Nice and Mean (8 page)

When I'd dragged my three photos into the slide show, I got to choose: Should the photos fade into each other, tile, or cartwheel? Cartwheel sounded like the most fun, but as I now knew from
V/V
, fading was the real way to do it. I clicked “fade” and sat back to watch the Victim-a-Thon.

Forty minutes later, Addie was sitting on my beanbag chair on the floor, iMovie was up on my computer screen, and everything was in place for me to hit “play.” So why
wasn't I showing her my video?

“It's just a rough cut,” I told her, my hand hovering above the mouse. “I mean, I haven't even put in the sound.” Addie didn't know it yet, but next weekend, when we went over to her place to get dressed before Caleb Rosenheck's Bar Mitzvah, she was going to hook me up with her brother's sound effects CDs. “I'm just saying, everything's not, like, completely perfect.”

“'Rina.” Addie elbowed my legs. “You know it's going to be good.”

“No, I know, I'm just saying—” I know some parts are bad, and I'm working on them. “I haven't had time to—” Figure out when to start the music, or make sure I'd gotten the title color right. “You just need to remember that . . . Oh, forget it.” If I couldn't show my video to a plebe, how could I show it to everybody in the Arts Assembly? “Here.”

The video started black to be dramatic. Then, from either side of the screen, hot-pink letters faded in, reading “Victim/.” Then, burning in slowly in bold, came the word “Victorious.”

Addie clapped. “I love it!”

I bit my lip. So far, so good.

The screen flipped back to black. Red letters appeared, saying, “Starring your hot, HOT, HOTTTT hosts . . .”

Pictures of Elizabeth and Julian faded onto the screen.

Addie squeezed her hands into fists. “Eee!”

I grabbed my elbows so I didn't do my idiot grin. She was right, though. I had nailed the credits.

“Tonight's stars are . . .”

Three of Chelsea: fine, fine, and not too bad. One photo of Crystal, cut from the scene I'd shot the day before.

“Oh!” Addie pouted. “My face looks so fat!”

“What?” Her face was barely in the background. “It does not.”

And then the Rachel photos.

After Rachel with the pigtails, Addie burst out laughing.

When she saw Rachel drowning in the Hula-hoop belt, Addie said, “Oh, wow.”

And with Rachel in the halter top, Addie gasped.

The music faded and the screen froze. I waited.

And waited.

“I know it's not much,” I said, “but I've really only been working on it since yesterday.”

Addie shook her head quickly. “It's not that,” she said.

What was her problem, then? “I know it's a little long,” I said. Most
Victim/Victorious
credits were between sixteen and nineteen seconds—hello, squeegee. “But I wanted to include everyone.”

“Oh.” She was practically in a trance. “I didn't even notice.”

“So?” I said. Was she going to make me ask? “What did you think?”

Finally Addie looked up at me. “Are you sure you should show that?”

I stared at her. “What?”

She pulled her knees up to her chest. “I just . . .” With her hair half-up and her little gold ball earrings, she looked more like a fifth grader than someone in seventh. “I mean, isn't she going to feel . . . you know . . .”

What, I thought, feel
bad
? The way Rachel makes me feel every time she brags about Julian? Or when she laughed after I told her my parents took away my phone as punishment for the poll? No, we couldn't possibly make Rachel feel
bad
.

“That was kind of the plan, Adds,” I said, circling the mouse over the word
Victorious
. “That's what we talked about the other day. I mean, after what she did to you last weekend . . .”

When I'd told Addie what I was going to do with
Victim/Victorious
, she'd admitted that the weekend before, Rachel had invited her to her house in the Hamptons and then ditched her and invited Madison and Chelsea instead. “It's not right for her to dump you like that,” I told her now.
“You're her best friend.”

“No, I know.”

“Even Elizabeth thought you should say something,” I reminded her, “and you know how much she hates in-your-face-ness.”

Addie picked at her cuticles. “Yeah. I just—those pictures are so bad.”

