by Paula Stokes
Across the street, the lights flick off in the body shop attached to the gas station. Holden is in the parking lot, pumping gas on a couple different cars. He sees me and taps at his wrist as if to say, “Look what time it is.”
I nod at him, but I’m not sure if he saw the motion, so I give him a tentative wave. He waves back and then turns to the gas pump. He removes the hose from his customer’s fuel tank and hangs it back on the pump. He reattaches the customer’s gas cap and offers the man a receipt.
Mom returns with a man about her age wearing a red-and-black plaid jacket and brown work pants. He’s got standard blue-and-orange gardening gloves on his hands.
“This one is twenty dollars, Emb. What do you think?”
“I think we should take it.” I force a smile, for the benefit of both my mom and the tree salesman. I cast another glance all around me as I follow them up to the front of the lot, where the man puts netting around the tree.
Mom and I both go for our purses at the same time. She shakes her head at me. “I have cash. Not from your father, okay?”
I nod. I feel bad about being so picky. “I’m sorry if I was stupid about that.”
“You weren’t stupid. You were sensitive. You’re allowed to be sensitive, though I do hope you’ll consider talking to him someday.”
“Maybe someday,” I say. But not anytime soon.
Mom gives the tree salesman the twenty-dollar bill, and he offers to write her a receipt. She shakes her head. “That’s all right. Thank you.”
He carries the tree to our car and helps secure it to the roof with a couple pieces of strong twine. As mom pulls her keys out of her pocket and heads for the driver’s side, the tree salesman presses a little card into her hand. “Give me a call if you ever need any plants or flowers for your yard. I run the nursery over in Tillamook and I can get you a good deal.”
Mom blushes as she accepts the business card, and I suddenly realize this guy is flirting with her. Seeing Mom and this guy smiling at each other kind of makes me wish I could disappear. It also makes me wonder if everything she said at dinner was true.
Maybe love is just one more thing she sacrificed for me.
Back at home, Mom and I work on getting the tree into our tree stand. I close the blinds and pull the curtains across the front window. I can’t quite shake the image of the guy in the brown bomber jacket lurking in the Fintastic parking lot. I hope my mom hasn’t picked up some creepy guy from an online dating site or something. I think she’d tell me if she were seeing someone, but she probably thinks the same about me.
Holden calls in the middle of Mom holding the tree straight and me tightening the bolts of the stand, while Betsy wags her tail and paces back and forth, excited at the presence of anything new in the house.
“Go lie down,” I tell her. With one hand on the trunk of the tree, I use my other hand to silence my phone.
Betsy barks once and then sits back on her haunches and smiles at me.
“Dumb dog,” I say, but my lips twitch. I can’t ever resist her doggie smile.
We finally get the tree bolted in securely. Mom steps back to see if it’s straight. “Looking pretty good. Did you want to decorate it now or tomorrow?”
“Maybe tomorrow.” This is later than my mom is usually awake, and I can see the dark circles under her eyes, her shoulders starting to droop. I gesture toward my bedroom. “I’ve actually got some homework I should work on.”
Mom snickers. “First you want to work all day on Saturday, and then you want to do homework? If you’re some alien pod person, you’re doing a terrible job of impersonating a normal teenage girl.”
“You calling me abnormal?”
“In the best possible way.” Mom winks. “Tomorrow sounds good. We can decorate it during our Sunday sundae party.”
“It’s a date.” I give her a quick hug. “I had fun today. Good night.”
“Night.” Mom yawns. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Betsy follows me as I head for my room. I kick off my boots and flop down onto my bed fully clothed. My mom isn’t the only one who’s exhausted. I don’t know if I wore myself out working or if it’s just the stress of worrying about what might happen after the deadline for posting a confession, but I’m about ready to fall asleep too.
Betsy clambers up onto my bed and lies down at the foot of it.
