It's All About Us Read online

  Sometime later, right when I was getting to the good part, someone grabbed me by the shoulder. “Lissa!”

  I shrugged it off and mumbled, pulling the duvet over my head. It got ripped off me. “Lissa, wake up!”

  Irritation flooded me and I finally cracked my eyes open. Gillian stood next to my bed. When I got my glasses on, I could see she was fully dressed in jeans and a bright red T-shirt advertising some choir called the Gospel Grrls. Didn’t she know that was against the rules?

  “What?” I said, halfway between a snap and a whine, as I sat up.

  “You gotta see this. Look.” She took my face between her hands and turned it to her notebook, which was sitting on my desk next to the bed.

  The screen was dark. “What? Gillian, I need to sleep. Go away.”

  “Watch it.”

  The tension in her tone finally got through to me. With a sigh, I turned so I could see better.

  “There’s nothing there.”

  “Yes, there is. Wait.”

  Music began, some kind of slow hip-hop beat. And then a tall blond girl with hair as long as mine walked into the frame. Scene change. Callum walked in. Whoa.

  What? Wait a second.

  They turned and kissed, and suddenly some layer of disbelief peeled off my brain and I realized what I was looking at.

  Myself.

  “Wh—wh—”

  “It gets worse,” Gillian said grimly.

  Someone had cut the scenes so they were timed perfectly with the hookup going on in the song. I saw Callum blow out the candles. Saw myself fall back on the bed. And then the music came up and supplied all the missing information.

  Clip. Edit. Clip. The song ended, and then in the silence I heard my own voice go “Ooh!” as if . . . as if I’d . . .

  Oh, no. No, that hadn’t happened. We hadn’t—I hadn’t—

  Cold horror cascaded over me like a bucket of ice water down my back. My hands began to shake. My cheeks felt cold as the color drained away. “This isn’t happening,” I said. “It’s not real.”

  “It is. It’s on the school server, which has been feeding it to all the PA screens in the classrooms and common rooms.” Gillian bit off her syllables as though they were crackers. “Everyone at breakfast knew about it because it started playing when the dining room opened at nine.”

  “No.” Denial.

  “Curzon had it stopped, but it was too late. Half the kids in school have it downloaded already, and the other half are watching.”

  “No.” Bargaining.

  “Lissa, saying that isn’t going to help.”

  “But how? How did—”

  I swung my feet out of bed, pulled the notebook onto my lap, and played the movie again. It hadn’t changed. If anything, it looked worse now that horror had swept my brain crystal clear. Candlelight illuminated an arm, a leg, a swath of my hair. You couldn’t see what was going on very clearly (oh, thank you, Callum, for blowing out most of the candles), but over the music you could hear—and that was just as bad. And worst of all was that “Ooh!” dubbed in at the end.

  I looked up at Gillian. “I swear to you, that isn’t what you think. I knocked over a bunch of DVDs. The whole thing is a manip. It didn’t happen.”

  With a sigh, Gillian sat next to me and took the instrument of torture away. “Something must have happened to give them footage to work with.”

  Those beautiful moments with Callum seemed to burn away at the edges, leaving me with nothing but the way other people would see them. How could I have been so stupid? How could I have walked into this with my eyes wide open and yet been so completely blind?

  My stomach rolled, and I wondered if a person could actually be sick from shame.

  “You don’t believe me.” Somehow, that made me feel even worse.

  “More like, I don’t get you.” She closed the notebook, then glanced at me. “I don’t get why you deliberately went against your beliefs and what you knew was right. Maybe you didn’t break your promise to keep your purity—I don’t know and you don’t have to tell me. But you sure put it in jeopardy.”

  I’d expected judgment in that gaze, and maybe there was, a little. But mostly I saw the tears that she blinked back. For me.

  “I didn’t expect this.” I put my head in my hands, close to tears myself. “If you say I brought it on myself, so help me . . .”

  Silence. And it spoke volumes.

  Maybe we were both trying not to choke up. Or maybe she was giving me a chance to tell myself the truth.