I was starting to feel weird sitting so high up, so I pushed back my chair and sat on the floor to face her. “She chose to wear those clothes,” I told her. “It's not like we punk'd her, or put her head on someone else's body. We're just showing everyone what she chose to wear.”

Addie didn't seem convinced, though. “I guess.” She stuck the edge of her thumb in her mouth.

Oh, come on. Not just the sucking on fingers, but the poor, poor Rachel pity party.

Then I had a terrible thought: What if people agreed with Addie? What if they thought it was mean to show Rachel's ugly outfits? If I was the only one doing it, they'd all blame me. If it was me and Addie, though, we could say, “What? It was a joke,” and people would believe us.

I hated to admit it, but I needed Addie. Plus, I needed her sound effects.

“Hey, you know what?” I said. “I have some cute photos
of her.” I hauled myself off the floor. “If you want, I can replace one of the photos with—hold on.” I clicked around. “This one.” It was a plain old shot of the four of us with Rachel in sweats, back before she chose to make her clothing a daily art project.

“Um,” said Addie, “I guess that would be okay.”

“Then I'll do it.” It was a genius idea! Rachel couldn't complain as much if I showed a good picture of her. “I just think, Adds, you need to show her that she can't walk all over you.”

Addie took her thumb out of her mouth. “I guess you're right.”

I nudged her shoulder with my knee. “Of course I'm right. Nobody messes with Addie Ling.”

Addie blushed. Even if, actually, people
did
mess with Addie Ling, she was on board. And that meant no one would mess with Marina Glass.

SACHI'S VIDEO NIGHTMARE #8.0


INTERIOR. JANE JACOBS MIDDLE SCHOOL STAIRWELL—DAY


Sachi and Marina open the door to the stairwell, carrying video equipment.


Eerie horror-movie MUSIC. Bats SCREECH.


The door SLAMS shut.


A THUMP—Marina drops the bag with the video camera. She begins to strangle Sachi.


MARINA


Not only do I have to work on your stupid video, but I can't even edit my footage today? You're so dead.


Sachi gasps and sputters.


MARINA


(strangling)


Take that! And that!


Dead, Sachi slumps against Marina and slides to the floor.


Marina picks up the video camera and tripod.


MARINA


Now I'm off to make the real video.


There were no bats in the stairwell, and Marina seemed only silent, not violent, as we descended to the basement, but I could feel her anger all the same. I had told Mr. Phillips that I didn't need Marina to come with me, but he had looked at me in surprise and said, “Partners film together.” I knew that wasn't the answer Marina had wanted to hear, and with just the two of us in the dark, echoey stairs, I felt like I had to say something.

“I'm sorry Mr. Phillips wouldn't let you edit,” I told Marina. “I'm glad you'll be helping me”—or perhaps not—“but if it had been up to me, I would have said you could stay upstairs.”

“Whatever,” she said. Then she muttered, “I don't know why you have to film during play rehearsal.”

I hadn't expected
that
. “I don't
have
to,” I said. “But that's where my friends are, and they said I could film them when they weren't onstage. I don't know when else I would do it.”

Marina shrugged. “It's fine.”

Okay. If it was fine . . .

I had to admit, there was another reason I wanted to film in the auditorium: If Alex was on stage crew, maybe he
would be around when I filmed. Carrying a video camera always made me feel slightly cool, and on top of that, I was wearing the black hoop earrings Lainey had bought me when I hadn't been able to come to the Kyle Griffin movie the weekend before.

Then again
, I thought as I rounded a corner,
why should it matter which earrings I wore?
I didn't want to be one of those people who needed to be dressed a certain way to feel good. I ran my thumb over Nani's ring. It was all so complicated. Some days I truly wished I could go to school with my cousins in India.
They
got to wear uniforms.

And would I really learn anything from my video, anyway? I ran through my interview questions for what seemed like the twentieth time:

1. How do you choose what to wear?

2. Do you try to be unique, or to fit in? Why?

3. How do you think people decide some things are cool and some are not?

4. Do you know what's going to be popular? How?

5. Do you know what things are uncool? What makes them uncool?

I'd run the questions by Lainey in the hall before Video. “Yeah, these are fun,” she'd said, handing them back to me.

