Blue Gold (26 page)

He paused. Then, “Yes. That too.” He took a deep breath and sat up straighter. “Okay, so you want to handle it. What's the plan?”

“I don't know. I'm afraid of making it worse.” She felt tears stinging in her eyes.

“Does your mom know?”

“No.”

“We should go talk about it with her, together.”

He pushed his chair back and got to his feet.

“No!” That was the last thing Fiona needed, her parents squaring off like pit bulls, with her as the bone in the middle. “I'll tell her,” she promised.

He sighed. “We should go now, Fiona. Your mother should know what's going on.”

“Tomorrow, okay? I'm really tired. I just want to go to bed.”

He hesitated, like he didn't know what to say. From the painfully awkward look on his face, Fiona started to get it.

“What? Am I not allowed to stay here?”

“I'm sorry, honey. Joanne's really upset,” he said, lifting his hands as if to say he knew it was crazy, but it was out of his control. “I'm going to drive you back to your mom's.”

 

FIONA AND HER DAD
drove in silence as they headed back across the bridge. She was glad it was dark out, so he couldn't see how miserable she felt. As they crossed into the city, she watched twentysomethings walking in couples and in groups, and wondered if when she was that age the photo would still be out there circulating on the web, haunting her.

“Don't worry about Joanne,” her dad told her as they got near her mom's place. “She'll get over it.” But the way he said it, it didn't sound as though Joanne would “get over it” any time soon.

“What about my birthday?” Fiona asked uncertainly. It was just a couple of weeks away. They were supposed to have had a family party around the pool.

“I'll call you, okay? We'll figure something out.”

When he stopped the car outside of the apartment, he reached out his broad hand and cupped the back of her head, pulling her forward so they bumped foreheads. “Listen,” he said. “I love you, no matter what. You'll always be my girl.”

Will I?
she thought.
Because it feels like you don't even know who I am
. But she said,

“I love you, too.”

She collected her things and opened the car door. As she climbed out, he leaned over to tell her, “Tell your mom.”

“I will.”

“I'll call you.”

Famous last words. He drove away, leaving Fiona with the distinct impression that her own father had broken up with her.

 

FIONA CAUGHT ONE LUCKY BREAK
—when she came into the apartment, she heard the shower running. She slipped down the hall to her bedroom, hoping to avoid a confessional with her mom for at least one night, but just as she closed her door, the shower stopped and she heard her mother shout out in alarm, “Who's there?”

“It's just me,” she called back.

“What happened?” her mom asked, pulling on her robe as she opened the bathroom door, wet hair dripping around her anxious face. “Why aren't you at your dad's?” Fiona's chin started to quiver. She could feel tears coming. “Honey? What's wrong?” her mom asked, taking her in her arms.

“I made a big mistake, Mom,” Fiona choked out.

Her mom held her away from her by the shoulders and gave her a reassuring look. “Fiona, nothing can be so bad that we can't get through it. Are you pregnant?” she asked calmly.

“No!” What was it with her parents? Did they think she was some kind of sex fiend?

“I had to ask,” she said. She seemed relieved. “C'mon,” she told her, steering Fiona toward the kitchen. “I'll make tea and you can tell me all about it.”

Once they were seated at the kitchen table with mugs of steaming tea, Fiona told her mom everything. She was surprisingly cool about the boob shot—“Everyone does things in a relationship they regret later,” she said, “Unfortunately, with the Internet the consequences are bigger than they used to be”—but she was furious when Fiona told her about Joanne's reaction. “As though you haven't been punished enough!”

After she'd calmed down a little, she told her, “Fiona, taking that photo wasn't the smartest thing you've ever done, but what you do with your body is your business and nobody else's. There's going to be fallout, though, and you're going to have to have a strategy to deal with it.”

Fiona knew what her mom was worried about—there had been several stories in the news in the past year about girls who were cyberbullied so badly after pictures of them got passed around the web that they wound up committing suicide.

“I'll be okay,” she said. But would she? Did those other girls think they could handle the heat, until they couldn't anymore?

“The main thing is to know who your friends are,” said her mom, getting up from the table and carrying their empty mugs to the sink. “Don't allow anybody to turn you into a victim.” She came back to the table and kissed Fiona on the forehead. “I'm here for you, honey. And I'm sure your dad is, too. Just don't get me started on Joanne again.”

Fiona put her arms around her mother and hugged her tight. “I'm sorry I'm so mean to you.”

“You can't help it,” she said, stroking Fiona's hair. Fiona looked up at her. One corner of her mother's mouth was lifted in a wry smile. “Sadly, sometimes ‘mean' is what teenagers do best.”

 

ON THE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL
, Fiona sat in the auditorium with the other grade tens waiting to get their homeroom assignments. She had planned to wear a denim mini with a loose cami. Instead, she wore jeans and a long T-shirt to achieve maximum coverage, even though the day promised to be sweltering. The auditorium was loud with excited chatter and joking. Fiona was on alert for glances and whispers, trying to determine whether she was the center
of gossip, or—dare she hope?—if the photo had been forgotten. Lacey and Rick were seated on either side of her as protection, both having vowed to stay glued to her today, just in case anything ugly happened. A loud burst of laughter drew Fiona's attention to the back row. She turned to see Ryan's friend, Jeff, sitting with another jock, Max.

“Sweet rack!” Jeff proclaimed.

“Wonder what her ass looks like,” mused Max.

Max caught Fiona looking at them and, grinning, made a gross pumping motion against his crotch. Fiona turned her eyes forward and sunk down into her chair.

“Smarten up, douche bag!” Lacey snarled at Max.