  I had brought it on myself. I’d made stupid choices. I’d gone ahead and done what I wanted instead of going to God and asking Him what He wanted. And now look.

  “Nobody deserves to be broadcast on the school system,” Gillian said at last. “I guess the only thing we can do is try to find out how she did it.”

  “Who?”

  “Vanessa, of course.”

  “No, no. She would never—we’re friends.”

  “Is that what you call it? Then how did this get recorded? By astral projection?”

  “I don’t know.” I tipped over and buried my face in the pillow. “I want to crawl away and never come back.”

  “No, you don’t. You want to find out who did this.”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “Lissa, think. The picture is shot from the end of the bed. All these rooms are laid out the same way. The v-cam had to be somewhere between the desk and the wardrobe.”

  A suffocating cloud of humiliation and hurt lay on me as heavily as a down duvet on an August afternoon. What point was there in all this? It was a little late for the private-eye act.

  “Lissa?”

  “Go away.” I pulled the pillow over my head.

  She yanked it off. “You have to think. You have to get through this. You might be able to hide in here today, but you’ll have to come out Monday morning and face everyone. Not to mention—”

  A knock sounded at the door and Gillian froze.

  “Miss Mansfield? Miss Chang? Open the door, please.”

  “It’s Curzon!” Gillian hissed, like I hadn’t figured that out already. “Here.” She threw the hoodie that had been hanging over my desk chair at me, and I leaped to the dresser and yanked on a pair of pajama bottoms. Once I was dressed in more than a T-shirt, she opened the door.

  The headmistress stepped in, dressed in her blue blazer with its gold badge on the breast, and a long skirt made of the school plaid instead of the habitual short blue one.

  I stared at her, trying to figure out why she’d be all dressed up at ten o’clock on a Saturday morning. And then I remembered.

  Benefactors’ Day. She was ready to receive all the dignitaries as they arrived. To show the parents around and make them proud of what their tuition was paying for.

  Parents.

  Oh, Lord, help me. What were Mom and Dad going to say?

  My insides felt like they were about to cave in, and before I could stop them, tears spilled down my cheeks.

  “Miss Mansfield,” she said. “Lissa.”

  Her voice held such kindness that I gasped—a single sob that I couldn’t control.

  “I see that you’ve seen the video,” she said. I hung my head, unable to look at her. Dui bu chi. “I’ve had it pulled from the server, and we’re investigating how such a thing could have been uploaded, given the password structure.”

  “The incoming computer science class hacks into the server every fall,” Gillian said. “It’s like a rite of passage. Anybody could have had the password.”

  “Is that so?” Ms. Curzon looked over her glasses at Gillian. “Interesting. In any case, I’m most concerned now about how the video was created in the first place. Lissa, leaving all other details aside for the moment, I’m assuming you had no knowledge that you were being filmed.”

  I still couldn’t speak. Fear and grief were lodged in my throat like a big lump of peanut butter. So I shook my head no.

  “We were just trying to fi
gure out how they did it,” Gillian put in. “Given the continuous angle of the shot, it was a stationary camera somewhere here.” She waved a hand toward the desk, where the sleeping notebook sat, and the wardrobe behind it.

  My throat cleared abruptly. “We were in Vanessa’s room. She had a notebook, too. Sitting right there.”

  “Webcam,” Gillian said immediately. “You couldn’t tell it was on?”

  I shook my head. “I didn’t want to mess with her stuff. The screen was dark. It never occurred to me that it was on—or that she would—”

  “We don’t yet know for sure it was Miss Talbot, given that she was and is off campus,” the headmistress said, “but we’ll certainly investigate.”

  “They’ve probably already wiped the file,” Gillian offered. “The IT guy could probably find its footprint, though. And maybe the port it was uploaded through, if you get the notebook’s IP addy. The server will have a record.”

  “All excellent suggestions,” Ms. Curzon said. “In the meantime, Lissa, I know this is painful, but do you have an explanation for the origin of the movie?”

