Antisocial

by Jillian Blake

  Then there’s Haven. In Twitter debates, pro-Haven factions use the hashtag #Havenis4real. Late last night, a few members of the basketball team who got smeared in the leak started the #Haveninhell hashtag. It was accompanied by a Photoshopped pic of Haven’s head on a spit.

  I’m wasting time thinking about boys and jocks, though. The art show’s less than ten days away, so I slip into the lab early, around seven a.m. Mr. Touhey leaves the art studio unlocked so we can hang out and work before or after school. I’m relieved as the knob gives way easily and I pass into my sanctuary without having to talk to anyone.

  But as I’m taking my painting out of its cubby, a voice behind me says, “Hey.”

  I jump, my nerves lighting up, and spin around, nearly dropping my armful of paints. One of the tubes slips from the crook of my elbow, plopping onto the tile.

  “Hi,” I say, dumping the rest of the paint onto the table.

  Jethro steps forward and picks up the tube.

  How is he always popping up when I least expect it?

  He’s just a lurker, like I am, on social media, so I couldn’t even stalk him this weekend. After a moment of painful silence, we both start talking at the same time.

  “Sorry,” I say with an uneasy laugh. “You first.”

  “I saw what Palmer wrote,” he says finally.

  “Oh,” I say, surprised. I didn’t think Jethro had a cruel bone in his body. It’s not like him to kick a girl while she’s down (or kick a girl at all, really), but I guess I deserve this after all I’ve put him through.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Kinda crazy.”

  “I mean about you,” he says now. “I’m sorry. You holding up okay?”

  There’s the boy I know. “Others got it a lot worse,” I say.

  Jethro nods. “No question. But I’m sure it was hard for you. Especially given…the way you might still feel about him.”

  I look down at the ground. It’s so much more complicated than that, I want to say. But all I muster is a lame, “Oh. Okay. Thanks.”

  Now he says, “Look, about that. I’m really sorry about how I reacted on Friday. It was really immature, and I shouldn’t have stormed off. It’s just…it was hard to hear.”

  Unspoken words hang in the air, floating around in the sharp chemical smells of glue and glaze and paint thinner. I don’t know what to say, too afraid it’ll be the wrong thing. I focus on fighting the overwhelming urge to reach for him.

  “Have you talked to him?” he asks finally.

  “Palmer?”

  “Yeah.”

  I shake my head.

  “Andrew heard he’s gonna be out today,” Jethro says, “maybe all week. His parents are, like, freaking out, I guess. Talking to coaches and stuff.”

  The last thing I want to talk about with Jethro right now is Palmer. So I use an age-old SAD coping mechanism—changing the subject.

  “Speaking of skipping school, you think we’ll see Prep’s very own Edward Snowden around today?”

  “Haven?”

  “Who else?”

  A beat passes, and then Jethro says, “We don’t know he did this.”

  I snort. “You don’t think he did?”

  “He hasn’t told me or Andrew anything.”

  “How come?”

  “We couldn’t reach him all weekend. He hasn’t returned any of our texts.”

  “Wait. So he’s, like…in hiding or something?”

  Jethro looks contemplative. “I don’t know. I mean, I guess he has been going, like, toe to toe with Wallace this year.”

  “Really?” (Something I’d know if I’d been around, I guess.)

  Jethro nods. “Right before break, Haven and Andrew were out back smoking, and Wallace drove by with Vanessa and threw a Big Gulp at them. It didn’t hit them, but it nailed Haven’s bag, fried his laptop. I haven’t seen him that mad, like, ever.”

  I sigh. “Well, why didn’t he tell anyone?”

  “And tell Nichols he and Andrew were blazing before class?”

  “Oh, right. That sucks.”

  Jethro smiles, a thought creeping across his face. “Know where I’d rather be?”

  I shrug. “Tell me.”

  “The Stairway to Heaven. Oahu Island, Hawaii. They call them the Haiku Stairs, and they’re not even open to the public. But we could pack some beers and find our way to the top of the cliff. Views a thousand feet down the mountain.”

  “Maybe without the beers,” I say. “Had enough of those for a while.”

  He nods. After a long pause he says, “I hope you know, if you ever need someone to talk to, I’m…here. Whatever happened, I’m your friend. I’ll always be your friend.”

