Cherry

by Lindsey Rosin

  * * *

  EMMA had spent all ten of those days without cell phone service.

  She’d gone camping at the national parks in Utah with her parents and sisters, but the truth was she probably wouldn’t’ve texted anything anyway. She didn’t know what to say.

  * * *

  ZOE didn’t know what to say either.

  She’d spent the first week of spring break up in the Bay Area with her mom, visiting family. They went sightseeing, and she even got to hang out with Joey on campus. He took Zoe to her first frat party. Under normal circumstances, she would’ve texted the girls all about it, but she felt like there was too much else she had to say first. She wanted to apolo­gize to Layla for some of her words at the lunch table, but she was still mad that Layla wanted to give up on the pact, and she didn’t know where to start, so it all just amounted to more silence.

  * * *

  LAYLA hated the sound of silence so so much.

  Luckily, she’d had a bit of a distraction, as her family had rented a house in Santa Barbara for a week. They’d caught waves at the beach and played board games, and Layla had even managed to get a tan (and no tan lines), but it all felt like a bit of a consolation prize. The conversation had simply spiraled too far with Zoe, and Layla wished she could take back some of what she’d said, but she didn’t know where to start either. Now that Layla was home, she couldn’t help but miss Logan, and she missed the girls, too, and there was still another week until they’d all be back at school again.

  Layla decided she needed a break from her spring break, and all the racing thoughts in her head, so she drove over to Alex’s house after dinner Monday night.

  * * *

  ALEX had spent all day every day of the first week of spring break on the track.

  Meanwhile, Oliver had spent all night every night text­ing her—or more accurately begging her—for a naked picture, so she was doing her best to avoid her phone altogether.

  But of course she was happy to hear from Layla, and glad to see her too, and the girls ended up on the lounge chairs in Alex’s backyard, swapping stories about Layla’s trip and Alex’s track practices and how the closer she got to breaking the record, the farther away it actually felt.

  Then, their thoughts and the conversation drifted to Zoe and the fight . . .

  “Are you really done?” Alex asked, treading carefully.

  Layla thought for a moment.

  Alex wanted her to say no as much as she knew Zoe did, but she could see the hesitation all over Layla’s face.

  “I don’t know.” Layla finally exhaled after a bit of time had passed. “It was my stupid idea in the first place.”

  “Oh no. It is not a stupid idea. In fact, it might be the most brilliant idea you’ve ever had,” Alex teased, quoting Layla back to herself.

  “Thanks,” Layla said softly.

  “Hey. Don’t do it if you don’t want to, but don’t not do it because of Logan.”

  “It’s not because of Logan. I mean, I want to say that he has absolutely nothing to do with how I’m feeling . . .” But they both knew that wasn’t true.

  “Zoe does have a point,” Alex said after another moment. “It was supposed to be together.”

  “Yeah, well, it was supposed to be a lot of things,” Layla added.

  “Maybe that’s the problem,” Alex said, thinking back to that night with Cameron at sleepaway camp. “Maybe it’s the way we think things are supposed to be that messes us up most of all. If you really don’t want to do the pact anymore, that’s your call. But don’t bow out now just because you’re scared about what it might feel like if you don’t end up crossing the sex pact off your to-do list,” Alex said, sounding all Zen and wise even though she felt like a bit of an imposter. She wasn’t sure if she’d be able to take her own advice to heart when it came to thinking about her upcoming track meets and breaking the record and her faith being greater than her fear and all of that, but at least she believed it wholeheartedly for Layla.

  “Thanks,” Layla said.

  Alex could tell that she needed that, which made her feel good. And then it got quiet for a while as the girls sat together, thinking.

  “What’s on your mind?” Layla asked, after who knows how much time had passed.

  “Honestly?”

  Alex’s mind had returned to Oliver’s dick pic.

  She still hadn’t told anyone about it, but Oliver had been texting, over and over, asking for a pic of her. Maybe she should’ve just blocked his number or told an adult or done something (anything) that could be classified as responsible . . . but she didn’t.

  Instead, she’d done something stupid.

  Alex put her knees inside a red, lacy bra, the sexiest one she had, and took a picture that made it look like they were her boobs. It was something she’d seen on the Internet, but the online version looked way better than her own. Alex thought her picture looked ob-vi-ous-ly fake, since there was way more cleavage involved than she had in real life, but, objectively speaking, it did sort of maybe kind of look like actual cleavage. Still, she was more or less certain that Oliver would know it wasn’t real.

  She was wrong.

  Less than ten minutes later, Oliver sent her back a very real video of himself really jacking off to her fake boob picture.

  That’s what Alex was thinking about.

  But.

  Instead of getting all into all of it with Layla, she simply said, “Oliver.”

  “Boys are stupid,” Layla said.

  “So stupid.”

  “Girls too, though,” Alex said, laughing.

  And Layla laughed too.

  The truth was funny like that, Alex thought.

  92 days until graduation . . .

  EMMA decided it was time to break the ice in The Chat.

  She knew Layla and Zoe were both equally stubborn, but the silence had lasted for far too long, more than two weeks, sixteen days to be exact, and now she had to do something about it.