  “She was set up,” Gillian said at once.

  Curzon looked at her. “I asked Lissa, Miss Chang.”

  “Sorry, ma’am.” Gillian subsided, but stayed on high alert. If I hadn’t been so miserable, I might have appreciated her willingness to help me. Especially after the lousy way I’d been treating her all week.

  The fact that she’d been right about my bad choices—and that Kaz had been right about Callum, and that even my sister had been right about dating someone who didn’t believe—did not help.

  Compounding my mistakes by lying about them just seemed stupid. I was already finished at Spencer Academy. Being expelled for breaking the rules would be a mercy. If I was, I could be out of here by tomorrow and wouldn’t have to face the laughter and jeers on Monday.

  Happy, happy thought.

  I lifted my head. “Vanessa loaned me her room so that I could have some privacy with Callum,” I said. “I know it’s against the rules to bring a boy into the dorm, ma’am. I’m fine with being expelled.”

  “You are, are you?” She lifted a brow. “And who is going to escort our celebrity guest this evening?”

  “Vanessa can do it.” She’d totally be in her element. Me, crushed forever in ignominy, kicked out of school, and Angelina at her side. It would be the apex of her junior year—and we were only in the first term. “I can pack my stuff and be out of here by noon.”

  “You worry me,” she said. “Once again I find you alarmingly anxious to be punished.”

  “This time I really deserve it.” Get on with it so I can get out of here, would you?

  I could take a cab to Dad’s and then revisit the boardingschool versus live-in discussion. Being by myself with only one other person sounded like heaven. I could go back to our house on the hillside in Santa Barbara with its cool sandstone and quiet, sleepy gardens and pick up where I’d left off. It was still only first term. People would hardly have had time to notice I’d been gone.

  “Unless it involves blood, fire, or illegal substances, we don’t expel on the first infraction,” Curzon said slowly. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to come up with an alternative. A month’s detention under the supervision of the cleaning staff should be sufficient.”

  I gaped at her. Not be expelled?

  Oh, no. No, no. I had to be expelled. Immediately. Today.

  “But this is my second infraction.”

  “You were not actually proven to be guilty of the first. I’m afraid that Newton’s Law applies in real life. In this case, the reaction to your actions is very unfortunate, and I’ll do my best to find out who posted that video. You are simply going to have to live through the consequences. It seems to me that punishment is quite severe enough.” She crossed to the door. “But for the record, as I said, a month’s detention, assisting the cleaning staff. You’ll report to Mrs. Dumfries, whose office you can find on the ground floor behind Admissions, after classes on Monday. In the meantime, ladies, I very much look forward to seeing you both at the festivities today, and at the ball this evening.”

  With a smile, the headmistress turned on the heel of her—I blinked—Doc Marten Mary Janes??—and left.

  I looked at Gillian in appeal. “They have to expel me. Think of something involving blood.”

  “They’d just have you committed, not expelled.”

  I jumped up and gripped the windowsill as I peered out, searching the view. “What can I burn? A tree? A building? How come everything out there is made of stone?”

  “Lissa. Calm down.”

  I whirled. “You don’t get it! I have to get out of here.”

  “Run away? And let them win?”

  “They already have.”

  Gillian guided me back to the bed and tried to get me to sit, but I couldn’t. I bounced up and began to pace.

  “For once in my life I wish I knew someone who dealt drugs.”

  “Like that would improve the situation.”

  “It would get me out!” Six steps up. Six back. I wrapped the hoodie around myself, protecting myself, warding off the future.

  “And tossed in jail. Here.” She stopped me by wrapping both arms around me from behind, and steered me back to the bed. “This is what we should do.”

  Oh, thank you. A plan. Gillian would come up with something. It might not involve blood, drugs, or fire, but she would help me.

  “Father God,” she said firmly, sitting beside me, “we really need You right now.”

  That much was true. I didn’t so much bow my head as hang it. My shoulders drooped, and I gave myself up to what I should have done ages ago: prayer. Real prayer. Not visualizing a fantasy and calling it prayer.

