Everyone in the vestibule had their tech out. It was impossible to know who was participating and who was innocently txting or doing last-minute homework. The sound came from at least fifty Docs. There was no way this many people had this big a grudge against me.
Channing Gregory grabbed Bryan Alders and started imitating the video. Stupid Channing thought he could get away with anything because his father was VP of the most popular online network. Yvonne Rose Harper paraded past, her Doc in the air, Mr. E. going at it on-screen. At least four people were filming us, laughing. Fawn still had her Doc raised half in the air, waiting for a kiss that wasn’t coming. There wasn’t anything to be done. Reacting would only make for a popular related link.
“Come here, betch.” Audra smiled brightly, shoving her Doc in her bag.
Placing her tiny hands on my shoulders, she pulled me to her and kissed me, like kissed me, full on the lips. Fawn swooped in and planted a kiss on my cheek. After only a brief hesitation, Sharma lightly pressed her lips against my other cheek. The moaning was now covered up by catcalls and a murmur of whispers. The girls kissed me until after the video ended. When they pulled away, we were all flushed and smiling.
“This builds character. You are bigger than this.” Audra tweaked my nose, then over my shoulder said, “That’s how you protect the people you love, güey.”
When I turned, Mac was at the edge of the crowd. He was wearing a baseball cap pulled so low it was impossible to see his eyes. His hands were shoved into the pockets of his hoodie.
“Macky,” I called.
Shaking his head, he backed away, dissolved into the crowd, and was gone. The funny thing was, I knew just how he felt. He looked exactly as heartbroken as I’d been every time I’d seen him making out with someone who wasn’t me. But there was one huge difference. He’d gotten with those girls. I’d never touched Mr. E. And if he’d tried to talk to me about something terrible that had happened to him, regardless of his guilt in it, I would have been there to listen.
Audra watched me watch Mac, then grabbed Fawn’s arm and sashayed away to first period, never mind that Fawn would immediately have to come back this way for physics. Guess today it wasn’t important that we all walked together.
A bony hip bumped mine.
“Why I prefer living online,” Sharma said. “Let’s go see how Mr. E.’s holding up.”
First period. Mr. E. wasn’t in class. My classmates stared at me, waiting for my reaction. Despite her apology for not having been there for me and her miraculous save during the flash prank, Audra stayed thoroughly absorbed in her privacy-mode Doc when I sat next to her, barely registering my appearance. Two people recorded me.
Cue the substitute teacher: “I know it’s only two days before Christmas, but I won’t stand for any nonsense or improper behavior. I expect you all to read or work quietly.” Cue my Doc dinging loudly a dozen times. Cue classmates’ laughter as everyone hid their Docs on their laps and flicked on some kind of EarRing device.
Cue me checking my profiles for the first time that day and trying really hard to keep it together. My whole life, my G-File had come up as the second Kyla Cheng. The first Kyla was a film editor out in LA. Now when you searched my name, I came out above her. I had figured I’d be in my twenties before that happened, when I’d won an election as a junior senator.
Ha!
What’s worse, there were now dozens of tribute videos attached to my G-File. (Didn’t anyone have a life?) A few were simple vlog posts. Only one was in my defense: Ailey’s. She said that if I were a boy I’d be getting high fives right now instead of being ruthlessly talked about and ostracized by everyone I knew for being a slut.
Um, thanks.
The rest, the majority, were remake videos. Derek Boger’s had the most views. He dressed up like “me,” and the whole time another boy moved around behind him like Mr. E., Derek said idiotic things like
“O-M-G, can you believe I have hair?”
“I like clothes.”
“O-M-G, look at my boobs.”
At the end, when the dude behind him moved in for a kiss, Derek held up his Doc and said, “Kisses.”
Cue Audra’s Valley Girl avatar voice whispering in my ear, “Look at this instead.” When I glanced at her, she winked.
The link she sent was to the Bra&Panties slut’s most recent post.
BRA&PANTIES
Hey there, mavens and empresses. I picked up on something that happened in my locale today. Apparently there’s a high school minx in Brooklyn who slept with her teacher. Let me be the first to say—good job, honey! Now can we all get back to our commercialized holidays and please stop assassinating this woman’s character because she knows how to use her vagina?
In honor of Li’l Miss Straight-A and all the other persecuted vixens out there, I hope you enjoy today’s special photo series. And don’t forget to tune in to my big New Year’s Eve reveal, only eight days away.
The post was followed by a half a dozen shots taken in a room similar to our English class with two girls in different barely there outfits reenacting the Mr. E. video. As always, both girls’ faces were obscured by their hair, blurred out, or lopped off entirely.
I like sex was written above each picture.
The last photo in the series was of the girls, heads cropped off, cleavage exploding, as they gave the camera the finger.
I like sex, it read. That doesn’t make me a slut.
Great. The one person supporting me had disrobed her way to stardom. I could tell Audra was impressed and expected me to look equally so. But this wasn’t the kind of support I was looking for. Not to mention, the B&P slut had over a million followers. How soon would that reflect in views on my video?
I gave Audra a thumbs-up. Cue her wiggling happily in her seat and humming as she flicked through her celebrity pages. Classic Audra—annoying and adorable all at the same time.
I’d only been in school for thirty minutes.
Instead of focusing on my present life of SHT, I decided to think about my future and finish my college admissions essays. But in five hundred words or less, when I swiped over to Scholar: The Place to Track and Submit Your College Applications, I saw twelve new unread messages. This was why my Doc had dinged at the start of class. I clicked on the one from Yale.
Thank you for submitting your recent application to Yale University. This e-mail verifies that the admissions committee has received your electronic submission and will be considering it shortly.
What? No. I hadn’t submitted anything.
I swiped into my pending submissions. Harvard. Brown. Columbia. Every application was marked “completed.” Half the essays weren’t even finished.
Cue me abruptly standing up. Cue my chair falling backwards. Cue Audra—hand to chest—staring at me like I was insane. Cue the substitute shouting, “Ms. Cheng, sit down now,” as if I were a notorious troublemaker. Cue me grabbing the lav pass off the wall, then sequestering myself in the tiny third-floor faculty bathroom so the girls wouldn’t find me.