They call us “the girls who got away with it”, as if we got off scot-free that night from some terrible crime we committed, and they even see Miss Anderson as an aggressor: a callous school counselor who was more interested in being popular with the cool kids than protecting the weak and the alienated. No wonder Jeffrey lashed out, they say. No wonder he couldn’t take it anymore.
I’m usually seen as the worst of the lot though. That infamous incident with Ty is brought up, again and again, to prove that I’m the real bully, and my history of suspensions is used to show that I’m unstable and difficult—a problem child who struggled to make friends at school and who reacted with excessive force not demanded by the situation. A boy lost his life, they say, simply because “Jezebel” wanted to be a hero. Why didn’t she try to reason with him? Why didn’t she run instead of attack? Most of the people who say these things seem to believe they have a real case, a justified argument. And ever since some people who were at school with me started to give interviews, the #JusticeforJeffrey camp seems to be growing every day.
Amanda Roberts, of course, has been in the anti-Jezebel camp right from the start. (Which is weird: although we always irritated each other, I never knew she genuinely hated me.) But the things she’s saying about me now are beyond unfair. For example, she told one journalist—from a very serious, very respected print newspaper—that she once saw me “googling something weird about bombs” and that I was probably “in on the whole thing” from the start. She also told him I personally confessed to her that I “turned on Jeffrey at the last minute”, that I knew about the cameras, and that it was me who leaked the footage because I “wanted to be famous”.
Honestly, words fail me.
Other people are saying horrible things too. Brooklyn Davis, this really religious girl who I’ve maybe spoken seven words to in my life, gave an interview where she described me as a well-known Satanist. A Satanist! And what’s worse is that her new boyfriend, Cayden Hunt, the boy whose life I saved the first time I did magic, is fully backing this ridiculous story. They’ve seen me out at night, they told the interviewer, dancing naked under the full moon, blood smeared all over my body. And one time Brooklyn’s dad, the pastor, had to purify their house after I left an “aura of evil” lingering in the air. Oh, and I killed Brooklyn’s kitten too, apparently, in a ritual sacrifice they later found traces of.
Her kitten!
Taylor Wilson said a lot of mean stuff too, mainly concerning my pathological jealousy of girls prettier than me. She “proved” this ridiculous theory by pointing out how often I dropped Chloe on her head when I dragged her from the library, and also by the fact that I spitefully stole her boyfriend, Jonathan Pendragon, away from her. (What??) After Taylor’s interview, a lot was suddenly said about my appearance, and more and more photos were dredged up where I look awkward or strange or just plain ugly.
Jeepers. I’ve never thought of myself as particularly vain, but let me tell you something—it’s surprisingly painful when strangers make fun of your old haircuts, your outfits, your body shape, your nose, your teeth, your lack of style...
And then there’s Josh Bankson. His interview was so bizarre it was almost incoherent, but it basically came down to the fact that my “foreign upbringing” had turned me into a “radical Muslim terrorist,” who used “Saudi money” to get the freemasons to blow up the school. The freemasons!
Now, I’d like to believe most people would simply ignore such obvious nonsense, but unfortunately the shooting at Ingrid’s house complicated the story, especially because the Skykeeper snipers who were caught on camera turned out to have links to the Israeli secret service. (Really?) Which means that there are now hundreds of threads where people argue that I am actually a terrorist. Or an anti-terrorist vigilante. Or part of an underworld of secret operatives working for the Illuminati/ the government/the Catholic Church/ the drug cartels/ aliens/ the freemasons. (Pick an organization depending on your flavor of crazy.)
And still, that’s not the worst of it.
Because in the last couple of weeks “Jezebel” also became the poster child for “the racist underbelly of middle America” and so, according to your politics, either “a symbol of determined ignorance and bigotry” or “the victim of smug elitist moralizing.”
For crying in a bucket.
