“This is news? There are photos all the time now.”
“These are new.”
There was something in her tone that made Reese suddenly nervous. “What are these photos of?” Reese went to her desk and opened her laptop.
“Well, you’re with that alien chick.”
“Like during the press conference in front of my house?”
“Uh, no.” Bri paused. The computer was slowly loading. “They’re, um, you guys look a little intimate.”
“What?” Why was her computer so slow? “Where are we?”
“Some beach somewhere? So… you and this alien chick?”
The laptop was finally on. Reese clicked on the Internet browser. “What website did you see it on?”
“It’s on the Hub. It just showed up like a few minutes ago.”
She went to the Hub. “On your feed? Where?”
“Just type in your name and it’ll come up.”
There it was. A somewhat grainy photo of Reese and Amber, sitting on the concrete retaining wall on the edge of Angel Island, their heads close together. Amber’s hand was on her cheek. Their mouths were nearly touching. Behind them the bulk of the spaceship loomed like a giant black beast.
Reese’s heart was racing. “Shit.”
“Reese? Are you okay?” Bri asked.
Reese clicked on a thumbnail image next to the large one. It was another shot of the two of them. There was a whole series, starting with them sitting a couple of feet apart and culminating with the fuzzy, zoomed-in photo that made it look as if they were about to or had just kissed.
“Hey, I just wanted to tell you. I didn’t want you to be surprised,” Bri said.
Reese took a shuddering breath. “Yeah. Thanks.”
“Are you all right? You sound a little freaked out.”
Hysterical laughter threatened to rip out of her. “Freaked out? Shit.
“So, I gotta ask, um, did you guys hook up before? I mean, you told the news that you knew her before. When did you know her?”
Reese thought she was going to hyperventilate. The comments beneath the photos turned her stomach. There weren’t many yet, but she knew this was only the beginning.
“Reese?”
She had to stop looking at this page and its comments—another three popped up that second—or she would throw up. She got up, slamming her laptop closed. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m here,” she said. She began to pace back and forth. Her phone beeped; Julian was on call-waiting. She didn’t answer, and Bri kept talking.
“I know you’re not out and all, and this is probably like a giant shock to you or something. I’m really sorry. If you need to talk about it or anything, I’m here for you.” Bri laughed slightly. “Hey, that girl’s pretty hot. Congratulations?”
Reese froze in place. She had to call David. He was going to see those pictures. “I have to go,” she said abruptly. “I’m sorry. Thanks for telling me about the photos. I’ll talk to you later.” She hung up without waiting for Bri to respond, and then she stood there with her phone in her hand, her finger poised above David’s number in her address book.
She took a deep breath and hit the Call button.
CHAPTER 25
Walking into Kennedy High School on Monday morning felt like walking into a pit of vipers. Reese had already gone through the gauntlet of photographers outside on the sidewalk, shouting questions at her about her relationship with Amber, and that was bad enough. Going inside meant facing people who knew her—or thought they had known her—as well as their judgment.
The normal hum of conversation faded quickly as she came through the door. After her lessons with Eres, Reese could now sense much more clearly where the emotions fell around her. There was a lot of curiosity— which still felt like dozens of fingers jabbing at her—but layered over that was an amalgamation of distrust and, in some cases, disgust. That feeling in particular emanated from a group of kids standing by the trophy cases. David’s friends. Of course his friends would hate her. The pictures made it look like she had cheated on him. She didn’t see David, though, and she wasn’t sure if she was glad about that or not.
He had been brief with her on the phone. She couldn’t tell if he was angry with her when she explained, haltingly, that she and Amber had been photographed together. “We didn’t do anything,” she told him. “I left right after they took those photos.” There had been a long silence afterward. So long that she began to fear that he had hung up on her. “Are you still there? Do you want me to come over?”
“No,” he said. “I’ll call you.”
She had kept her phone with her for the rest of the weekend, but he didn’t call. Julian did, and so did Madison, but Reese didn’t answer. She stayed in her room with the computer off and replayed her conversation with David on the ferry over and over in her mind, picking out every instance when she could have told him about what had happened with Amber, but chose not to. As the hours passed, dread built up inside her, layer upon layer. This was it, she thought. She had messed things up with David, just like she had feared she would, and now it was over.
As she crossed the school lobby on Monday morning, her face burned with shame. Whispers passed through the students:
At her locker, she fumbled through the combination, opening the door clumsily and nearly banging her face into it. She cursed under her breath and unloaded her backpack. She should get to class. Ignore all of these people. When she closed the locker she started at the sight of Julian, Madison, Bri, and Robbie standing right there. “Crap, you scared me,” Reese mumbled. They all had extremely sober expressions on their faces.
“Come on,” Julian said. “We’ll walk you to class.”
A wave of gratitude swept through Reese. “You don’t have to do that.”
Robbie shrugged. “You hooked up with some hot alien chick. Other people are just jealous.”
“I didn’t hook up with her,” Reese said. “At least, not last weekend.”
Madison’s eyebrows shot up. “When did you hook up with her?”
Reese reddened. “Those photos are totally misleading. I would never cheat on David.” It was important that her friends understood that, and she said the words loud enough that several other students stopped to stare at her. “I didn’t,” she insisted, looking at her friends.
Julian gave her a sympathetic look and put an arm around her, ushering her down the hall as the others fell in beside them. “Think of it this way: Now it’s all out in the open. You have nothing to fear anymore.”
“Also,” Bri put in, “you are totally coming back to the GSA.”
Reese only glimpsed David from afar at lunch, and he was surrounded by his friends, who kept shooting dark glances at her, so she didn’t approach him. Her friends tried to cheer her up, but she could only manage a wan smile at their bad jokes. She couldn’t avoid hearing the whispers in the hallways or feeling the waves of emotion that passed through other students when she walked past. Nobody believed that she hadn’t cheated on David. The pictures were too damning. By the end of the day she had withdrawn into herself, blocking everything off so that she was enclosed in her own mental space. It wasn’t comforting, though, because in her head she kept remonstrating herself for not telling David everything right away. Maybe if she had, he wouldn’t have reacted this way.
During Principles of Democracy, Mr. Hernandez once again told her and David to wait after class. David wouldn’t look at her the whole period, and even when the room cleared out—with a few students casting curious glances their way—he continued to sit in his seat, facing forward.
