“While we sincerely apologize for your inconvenience, I hope you will view it as forgivable. There’s no end to the benefits of monitoring men who frequent or set up child pornography sites. Or, when it’s true—we’re reevaluating our vetting process as we speak—of pulling teachers who slept with their students out of schools. As stellar as you are at debate, Kyla, even you can’t argue against the advantages of preventing grown men from befriending children on apps that were meant for ages two to six.”
Clearly, Ms. Smythe didn’t know who she was dealing with. Or maybe she did. As I explained how that was heroic and all, but that there were still five other girls suffering through the mess Jonah Logan had made of their lives, she replied that she’d already signed them up for a pilot software program that erased selected materials as soon as they reemerged online—i.e., the other girls’ un-DRMed sex videos.
When we left, Mom got all teary-eyed. “That was spooky and terrifying, but honey, I am in utter awe of how awesome you are.”
I wasn’t as impressed. When I’d asked about Mr. E., Ms. Smythe had said, “We’ll look into it. But in his case, I fear the damage has already been done.”
Awareness for a Safe America had done that damage. Them. But this was politics, wasn’t it? And if this was where I was headed, I needed to learn the game. Maybe today there was nothing to be done, but someone worked above Ms. Smythe. There was always another channel.
Speaking of politics, while, ahem, I did take down my video, I was not the recognized valedictorian of my high school graduating class. I should have been. I had the highest grade-point average. But a few days before the ceremony, Dr. Graff called me into her office for one last visit. With her unblinking eyes, she informed me that though I was technically valedictorian, due to the circumstances in December my giving the commencement speech would be too controversial. It would open the school, and myself, up to too much scrutiny and negative publicity. So it was that Jessie Rosenthal, with her lousy 3.89 GPA, her three senior-elective art periods, and her crap British accent, won the honor of being the class speaker at graduation.
And actually?
She crushed it.
“We’re all about to go off and see and do many miraculous things, but I’d like to spend a few minutes now reminding you about what we don’t see….”
While she spoke, she scrolled through photos from a series she called the Humanity Project. It was the man in the diner, and the woman feeding the birds, but also a woman putting on makeup on the train, a man walking his bicycle, a mother with her five children staring into space as they waited to cross the street, all these lonely souls, moving through the world, crying out for a little contact and a little something good to happen.
“…In conclusion, I’d just like to remind everyone to be kind, to be mindful of those who don’t have what we do, and for heaven’s sake, to look up.”
As an added bonus, I still got called up onstage for having perfect attendance.
In college app news, two days before the admissions deadlines, Mom and I contacted twelve different admissions offices and begged them to let me resubmit the essay portion of my application. It turned out to be no big deal. Apparently, Scholar screwed up constantly and students were always pleading to upload new documents.
Still, I didn’t get into Harvard.
But I did get a partial ride to Yale.
I was also in that year’s class of summer White House interns. Funny, but as it turned out, I think my sex video nudged me into both places. In their acceptance e-mail, the head of the White House review committee told me she was “moved” and “overwhelmed” by the video addendum to my application, and that she was “excited” to have such a voracious crusader on board. In my reply, I thanked her for her kind words and said it was only too bad that my teacher, Mr. Ehrenreich, had been a casualty of the whole ordeal.
I’ll get Mr. E.’s record expunged yet. After all, I’m the girl who took down her video!
Okay. That will be the last one.
Although, actually? I didn’t take down the video.
Yes, I deleted it from Ailey’s Doc and YurTube faster than you could blink, but not before transferring it to my Doc. A few days later, I posted it to Whattodo.org along with my story—this story. Of course, the video had a DRM on it, and Mr. E. was no longer tagged to it, but if at some point in all our lives we’ll be attacked online, we need to muster every resource to fight it. And there’s nothing I love better than a good fight. (Or at least a good theoretical one.) Besides, a friend once told me I’d be an idiot not to use the incredible platform I’d been given.
Speaking of Audra, the photos for her big New Year’s Eve reveal were staged on her parents’ dining room table. I didn’t see them right at midnight on New Year’s. I was too busy toasting my mom and dad. But I did try to flip through around one a.m. Unfortunately, a billion other people must have too. All the traffic temporarily crashed her site. When I saw the pics the next morning, I had to admit that Audra looked beautiful. The photos were tasteful, fairly showy, and yet coy. I’m not sure any of that mattered to the Parents.
As I’d hoped, Sharma said that Audra showed the Parents the photos on the dining room wallpaper screen after yet another nonpescatarian dinner. Audra’s bags were already packed and waiting by the front door. Which, from Sharma’s telling, was a good thing as, shortly after the Parents viewed the pics, Audra was no longer welcome in the Rhodes brownstone. Apparently, she’s lived quite happily in her one-bedroom Williamsburg apartment ever since.
Dr. Graff was also not thrilled with Audra’s entrepreneurship and this latest Park Prep sex scandal. I’m guessing Audra opted for a suspended-until-graduation deal, as she never sat next to me in English again. By then I highly doubt she cared. Because it just meant, by early January, her life was exactly where she wanted it to be.
After her New Year’s pics posted, Vogue did indeed scoop her up, but she must have pissed off someone, because her column only ran for four months. Fawn said Audra was now working on a lifestyle brand and had a contract with a major national retailer—apparently she was thinking of naming it Slut Kitten. Leave it to Audra to take over the world, one repurposed word at a time.
There was a lot of leftover junk related to the video on my G-File, and right before the January 1 deadlines my parents paid a file-sweeping company to make it go away. Before they did, Audra thoughtfully untagged me from the B&P posts.
I immediately txted
moi you =
audy You know it, betch. Keep being good. And don’t forget to be bad, too.