  “Thank you. It means a lot.”

  Jethro hands me the paint tube, which I take with a clammy hand, then turns to go. What I ever did to deserve his friendship, let alone anything more, is beyond me.

  When he’s gone, I pull my phone from the bottom of my bag.

  I can’t take it any longer. I send a single line of text.

  Are you okay?

  I wait a full minute. Palmer doesn’t respond.

  —

  For the entire day I avoid eye contact, pretend not to hear my name being spoken, and try to blend into my surroundings like those twig bugs you see on the Discovery Channel. An announcement during lunch told us that last period is canceled today for an emergency assembly. I’m headed to swap books so I can make a quick getaway right after, and I find Nikki waiting for me at my locker.

  “Hey,” she says, her voice gentle. “How are you?”

  I force a smile. It’s weirdly worrying when other people worry about me. Makes me feel guilty. There’s just no winning with anxiety. “I’m okay. How are you?”

  “Eh. Mattie texted me once last night.”

  “That’s good, right?”

  “He just seems so…noncommittal. Like, I can’t even get him to commit to texting me back more than once a day. Much less to when we’re gonna hang out.”

  “Like every boy ever.”

  “Haven’s gonna be in such deep shit with the whole Wallace thing,” Nikki says, changing the subject.

  “Do you think he could lose his place at MIT?”

  Nikki’s eyes go wide. “Hadn’t thought of that. Is there even any, like, hard evidence? Can they trace back through all that techie stuff like on CSI?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “I talked to him yesterday. He wanted me to pick up his chem assignments.”

  “You talked to him? Did he do this?”

  “Yeah,” she says. “He thinks Wallace deserved it.” She pauses meaningfully. “But he also told me to tell you that you didn’t deserve to get dragged into it.”

  —

  Nikki promised to sit with some of her Thesbo friends, so I slide into a middle pew in the chapel beside Rad. Jethro and Andrew sit behind us. I tap my toe nervously. Andrew won’t care about what happened with me and Jethro. But every time I’m with Jethro and Rad together now, some part of me is preparing for Rad’s wrath when she finds out. It won’t even matter that Jethro’s (seemingly) okay now.

  You’ve messed up enough of us for one year, she said.

  Headmaster Nichols takes the pulpit. Before he speaks, though, a male voice yells out, “You tapped that ass, son!”

  Wallace sits in the front row, where no Instagram has ever sat before. He doesn’t turn or move, but you can almost feel him wanting to raise his fist in triumph.

  Scattered shouts of “Yeah, boy!” and “Work it, Wallace!”

  “Pig!” responds a girl.

  More laughter all around us.

  Rad lets out a low whistle. “Wow,” she says. “Get ready for a battle of the sexes.”

  “Quiet! Quiet! And phones away!” Headmaster Nichols says. “Anyone who does not comply with this order will have their phone confiscated.”

  Teachers and admin are wound tight today.

  Nichols glowers as kids pocket their cells. “All of you are aw
are of the troubling events that occurred at the basketball game on Saturday evening,” he continues. “A student’s private information was made public. That student is senior Wallace Reid, and there are some allegations that are being investigated currently.”

  I assume he’ll bring up the steroids. But he doesn’t.

  “To that end,” he says, “Ms. Sozio has elected to go on administrative leave for the rest of the semester. The senior administrative council has issued a formal investigation into Ms. Sozio’s conduct. We here at Prep take transgressions of student–teacher boundaries very seriously.”

  Behind us I hear Andrew lean over to Jethro. “Notice he’s not talking about canceling a state-championship basketball season.”

  I have to keep my eyes fixed on Nichols to stop myself from turning around to see the look on Jethro’s face.

  “There have been other accusations,” Nichols continues. “But Mr. Reid has acted honorably over the last forty-eight hours and has voiced his intention to accept the punishment his parents and the honor board see fit to dole out. Mostly, however, we need to remember that the students affected by this violation are victims. Mr. Reid’s privacy has been terribly invaded. In a way no one deserves.”

  Rad snorts and whispers, “Oh my God. Yeah, let’s all weep for Wall—”

  Suddenly the sound of buzzing sweeps over the chapel. Teachers can’t hear one vibration. Two hundred is a different story.

