emo so well. Every post ended with "Cara Leonard is a great big whore. "
The most recent post was from Trista. It reached out to anyone who might know people at Pennsbrook, so everyone could find out what I'd really been like before I came to Chrysella.
Time to leave my bedroom. Mom and Karl were back home, I realized. Their door was closed, but I could hear their TV. I went downstairs and heated some chicken noodle soup, which I ate in front of the TV until I was ready for bed. I figured I'd check the Facebook page again in the morning. No sense killing the suspense before then.
Sure enough, by the time I got up on Monday, the legions of people who thought I was a Great Big Whore had grown to one hundred fifty. Some of these were from different states. One was from Germany. Weird. Several new members were from Pennsbrook. None of them were people I knew well, but I recognized the names and faces. Not surprisingly, they dished all they knew about me, which was basically that I was a misfit who had only one friend and peed herself in class. Even that story got twisted over the course of several posts, until it seemed like Claudia and I were actually lesbian lovers who had made some kind of weird cultish pact to pee only in our pants and continued doing so right up until the day I left for Chrysella.
I probably should have been upset, maybe screaming for justice. I wasn't. I was numb.
When I walked into school, once again I felt every pair of eyes on me, but it was very different now. I didn't meet anyone's stare. I walked right to my locker. Hanging from its handle was a large diaper, heavy with something yellow I hoped was apple juice.
It didn't smell like apple juice.
The halls were not my friends. It seemed like everyone on every tier of the Tower had nothing more interesting to do than stare at me and laugh or make jokes. Gabe Friedman started singing Nate's "Succubus" song as I walked by, but he added his own touch: a beatbox. Robert was right next to Gabe and didn't join in. He looked at me sadly, then pointedly turned his back. A couple of Genius guys squatted and made ssssss sounds as I walked past. A Cubby Crew of lesbians handed me a petition they'd signed begging me to renounce my own lesbianism, since I was giving the group a bad name.
I was thrilled when the bell rang, but class wasn't much better. The second I sat, everyone in a five-seat radius shifted away, leaving me a lonely island. I purposely hadn't sat near Archer, so he wasn't one of the people who moved, but I was sure he would have. He'd established long ago that he wasn't a fan of mine. Compared to him, the rest of the school was late to the party.
As for Mr. Woodward, it seemed like for once in his career, he wasn't sure how to handle the situation. I got the sense he didn't want to make things worse for me but didn't know how to make them better. He chose to basically ignore me, but I caught him tossing sympathetic glances my way. It was unbearable.
I didn't even dream of trying the cafeteria for lunch. I hit the vending machine for a Zone bar and Diet Coke and locked myself into my car. I tried calling Claudia, but of course she didn't answer. I'd been calling her since the party—calling, texting, e-mailing, Facebooking ... she wasn't responding.
I wished everyone else was as disinterested in me as Claudia, but by Monday night Cara Leonard Is a Great Big Whore was up to two hundred members. By Tuesday morning it had climbed to 225, and among the newest members were all the Theater Geeks—including Archer Jain.
Every day held another surprise, and every day I'd find more strange things stuck to my locker. Every day people would feel a little braver and jeer a little louder in the halls. And every day I'd at some point catch Trista's eye, and she'd give me a smug smile that left no doubt as to who was in control.
I spent two weeks like this. It helped that the school year was almost over, and I could throw myself into studying. We had SATs, and I also had AP tests in English Language, English Literature, French, Physics, and