
“Yeah, we all know you’re an expert in teeny weenie things, aren’t you Carter?” Aria yelled back, and the crowd ooo-ed and aaah-ed.
Carter flipped Ari
a the bird, to which she replied by blowing him an air kiss.
“Just ignore them,” Jack told me firmly, and I bit my bottom lip to stop from crying.
It was easy for him to say that. His social status hadn’t been murdered in front of his own eyes.
“Who would do something so horrible?” I heard someone say from a little behind me.
It was a good question. Who would capable of pulling off such an extravagant prank? More importantly, who hated me that much they actually wanted to pull the prank in the first place.
“Hey Gia,” Meghan said sweetly, walking through the entrance of our hallway just as Jack and I were ready to make our escape. She placed her sunglasses on top of her head and beamed at Jack, her two sidekicks by her sides. “Hi, Jack!”
“Hey,” Jack replied, with a pleasing amount of disinterest.
“Meghan!” I snapped, pulling my hand away from Jack’s grip.
She spun around to face us and I narrowed my eyes at her. “Can I help you with something?” she asked, her fake smile still on her heavily made-up face.
“Yeah, I hope so,” I said with a fierce nod. “Maybe you could do me a favor and go fu—”
“Far out, Gia!” Lori said with an offended look. “What’s with the ambush first thing in the morning?”
“Gia, come on,” Jack said calmly, stepping beside me and putting a hand on my shoulder.
I shrugged it off with a steely stare directed at Meghan. “Look around you, Meghan,” I told her, pointing at floor where my edited pictures lay scattered below our feet.
Meghan, Lori and Mischa obediently looked at the ground, craning their necks to get a better look at the papers on the floor. Lori bent down and picked a few up, handing them to Meghan. The three leaned in to inspect the posters while I crossed my arms over my chest, seething.
“That’s horrible, Gia!” Meghan cried, placing a manicured hand to her chest. “I can’t imagine why anyone would be so cruel.”
“Yeah, neither can I. So why’d you do it?”
Meghan faked a shocked expression and turned to her friends, as if to reconfirm that she had heard me correctly.
“You think I did this?”
“I know you did this,” I told her. “You’re the only one evil enough to pull it off.”
Meghan’s shock turned to sympathy as she reached out and lightly patted my arm. “It’s alright, Gia,” she said. “I know you’re upset and you just want someone to blame, so I won’t take this absurd accusation personally.”
“Yeah,” Mischa added. “We’ll just attribute this to your substance abuse problems, poor thing.”
I gave her an incredulous look. First she went and made all these terrible photo-shopped pictures of me, then she spread them all over the school, and now she had the nerve to deny all of it in the world’s most condescending tone ever and bring up an addiction I didn’t even have?
“Gia,” Jack said quietly, sensing the volcano of anger was ready to erupt. “You don’t know that Meghan did this.”
“Exactly, Gia,” Meghan agreed, fake sympathy dripping from her voice. “But if you’d like, I can go to Principal Morris with you. I’d be more than happy to help you find out who pulled this hideous prank.”
“You want me to hit her?” Aria asked, coming to my other side with a pile of ripped up posters in her hand.
“I don’t think that’s the best idea!” Veronica piped up with a concerned look, standing with Aaron a few feet away.
A crowd was forming around us. What with my furious looks and my well-known rivalry with Meghan, everyone else seemed to have figured out that I was pointing fingers at Meghan Adams, and began to gather around us to hear the conversation better.
“Are you sure?” Aria asked me, ignoring Veronica. “Because that World History textbook you’re holding can do a lot of damage.”
“Excuse me?” Lori exclaimed. “You can’t just go around hitting people, Aria! Especially when they didn’t even do anything wrong.”
“Exactly,” Meghan said, looking at Aria with disgust. “If anything, I’m the victim here.”
Jack sucked in some air and my mouth dropped open. If Meghan Adams was the victim in all of this, I was the new Pope.
“Okay, hit her,” I told Aria, taking a step back and thrusting my textbook in Aria’s hands.
“Violence never solves anything, guys!” Veronica cried, running up to us and snatching the book from Aria’s grasp. A few spectators groaned with disappointment. “Can’t we just talk this out?”
“You lay a fingernail on me and I will slap so many lawsuits on you, your plastic surgeon daddy will have to give up that shoebox you call a mansion.” Meghan’s eyes turned cold and predator-like.
“Oh, you’re going to need my plastic surgeon daddy after I’m done rearranging your face!” Aria shot back, taking a step forward, challenging Meghan to retaliate.