  “It’s like a sex toy convention,” Rad says, and we crack up.

  Most people are digging in their pockets or bags for their phones.

  Nichols is repeating his threats again. Do not take out your phones. Detention. No extracurriculars.

  No one seems to care. Strength in numbers and all that.

  “No…way,” Rad says, opening a browser window.

  I glance down. Prepfortruth.com is on her screen.

  “Wallace isn’t the only ‘victim’ now,” she says.

  “Hole E. Shit!” a detached voice not far from me says.

  Know what murmuring sounds like between points at a tennis match? That’s an adult murmur. What’s growing inside the chapel right now sounds nothing like that. It sounds more like a crowd waiting for Beyoncé at RFK Stadium.

  Wallace’s deepest, darkest secrets arrived with a bang—images and text splashed up on a huge LCD. Spectacle, just as Haven and God intended it. Today’s hack, however, has spread with a hmmm, hmmm, hmmm—as a quiet, almost beautiful symphony of softly vibrating phones swelling throughout the chapel.

  “Off,” Nichols says from the podium. “Not on vibrate or silent or in airplane mode. Off. Now. Then put yourselves on silent mode, please.”

  Some goody kids start powering down their phones. Mine’s still buried in my bag, where I try to always keep it. Rad’s less inclined to follow Nichols’s order; her phone sits low on her high-waisted jeans, and she’s scanning the alerts.

  When I whirl around, I see Jethro’s doing the same, his face a mix of confusion and disbelief. People are all whispering: Prep for Alexis Bowman.

  I glance over in the general direction of the Instagrams. I can’t see Alexis anywhere, but I do see Wallace. He’s openly and flagrantly staring at his phone, doesn’t give a crap about Nichols. A toothy smile is creeping across his face.

  Rad’s on the home screen of Prepfortruth.com, whispering the details.

  Alexis Bowman. Second-tier Insta. Alternate on the spirit squad. Alexis’s secret biggie: kleptomania. Not shoplifting. Actual kleptomania. In her Gmail account was a letter officially banning her from Tysons Galleria.

  “It’s everything,” Rad whispers in my ear, too excitedly. “All her stuff, like with Wallace. The shoplifting’s just clickbait to get people digging for more.”

  Up front, Ms. Dominick, Prep’s most senior, severe Latin teacher, is whispering in Headmaster Nichols’s ear. He leans into the mic. “Everyone stay here until you’re excused by Ms. Dominick. Anyone who leaves or continues to use his or her phone will be subject to disciplinary measures. I’m very serious about this.” Nichols then hurries off.

  “I thought Haven kinda liked Alexis,” I whisper back to the boys behind us. “He said she was hot.”

  Rad interjects before either of them can. “Hell hath no fury like a troll scorned. Do you see her anywhere?”

  I scan the room again and finally spot Alexis. She’s sitting toward the middle with a few other Instas. Alexis is one of those almost strawberry-blond redheads with impossibly perfect color and freckles in just the right places. She doesn’t look angry or even embarrassed.

  Just…stunned into silence.

  Wallace is beaming. He knows he’s about to be yesterday’s news. Kleptomania is one thing. But what’s on everyone’s mind—the reason everyone is dying to get to a private place where phones are allowed—is what else is buried in Alexis’s files. Wallace had some blood the vampires could feed on, including the stuff about Palmer. But Alexis is an Instagram girl, and that means she can be counted on to have gossiped about and insulted half the other girls in school, including the rest of her Insta clique.

  The buzz begins again.

  Phones vibrating. More alerts.

  There’s more coming.

  Dylan Johnson.

  Instagram of the first order. Power forward on the basketball team, kind-of-friend of Palmer, third man in the already infamous juice/holy water exchange that’s got Palmer MIA today. But this time Dylan’s clickbait has nothing to do with steroids. Now we’re looking at a text from months ago to his ex-girlfriend, none other than Vanessa.

  Dylan: Yeah, it hurts. But that Valtrex stuff helps. But also, maybe I got it from you. Ever think of that?

  Vanessa: You’re telling me you might have given me fucking herpes and are trying to blame me?

