Even Tepper respects for a moment before finally chiming in again. “Yesterday, Vanessa Eubanks, the girl you love to hate, or at least the girl you’d love to hate-fudge—this a family show, folks—the girl who hooked up with Dylan for about five minutes fall semester when it looked like Palmer was lovey-dovey with Anna Soler for the long haul, was seen entering a nearby LabCorp yesterday afternoon with, a reliable source reports, a very concerned expression on her face.”
But from the look on Vanessa’s face, you’d think she couldn’t hear a word Timmy’s saying, even though it’s blasting from every speaker in the parking lot. She’s giving a master class in holding your head high. Then, just as Vanessa’s about to pass Rad’s car, she pauses and, pivoting gracefully on one very high heel, lets her sunglasses slide down the bridge of her nose. She looks right at Rad.
“You’re the editor of the newspaper, right?”
Rad, unflappable Rad, swallows audibly, makes an actual cartoon-character gulping noise, before saying in a reasonably cool tone, “Yeah.”
“Your next headline.” Vanessa drops a crumpled slip of paper on Rad’s lap, then makes a second graceful pivot and disappears inside Ewing.
“Hell is it?” Andrew asks.
Rad studies the paper. “I think it’s a blood test.”
“Why would Vanessa give you her blood test?” I ask.
Rad guffaws. “She’s controlling the narrative. She’s herpes-free. Totally clean. And she wants me to print it in the Xandria.”
—
First period on Tuesdays, I have a double block of PE (the price of not playing any sports at Prep), which is a pretty weird way to start the first day of school in a post-deck-of-cards world. Of the nine girls in my class, two of them were in Mattie’s deck. So, even though I haven’t looked at the cards or pics beyond what Rad showed me at chapel, I have seen Erin Green and Deirdre Nikzad in the buff before.
As Mr. Fortini feebly attempts to teach a bunch of nonathletes the rules of badminton, a funny thing happens. Everyone is actually being nice to Erin and Deirdre. The boys smile gently but don’t gawk at what they already know is beneath the girls’ gym clothes, and the other girls are extra cool. There aren’t any catty comments—or comments at all. One of the band boys says Sucks, sorry, to Erin genuinely as we break to go back to the locker rooms, but that’s about it. Maybe it’s because Erin and Deirdre aren’t Instagrams, and—like Nikki—they didn’t have anything coming to them.
I go to third period in a slightly better mood and text Nikki to tell her. An hour of hitting around those stupid birdies has actually given me a tiny bit of hope. Maybe Vanessa is acceptable collateral damage ’cause Vanessa is Vanessa.
Sadly not.
You know that whiny book they make you read in sophomore lit? Candide? It’s by that French philosopher, and the moral of the story seems to be, optimism is for idiots. Well, the rest of my day seems to prove his point.
Gym was a fluke. The exception.
Each new period I go to, there’s more whispering, more kids not in class because they’ve been so horribly humiliated that they’ve gone home or they are in Nichols’s office being interrogated. Every period things get worse—more gossip spreads by the hour, and Prep kids are in an arms race to see who can spread it in the most amusing, viral way. Some people post stuff on their own feeds, but 4chan and Yik Yak are blowing up too; the trolls are using them to make their nastiest posts anonymously. And we’re all sneaking looks at our phones between periods, lots of people even during class.
As I head to sixth period, history with Mr. Kisker—the only class I share with Jethro—I’m nervous, of course. When I walk in, Jethro’s in his usual seat in the last row, but he doesn’t look anywhere in my direction. It’s the first time I’ve seen him since chapel yesterday, and he’s just staring at his computer screen.
“This is a media-history class,” Kisker says as I slip into my seat. “And, given that we have news trucks sitting a hundred yards from Prep today, I’d like nothing more than to discuss what’s happened. But we are going to hold off until we have more information. Until there is something concrete. So let’s return to where we ended yesterday. As I was saying, no one has handled and mishandled the media better than O. J. Simpson.”
