“That’s better,” Miranda cheered, locking up behind them. “Let’s get this done.”
Did you hear?
Is it true?
I heard he was a virgin when he slept with Kaia.
And when she blew him off, he cried.
Well, I heard Kane wanted Beth so much he posed naked with Harper and they doctored the photos.
They didn’t just pose-he and Harper totally did it on the locker room floor.
No, I heard it was on the soccer field, and Kaia was in it too. Threesome, baby.
So who was taking the pictures?
Could Kaia really be hooking up with that skeezy stoner?
Didn’t you hear? She’s a total nympho.
Why do you think they threw her out of her last school?
Did he really-?
And then she-?
How could they-?
I don’t believe it, but…
You won’t believe it, but…
It doesn’t make any sense, but…
Trust me.
It’s true.
“Oooh, Harper, you must be soooo humiliated!”
Harper rolled her eyes. She’d been (barely) tolerating her lame sophomore wannabe-clone for months now, but the Mini-Me act was getting old. Especially now that the girl had dug up the nerve to speak to her in public. As if Harper was going to dent her own reputation by acknowledging Mini-Me’s existence-or, worse, giving people the impression that they were actually friends.
“We just want you to know we’re there for you,” Mini-Me’s best friend gushed. Harper couldn’t be bothered to remember her name, either, and since the girl was decked out in the same faux BCBG skirt and sweater set that Harper had ditched last season, MiniShe would suffice.
“What are you talking about?” she hissed, through gritted teeth. Under normal circumstances she would have just closed her locker and walked away. But something strange was going on today. She’d been getting weird looks all morning, and once, difficult as it was to believe, it had almost seemed like someone was laughing-at her.
“Oh, Harper, we don’t believe any of it,” Mini-Me assured her.
“Of course not,” Mini-She simpered, her head bouncing up and down like a bobblehead doll. “Well, except that thing about-”
“None of it,” Mini-Me said firmly, giving Mini-She an obvious shut your mouth glare.
“None of what?” Harper was getting increasingly irritated by the twin twits-and by the sensation that something very bad was about to happen. Or had already happened, without her knowing it, which was worse. Harper owned this school, and nothing happened without her say-so.
“You mean you haven’t…” Mini-Me’s eyes lit up. She tried to force a concerned look, but her eagerness was painfully clear. “Oh, I hate to be the one to show you this, but…” She pulled a folded red flyer out of her back pocket. Harper had seen them floating around that morning, but assumed it was just another lame announcement about the next chess club tournament or some charity drive for the community service club. “Maybe I shouldn’t show it to you,” Mini-Me said, waving the folded flyer out of Harper’s reach.
“But at least we can be there for her, when she sees it.” Mini-She patted Harper’s shoulder, and Harper squirmed away with a grimace. “We’ll always be there for you, Harper, no matter what anyone else says.”
“You’ve always got us,” Mini-Me agreed. “I mean, we don’t care if you wet your pants or slept with a million guys or-”
“Give me that,” Harper snarled, snatching the flyer out of Mini-Me’s hand. She unfolded it slowly, forcing her hands not to shake.
The words leaped off the page.
All her darkest secrets, all her most embarrassing moments, her deepest fears, all laid out in black print, stretching across the page for anyone to see. It had been published anonymously-the cowards way-but Harper didn’t need a byline to know whom to blame. There was only one person who knew all her secrets-the one person she had trusted never to betray her.
Harper smiled, though it felt more like a grimace of horror. Hopefully the Minis would be too dim to tell the difference. Then she shrugged. “Is this all?”
“All?” Mini-Me squealed. “Don’t you get it? ‘HG’-Harper Grace. That’s you.”
Harper rolled her eyes, almost thankful for the Minis’ presence; the familiar sense of disgust was helping her suppress all those less desirable emotions. Helplessness. Humiliation. Despair.
Focus on something more constructive, she warned herself. People can only hurt you if you let them. Don’t be a victim.
“See?” Mini-She chirped. “Like it says right here, ‘HG was so desperate for AM that she…’”
Harper tuned her out-after all, she already knew the story. It was more important to regain her focus and start working on damage control. But cool, calculating strategy was impossible when one unquestionable fact kept drilling into her brain.
Miranda had betrayed her. No one else knew what she knew.
She wouldn’t have done it on her own, Harper was certain ofthat. She didn’t have this kind of nastiness in her. She would have been goaded into it by someone else, someone so pure and innocent that no one would ever suspect her of spewing such poison.
“What are we going to do?” Mini-Me moaned. As if there were a “we.”
“Who needs to do something?” Harper asked, crumpling the flyer into a ball and tossing it over her shoulder like the trash it was. “You know what they say, there’s no such thing as bad publicity.”
“You don’t even care?” Mini-She asked, eyes wide and adoring. From the expression on the Minis’ faces-impressed and totally devoid of pity-Harper grew certain that she’d be able to fix this.
These last few weeks had been the most lonely and miserable of Harper’s life-something like this could have been a fatal blow. And yet, she marveled, perhaps Beth had done her a favor. Because she suddenly felt invigorated. She felt offended and insulted, righteous and wronged, empowered and enraged.
She felt like herself again.
And it felt good.
Beth and Miranda met up in the second-floor girls’ bathroom after third period to compare notes. The school was buzzing about the already legendary flyer-half the student body had memorized it, and the other half had used it as a springboard to create and pass along wildly unlikely rumors of their own.
“I can’t believe we actually did it,” Miranda whispered, checking under the stalls to make sure they were really alone.
“You should have-” Beth quickly stopped talking as two babbling juniors burst through the door. Miranda turned on the faucet, pretending to wash her hands, while Beth peered into the streaked mirror, applying a new coat of transparent lip gloss.
“You think she, like, did it to herself?” the tall brunette asked, smoothing down her hair and using her pinkie to rub in some garish blue eye shadow. “But, like, why?” She dug through her overstuffed silver purse and pulled out a large gold hoop, wide enough to fit around her wrist, and clamped it onto her earlobe.
“Oh, puh-leeze,” the shorter, pudgier one said, locking herself inside an empty stall. Her bright yellow platform shoes tapped against the linoleum. “She’s mad crazy for attention, you know she’d do anything.”