Veronica immediately stepped in the middle of both of them, desperately trying to reason with Aria as she and Meghan exchanged some not-so-nice nicknames for each other. The bell signaling that it was time for first period rang and everyone stopped shouting at each other.
“Alright guys!” Jack said, with a hint of amusement in his voice. His bodyguard instincts apparently kicked in as he pulled me back toward him. “As much as I would love to see this fight . . .” He turned to Aria with a grin. “And trust me, I would really love to see that fight, I think it’s time to dial it down a notch.”
“Whatever,” Meghan announced, flicking her hair behind her shoulder and pulling her handbag higher up on her shoulder. “I don’t have to stand here and deal with you barbarians. Gia, if you can’t prove that I pulled this little stunt, then I really have no reason to keep looking at your face right now.”
I desperately tried to think of a good comeback, but my mind had shut down. So instead I stared at her through squinty eyes. When I finally couldn’t think of anything good to say, I continued to glare at Meghan and her sycophants as they walked all the way down the hallway in their inappropriately high heels and disappeared inside a classroom. Around us, disappointed students began to disperse, heading to their classes and giving up hope for a good catfight.
“If that didn’t cheer you up a little bit, I don’t know what will,” Jack whispered, and I pouted.
Personally, I didn’t feel any better. I had just missed an opportunity to watch Aria release hell on my arch nemesis, so disappointment was at an all-time high. On top of that, Meghan was right, which is a scary thought in itself. I didn’t have any proof that she had printed out those edited pictures of me, let alone spread them all over school. All in all, there was nothing to make me feel better, and now I was late to my first class.
“Screw it! Buy me a damn sugary treat,” I declared, grabbing onto Jack’s leather jacket sleeve and pulling him toward the entrance roughly.
“Don’t worry, Gia,” Veronica assured me. “We’ll deal with the posters.”
“And Meghan,” Aria added, winking at me. “You go home. We got this.”
“I’m actually starting to like L.A.,” Jack said, smiling at me as we left the building and headed back to the parking lot.
It had been all but three minutes and I was beyond done with school for the rest of the year. I needed to go home, crawl under my silky covers and not come out until I was pushing sixty. I hoped the embarrassment would have subsided by then.
“Nice to know you’re enjoying my humiliation,” I said, returning his grin with a glare. “I was insanely close to slapping her.”
“I think Aria had that part covered,” Jack laughed, putting a hand in his jacket pocket as we approached the car. “She’s a keeper, I’m telling you.”
That much was true. If there was a silver lining coming out of any of this, it was that I had some pretty amazing friends. But even still, I could seriously do with a calorie-fil
led dessert right now.
“Oh shoot,” Jack said, stopping next to the driver’s door.
“What?”
“I think I dropped my keys when I was trying to break up the catfight. My jacket pocket was open.”
I widened my eyes, panicked. “I’m not going back in there, Jack! I can’t!”
“You don’t have to. I’ll be back in a second. Stay here.”
“You can’t just leave me here!”
Jack rolled his eyes. “Relax, Princess. I’ll be back before the big bad wolf can eat you.”
I watched Jack jog back to the school with another sigh. Great timing for losing your car keys, Jack. Right as I’m trying to make my great escape. I leaned against his jeep and crossed my arms over my chest, glaring at my boots. I was considering possible lawsuits against Meghan when I felt my phone ringing in my pocket. I pulled it out and looked at the screen, squinting in the sunlight.
“Milo,” I said, answering the phone with forced happiness. “Hi.”
“Hey, is this a good time?” Milo asked, with slight urgency in his voice.
That was an interesting question. It was pretty much the worst time possible, but if Milo Fells was calling me, I was pretty sure things were looking up.
“Yeah. Sure, what’s up?”
“Is Jack with you?”
“Um,” I looked over at the school entrance, watching a few latecomers rush through the doors. No Jack. “Kind of. He actually just ran inside to—”
“Gia, listen to me,” Milo said, cutting me off. “We watched the security footage from the Coco Club. The blonde guy Claudia was talking about was Jack.”
Oh shoot. It’s not like I didn’t see this coming, but I had kind of forgotten to think of an excuse for that.
“Um, really?” Was all I managed to mumble, but Milo didn’t seem to be paying attention.
“We’re still trying to identify the blonde girl, but it’s definitely Jack in the video. Look, I’ll explain everything soon. We’re coming to your house, I’ll be there in like half an hour.”
“Wait, Milo!” I cried out, before he hung up. “I know Jack was at the Coco Club!”