The whole racist thing seems to have started when some people began to make Ty the hero of the whole story. At first it was simply part of the whole anti-women thing: men whose fragile egos exploded at the idea of an unarmed girl overpowering a guy with a gun looked around for someone else to be the school’s savior. And there was Ty: the football star who broke the lock that kept everyone trapped behind steel gates and thereby saved hundreds of lives. And so there were the memes (How many girls does it take to stop a bomb? None. It takes a boy.), the blog posts (Jezebel who? Meet the real hero), and the videos (Girls go wild for Ty).
After I first came across these, I was actually quite pleased for Ty—he will always be a hero in my eyes, and I’m sure he secretly enjoyed the attention. But a few weeks ago the whole thing turned ugly when some New York academic wrote a totally serious article about how “Jezebel mania” is actually racist (“…once again a very visible, pretty white face takes credit for an act performed by invisible black labor…”) and everyone self-righteously started taking sides either for or against this idea. Then someone dug up an old, badly-lit photo that made it look as if I wore blackface to a party, and someone else found an old, forgotten comment where I called Ty a “retard” (not cool, I know, but it was long ago and I was angry; I would never use that word now), and all hell broke loose. A couple of huge celebrities started a vicious twitter fight; there were some jokes on late-night shows; Oprah made a comment…
This is what hurts: in all this Ty said nothing. He remained completely silent even when things got nasty and more and more stories were made up to prove my inherent racism and bigotry. Henry didn’t say anything either, when all those men’s groups made him out to be the victim of my female stupidity. And Maggie stayed quiet too, which means that both brother and sister probably think I carry some of the blame for what happened. Third Wave used our friendship to raise the profile of her blog. Chloe never denied my “jealousy” of her.
Taken together, all of it leaves me not quite knowing what to think. But I definitely suspect that my friends might not be my friends anymore, and that my enemies hate me more than I ever imagined.
Chapter 25
While anyone who disseminates ideas of female strength deserves attention, it is now evident that we should choose our ‘heroes’ with more circumspection. Recently, Sarkany was exposed as fatally flawed (the use of blackface, even when used ‘accidentally’, is patently offensive, racist and in no way defensible, whatever her celebrity supporters might argue), but more importantly, the heroic narrative which overlooked Sarkany’s automatic advantages of being white, wealthy, attractive, able-bodied, and cisgender was equally exposed. After all, it is easy to be ‘heroic’ when you’re the kind of woman whom mainstream feminism has worked hardest for. But how does the idolization of such a person improve the lives of women and nonbinary people who regularly experience the intersectional oppressions of racism, transphobia, and fatphobia?
From An Intersectional Feminist Analysis of Contemporary Female Idols, by Chelsea Beth Klein
The new poster child for this growing form of female narcissism is none other than the infamous Jezebel Sarkany. Thanks to that dumb bitch, just when you thought female exhibitionism could go no lower, it did. The problem isn’t so much those perky boobs bouncing around in her tight sweater while she went about ‘saving’ her ‘friends’ (yeah right), but that her specific brand of female ‘empowerment’ is making a lot of other brainless bimbos believe that they can also be ‘strong’ and ‘independent’ (barf).
From 10 Ways the Liberal Media is Messing with Your Head on The Rule of Kings website.
It’s about four hours later. I’m
in the large suite which Daniel shares with his parents in the Pendragon mansion, and I’m staring at his computer with one hand over my mouth, horrified. Daniel is sitting next to me and my Skykeepers are standing behind me. Zig is leaning in the doorway.
When I finally manage to pull myself away from the screen, I feel sick and shamed and horribly exposed. Why did I ever make those dumb videos? Why did I cut those ugly bangs? Why did I go to that stupid party? Why did I let people take all those photos? Why did I leave those nasty comments? Why did I ever think it would be alright to share so much of my life online anyway?