“You're sure?” I looked at her closely. “They're not too . . .”

She pulled a book from her locker. “Too what?”

Dorky? Nerdy? Immature?

“I don't know.” I tucked them back into my folder. “Thanks.”

Flora had come loping down the hall just then, and I was glad Lainey was a fast reader. Even though I was going to interview Flora later, I didn't want to give her the chance to laugh at my questions.

Flora had said that rehearsal was mostly a nonstop festival of sitting around, but when Marina and I got to the auditorium, everybody was onstage singing this hoppy, boppy song. They sounded great! I wanted to leap up and join them. I glanced at Marina to see if she was feeling the same, but her arms were folded, and her jaw stuck out to the side. Oh, what was wrong now? Why did she always have to be in a bad mood?

When the song was over, a voice called, “Can I help you girls?”

As I looked for the person who had said it, there was a massive shuffling sound: everyone on stage, turning to look at me and Marina. Oh no! Was Alex up there? Had he seen me? There were so many people . . .

“Girls?”

Finally I realized where the voice was coming from: Ms.
Mancini, the director, who was sitting in the audience. “Hi,” I said, my voice sounding tiny in the cavernous auditorium. “We came to do some interviews?”

“And who said you could do that?” Ms. Mancini folded her arms.

I searched the stage for Flora and Lainey. “My friends?”

“Busted,” said a voice, and everyone laughed.

“I don't have to do interviews,” I said, my face feeling hot with shame. “I could just shoot B-roll, or not do anything . . .”

“B-row?” said Ms. Mancini, confused.

“Um, no. B-roll?” A few kids snickered. How horrifying, to correct a teacher! “You know, background shots?” I sounded like a huge nerd! Somewhere, Alex Bradley was probably laughing himself onto the floor. Beside me, Marina was scraping off her nail polish with the focus of a concert violinist.

“B-roll, right,” said Ms. Mancini. “Well . . .” She turned behind her and looked at the clock. “We're going to do scene work soon, so why don't you set up your camera in the back, and when people are done, you can interview them.”

“Thank you,” I said, hugely relieved. “I really appreciate—”

She waved me away. “No problem.”

I ducked my head and followed Marina, who was stalking up the aisle toward the back of the auditorium. I hadn't even
started filming, and already I was experiencing maximum humiliation.

After Marina and I finished setting up, she slumped into a seat in the back row and whipped out her phone to play a game. I watched her enviously for a moment, wishing my parents didn't consider cell phones to be “outrageous, expensive toys.” Then I remembered—I had the best toy invented in my possession right at that moment: a video camera.

I turned around the tripod to face the kids onstage. It was cool to watch people without them knowing I was looking at them. I was like a giant eye, yet invisible. Too bad I still hadn't caught sight of Alex!

As I zoomed in on people in the crowd, I noticed a slight difference between seventh- and eighth-grade outfits. Except for Flora and Lainey, the seventh graders seemed to be more interested in looking crisp and neat, in dark jeans and colored tops, while the eighth graders looked sloppy but cool in sweatpants and T-shirts with the collars ripped out. Was being sloppy an older-kids thing? Would Marina and her friends start ripping their T-shirts when we graduated to eighth grade? Or was that just one class's style compared to another's?

Eventually Ms. Mancini said, “All right, folks—pajama
party.” People seemed to know what that meant, because everyone except the girls playing leads jumped off the stage and took a seat in the audience. Lainey stayed onstage —yay, Lainey!—and Flora joined a cluster of girls next to the stage with their scripts—understudies, I guessed. Some girls were coming toward me, and I realized it was Tessa and Phoebe from my math class. “Hi!” I whispered loudly, and waved. Once they got closer, I asked, “Are you here to be interviewed?”

They nodded enthusiastically, and my stomach did a little flip of joy. I was actually going to start filming! Then my stomach did a different kind of flip as I realized Marina would see me while I filmed. I glanced toward her seat, hoping she was still involved in her phone, but she was gone. I finally spotted her sitting over on the side with Addie Ling and some other girls.