  Emma had spent the last few days of spring break in Minneapolis visiting her cousins and had taken a pretty stellar selfie while she was on the SpongeBob rollercoaster at the Mall of America. Then yesterday, once she got back to Los Angeles, she texted it to The Chat and hashtagged it as a sexie. If anything was going to get everyone talking again, Emma thought, it might be that pic.

  But she was wrong.

  Alex and Zoe didn’t respond at all. Layla texted Emma back separately, directly, to say that the pic and especially the hashtag had made her laugh out loud, but that was it.

  Even before the fight, the girls had decided to take a break from froyo Sunday while they were on spring break, since everyone was going to be traveling at different times. But now, Sunday March 22nd, they were all back in town, and still no one was texting.

  That afternoon, Zoe texted her just to say hi, and they decided to meet for coffee right across the street from The Bigg Chill. It felt weird to be near that intersection and not have any rainbow sprinkles on the table, Emma thought. But then, when Zoe asked her what she was thinking about, she said Savannah instead.

  Emma still hadn’t really talked to the girls about her, but this just finally felt like the right time to say something. “We’ve been texting over break,” Emma explained.

  And then she told Zoe how they kissed at her birthday party.

  “Like. Kiss kissed?”

  “Yep. Tongue. Butterflies. Goose bumps . . .”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah. And I liked it,” Emma added before Zoe even had to ask. That last part, the part about liking the kiss, as opposed to just doing it, seemed like the more substantial details. Sometimes, girls would randomly get drunk and make out with other girls at parties just because. Because it was trendy. Or because it got them attention. Or whatever.

  But this wasn’t like that.

  Emma knew this was so much more than a “just because.”

  “So then, you like Savannah?” Zoe asked.

  Emma knew she
meant like like without even having to ask for clarification.

  And she knew that she did, too.

  “All right, then,” Zoe smiled. “That’s cool . . .”

  “What?” Emma asked, sensing that there was more to Zoe’s thought.

  “Are you going to, like . . . come out?”

  “Oh . . .”

  “I know how much you love labels . . .”

  “It’s not even about the label of it all,” Emma said, trying to wrap her thoughts around her feelings. “It just feels like too much attention . . . and so definitive . . . and what if I change my mind?”

  “I think that’s allowed,” Zoe said sincerely.

  * * *

  ZOE didn’t want to make too big a deal about this moment . . .

  . . . but she didn’t want to make it too small, either.

  This was important for Emma.

  She could feel that it was.

  And she knew that was part of the whole best friend thing: You could feel each other.

  It was part of what had made her and Layla yell across the lunch table at school a couple weeks ago. Caring for a friend’s emotions as if they were your own could be ­muddled—and difficult and confusing. Sometimes, even the togetherness could be overwhelming. Especially since there were four friends involved in The Crew dynamic. All the emotions felt exponential.

  “I’m excited to hang with her,” Zoe said about Savannah. It was her way of letting Emma know, without saying too much, that it mattered to her too.

  “You will.” Emma smiled. “You all will.”

  “Yeah . . . if Layla ever talks to me again.”

  “Or if you talk to her.”

  Of course Zoe was going to talk to her. That wasn’t the problem. “I’m just not even sure who owes who an apology at this point . . . ,” she explained.

  “Maybe it’s not an ‘I’m sorry’ kind of thing anymore. Maybe you should just start with more of a hi,” Emma suggested.

  “A hi?”

  “Yeah. Like a little peace offering.”

  Zoe was just about to tell Emma how wise she was when an incoming text message buzzed into The Chat.

  Hi.

  It was from Layla.

  “Whoa,” Zoe said, overwhelmed by the serendipity of the moment. “Did you give her the same advice?”

  “Nope.”

  “She must’ve felt it.”

  “Definitely.”

  And ten minutes later the girls found themselves sharing a side of rainbow sprinkles at their usual table at The Bigg Chill.

  * * *

  LAYLA was definitely still in.

  “I was just having a moment . . . ,” she explained once everyone had settled into their chairs, and their phones had been stacked, and rainbow sprinkles had been distributed, and everything.

  “I know,” Zoe said, “but if it’s more than that . . . you don’t just have to say it for me.”

  “I’m not,” Layla insisted. She didn’t want to make any promises she couldn’t keep, but she wanted to be a part of the pact. It mattered to her. “So. Tell the universe: it’s all still happening.”

  “Totally happening,” Zoe agreed.

  * * *

  ZOE finally felt like herself again.

  It had only been two weeks, but she’d missed her girls. She filled them in on the latest Austin progress report. They’d now had sex four times. And each time was better than the one before, even if there were still no damn fireworks to be found.

  * * *

  EMMA told Layla and Alex about Savannah.

  “Wait, wait, wait,” Layla said with one of those giant smiles on her face. “You know what this means, right?”

  “Do I?” Emma asked cautiously.

  “You’re gonna get to lose your girl V-card too,” Alex said, totally hopping on Layla’s train of thought.

  “Ohmigod yes . . .” Zoe smiled.

  Emma hadn’t really thought about it like that, but the girls were right.

  “Can’t wait for that progress report,” Layla said, laughing.

