The Kiss Off (27 page)

Drew was at the window and waving for us both to come inside.

“Poppy, you have to see this!”

“What is it?”

“It’s Ty, he’s on TV and he’s talking about you!”

I froze for a moment, but just a moment. Cam and my eyes locked together. Ty. It hadn’t been Ty in two long weeks, but right at that moment, of course. Of course it had to be Ty.

“Get in here, you’re missing it!”

I felt a pang of shame as Cam watched me climb up, my legs dripping, as I scooped up my shoes on my way into the house, bracing myself for what I was going to see. I heard the water move and droplets hitting the ground and knew that Cam was following me in.

“So you’ve been hard to get a hold of lately, haven’t you?” the perky TV presenter said. She fidgeted on the spot, waggling the microphone between them.

“Yeah, I guess,” Ty said. He glanced at the camera but settled his gaze on her. Aside from the way he had stuffed his hands in his back pockets, the way he only did when he was uncomfortable, he looked calm and in control. But I knew better.

“Not hitting the clubs so much.”

“Right.”

“Have you been hiding?”

“Yeah well, pretty much, yes,” Ty said with a forced smile. “This whole adventure, since The Kiss Off and the record dropped, it’s been amazing and exhilarating and everything we always dreamed of…”

“But…”

“But it’s also led to a huge loss in privacy. In that, we really don’t have any. And that’s been hard to adjust to. I mean some days you’re completely surrounded by photographers and fans all wanting to meet you and asking you questions – and I’m not complaining…Tommy, he
loves
it. He’ll talk to reporters and paparazzi and fans all day, but he’s not a private person. The rest of us, we’re so thankful for the support of our fans and the paparazzi help us reach them, but-”

“They can get pretty intense, am I right? The paparazzi?” The woman asked. Like it wasn’t for shows like hers that they were out there harassing celebrities in the first place.

“Yeah, absolutely. But I get it, it’s part of the job, it’s fine. It’s fine until they start changing the contexts of the pictures they’re taking.”

“Like some pictures of you and some ladies.”

“Exactly.”

“Any one lady in particular?”

“Well she didn’t seem too happy about the pictures of Roxy,” Ty said, cringing and rubbing the back of his neck. He turned his attention to the camera, staring straight at me. “Which were totally innocent, by the way.” I felt a rush of heat to my cheeks and, though determined not to look back at them, I could feel several sets of eyes boring into me. I kept my own glued to the TV, or if I couldn’t bear it, the small blue mark on the cream wall paint. I didn’t know what it was, I didn’t care what it was, all I knew was it wasn’t the TV and it wasn’t anyone else. It definitely wasn’t Cam.

“Right, your girlfriend Poppy Douglas, writer of The Kiss Off and several other songs she has aired on YouTube,” she said. “Tell us about Poppy. From the look of her latest video a couple of weeks ago, she wasn’t too happy with you.”

“No, she wasn’t, and it-”

“Have you spoken to her since?”

He paused for a moment, like he wasn’t sure if he should answer. Pretty ballsy of her to ask something like that. Wasn’t he
just
talking about wanting privacy? Finally he decided to answer. “No.” He sighed, looking frustrated. He looked at the camera for a moment, looked at me, and then back to the presenter. “No, she’s not talking to me. She’s blocked my number or something.”

“Ouch.”

“Yeah.”

“What a hypocrite,” Cam muttered. I glanced at him, confused. “Yeah, he’s a
hypocrite
. He’s on national TV talking about how he wants privacy, and about how his girlfriend’s not taking his calls. Couldn’t get much more public. Hy-po-crite.”

I grimaced and looked back at the TV. He was totally right. I couldn’t believe he was saying all this at all, but on TV? For the whole world to watch? But then again…well I guess I’d done the same thing. Except who knew where in the world my viewers were coming from. And it could be viewed day and night forever more. This interview was on now, and after that it was gone. Probably not completely, but more gone than my videos were. Hopefully my parents weren’t watching this. Surely not. They wouldn’t be home for ages.