The anxiety I feel when I imagine everyone staring at me, judging me without knowing a thing about me, is overwhelming, paralyzing. But at the same time, it feels completely unreal, like a horrible nightmare or a bad trip, where two completely different realities crash into each other to leave you scared and lost and bewildered.
Truth is, I’ve been isolated from the real world for so long that I’ve entirely forgotten about politics and racism and fashion and sexism and social media and all the other things that make being a normal person so complicated. When was the last time I wondered if I was cool enough, or sexy enough, or thin enough, or decent enough, or progressive enough, or clever and ambitious enough? When was the last time I worried about whether I made a stupid comment, or if anybody would like my pretty picture or my witty post? When was the last time I stressed about passing exams or getting into a college or choosing a career and a life?
The truth is, I can’t even really remember. But it feels like a lifetime ago.
“How the hell did this even happen?”
Daniel gives a helpless shrug.
“I’m serious! Why did it blow up like this? What’s going on?”
“We’re thinking that the original footage probably came out in a slow news week and that you just grabbed people’s imagination in a certain way. I mean, how many times have you seen a…” He stops himself mid-sentence. “Anyway. After that there was a new angle every week that kept the story ‘relevant’ somehow: sexism and racism and conspiracies… You couldn’t have pushed more buttons if you tried.”
“But I didn’t push any buttons! I didn’t do anything!”
“I know.”
I sink my head onto the table. “That lot from school are the worst. Why would they be telling all those lies about me? What did I ever do to them?”
“Hey, don’t take it personally –.”
“How can I not take it personally when someone tells the whole world I wanted to blow up the school! Or that I’m a Satanist! Or a Saudi funded terrorist!”
“Take it from where it came. Brooklyn is the kind of person who thinks Satan is hiding in everything from Christmas trees to Pokémon. And Amanda and Taylor are evil airheads who’d say anything to get some attention.”
“I guess.” I slowly lift my head again.
“And you know Josh. He wishes he was an airhead because as things stand, his head is completely empty. A vacuum.” He grins. “Nature abhors his head.”
I can’t even force a smile. “It’s not funny. A lot of people believe what they’re saying. They don’t know them like we do.”
“Nobody really believes you’re a Satanic freemason alien who seduced Jeffrey into blowing up the school, okay? It just looks like it because you’re on the internet, and there are a lot of weirdos sitting in their parents’ basements wasting time on dubious threads. The mainstream media still thinks you’re a hero.”
“A racist hero.”
“Yeah. Okay.” He gives another helpless shrug. “That photo was a bit unfortunate.”
“A bit unfortunate?” I throw my hands up in the air. “We all paint our faces blue and our limbs green for an alien party—and suddenly I’m wearing blackface?”
“The light must’ve caught you badly.”
“I had silver foil antennas on my head! And my face was clearly blue!”
“Some people did point that out, especially once other photos from the party surfaced. But then it became a debate about how often darker skins are made blue in sci-fi movies and…” He stops when he sees my face. “I guess by that point nobody was interested in what really happened.”
I give one last look at his laptop, then slam it shut. “What I don’t understand is why Ty didn’t say anything to stop it from spiraling out of control so badly. I kind of thought we’d become friends, you know?”
I don’t say anything about Henry and Maggie’s silence, but I don’t have to. Daniel knows me well enough.
“There can be a million reasons for their silence, Jess. You don’t know what’s going on in their lives.”
“Or else they’re blaming me for Henry’s eye.”
“Dude. You might’ve missed some things in the panic of the moment, but you personally dragged Maggie out of that library. You saved her life for sure. There’s no way she’d be blaming you.”
“So why isn’t she saying anything to defend me? Chloe too. All that stuff about how I dropped her on her head because she’s so pretty…”
“I know what’s going on.” Michael steps forward. “The White Lady is behind this; she’s running a clever and sophisticated smear campaign against you.”
The anger in his eyes remind me of what I saw through my firemagic: his inner self was drenched in darkness, his hatred for the White Lady consuming his soul.
