Truth about Truman School (3 page)

Write two versions of what happened. That's what Zebby Bower wanted people to do. Write the nice school version for language arts and then write the truth for the website.

Well, guess what? I did that. I wrote two versions. But I have to tell you, the version I turned in to Zebby still isn't the whole truth. I couldn't write the whole truth. Not even for her, because even though she's going to change everyone's name, people from Truman will still be able to figure out who I am, just by what I wrote.

So I decided to write a third version.
This
version.

You won't be able to tell who I am by the things I write in this version. This version is going to be totally anonymous. Which means I can tell you things this time around that I couldn't tell you before. The first thing I want to tell you is: Everyone's making Lilly Clarke out to be this huge victim. Lilly wasn't a victim. She deserved what she got. The second thing I want to tell you is: I've wanted to bring Lilly Clarke down for a long time. I thought I could bring her down by sending her a few emails now and then and scaring her a little.

But then the Truth about Truman site came along. The Truth about Truman made it easy to bring her down.

My boyfriend Reece and I instant-messaged each other almost every day after school. (I LOVED saying that —“my
boyfriend
, Reece!”) Technically, I wasn't supposed to be on the computer after school, but after school was the best time to be on the computer because my mom was at work. So I didn't have to worry about her standing over my shoulder and watching what my friends and I were saying to each other.

Almost every time I was on the computer, I had a conversation with Reece going in one window, a conversation with Hayley and Brianna going in a second window, and a conversation with somebody else going in a third window.

Hayley and Brianna were always trying to get me to tell them what Reece and I talked about. Honestly, we never talked about anything very interesting. Most of the time we just did our pre-algebra together. Or we talked about weird things. Like vegetables.

I remember once, Reece tried to convince me that ketchup was a vegetable. I said it was a condiment. We went back and forth for like twenty minutes. Reece was so funny! That's why I liked him. (That, and he was
cute!
)

But I couldn't tell Hayley and Brianna that Reece and I were talking about vegetables. So I just said all mysterious-like, “wouldn't u like to know …
”

“Ooooooooo!” Brianna typed.

I used to think my life was sooooooo great back then. I had good friends, a cute boyfriend, popularity … I had everything. But then it all went away. Just like that.

Hello? Had no one but me noticed that Lilly was a total
boyfriend stealer
??? Hayley and Reece used to go out in fifth grade! Everyone knew that. Even people who didn't go to Central with us knew that.

Okay. So maybe Lilly didn't exactly steal Reece away from Hayley, but wasn't there like a rule that said you don't go after your friends' ex-boyfriends? You didn't see
me
going after Reece, did you?

But Hayley never complained about Lilly and Reece. She was always all, Oh, aren't they a cute couple? Which I thought was very mature of her. I'm sure deep down it really bothered her.

Lilly did stuff like that all the time. She was totally selfish. In fact, maybe that was why this whole thing happened? Why people stopped liking Lilly, I mean. And why they posted some of that stuff about her online. If you're the kind of person who goes after your friends' ex-boyfriends, you shouldn't be surprised if people get tired of you.

So why didn't our group think about doing an underground school newspaper or website thingie? We're the ones who really should be telling everyone about our school because, well, let's be honest … we're the ones who run things around here: Me and Brianna and Reece and Jonathan.

Our regular school paper, the
Bugle,
was so lame. Nobody ever read it. People were reading the Truth about Truman, though. They were posting on it, too. You have to admire people who get something going like that. Even if they aren't in our group.

So I got to thinking … maybe there was something else our group could get going at Truman. Like … a cheerleading squad! We didn't have any cheerleaders at our school. None. Can you believe it?

Last year I asked our principal, Mr. Gates, if we could start a cheerleading squad, but he said no. He said, “The school doesn't have enough money for another activity.”

I said it didn't have to cost money. Lilly, Brianna, and I would cheer at all the football, basketball, and baseball games (wherever there were cute guys!) for free. But Mr. Gates still said no because “it wasn't about paying us to cheer, it was about paying one of the teachers to be our faculty advisor.” And the school couldn't do that.

So no cheerleading squad.

But the Truth about Truman didn't have a faculty advisor, either. Those kids, whoever they were, ran that whole thing all by themselves. So, I got to thinking … why couldn't Lilly, Brianna, and me start a cheerleading squad all by ourselves? All we had to do was buy some cute outfits and show up and cheer! We didn't need an advisor any more than the people who started that website needed one.

Lilly and Brianna were just as excited as I was when I IMed them my idea later that night. They were all, “yeah, we should totally do it! That would be so great!”

So I said, “Maybe that website—the Truth about Truman, or whatever—would do an article on us? After all, they're an underground newspaper and we're an underground cheerleading squad.”

“Maybe,” Brianna wrote back. “In fact, maybe they'll even take videos of us cheering and post them on the site?”

“Maybe,” I said.

I waited for Lilly to say something, but she didn't. Reece had probably IMed her, so she was probably writing back to him. He was cute, but he was
boring
. And he expected you to drop everything whenever he came online. That's why
I
dropped
him
.

Oh, well. I emailed the Truth about Truman and informed them our school now had our very own underground cheerleading squad and that they (the Truth about Truman people) should come to Friday's game and write an article about us and shoot some video for their website. We could be like their next big feature!