Yet Cat needed The Shrieking Violet shut down.
If she revealed the truth in The Red and Blue, maybe she’d be able to control the spin.
She considered texting Emmie, but they hadn’t been on the same page the last time, and besides, Ravi was right here. Maybe they could walk into the harbor and talk it through. Stop for frozen yogurt or scones or—
Ravi stood. “All right. That’s it for me. Unless you need anything?”
She lost her nerve. “I’m good.”
“See you tomorrow then, Chief.”
He left, and Cat promised herself that she wouldn’t stalk his feed later.
Reluctantly, she returned to the The Shrieking Violet:
It’s A-a-a-alive! Maybe Inside You!
Oh, do we have a tail to tell, dearies!
We at The Shrieking Violet love being green as much as the next information source. (Well, maybe not, considering said next information source still prints on paper! Gasp!)
And so it is with great sadness weighing down our shrieks that we must advise against being environmentally conscious and filling a reusable bottle with water from Acedia’s drinking fountains. For this is a green of the “ribbit” kind, one that will soon require a delivery of lily pads, which, come to think of it, might actually be trés chic and a substantial improvement in decor.
Absurdity had reached a new level. Tadpoles living in the school’s water fountains. Leo was more creative than she’d thought, she’d give him that.
Though he’d done the same thing with the vegan bacon, taking a kernel of truth and spiraling it into a story. Earlier that week, two freshmen had gotten sick in front of the water fountain outside the gym—after mixing twelve packets of energy powder into a gallon of water and daring each other to chug.
Cat’s mind churned with likes and comments and tadpoles and #HotheadQuinn and Leo and Ravi, and she needed air. She left the newsroom for the empty halls and almost immediately came upon a flash of yellow near the girls’ bathroom. Caution tape. Three strands wrapped around the water fountain. An itch crept underneath her skin. She kept walking. Down the west corridor to the boys’ bathroom and another water fountain, more yellow caution tape. That itch spread. She increased her speed and did a lap around the school.
More yellow.
More itching.
Every.
Single.
One.
By the time Cat had come full circle to the first, she wanted to claw her hair out. Every drinking fountain in the school had been covered in yellow caution tape. A petition signed by nearly a hundred students hung above each one, demanding the administration conduct testing and warning fellow students to avoid using until The Shrieking Violet confirmed the water was safe.
How was this even possible?
Leo had reach. Reach Cat didn’t.
She tore off one of the strands. Static cling attached it to her, and each turn only entangled it further. She spun out of it, flung it to the ground, and stomped.
Reach that maybe Cat never would.
Stomp, stomp, stomp.
Or maybe never would like this.
She pulled out her phone and texted Grady.
Cat: Up for some investigative reporting?
He responded instantly with a series of thumbs-ups. She asked him to come back to school and kicked at the caution tape one last time. Her mind begged for her to return her phone to her pocket, but her heart disobeyed. She swiped open Instagram. Not Ravi’s feed. Natalie’s. She was at Eggshell Beach, sharing a pint of orange-colored frozen yogurt with Ravi.
26
When Angeline Takes an Ice Bath
8 DAYS TO THE ELECTION
Angeline shook food into Tartan’s bowl. Cat was out, her mom had texted a thousand apologies that she’d be working late, and Gramps was watching the Red Sox at the Irish bar since none of them would curse at the umpires with him. Baseball was how Angeline had learned every bad word.
Every bad word now an adjective to describe Leo.
Tartan dropped the angel wing he’d taken as a toy and scurried to his bowl. Angeline grabbed a yogurt and reread back issues of The Shrieking Violet, now with the perspective of Leo as its creator.
The live-streamed streaking during homecoming had Tad Marcus written all over it. She’d seen his text begging Leo to help coordinate it for last year’s junior prom. How had she not remembered that until now?
Jennifer Lawrence cousin? Sure. They’d watched the Hunger Games movies three times with Sammy, finding his crush totally cute. A descendant of George Washington? Angeline thought back to Leo’s random fact about him at the lighthouse. Totally fit.
And Angeline and Cat living outside the charter school region when they’d applied? Like Cat said, Angeline had been the one to tell him. The grill fire, the birthmark—it all made sense now in retrospect.
Her secrets, entrusted to someone she thought would protect them like they were his own. She’d misjudged. She wouldn’t do it again.
She clicked on the headline for The Shrieking Violet’s most recent story: “It’s A-a-a-alive! Maybe Inside You!”
At least Leo had learned a thing or two from her about how to write a headline that demanded to be clicked. She read the full story, which was ridiculous but also creative.
Super creative.
Super creative fiction.
Leo had written a fiction story for an ELA assignment last year. It had taken her about thirty seconds to realize that he’d ripped off an old X-Files episode they’d watched—and gotten the twist wrong.
She scrolled back.
“Student council is yours because your students.”
Leo might have needed editing help with his storytelling, but his grammar had always been rock-solid. The “your” and “you’re” mistake was unusual. As were the “its” not “it’s” and more than a handful of other errors and sloppy typos.
She dissected each article The Shrieking Violet had published with all of its sarcastically silly humor.
“Shriek with me, folks!”
Earnest, loyal, smart, that was Leo.
“Bacon from cows.”
Funny? Leo wasn’t this funny.
“Succubus, some percentage true.”
Leo wasn’t funny.
“The hard thing about doing nothing’s that you never know when you’re done.”
But his brother was.