I spend most of the period watching Jethro instead of the images from O.J.: Trial of the Century on my monitor. A couple of times I try to get his attention, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that he’s ignoring me now. Maybe he was just putting on a show, but yesterday it seemed like he was genuinely moving on from the other night. That he’d forgiven me for being…reckless with his feelings. Or at least indecisive about my own. He was even pretty nice about the Palmer stuff, even though I know hearing that name must make him sick.
The more Jethro ignores me, the more I want him to look at me. Typical. When things are easy, I don’t pay as much attention to him as I should. But when things are bad in my life, I need him bad. And right now I want to make eye contact with him, to give him a look so that he knows I want to connect with him. I want him to tap on the doorsill in a way that tells me everything is going to be okay.
Am I actually in love with him?
Do I just like having him be in love with me?
God, I’m a mess.
The seventh-period bell rings, and Jethro rushes out of class. He doesn’t even glance in my direction.
I know he has BC calculus next, and he’s pulling books from the top shelf of his locker as I approach. Finally we make eye contact. Finally.
“Hey,” I say as his locker neighbor heads off. “Are you okay?”
Jethro turns. Takes a long breath before saying, “Not really.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Other than everything?”
“I mean…why were you ignoring me in class?”
“I wasn’t.”
“Are we…still okay?”
“Not everything is about you, Anna.”
I step back a little. There’s an edge in his voice that I don’t recognize but probably deserve. It stings, either way. “Uh. Okay. Forget it. Sorry I asked.”
I turn and start to walk away, feeling the uninvited knot in my throat.
“Wait,” Jethro says. “Anna. Hey. Stop. I’m sorry. It’s just…”
I turn slowly.
He leans his head toward mine. “I just mean, I can’t believe it’s happening like this,” he whispers. “It’s so bad, Anna. It was funny for a second, when it was Wallace. But Nikki and all the rest of them? Everyone is fighting over text messages from, like, months ago. We’re all losing our damn minds. Know what I heard in chem? Bobby Simkins said he was going to kill Aiden Murphy for some DM he sent one of the Instagrams. And honestly, knowing Bobby Simkins, I think he might.”
I shake my head. “Do you think you and Haven can find the person who leaked everything? So it’ll stop?”
“I’ve got even heavier hitters helping,” he says. “Some college dudes at Johns Hopkins, old mathlete guys.” Jethro’s eyes are already red, and he rubs them for a second. “And we’re not trying to find the person. We’re trying to find the people.”
“There’s more than one?”
He nods.
“Like…some sort of—what? A bunch of hackers working together?”
“No, that’s the thing,” Jethro says. “There’s no collective here. No Anonymous or fsociety or anything else. No one’s working together.”
“I don’t understand. How do you even know that?”
He kicks his locker softly. “Whoever did the Wallace leak is different from whoever did yesterday’s with the other Instagrams.”
“What do you mean?”
He takes a big breath. “It’s complicated, but from the way it looks, the first hacker probably just wanted Wallace. No harm, no foul. Even Haven wanted to take credit. But then other hackers saw the way into the enormous cache of Prep for Today files, and they made copies of the data set. Plus, you’ve seen how many trolls are reposting
everything. It doesn’t matter who started it now. All that matters is, there’s no stopping it.”
—
The third floor of Dwight Library is normally my place to escape. No one else likes the third-floor bathroom ’cause there’s only one stall and it smells weird. I like it because no one else likes it. I need a moment to panic in private. Desperately. Because now I know: it’s just a matter of time before my stuff is leaked.
Unfortunately, the third-floor bathroom ain’t empty today. It doesn’t smell any better than usual, but there is a pair of ballet flats at the bottom of the sole stall. As the door closes behind me with a heavy clang, there are scrambling noises, and then I hear something light and metal land on the floor.
A razor blade, fresh blood on the edge.
A hand quickly snatches it up. Oh Jesus. I don’t know if I should try to leave before whoever’s in there comes out. Or tell some well-meaning guidance counselor. Or stay and act like I haven’t noticed anything.
Before I can decide, the stall door swings open.
