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?
I stopped where I was and closed my eyes. For a moment, I was glad Audra and I weren’t speaking, otherwise I’d have felt compelled to txt her what an idiot I equaled. The “some boy” Fawn was logging blue dots with was my brother.
I stomped upstairs to my room and threw myself on my bed.
moi Fawn. What the FCK. My brother?
Just to make sure she knew what I was talking about, I forwarded her the pic that AnyLies had sent me.
Her avatar immediately went from green to red.
It wasn’t Fawn’s or Kyle’s fault I knew about this. It was AnyLies’s. And as I seethed in my room, I reminded myself that I never had been and wouldn’t start now being the sister who went through her brother’s stuff. I further reminded myself that I wasn’t the kind of girl who scanned Woofer looking for more pics of her not-boyfriend making out with some skank.
Except, apparently, I was. Also I now not only called girls sluts, but skanks as well, because let’s face it, some of us just were. And why the H-double-L did Mac’s skank have to be so pretty? And, according to her profiles, interesting. A Natty History Museum volunteer and a Summer Relief aid worker? Speaking of exceptional sluts, it was then I realized that AnyLies hadn’t sent me a pic of Audra. Did that mean something or was it just that Audra’s secret had already come out? And if it was that Audra’s secret was already out, how did AnyLies know that? And did we still have any of N?inai’s tea for migraines, because so much wondering was making my head hurt.
Regardless, it took a lot to make Audra look like the angelic one.
“Screw it.”
I went across the hall and shoved open Kyle’s door.
I knew my brother was a slob, but usually Mom closed his door against it. So I hadn’t realized what an extreme state of gross he lived in. Clothes were thrown everywhere. Tech stuff was just as sloppily strewn about—game consoles, earbuds, outmoded Docs that he was too lazy to trade in. As I poked around the mess, I wondered how AnyLies lived with being such a creep. Just being in Kyle’s room uninvited felt squirmingly gross and morally wrong. Still, I pulled open his top dresser drawer.
The papers stood out like a flock of flamingos in the Gowanus Canal.
There were sheets and sheets of them. They were all primarily the same. My name was written in every color and every style imaginable. Okay, not my name. Kyle’s name, boy-Kyle’s name. Now I knew why Fawn’s face had paled the day these fell out of my bag. She’d written them. I thought of the look she and Audra had given each other. Why hadn’t I realized it before? It was a W-T-F, how did those get there? look. Which, B-T-W, was still a great question.
At least now I knew who’d been inside Fawn’s house the day I fought Ellie. And why Kyle had snuck into the house that afternoon and then lied that he’d been upstairs the whole time, the jerk. And why they’d both snuck off so much at the sleepover.
I slumped to his floor. Why hadn’t Fawn just told me? I got that she was afraid I might be upset, but come on. I wasn’t the scary-temper one in the group. Audra was.
I banged my head lightly against Kyle’s dresser. F it. I pulled out my Doc and txted Mac.
moi Come for dinner? I miss you so much it hurts.
But before I could hit send, my Doc buzzed. Rory—FaceAlerting. I didn’t even have this much face time with my parents. I almost didn’t answer. I didn’t have the heart for this anymore. I just wanted my life to go back to the way it was. My Doc continued to buzz. Then again, Rory was the only person left who could help me get back to normal. Or as close to normal as I was now capable of. Because so much of what I used to take as a given in my life—the girls, my solid relationship with my bro, Mac’s adoration—would never exist again.
I swiped accept.
“Got him!” Rory cried when I answered. “Or at least I got the schmuck that the fake CB account is attached to. His real name’s Jonah Logan. He’s got at least four other dummy accounts that I could find. Meanwhile, his actual profile is mi-ni-mal.”
No, it couldn’t be. My hater was Jessie. Or at the very least Audra. I’d even believe dumb Brittany or Ailey. Not some kid named Jonah. I’d never even met a Jonah, let alone interacted with one enough to make him hate me. And this whole time I’d been txting a boy? That definitely didn’t feel right. What boy called someone pookie?
I guess Mac had nailed it. I had no idea who my hater was, so why was I giving him open access?
“Hello?” Rory tapped his screen. “Why don’t you look happier?”
“Sorry. I’m just surprised. I was expecting a girl. Are you sure this is my hater? Did he view the clips used to make the sex videos?”
Rory smiled. “Yup. I checked his view history on the fake account that linked to the other girls and teachers. He viewed all of their Woofer accounts. And guess what he was looking at a week ago?”
“My Woofer account.”
“Yep, hard-core stalked it looking for that footage of you in the cafeteria. Plus, you know how all you girls kinda look like each other? I’m sending you what might be the reason why. Check your mail.”
“Check mail, Rory sender,” I said.
A small window opened over Rory’s FaceAlert screen. The photo of a girl in a glittery semiformal dress uploaded, her hair swept into a fancy updo. Like me, she was some kind of Asian-white mix. If not downright twins, we most definitely could be long-lost sisters.