“Oh, Michael. Not everything bad that happens in this world is the White Lady’s fault.”
“True. But I know her well, and I recognize her brand of spite and malice all over the illogical hatred spewed at you online.”
“I only wish it was that simple.” I rub my eyes, which are burning from staring at the screen for so long. “Look, I realize you’ve led a pretty secluded life and that you don’t know much about the modern world. But the sad fact is that, as the internet goes, this stuff is pretty much par for the course.”
“Respectfully, my Queen. It’s Dasha and Iryna who’ve lived secluded lives; I grew up in suburban Baltimore.” A faint little smile. “I even had my own blog in high school.”
“Oh. Sorry. I didn’t mean to sound patronizing.”
“There’s no need to apologize, my Queen.”
“Please don’t call me that.”
“Of course; forgive me.” Annoyingly, his nod is so deep it’s almost a bow. “What I meant to say is that I spent nine very long months of my life in the White Lady’s court last year, and I know how she operates. Usually, she isn’t too concerned with the outside world—her life begins and ends with the Order of Keepers. But she’s smart, and she’d use any weapon available if the situation demanded it.”
“This is true,” Dasha agrees. “All my life I have watched her, and she is not afraid of using people from outside to do her dirty work. You saw how she used the aeroplane and the bombs to attack us in the desert. She will use the world wide web also, if she can.”
“But how would any of this help her?” I ask. “What could she possibly hope to gain?”
“To the White Lady, it is of great importance that the world sees you as evil. Her whole life, everything she believes, everything she has done, is being based on her conviction of your wickedness. You cannot be revered. It would destroy everything for her. If the
final days transformation
reckoning
“Please stop!” I cry, hands pressed to my temples.
There’s a short, horrified silence.
“I am so sorry, my Queen.” Dasha stops herself just before falling to her knees. “I forget the Pendragon spell.”
“That’s okay,” I say as soon as the worst of my headache fades. “It’s my fault, not yours.” I don’t have the energy to argue about the queen thing again, so I turn to Daniel instead. “What do you think? Could the White Lady be behind all this?”
“It’s possible, I guess.” He pulls a face. “My mom certainly thinks so, but then she also thinks the White Lady caused everything from the financial crash to climate change.”
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“But all those people at school…”
Iryna steps forward. “We believe she put Enthrallment spell on your classmates to make them tell lies about you. It is possible to create illusions so they think they tell truth when they don’t. Also she Enthralled others to remain quiet and not defend you against their lies.”
“How can a Skykeeper Enthrall anyone?”
“You are correct, my Queen.” Iryna makes half a curtsy, then blushes. “White cannot Enthrall. But if she needed such spells, she can use the Red Lord to do her evil deeds. He is besotted by her charms and will do everything she requests of him.”
I look into the earnest faces of my Skykeepers as I try to make sense of this. At the trial last year, the White Lady and the Red Lord worked together against me, so I can easily believe they might be conspiring again. There’s just one problem.
“I honestly don’t think the Red Lord is strong enough to Enthrall so many people. I met him last year. He’s a terrifying human being, but his magic is pretty weak.”
“It is true the Red Clan lost much of their magic when the Pendragons were made Outcast,” Dasha says. “They are weak and divided, but not totally without power.”
“Daniel said something of great importance,” her sister adds. “The people who denounced you in public are not intelligent. The weaker the mind, the weaker the magic needs to be. Strong minds can resist Enthrallment spells.”
“Oh, great,” I mutter. “That probably means I’m a complete idiot.”
The sisters’ shocked faces remind me of the outrage my old “r-word” comment caused.
“Oh! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it like that.”
The look on their faces changes to mild confusion.
“I mean I wasn’t, like, referring to people who are, um… differently-abled… or anything. I meant it in the modern sense, you know? To mean someone who’s stupid or acting like a moron.”
Fireborn (The Dark Dragon Chronicles Book 2) Page 26