It’s Hannah Moyer, a junior lacrosse player who I know a little through Andrew. She’s yanking down both sleeves of her sweater. I haven’t heard anything about her in the leaks; as far as I know, Hannah’s not in Mattie’s.
“Hey,” I say.
She fixes her short, cropped black hair, brushing it over like she just stepped out of a convertible. “Hey.”
“You okay?” I ask, unable to stop myself.
Hannah stares at me for five awkward seconds. Finally she says, “Would you be? Everyone thinks that I’m crazy now. Suicidal.”
I take a breath before I react, because I don’t want to say anything bad. I knew a couple of kids like her at Silver Pines, and the crazy thing is, most cutters aren’t suicidal. They’re just…in pain. And need more, or, like, a different kind.
Hannah moves to the mirror to fix her mascara. “Bat-shit cray, halfway to Bathtubville,” she continues. “Prepare your funeral speech, Brian. That’s what she wrote. On stupid Twitch.”
Twitch is a random gaming-video site I thought only trolls went on. I didn’t even know anyone with two X chromosomes was allowed to go on it. The Brian in question is a sophomore—sciency guy, I think?—who Hannah’s hung out with on and off.
I look at Hannah in the mirror. “Who said that to Brian?” I ask.
She grabs a handful of tissues and shuts herself back in the stall. “Colleen. Our families go to the Outer Banks together. We talked about applying to the same colleges. She’s supposed to be one of my best friends.”
—
After the last bell, I keep my head down. I don’t want to have anything to do with other people’s business. It’s not easy. In a corner of the senior lounge, Martha Stevenson’s talking in hushed tones with Jill Fay about comments on her “rank” body odor, made to one of the Instas; outside the snack bar, the hockey goalie is pulling apart two best puckheads forever over gross stuff one snapped about the other’s girlfriend. I’d muff dive on that whale like Jules Verne, yo, didn’t go over very well with the boyfriend, apparently. It doesn’t help that someone’s already Auto-Tuned it and put it up on YouTube.
Who am I to judge? And how long do I have until my idiotic, off-the-cuff, I am undeserving of the company of civilized humans comments about my best friends, which could send any one of them into a Hannah-like spin, get leaked?
It sounds narcissistic, I know. Especially after what Nikki, Palmer, and others have been through. They’ve had it so rough, and here I am worrying about what awful thing might possibly happen to me if and when my phone gets leaked. Only, I can’t help it. Just when my friends have come around to forgiving me, they’ll realize that I’m not just a friend abandoner who didn’t even have the decency to choose chicks over dicks, but also an evil, gossiping jerk. Standing at my locker, I hold my phone out of sight in case any teachers walk by. Group text to Rad and Nikki: Can we hang later, please? I hit Send and wait. I take a long swig from my water bottle, trying to cool myself down. I need to know things are okay. I need to know that nothing of mine has been let out of the bottle and that Nikki isn’t sitting at home, realizing that I’m the worst. That Rad isn’t in her car, preparing to mow me down when I walk out the doors.
The halls are practically empty now. Usually people linger after school, but the leaks have everyone running to their cars and home to their devices to see what else has been leaked/discovered/trolled.
I wait. And wait.
Nothing.
I slip my phone back in my pocket. I burrow my head in my locker. What would Dr. Bechdel tell me in this moment? Probably to have “presence of mind.” Okay. Here’s how my mind feels in the present: vulnerable. I need some confirmation that my friends are still in touch with me, that they still have my back.
I down every drop from the water bottle to distract myself, and now I think I have to pee. But the bathroom near my locker doesn’t have good cell service. What if I miss their texts?
Oh, come on, Anna.
Suddenly I hear a voice. “ ’Sup, Anna? You trying to climb inside your locker?”
Some kid in our grade I don’t really know but I think is named Ralph walks by and smiles awkwardly at me. “What? No…”
“Hope Meade never ’roid raged on you,” he says. “Heard they’re making him piss in a cup before he can play in the next game. Whoops. Sayonara, Duke!”
“Don’t be an asshole,” I say. He shrugs and walks down the hall.
Five minutes later, neither of my girls has said a word back.