“Rough day for you too, huh?” I stroke her soft fur. Then I pull my phone out of my pocket, lie back on the bed, and call Holden. “Hey,” I say. “Sorry. We were dealing with the tree.”
“No worries. I was going to jog over and check out your tree, but you guys were gone before I finished with my customers.” He pauses. “So nothing bad happened?”
“There was this weird guy by our car at Fintastic, but it was probably just a coincidence. I’m still keeping an eye out for trouble, though.”
“Like I said, I bet it was just some troll,” Holden says. “They’re everywhere nowadays.”
When nothing happens on Sunday, I start to believe him. And then when nothing happens on Monday or Tuesday, I completely believe him. But then everything changes at school on Wednesday.
Ten
December 19
THE FIRST THING I NOTICE is that Julia isn’t at her locker before first hour. She usually drives herself to school instead of taking the bus with most of the Three Rocks kids because she swims laps in the mornings for exercise. Still, she’s always at her locker by the time I finish eating breakfast in the cafeteria. I send her a text, asking if she’s sick or staying home today and she doesn’t respond. When my phone buzzes a few minutes later, I assume it’s her, but it turns out to be Holden.
Holden: Did you check your email this morning?
Me: Yeah. Mostly spam. Why? Did you send me something?
Holden: No, but someone made a Gmail account under my name and sent something out to our entire class.
Shit. I don’t generally log in to my school email account unless a teacher tells me to because it’s full of boring stuff like announcements and cafeteria menus. I use my phone to pull up my inbox. Sure enough there’s a message from [email protected]—a message with a video attachment. The text of the video says: Christmas came early for me . . .
A sense of dread creeps over my body as I click the video. I recognize the background immediately—the lobby of the Sea Cliff Inn. The image focuses and I see Holden sitting on the sofa, me kneeling in front of him. It’s pretty obvious what’s going on. It’s pretty obvious we’re both enjoying it.
The camera is zoomed in, so all you can see of me is my back and blond hair. A lot of people probably won’t even recognize me. But Holden is undeniably Holden. I blush furiously as I watch the video to its conclusion, desperate to know but terrified to find out how much more it shows. The clip cuts off before he lifts me back onto his lap, before I kick over the candle and start the fire.
I’ll ruin the life of someone you care about. Maybe this video is supposed to hurt Holden. It’ll be awkward for him, I’m sure, but it’s not like most people are going to care if he was hooking up with some girl. Julia might care, but even though it might embarrass her, she and Holden are broken up, so it shouldn’t be a big deal. Still, I bite my lip as I imagine her face flushing red as she watches this.
I shut my email account and text Holden back.
Me: Has Julia seen this?
Holden: Not sure. She’s not responding to my texts.
Me: Mine either. What do we do?
Holden: I’m not sure there’s anything we can do.
It’s tempting to toss my purse right back into my backpack and walk out the front doors of Tillamook High. I’m not sure I can sit through all my classes wondering what Julia is thinking, wondering if my classmates know that’s me in the video. Holden and I have been pretty careful about the way we appear in public, but everyone knows we started hanging out more after Julia went to DC for the summer.
But before I can decide whether to cut and run, Fra
nnie rounds the corner. She’s wearing black jeans and a hoodie that says “ARMY”—probably something Luke sent her. “Embry,” she calls, as she crosses the hallway and heads toward me. “I’m glad I caught you.”
Her eyes are a little red, like maybe she’s been crying. I’m hoping she hasn’t heard about the video. Her name wasn’t on the email recipient list, probably because she’s only a junior. Seeing me with another guy wouldn’t ruin Luke’s life or anything, but I know it’d upset him and that’s not the way I want to end things between us.
“Hey, Fran,” I say cautiously. I rummage through my purse until I find a ponytail holder. Casually, I twist my hair up into a bun.
“I’ll walk with you to first hour.” She shifts her books from her right arm to her left.