  Guh. How bullheaded, blind, and downright stupid could I be?

  The problem was, how could I come to God when I’d deliberately turned my back on Him and done what I wanted? How could I ask for help and forgiveness now, when I didn’t deserve it?

  I couldn’t see my way to a place where I could do that. So I sat there and let Gillian say it for me.

  “Father, whatever Lissa did is between You and her,” Gillian went on. “We come to You now asking for strength to get through what’s coming. No matter what, we belong to You, and we know that You’re sufficient for us. No matter how dumb we act, You still love us. Please forgive Lissa for disappointing You, and forgive me for not showing love to her when I should have. Help us, Lord. We sincerely need it.”

  “Amen,” I said. Then I turned to her. “I’m sorry I was such an MGN.”

  “I wasn’t there for you when you needed me. I got my pride hurt. I’m sorry, too. What are you going to do now?”

  I glanced at the floor next to the bed. “Pray some more. And take a shower. And call my parents and tell them before they get here at noon and Curzon does it for me.”

  “That sounds like fun.”

  “What’s the worst that could happen?”

  The words were no sooner out of my mouth than my iPhone chimed.

  “If that’s Callum, I hope you tell him to kiss off and bark at the moon,” Gillian said. My friend. Always the perfect lady.

  “It’s probably Kaz.” Though why he’d call to get an update on an event he’d hated even thinking about, I had no idea.

  A glance at the display told the truth. “Hey, Mom.”

  “Lissa, this is a disaster.”

  I shot an agonized glance at Gillian. Great. Curzon had already broken the news. “Mom, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I let you down and I’m just going to have to get through it. Try to survive, you know?”

  “No, no, darling, it’s me who’s let you down.”

  “What?”

  “Obviously someone has already called and told you. Oh, sweetie, if I could have done something, I would have, but you know how she is.”

  “I sure do now.”

  “Or maybe you don’t,” my mother rushed on. “The kids come first, w
hich I can hardly blame her for, but after giving me a commitment . . . I knew how disappointed you were going to be.”

  I frowned. “Wait. Mom. Whoa. What are you talking about? Did Ms. Curzon call you?”

  “No, darling. What does she have to do with Angelina bailing on us?”

  I sat down suddenly and hard. Good thing the bed was there. “Angelina bailed?” My voice went up the scale and off the chart.

  “That’s what I’ve been saying. One of the children was admitted to the hospital with a virus of some kind, and you know her. She’d no more go to a benefit with a child in the hospital than jump off a building.”

  “She’s not coming,” I repeated, as though I might have gotten it wrong. “We have no celebrity guest.”

  “That’s right.” Mom said something else, but that stifling quilt of fear and humiliation had me in its grip again.

  First the video.

  Now no celebrity.

  Suddenly drugs, blood, and fire were looking really good. Preferably all at once.

  Chapter 25

  I HAD NO CHOICE. Whether she’d set me up or not, Vanessa had to know about Angelina ASAP.

  So instead of hiding in the shower until I was wrinkled and pink, I got on with it. As I dried my hair, I thought about French braiding it, then decided not to. It would come in handy as a personal curtain if the laughter got too loud. I got dressed in my uniform and found Vanessa’s cell number.

  She didn’t answer until the fourth ring, and I refused to let my imagination dwell on what she and Brett might be doing on a Saturday morning in the wine country.

  Probably not having a Sound of Music moment in the hills.

  “Why are you calling me here?” she asked when she found out it was me.

  “We have a problem.”

  “Honestly, Lissa. Deal with it. I’m kind of unavailable here.”

  “It’s a serious problem,” I said doggedly. “Angelina bailed.”

  “What?” Like mine, her voice spiked into a squeak. “Why?”

  “One of her kids is in the hospital. My mom just called me to say it’s not going to happen.”

  “Okay. Okay. Regroup.” I pictured her with a palm pressed to her forehead. “What’s your Plan B?”