“I hear she’s been grounded,” the reporter said. Ty’s eyes lit up. I guess she knew that since her colleagues hadn’t caught me out of the house in forever.

“Really? Oh,” he said. “I didn’t know that.”

“Yeah. So maybe even if she wanted to talk to you, she’s not allowed.”

“Oh. Yeah. Okay,” Ty said, looking thoughtful.

“Do you want to talk to him?” Cam said.

“Sshhh!” I waved him away, staring at the screen. I so wasn’t able to answer that. I closed my eyes and the image of my naked self all over the internet flashed behind my eyelids. I opened them again and blinked at the screen, trying to flush it away. No. No, I didn’t want to talk to him.

“But, of course, she has pretty good reason to not be returning your calls, doesn’t she, Ty?” the presenter said. Damn right.

“Well that’s the thing. That’s what the new track is all about.”

“Okay, tell us about your new track,
Liar Liar
. You haven’t responded publicly to any of the claims or accusations that have been made until now.”

“No, I haven’t, Anita, it’s my private life,
our
private lives. It’s not something I would have wanted public anyway so we, as a band decided it didn’t require a comment.”

“Keeping your private life private, as it should be,” the woman, Anita said. Like it wasn’t her job to dig up all the dirt she could find. The hypocrisy was breeding.

“What a douche,” Cam muttered.

“But there is someone who needs me to make a statement, have a response, and this is it. We wrote this song all together as a band, and the guys, they wouldn’t let me lie even if I wanted to, so it’s the honest truth about everything. The boys, we all love her, so we wrote-”

Anita’s eyes lit up and she cut in. “You and Seb, Archie and Tom all love Poppy Douglas?”

“Yeah, they all think she’s great, and-”

“So you love her, Ty?” she asked with a sly smile. “Are you in love with Poppy Douglas?”

Ty cringed and looked away, his eyes wandered the floor, the ceiling, he glanced at the camera in panic. He’d walked right into it.

“Holy shit,” someone said from behind me. More eyes flit in my direction, everyone held a collective breath.

“Yeah,” Ty said finally. On live TV. Oh my God. “Yeah, I am.” He walked over to the camera and pointed at it, pointed at me. A girl beside me squealed and clapped her hands over her mouth. Anita the presenter looked beside herself with joy. Of course she was. What an exclusive. “Poppy, I’m in love with you, and I’m sorry. About everything.”

“You heard it here, first, girls,” Anita said, putting her arm around Ty and giving him a side hug. He grinned, seeming to feel pretty happy with himself. “Ty Academy of Lies is most definitely, completely-”

“Uncontrollably,” Ty added.

“Uncontrollably,” Anita repeated. “You can’t help it. It’s love. Ty, Academy of Lies is definitely, completely, uncontrollably in love. Taken. Off the market. I can almost hear the sounds of fan girls across the country crying.”

“Whoa. That took some balls,” Drew said.

“Talk about the big gesture,” Ravi agreed.

“But wait!” Anita said, turning to Ty with concern. “We don’t know what Poppy thinks!” That was true, they didn’t. And I had to admit, neither did Poppy. I couldn’t look at Cam, standing somewhere off to my left. I just couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to know what he was thinking.

“That’s true,” Ty agreed with Anita.

“Do you think she’ll take you back?”

“I hope she will.”

“Stay tuned?” Anita beamed.

“Well…if she does I hope it’s between us. Anyway, should we introduce the song now?”

Anita blinked a couple of times, disappointed that the interview, her exclusive was clearly over. “Yes, let’s do it. Take it away.”

“Okay everyone at home, this is the Academy of Lies’ new song, it’s called
Liar Liar
. And it’s my one and only response, our response, to all the stuff that’s been going on lately. It’s all we have to say. Poppy, I hope you’re watching.”

