The Takedown(78)

Jessie held a finger to her lips—playing pensive—then cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted, “Why the FCK should I tell you anything?”

Laughing merrily, she slammed the window shut. Before completely disappearing from view, she held up a fist, then four fingers. Point four. The exact number her grade-point average was below mine. This time, I gave her the unfriendly finger. Trilling her fingers, she disappeared from sight.

Cursing, I swung my bag onto my shoulder. I’d transferred for this?

No sooner had I turned the corner from her estate than my Doc shrieked with AnyLies’s txt sound. I gasped. I’d been waiting for this moment all day, wondering when and how my hater would finally make good on her threats from last night. Now, finding out AnyLies’s freshest revenge was only a swipe away. I looked back at Jessie’s mansion. It equaled as impenetrable as the firewalls around Whitehouse.gov.

Suddenly something crashed into the back of my legs, like someone took a pipe to my calves. My knees buckled. I fell to the ground, scraping my palms. My Doc sprang from my hands.

“Oh goodness, I’m so sorry.”

It was a nanny, pushing a double baby stroller. She came around to see if I was all right.

“Are you okay, honey? Five a.m. call time plus PHD plus stroller equals accident. I even made you drop your device. Here, let me get that for you.”

“No, don’t touch it!”

Her hand stopped an inch away from my Doc.

“I was just trying to help,” she said, then abruptly crossed the street.

Last night, despite what Sharma had already said, I’d double-checked with the other five girls. None of them had received txts from AnyLies. Only me. Getting to my feet, I slowly reached over and retrieved my Doc. Honestly, what could be worse than that hickey on Mac’s neck?

Not to bother you, but thought you’d like to see who your so-called friends really are.

Three pictures followed. All of them appeared to have been snagged from Woofer.

The first pic was a Woofer of Sharma and the girls. They were in the background of a pic someone had taken of his latte. It must have been captured the day Audra and Fawn re-created the photos of me and Mr. E. for the B&P site, because even though their backs were turned and Fawnie was still sporting Mr. E.’s pompadour wig, I’d have recognized those outfits anywhere. Sharma was facing forward, and she must have swiped the Kyle wig from Audra, because she was sporting it on top of her own long black hair, and you could just tell by the way she held her head that she was mimicking me.

I knew right then that I should delete the rest without looking at them. These wouldn’t be photos you were supposed to see; they happened in the background of life for a reason. They were supposed to be forgettable. But like that time Kyle searched the word “nude” and it brought up pics of people with paintbrushes stuck in their tooters, I couldn’t stop looking if I wanted to.

When I scrolled to the second pic, I immediately sat down on the curb. And nobody sat on the curb-your-dog curbs of Brooklyn, even in Brooklyn Heights. But I suddenly felt like that stroller had run me over again and dragged me a few blocks besides.

It was another Woofer pic. This one had been taken at some kind of Mexican restaurant or club. I now knew what Sharma had seen when she was looking at Mac’s profile. In the foreground two girls were holding up margaritas. In the background was Mac, my math genius, with his derivative all tangent to the curves of some chick.

Correction: Nothing could be worse than Mac’s hickey, except for seeing a pic in which he was receiving it. Her hands were embedded in his curls. Their pelvic regions were plastered together like two sides of the same holoscreen. The time stamp was from last night. I guess I realized Mac hadn’t been kissing other girls these last four months because he wanted to kiss me, and I guess I knew that couldn’t continue indefinitely, but I hadn’t figured he’d go back to his old ways so quickly. The familiar sick-to-my-stomach, get-me-out-of-Brooklyn-my-skin-my-life-ASAP feeling came over me.

There was no way I was looking at the last pic. I wouldn’t give AnyLies any more power over me. My Doc screamed again.

Thoughts?

I meant to only reply with a string of threats about lawyers and leaving me alone and karma one day coming back to crush her or him or whoever this was, but instead my eyes found the third photo. At first I didn’t know what I was supposed to be looking at. It had to be from one of our recent snow days. It was a wide shot of a pretty, white-frosted street in Brooklyn. But there in a slice of an alley was a mess of curls that could only belong to one person. I zoomed in. Sure enough, it was Fawn leaning against a building, making out with some boy.

So what? Like this was news?

Except when I zoomed again, I realized the boy looked a lot like someone I knew.

I zoomed again and squinted at the screen. Kicking the tire of every car on that street, thereby setting off every single alarm, still wouldn’t have covered up my sharp shout of surprise and rage.

Fawn, apparently, was making out with my brother.





Fuming. All I saw was red. Screw the bus. I ran home. The entire one point nine miles.

When I got there I slammed the front door and hurled my bag into the living room. Nobody was home, so I was stuck with myself. I paced the first floor in anger. No wonder Kyle had been in such a good mood lately. No wonder he was always so clean. But was he aware that Audra’s period-predicting app told us Fawn had been creating blue dots aka having sex with some boy?