  * * *

  ALEX still didn’t have much to report in the progress department . . .

  . . . but she finally told the girls about Oliver’s dick pic.

  “Can I see it?” Zoe asked, surprising everyone at the table and prompting another round of giggles.

  “I deleted it,” Alex said.

  “Too bad.” Zoe laughed. “Let me know if he sends you another one . . .”

  Alex had already deleted his jacking off video too, but she didn’t tell the girls about that. She still wasn’t entirely sure how she felt about it, but she knew she didn’t want to talk about it.

  “Maybe you and Oliver should just do it already,” Layla suggested.

  “Oh God, you should talk,” Alex teased back.

  And everybody laughed.

  And it felt like everything had fallen right back into place.

  Unfortunately, that feeling didn’t last very long . . .

  91 days until graduation . . .

  EMMA saw it first.

  Nick forwarded her the email at 11:45 p.m.

  You still up??? He texted her at the same time.

  At first Emma thought it was just a horny text message, a sext-me-maybe kind of text, but something about all the question marks tipped her off and made her think that it wasn’t.

  Yeah . . . ? she texted back.

  Check your email, he texted. Sorry, but I thought you should see.

  OH, she texted back as soon as she opened it.

  It’s totally obviously fake. I can tell, Nick texted.

  Emma could tell too.

  It was Photoshopped.

  The skin tones were all wrong.

  The body was two shades lighter than Alex’s actual skin color, and it didn’t match her neck or her face—at all.

  But maybe the mismatching was something you’d only notice if you looked closely.

  Emma had a feeling that everyone who looked at this picture was going to be looking closely . . . but she didn’t think anyone would be looking closely at that.

  90 days until graduation . . .

  ALEX woke up on Tuesday morning in a panic.

  Her mind was racing and her palms were sweaty.

  It was as if her body knew what had happened, even before she saw a hundred missed text messages on her phone and dozens of copies of the same email forwarded to her in-box.

  She scrolled to the bottom of her in-box, searching for the original email. It was sent at 11:37 p.m. last night, less than five minutes after she’d turned off her phone and gone to sleep.

  The subject of the email was “superstar.”

  All lowercase letters.

  There were no words in the email.

  Only a picture.

  Alex got up out of bed. She couldn’t lie or sit or even just stay still anymore. Instead, she started pacing around her bedroom and her bathroom.

  She finally stopped long enough to open the photograph . . .

  As soon as she saw it—really, clearly saw exactly what it was—she turned around and threw up all over the tiles on her bathroom floor.

  It was the most awful thing she’d ever seen. And most of it was her. Well, some of it was her. The head, at least. It was still entirely awful.

  * * *

  ZOE could feel every pair of eyes staring at her and Layla and Emma.

  “This is insane,” Zoe whispered as they walked down the hallway.

  It felt like the sort of dream where she accidentally showed up to school naked. But it wasn’t a dream. It was a wide-awake nightmare.

  And it was really happening.

  And the girls weren’t really naked, but everyone was ­staring.

  And Alex wasn’t really naked either, but her picture made it look like she was.

  And everyone was talking about it as if it were real.

  And Alex’s real head had really been Photoshopped onto a naked body.

  And it wasn’t her real bod
y, but it looked real enough.

  And everyone in the hallway had definitely already looked at it.

  At all of it.

  It was only the second day back from spring break, and Alex had stayed home from school. She had texted The Chat, something about plans and God and a sick sense of humor and how she simply couldn’t face anybody. Not yet anyway.

  The Crew met Alex’s parents at the door to the principal’s office. They had just been in a meeting with Mrs. Bowers, the principal, demanding swift repercussions, but the head of the IT department informed them that—long (and nerdy) story short—they didn’t know who sent the email, and they couldn’t trace the IP address associated with the account.

  “Do you know who might’ve had a reason to send this?” Mrs. Bowers asked as if there were going to be a simple answer to that question.

  As if Alex didn’t have a reputation.

  As if people didn’t make up stupid stories about her all the time.

  The girls were thinking all of that, but they didn’t say any of it.

  They promised to alert the principal and Alex’s parents right away if they heard anything that might be helpful.

  Afterward, they huddled up in the hallway.

  “It had to be Oliver, right?” Layla asked.

  All the girls wanted to say yes. They wanted to be able to prove that it was definitely Oliver. And of course that made sense. And it was probably more likely than not that it really was him . . . but they couldn’t prove it.

  And the hard part was, as Emma articulated, “it could’ve been anyone.”

  “At least it’s not real,” Zoe said. “I mean not really real.”

  She was trying to find the bright side, but it didn’t seem particularly bright.

  85 days until graduation . . .

  ALEX hadn’t really responded to anything or anyone all week.

  She couldn’t.

  The Crew had unsuccessfully tried to come over after school on Friday. And then on Saturday, too. And now it was Sunday. It was a quarter to four. It was almost time for froyo.

  But Alex just still couldn’t get out of bed.

  So the girls got the froyo for Alex instead and brought it over. They bought medium sized servings of every flavor on the flavor board at The Bigg Chill (ten flavors altogether) and brought all of them to Alex’s house along with a dozen possible topping options.