  My eyes make a beeline for Vanessa. She’s sitting with her spirit-squad friends, her head a little bit higher than the others, and her minions clearly have no idea how to deal with their captain and queen bee in this situation. Vanessa smiles tightly at the people around her, then picks up her phone and starts texting someone, as if nothing’s happened. As if she’s making plans to meet someone at the Fashion Centre at Pentagon City later.

  Dylan, though, is now glaring in our direction. He’s surprisingly short for a basketball player, but, herpes or not, he is definitely cute. Brown eyes and Bieber hair. Wholesome-looking but apparently not that wholesome-acting. Not to judge—I’m sure some fantastic people have herpes.

  Dylan stands and points at Jethro and Andrew. “Tell your dickwad friend to watch his back.”

  Ms. Dominick walks down the aisle. “Sit down, Mr. Johnson.”

  For some reason, her saying his last name out loud elicits a cackle from one corner of the room, plus a stray boy’s voice: “Oooh, burn, Mr. Johnson.”

  Before the boys can respond to Dylan, it happens. Again.

  This time it’s Josh Klein—backup shortstop for the Prep baseball team. Haven has outed him for having cheated on three AP exams last year alone. A fact he admitted in a snap to his swimmer girlfriend! Adios, Cornell, I guess. On the right-hand side of the aisle, Josh just shrugs to his friends. Clearly trying to play it off, no big thang. But I can see it already—the glimmer of fear in his eyes.

  Alexis, Dylan, Josh, and a little Vanessa Eubanks for collateral damage? Even with the Palmer situation as it is, even though I’d die a slow death if someone did this to me—this is…kinda twistedly awesome. And with Haven at the wheel, I have to admit I feel safe; he won’t do this to any of us. Sure, these are real people with real feelings. But how can you not feel a little schadenfreude when cheats, kleptos, and a basketball player who doesn’t give a shit about anyone but himself catch a little bit of Haven’s technoshrapnel?

  “Dude,” Andrew whispers, leaning forward on my other side now. “Haven musta found a way into all their phones.”

  Before I can respond, more whispers fill the hall. All eyes turn toward the prettiest girl in the sophomore class. Benea
th heavy mascara and probably a year’s worth of Latisse on her lashes, I see her eyes go dark.

  Number five is live.

  It’s Colleen Wahtera. The most judgmental girl in school. Nightmare by any standards. Not even an official Instagram yet because she’s only a sophomore. But she was a shoo-in until this very minute. Only now, flashing across our screens: a Twitter DM asking her cousin how she can get an abortion and keep it a secret from her cray-cray ultrareligious parents. Brutal.

  People don’t know what to think about this one. Is it laughing material? I know it isn’t for me. Welcome to half the reason sex scares me. Colleen stares forward at Ms. Dominick, not responding to her friends, who are touching her on her back, giving whatever sympathy mini-Instas are humanly capable of. Colleen won’t even look at them.

  I turn back to Jethro and Andrew. “That’s a horrible thing for Haven to put out there. What’s that asshole doing?”

  Andrew just shrugs. Jethro looks stunned. Says only one word: “Sucks.”

  Rad whispers, “True. It sucks. Really sucks. But Colleen? Let’s be honest: H couldn’t have chosen a bitchier girl. I mean, that time she called Hannah Moyer a whore in front of the whole cafeteria for too much PDA? Karma’s a bitch.”

  Ms. Dominick obviously doesn’t know any specifics of what’s happening on the ground. But, sensing another leak and unable to chain our hands to our chairs and away from our phones, she immediately leans in to the mic at the podium again. “If you all ever want to leave this room, you better start acting like adults,” she continues. “You could be here a while. In fact, if this behavior continues, anyone who was planning to take an early bus home better start thinking about a plan B.”

  It’s the exact wrong moment to accidentally bring up the morning-after pill. My dad once made me listen to an NPR podcast about the definition of fiasco. Apparently it’s the moment when a crowd loses itself entirely. When every little thing seems like the funniest thing anyone has ever heard, even when it’s not funny at all. Like an abortion. Anyway, we’re there, apparently. Fiasco. Ms. Dominick could tell us her kid was dying of lupus and there had been a Red Dawn–like attack by North Korea right outside, and the laughter would only get worse.