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As we walked by, people glanced up from their phones and looked at me, snickering again. Jesus Christ, it was as if they had some dirt onmenow. I hoped that they didn’t think I had taken any part in Skylar’s death.
Blaise had slept over last night and driven me to school, but it wasn’t like we’d walked in together, hand in hand, swapping spit like some other couples did here. I didn’t understand why everyone was staring at us.
Maddie and Piper stood by my locker, chatting tensely with each other, worried lines etched into their foreheads. I grasped my aching stomach, knowing that there was something off, and hurried toward them with Blaise hot on my heels.
“What’s going on?” I asked Maddie.
She furrowed her brows and stared at me with worried eyes. “You haven’t heard?”
“No,” I whispered, glancing around at all the students staring atnot Blaise and me, just me. My heart pounded as I raked through my mind, trying to figure out what I had done to make myself this much of an outcast today. “Do I want to know?”
“Show her,” Piper said, frowning at Maddie. “There’s no use in hiding it to protect her.”
Maddie swallowed hard, pulled out her phone, and opened up Redwood Academy’s social media app that shared information about news and happenings at the school, highlighted clubs that were in competitions, and spotlighted all things sports.
I took the phone from her. “Why are you showing me—”
My eyes widened, and I stepped back, hitting Blaise’s hard chest. No, this couldn’t be happening. This really couldn’t be happening right now.
“What is it?” Blaise asked, looking over my shoulder and freezing too.
“My writing …” I whispered, staring at the screenshots of my Google Drive blasted on the first page of the social app. Bile rose in my throat. “Someone found my writing and released it to all of Redwood Academy.”
ChapterSixty-Seven
BLAISE
When the phone began trembling in Vera’s hand, I took it away from her and scrolled through Redwood’s social media app. It was the entire story that she had been typing up from her notebook with the revisions that we’d made together back at my place.
Not only that, but the Google account it’d originated from was visible—Vera Rodriguez.
Vera took another step back against my chest and wrapped her arms around her body, shaking her head and mumbling, “What am I going to do? What am I going to do? I’ve tried so hard to keep this a secret.”
“It’s okay,” Piper said, gently rubbing Vera’s shoulder.
“Don’t worry about it,” Maddie reassured. “We’ll take care of it.”
“How are you guys going to take care of it?” Vera asked, tensing. “The entire school—even the teachers—has already seen it. They’ve been snickering at me all morning since I stepped out of Blaise’s car.”
“We’ll get someone to take it down,” Maddie said. “Hopefully.”
“That won’t do anything,” Vera whispered, glancing up at me with fearful eyes. “Are you—”
“I didn’t do it, Vera,” I said. Even though I had blackmailed her with her stories, so much had happened between us since then. I hadn’t even been serious about releasing them to everyone. “I fucking promise, I didn’t do this.”
“I know you didn’t. I just …” She glanced down at her feet and shrugged, a single tear falling down her cheek. “I don’t even know what I was going to ask you. I don’t know what I can do. I hate it here.”
So did I.
“They’re going to make fun of me,” she whispered, resting her forehead against my chest. “I don’t want them to make fun of me, Blaise. All I wanted was to be invisible this year. Redwood Academy is so cruel—so fucking cruel.”
“They’re not going to tease you, Vera,” Maddie reassured.
But I knew Redwood better than anyone. I had seen it from the core, from the roots, from the rich parents who ran this town. Redwood feasted on drama, on forcing people to feel bad about themselves. They snorted that shit like a drug.
I couldn’t stand seeing her look so helpless.
I didn’t want kids to tease her. I didn’t want Redwood to bully her.