And the clip started. The camera panned out from a pile of scattered photos, all of Ty and a girl in a Beatles tee shirt with messy blond curls. I guess she was supposed to be me. Photos from happy times. It panned out to find Ty and the boys sleeping in a trashed hotel suite after a party, sleeping on the couch, on the floor, Tommy was even lying on the bar. A woman snuck over to Ty and picked up his cell phone and scrolled through. Her eyes lit up and she glanced deviously at Ty and pressed some more buttons. A sext of the girl, the Fake Poppy flashed onto the screen, she was posed the same as my photo but there were big black stars over her private parts. I cringed and looked away from the screen for a moment. I took a deep breath and looked back. The photo replicated and replicated and there were shots of people of a bunch of different nationalities looking at it on their computers. It was global.

Then the boys were all in an office with platinum records all over the walls. They were on one side of a desk yelling and pointing at a man and that same evil cell phone spying bee-yotch on the other side of the desk. The woman walked out of the building carrying a box and her belongings. Was he saying it was super-publicist Sasha that released the sext? He didn’t do it? And they fired her because of me?

Soon there were shots of Ty and a girl like Roxy Washington holding hands and laughing in the street. They did a cute peck on the lips, some photos were taken and seconds later the pair separated, stopped laughing and both looked off camera. Ty was wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, like he found the kiss gross. Oh wait, was that lip gloss he was wiping off? It panned back to find a guy holding a boom above them, a bunch of camera men, a makeup artist who walked over and fiddled with Fake Roxy’s hair. Was that intimate moment on the cover of magazines actually nothing more than… yes. A scene from the real commercial with Roxy and Ty came on screen, they held a pack of chewing gum toward the camera. Next, Ty was watching my video, or Fake Poppy doing an impression of it. He looked sad. Photos of Ty with his arm around the woman in pink, coming out of the nightclub flashed onto the screen, followed by some grainy video footage, maybe a fan’s camera phone. The woman showed off for the cameras, ignoring Ty until she nearly fell in the gutter and he helped her up. She clung to him and he tried to duck away but she planted a kiss on his lips which sent the camera flashes into a frenzy. He looked sort of repulsed by it when she let him go. Then he was on his phone, trying to call someone. And the girl that was me wouldn’t answer.

So there wasn’t a lot of artistry to the video, but it was clear as day what the point was. I got it. It was all lies, nothing was the way it looked. Except for the part where I wouldn’t take his calls. At least now I knew he had been calling.

“Soooo I’m gonna take off,” I said with a tight smile. I looked around at everyone, skimming my gaze past Cam.

“What?”

“You’re leaving?” a girl said.

“It hasn’t even finished.”

“You seriously can’t go yet,” a girl with…actually she had really cute earrings, said to me. “Don’t you want to talk about it?”

Um…
no.
I didn’t even remotely want to talk about it, not with you. I caught a couple of quick glances at Cam. Oooh this was going to be awkward.

“It’s cool,” Drew said. “Thanks for coming.”

“Right,” I said, backing toward the front hallway, my feet itching to flee. “Thanks for inviting me, Drew. See you all at school.”

I turned and scurried down the hallway, hopping as I put one sneaker on and then the other. The door slammed behind me, banging a couple of times against the frame. I scampered down off the porch, scratched my legs on some branches as I wrenched the bike out of the bush and rode it as fast as I could, all the way home. I didn’t look back.

***

Chapter Twenty-One

When I slowed the bike and pulled onto the sidewalk in front of the house, our car was in the driveway. Oh crap. What were they doing home so soon? I swear it hadn’t been more than an hour…maybe an hour and a half? There was no way dinner and ice-skating only took an hour and a half.

I stopped the bike outside the gate and sat on it, thinking. What do I do? How long had they been home? Had they noticed I was missing yet? Could I sneak in and pretend I’d been napping? I should have thought of that. Before I even left I should have made big lumps in the blankets and recorded some snoring sounds in case of this exact eventuality. Well. Okay, maybe not that but I should have done
something
.

I wheeled the bike back to the garage and dumped it in the driveway, took a deep breath and trudged toward the house.