always known that about her, right?”
“I thought . . . I don’t know. I thought she would support me no matter what.”
“Is this about Dre? Did you tell her?”
“It’s not about—” I stopped as I fully processed what Mindy had said. “How do you know about that?”
Mindy let out a laugh that would have drawn attention to us if any of my mother’s guests had cared that we existed. “You’re kidding, right? I mean, you told me there was someone, and then it was so obvious when I saw you together at your house. Your other friends don’t know?”
“I hadn’t thought they did,” I said. “But now I’m not certain.”
“Well, Tamal seems a little dense, so he might not have worked it out, but I thought Astrid was pretty smart. And cute.”
“Don’t.”
Mindy held up her hands. “Just saying.”
“Regardless, I didn’t tell my mother because there’s nothing to know. Dre and I are no longer together.”
“Lovers’ quarrel?”
Explaining to Mindy my sexuality and the entirety of my relationship with Dre and my reasons for ending it was not how I had planned to spend the evening, but that’s exactly what I did.
“You didn’t tell anyone, did you?”
“As much as I’d love to see McMann burn everything to the ground, I’m also not the kind of person who would do that to you. Or to anyone.”
“Then it had to be Dre’s friend Mel.”
Mindy rolled her eyes. “This is why I’m a lesbian. Isn’t it obvious? Mel wasn’t responsible, and neither was I. Have you ever considered that someone hacked your phone?”
“My phone? They’d have everything. My messages, my photos.”
Mindy’s face lit up. “Please tell me you were trading nudes.”
“No!”
“Damn. That was a scandal I could’ve gotten behind.”
Just when I was beginning to think Mindy wasn’t terrible, she reminded me why she was the worst. But while there might not have been any inappropriate pictures of me or Dre on my phone, there were some proving that we had been together. Combined with our conversations, there was enough evidence to prove we had been in a relationship. But only if my phone or Dre’s had actually been hacked, which seemed improbable.
“Maybe whoever did it was just trying to scare me into admitting to the relationship because they didn’t have anything concrete,” I said.
“Doubtful.”
“Is it? Then why warn me? And why haven’t they exposed us yet? If they’re going to do it, what are they waiting for?”
“The who is easy,” Mindy said.
“The Rosarios?” It was a scenario I had been forced to consider. Maybe Dre hadn’t known about it, maybe he had, but his parents had discovered the truth about us and had decided to use it to undermine my mother. Maybe even to blackmail her into dropping out of the race.
Mindy was shaking her head. “No way. He’s not that type of person. Doesn’t have the nerve to play that dirty. Your mom would. I could totally see her outing you and then using the sympathy to drum up votes. She could support you—love the sinner—to get liberal votes, but still condemn the lifestyle—hate the sin—to hold on to the church crowd.”
A few weeks ago, I never would have believed my mother capable of something like that, but now? Maybe. “You don’t think she would, do you?”
“She might,” Mindy said, “but I think it’d be too risky. Jackson McMann’s the obvious suspect. Nothing to lose, and it doesn’t matter what happens, he’ll be there to take advantage of the chaos.”
McMann? It seemed so unlikely, but it also felt like the kind of psychological warfare he would be into. “I still don’t buy that he hacked my phone,” I said. “But the photos Pyrogue sent me were from the second debate. I ran into McMann in the hall, and he could have seen me lurking around the janitor’s closet. If he saw me go in and then Dre come out, he could have taken the pictures and made a wild guess that Dre and I were together.” I tried to walk through it in my mind to see if it made sense, and it mostly did. “But that still doesn’t explain how he found me on Promethean.”
Mindy rolled her eyes. “I thought you were smart.” When I didn’t answer, she said, “McMann designed Promethean. It’s his company.”
“Would he really violate users’ privacy like that?”
“You sweet, simple boy,” she said. “Of course he would!”
All the pieces began to click into place. McMann saw Dre and me go into the janitor’s closet, and he took the photos.