When Aubrey takes a longer breath, I hold up a finger. “One second.” I pull my diary out of my bag and balance it on my knee, shielding the page with my forearm even though neither of them is looking.
Cinna says, “There she goes with her diary again.”
I write quickly:Aubrey. Cinna. Sun on the fountain. Vampire sex gossip. I laughed so hard my stomach hurt.
That’s enough for now. I can expand on it later tonight. I close the diary and tuck it away. Then my attention is on Aubrey again.
“Anyway…” she continues. She spends the next ten minutes giving us all the details, then finishes with a dramatic flourish, concluding, “He texted me this morning asking if I wanted to get dinner, so clearly I ruined him for other women.”
“Obviously,” Cinna says. “It’s the combat boots.”
“I agree.”
We giggle together as the fountain behind us burbles and splashes. I’m about to ask Aubrey if she’s actually going to dinner with Vampire Hottie when her expression drops into a look I know means she has more serious drama to tell us about.
She leans in, one plucked brow arched. But she doesn’t look excited as she normally does about sharing drama—the corners of her eyes are pinched. “Speaking of weekend gossip.” She’s looking at me now, head cocked to the side like she’s sizing up how I’ll react. “I heard something weird in my costume construction class yesterday.”
There’s a stuffiness in my head, like my ears don’t want to hear what she’s about to say. “Weird how?”
“Weird like, two girls were saying you bribed a judge to get into the fall exhibition.”
For a second, the words don’t make sense. They just hang there, nonsense syllables arranged together.
Cinna is the one to react first. “What? Who the hell would say that?”
“I know, it’s stupid.” Aubrey waves her hand dismissively because she’s used to gossip; she’s had rumors spread about her before and just ignored them like they were trivial. “I’m just telling you because you should know people are saying it. That’show college students are. They repeat everything around them without thinking.”
Cinna tsks. “That’s literally the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. It was a student show, not some big award. Who would even bribe for that?”
“Right?” Aubrey shrugs. “That’s what I thought. But apparently it’s making the rounds. One of my classmates and some girl I don’t know were being very whatever about it, like it was already a fact.” She raises her coffee cup at me like she’s presenting the gossip in physical form. “Honestly, just ignore it. You know I’ve had so much gossip about me, but don’t play into those fools and they’ll go away.”
It’s still not sinking in, and I’m just staring at the fading frothy flower art on my latte. Someone is saying I bribed my way into the showcase? Cinna is right that it sounds ridiculous. The exhibition features student work, doesn’t have prize money, and literally no one outside the art department cares about it.
And… me? Why gossip aboutme? I don’t say this because I have low self-esteem, but I’m kind of nobody. Just a normal student like all the rest, and I’m not even someone like Aubrey who gets in people’s faces, pisses them off, and creates enemies who are eager to spread rumors.
I’m nobody’s enemy.
“Maybe they were talking about someone else,” I finally say. “I’m not exactly known around campus.”
“They said your name. ‘June Belrose bribed a judge.’” Aubrey’s watching me, and I can tell she’s taking notes on my reaction.
Why, though?
“Hey,” she says. “It’s not worth losing sleep over. It’s obviously bullshit. But I figured you’d want to know. Better to hear it from me and not someone else.”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
Cinna reaches over and squeezes my arm. “People are idiots. Seriously, this will blow over in like two days. Someone else will do something scandalous and everyone will forget.”
“Probably.” I force a smile, trying to shake off the weird crawling feeling at the back of my neck. It’s just a stupid rumor. People say stupid things all the time. It doesn’t mean anything.
“That exhibition is overrated anyway,” Aubrey says. “I was a bit jealous, June, because you got in and I didn’t, but now I don’t care. Especially if someone is going to spread lies.”
“You entered?” I ask her. “I had no idea.” I glance at Cinna and she shakes her head; she didn’t know either.
“I didn’t say anything because I didn’t get picked and it feels embarrassing. It was video art of a performance piece. My teachers all gave it high marks last semester, so I thought it was good enough. But no one ever picks performance pieces.”
“That’s not true,” I say, but then I don’t have any proof. I actually don’t see much video art or performance pieces at museums or exhibitions. I guess the art world largely favors “sellable” art, like paintings, sculptures, and photographs. I give her a side hug. “They were stupid for not picking you.”