Frannie’s class is right next door to mine. She’s in an AP English class that focuses on advanced grammar and vocabulary to help kids excel on their college entrance exams. I’m in Multimedia and the Web, an elective designed to show students how to set up web pages and LinkedIn accounts. It’s basically a blow-off class, since by the time kids can take it they usually know more about the internet than the teacher.
“Yeah, sure.” I shut my locker and head down the hallway beside Frannie. As we walk, I glance furtively around, trying to see if people are looking at me more than usual. There’s definitely some whispering and giggling going on, but no one seems to notice Frannie and me as we walk by.
“Have you heard from Luke lately?” she asks.
“I talked to him on the phone a few days ago, but nothing since then. He said something about maybe going on a mission.”
“Did he say anything special when you talked to him?” Frannie asks. “Maybe about something he wanted?”
I throw her a sideways glance as we head down the stairs at the end of the hallway, wondering if she knows Luke asked me about getting married. Most guys don’t talk to their little sisters about stuff like that, but Luke is not most guys. He and Frannie are super-close, since the rest of their siblings are several years older than them. Plus, Luke is the only one in the O’Riley family who supports Frannie going into the medical field. Their parents want her to go to school for business so she can run one of their restaurants someday.
“Nothing out of the ordinary. Why?”
“I bought him some stuff for Christmas that I know he’s been wanting, but I was hoping to get him something extra as a surprise.”
“He didn’t mention anything specific,” I say. “Did he send you that sweatshirt?”
A smile flits across her features. “He did. In fact, he wore this exact sweatshirt when he was doing one of his physical fitness tests in Basic.”
I make a face. “Ugh. I hope he washed it before he gave it to you.”
Frannie doesn’t laugh. She just fiddles with the end of one of the hoodie’s strings. Her smile evaporates as we near our classes.
I pause outside the doorway to her room. “Are you okay? You seem sad.”
She tugs at the end of her ponytail. “I’m okay. I just got into it with my mom about something. She can be kind of unreasonable.”
“You said she was under a lot of stress, right? Maybe that’s all it is.”
“Yeah, maybe.” Frannie shifts her weight from one foot to the other. “You know, Luke said once that if things got too bad, I could move in with you and him next year. Do my senior year in Killeen.” Her eyes flick up to mine. “Of course, that was before you guys decided to take a break.”
“Fran,” I say softly. “No matter what Luke and I do, you can still live with him if you want.”
“Yeah. I guess.” Before I have time to respond, she adds, “See you around, Embry,” and ducks into her classroom.
I start to follow her, but then stop. I hate that Frannie is having such a hard time with her mom right now, but she’s not going to want to talk about it in front of her classmates, and I can’t really afford to be late to class.
Sighing, I stroll into the school computer lab next door and head to my assigned workstation in the back corner. For the past week we’ve been working on creating a web page using a Blogger or WordPress template. Most of the kids in class are creating blogs. I’m actually working on a website for the coffee shop. Mom has a really basic page with our location, hours, and phone number, but I’m trying to create something a little fancier that will hopefully draw in more business. So far, I’ve added a menu page and a link to Google Maps. The assignment isn’t due until after the holidays, but I’m hoping to have a functioning page by Christmas so I can give it to her as a present.
“Today we’re going to focus on adding images to your website,” our teacher, Ms. McClellan, says. “Please keep in mind they need to be rated G or PG so that I don’t lose my job. You’ll want to experiment with different sizes and alignments, as well as give them captions and consider linking them to other pages. And remember, if you’re going to make your site public, these need to be images in the public domain, or images that you own.”
“So no famous people?” a perky girl in the front row asks. I can see her computer from where I’m sitting. She’s making a fan page for an all-girl K-pop band.
“Sometimes there are public domain images of celebrities on Wikipedia or IMDB,” Ms. McClellan says. “But when in doubt, throw it out.”