I send myself a text to make sure it’s working. It pops back immediately. Test text. There’s no technical glitch. I stare at the screen inside the open locker. Checking the bars to make sure I have service. Turning the ringer on and off. Everything’s working.
My heart beats faster and faster. Group text number two:
Nik—is your mom going out? We’ll come over. Right, R?
Freshman and sophomore year, if thirty seconds went by and I didn’t get a response from one of them, I would’ve worried that they must have been in a gruesome car accident together and I needed to call the cops. But from the time our parents let us get phones, that never happened. Even as my anxiety issues got worse before Silver Pines, I’d always respond to Nikki and Rad immediately, even if it was just our code for why we couldn’t talk: SSSS—“Stupid shit, soul sister.”
Now it’s been ten minutes and two unanswered texts.
I can’t resist now. I go onto my browser and go to Prepforevenmorebitches.com—the URL changed again after the school IT staff got the last one shut down. I search the page, my eyes tripping over the heap of gossip.
There’s nothing more about me—nothing new.
I feel like I’m crazed and paranoid. Waiting to be busted.
—
I head to the art lab and try to work on my selfie portrait’s chin.
It’s tempting to give myself a new one in the painting, since my real chin has a slight point I’ve always hated. I’m trying to embrace it, though. Kyle Cherski is the only other kid in here, and Mr. Touhey isn’t a stickler about the phone thing, but he does believe our screens distract us.
I sneak looks in my pocket every few minutes. I keep imagining that my phone is vibrating. The show is just over a week away now, and I should be thinking about the fact that my selfie self-portrait is nowhere near finished. The only thing that’s certain is that it isn’t very good, and I don’t know how to fix it.
Then it happens. My phone vibrates.
I don’t know whether to be excited or terrified.
Then I reach into my pocket, and I realize—the vibration is much longer than it should be. This is the vibration of a call.
The screen confirms it. It’s Rad. CALLING ME. Like, actually calling me, with no warning. I can’t remember the last time she called me without texting me first.
Calling is rarely a good sign. Also, I hate talking on the phone.
I nod at Kyle on my way out of th
e art lab. “Hey,” I whisper into the phone once I’m in the hallway. Then, as casually as I can: “What’s up?”
Rad takes a long, dramatic breath. I can feel her gearing up for a bigger ass whipping than Gwen gave Gavin when sexts to a family iPad gave him and the nanny away.
“Yo, I need you at Haven’s,” Rad says.
I look down the empty stairwell outside the art lab. Staring into the abyss. Has there been another leak? Did I miss it on the site? Is my data out? Is Palmer’s? Are they all going to pile on and crucify me? Will I walk into one of those To Catch a Predator–like interventions/public shaming sessions if I actually show up at Haven’s?
“Right now? I’m in the art lab.”
“Anna, if you ever want to be my friend again, get your ass over to Haven’s right now. With the damn Nikon. I’ll be there in ten minutes. We have to make sure he’s okay and find out exactly what happened. People need to know. We’re putting it all in the Xandria tomorrow.”
“I don’t…what happened?”
“The cops went to his house. In SWAT gear.”
I push the phone toward my ear. Could I have heard her right? “The cops showed up for Haven? Isn’t that a little extreme, even for Nichols? I—”
Rad interrupts me. “They weren’t at his house investigating the hack. Someone called the cops and told them Haven was stockpiling guns and planning a school shooting or something insane like that.”
It’s hard not to scream. “Haven would never do that!”
“Of course not,” Rad says. “Someone SWATed him, Anna. Some troll did it to punish him for what’s happening. Anyway, they showed up in riot gear. Haven’s dad tried to stop them from coming in without a warrant, and the SWAT team pinned him to the ground and arrested him. Haven is scared shitless.”
You might think a house that’s just been stormed by a SWAT team would look a certain way—windows and doors thrown open or smashed and off hinges, furniture thrown about the yard, everything torn apart from the inside out—but as I pull up Haven’s driveway, the place looks no different from last night. Even the trash cans have been righted and emptied, lined up neatly along the fence.
Antisocial Page 12