“Omigod,” moaned Fiona. “The whole football team has seen it.”

“Fee, if you let this get to you, Ryan wins,” Lacey reminded her.

Vice-Principal Bains walked onto the stage and read off class lists. Fiona was disappointed she wouldn't be in the same homeroom as Lacey, but at least she was in with Megan and Brit. After he was done, VP Bains dismissed the grade tens and told them their first full day would be tomorrow. Fiona filed out of the auditorium with Lacey and Rick, keeping her head down. Then she heard her name.

“Fiona?”

Fiona looked up to see Ryan just outside the auditorium door. Fiona wanted to spit in his face, but before she could do or say anything, Rick stepped toward him.

“Get lost!” he told Ryan, all macho—even though Rick was half a head shorter and, since Ryan had beefed up over the summer, about twice as scrawny.

“I just want to talk,” Ryan said to Fiona, ignoring Rick. He was acting nice, like when they were dating.

“She's got nothing to say to you,” Lacey replied.

Lacey and Rick marched Fiona away, flanking her like her own personal bodyguards. She appreciated their loyalty, but after overhearing Jeff and Max, she was starting to realize that she couldn't count on her friends to protect her forever, any more than she could avoid fallout from the photo. It was better to know what people were saying about her than to imagine something possibly worse. When she got home, she fired up her laptop and went onto Friendjam, bracing herself.

On the first page alone, Fiona had been tagged in the boob shot a half-dozen times. She scanned messages from people she didn't even know, containing words like
whore
,
skank
, and
stupid bitch
. Oddly, it was the word
stupid
that hurt most of all. Nobody had ever called Fiona stupid before—not that they'd called her a
whore
or a
skank
—but she knew she was neither of those things. Now she felt like she had to prove to strangers she was smart. What was she supposed to do—post her GPA?
Don't give them the satisfaction!
her instincts warned her.
Don't even acknowledge them!
There was only one way for her to fight back, and that was to shut down her Friendjam account. With a few clicks of the mouse it was done—Fiona had severed ties with cyberspace. Now all she had to worry about was saving her reputation in the
real
world.

AFTER MEETING KAI
at the bubble tea shop, Laiping rode the crowded bus back across the company campus, worry­ing that she would be late for her shift. The bus seemed to take forever, with a dozen people getting on and off at every stop. By the time they arrived near Building 4, she had no time to get dinner at the cafeteria, or to return to the dorm to drop off her mobile, which workers were not allowed to take into the factory. She saw Fen coming down the stairs from the factory floor while she was going up, and she cut across the stream of workers.

“Put this under my pillow for me?” she asked, handing her the mobile phone.

“Sure,” replied Fen. “How are you?”

But there was no time for Laiping to reply before each was swept away by the crowd.

Laiping hadn't eaten since the morning, and her stomach rumbled in complaint. She was also short on sleep, but nervous energy propelled her through her shift.

“Slow down!” hissed Bohai from his station beside her.

“Mind your own business,” she hissed back.

When they broke at midnight, Mr. Wu praised her. “See how quickly Laiping has worked, and how well,” he said, holding up a couple of finished circuit boards from her full bin for all to see. “What's the matter with the rest of you donkey-brains? You must work faster!”

She ate ravenously at the meal break, and in the morning after her shift was over went back to the cafeteria for breakfast before returning to the dorm, where she slept soundly until six in the evening. When she woke up, Laiping thought about trying to reach her mother, but her phone battery was low. Fen must have used it—without her permission! Still, she was secretly relieved not to have to make the call. If her father was worse, she'd rather not know. She wanted to hold onto this good feeling she had. Finally, she was taking her future into her own hands. Somehow, with Kai's help, she would find a way to make the company give her the money she was owed.

But on Wednesday evening, Laiping broke her promise to Kai. When she met Min in the cafeteria before her shift, she noticed that her cousin's cough was worse, and her chopsticks trembled when she lifted food to her mouth. Min's transfer to another department, away from the toxic cleaner, still hadn't come through.

“There's a meeting tomorrow,” Laiping told her, keeping her voice low. “I'm going to tell them about what that screen cleaner is doing to you.”

“Don't you dare!”

“But you said the workers on your line want to talk to Kai,” replied Laiping.

“The guy who was saying that the loudest got fired! And then they made the rest of us stay for an hour after our shift, writing letters of apology to Steve Chen.”

“They can't treat us like this,” Laiping told Min. “It's not fair.”

“Keep your voice down! You sound like you've been brainwashed by that guy!”

“I'm not brainwashed,” Laiping replied hotly.

“Fen told me you've been seeing him.”

“How would she know?” asked Laiping in a huff. Then she remembered the low battery. “She's been snooping in my mobile!” If Fen had looked in the address book, she would have found Kai's number.

“She's worried about you, and so am I. She told me to tell you to stay away from him.”

Suddenly, Laiping wished she hadn't told Min about Kai, or the meeting. They may have been cousins, but Kai was right—you had to be careful about who you trusted.

“I won't go then,” she lied. “Forget I said anything.”

“Don't worry, I will,” replied Min.

Laiping glanced over to the nearest security guard, standing sentry by the wall. Her eyes were forward. She hadn't heard anything—Laiping was sure of it.

 

AT THE FACTORY
, Laiping made a point of staying to the far right of the crowded staircase as she climbed up, knowing that Fen would be on the left coming down. She was angry at her for nosing around in her mobile, and for talking to Min behind her back. Fen gave her a friendly wave, but Laiping noticed that she was making no effort to come over—so maybe Fen was avoiding Laiping just as much as Laiping was avoiding her.