I upload a few pictures I took of the food at work. I place them on the menu page of the website, trying different sizes and placements until I hit on something that looks both clean and aesthetically pleasing. I save a spot for a photo of the Julia Worthington, the new sandwich Mom and I are going to unveil the day after Christmas. I open my purse and peek at the screen of my phone. Julia hasn’t replied to the text I sent her.
Focus on the things you can control. I’m sure by now someone in school administration has gotten wind of the video and deleted the email from our server. I have no idea how many people have seen it or whether Julia knows it’s me. I drum my fingernails on the tabletop for a few seconds before accepting that there’s nothing I can do right now to improve the situation.
I glance around at what some of my classmates are doing. Two boys in front of me are both making fantasy football sites. Watching them upload pictures of NFL players makes me think of Luke. Even though hockey is his fave sport to play, he’s obsessed with watching football. I wonder how much of it he gets to see being stationed so far from home.
The girl next to me is creating a web page full of holiday gift ideas. As I watch, she clicks her mouse and uploads a photograph of a gingerbread Christmas house. I shudder. Mom bought one of those houses once when I was a kid. It took forever to put together and the end product looked more like our dilapidated garden shed than a festive holiday cottage. The worst part was that the icing that held everything together turned hard like cement and the actual gingerbread went stale in a couple of days, meaning after all that work we didn’t even end up eating it.
Ms. McClellan strolls up and down the rows, observing our progress and offering tips. She tells a couple of kids on the other side of the room to put their phones away and get to work. I wonder if they’re looking at the video of Holden and me together. I have no idea how many students might have downloaded it or passed it on to their friends in other grades. My face burns with shame. I’m not embarrassed because I did it—and still want to do it, if we’re being honest—I’m just embarrassed because I got caught. I hope whoever recorded us has had their revenge and will leave Holden and me alone now. Maybe this is a good thing—a chance for me to come clean, both to Julia and to Luke.
Julia shows up to third hour—Spanish III. She never responded to my text, so I figured maybe she saw the video, got upset about it, and decided to go home. But when she breezes into the classroom ten minutes after the bell rings with a pass from the office, she seems totally oblivious.
“Siento llegar tarde,” she tells Señor Martinez. She tosses her blond hair back from her face. As she heads to her seat in front of me, the boy to my left—Lowell Price, t
he kid who Misty Whitehawk punched at the swim meet—clears his throat. I glance over at him and he coughs the word “slut” into his hand. I’m about to tell him to fuck right off when I realize he’s directing it at Julia, not me. “Yeah right.” I snort. Julia might be flirty, but calling her a slut is like calling her dumb or lazy. Nothing could be further from the truth.
A couple other kids glance over at Julia as she makes a production of settling into her seat and pulling out her textbook and laptop. I hear whispering from the back of the class.
“La Navidad llegó anticipada para mí,” a boy in the back row says. Christmas came early for me . . . There’s quiet laughter from the seats around him.
“Silencio, por favor!” Señor Martinez glares at us from beneath his severe brow. There are a few residual whispers and giggles, but then most people go back to working on their assignments.
I don’t put it all together until after class, when Julia and I head back to our lockers.
“You would not believe the day I’m having,” she hisses. “I’m guessing you saw the video.”
My breath catches for a second before I say, “I mean, I didn’t watch it all or anything.”
“Everyone is just assuming the girl is me. Half the boys at this school have been making lewd blow job gestures at me all day,” Julia says. “Why are guys such idiots?”
“No idea,” I mumble, my brain still reeling. The lighting in the video was pretty bad and you couldn’t see my face, but still, I guess I expected Julia to recognize me right away.
She slams her locker and turns to me. “Are you okay? You look pale.”
I look up. “Yeah, I’m fine. Are you okay?”
Julia tosses her hair back over her shoulders. “Holden can get with whoever he wants—I don’t care. Everyone knows we’re just friends now. But I’m a little worried about what might happen to him. Even Principal Blake thought the girl was me. I spent first hour in the office with the police. They want to investigate Holden for some sort of child pornography sex crime.”