Truth about Truman School (6 page)

Were we good or were we good? I think more people came up to congratulate
us
than the football players after the game. But I'm not surprised. We really were that good.

As soon as I got home from the game, I uploaded that article I'd written the night before to that Truth about Truman website. I don't know why
I
had to be the one to write it! After all, I was the one who came up with the idea to start a cheerleading squad. I was the one who found our pompoms and decided on our outfits and picked out the cheers. You'd think Lilly or Brianna could have done
something
. But n-o-o-o!

While I was on the site, I looked around. There were a few new bad teacher stories, so I read those. Then I checked out the new poll. It said: Who's the biggest poser at our school? There was a picture of a real lard-butt under it.

Seriously, how does a person let themselves go like that? I didn't get it. I weighed myself every single morning, and if I was up two pounds, I went on a diet. No bread. No cheese. No pasta. Didn't most people do the same thing? Well, people who cared about their appearance, I mean?

Even if you didn't weigh yourself every day like I did, wouldn't you at least notice that your clothes were getting a little tight? Or when you walked by a mirror in a store or something, wouldn't you notice that hey, you kind of looked like Miss Piggy? And wouldn't that make you want to
do something
about yourself?

Honestly, I didn't see how this girl could bring herself to go out in public like that. She had, like, bags of fat hanging off her cheeks and her chin, and she had these beady little mouse eyes and no smile. (Though, really … what would someone who looks like that have to smile about?) And it wasn't just that she was fat and ugly and didn't know how to smile. She also had greasy hair. I'm sorry, but there's just no excuse for greasy hair.

I scrolled down to see the results of the poll. Did anyone know who this was? I wondered.

I just about choked. Forty-three people thought it was … ME!

Yes! For once, Hayley called
me
instead of Lilly when something was on her mind. It seemed like lately she called Lilly before she called me. Sometimes she even called Lilly
instead
of me. Like Lilly was her best friend now instead of me.

“It's a joke,” I told Hayley right away. (Well, as soon as I logged on to www.truthabouttruman.com to see what she was talking about.) “Nobody really thinks that's you.”

“Forty-three people do,” she whined.

I didn't know what to say. I've known Hayley Wood my whole, entire life, and I can tell you she has never looked anything like that picture. Hayley is like the prettiest girl in our school. She's got a perfect body. Perfect hair. Perfect skin. Seriously, she could be a model. How could anyone think the girl in the picture was Hayley?

“Twenty-seven people think it's Lilly,” I pointed out. “It kind of looks like Lilly, don't you think? And nineteen people think it's Shelby Adman. But I don't think it's Shelby—”

“It doesn't matter who it
really
is,” Hayley said. “The point is, forty-three people think it's me!”

“Somebody probably just voted for you because they thought it would be funny, and then everyone else did it, too.” It was the only explanation I could come up with.

“But it's
not
funny!” Hayley protested. “Forty-three people at our school think I'm fat. Forty-three people think I'm a poser!”

“Come on,” I said. “You're not fat. And you're definitely not a poser. Everyone knows that girl isn't you. That's like so ridiculous it's … funny.” Even though we'd just established that it's
not
funny.

I waited, but Hayley didn't say anything. Was she buying it? Was I helping at all? I really, really wanted to help.

“I have to go,” she said suddenly.

“Wait! Why? What are you going to do?”

“I'm going to call Lilly.”

It had to be Zebby Bower who put that picture of me up on that site. Zebby or Amr. And they probably did it because they're
still
mad that I decided to stop being friends with them in sixth grade. Some people will hold a grudge
forever!

I could probably just tell the whole school that the Truth about Truman was Zebby and Amr's website and everyone would stop reading it because who cared what
they
had to say about anything? But people would wonder how
I
knew it was their site? I didn't want to have to explain that I used to be friends with them. What would people think?

Besides, even if everyone stopped going on that site, that awful picture was still out there. And I couldn't pretend it wasn't me. Everyone who went to Hoover knew it was me.

What was I going to do?

My cell phone rang while I was trying to figure out what to do. It was Hayley.

“Did you know there's this picture of some lard-butt up on that Truth about Truman website?” Hayley practically yelled at me.

My throat started to close. I couldn't speak.
Did
Hayley know the lard-butt was me?

“It's part of a poll,” Hayley went on. “You're supposed to guess who you think it is.” Her voice sounded all tight and pinched.

Of course she knew it was me. By now, the whole school probably knew it was me. What could I possibly say to Hayley? She was really, really upset. I could hear it in her voice.

“Lilly,” she cried. “Forty-three people think that girl is me!”

Wait—what? “You're kidding,” I said.

It didn't sound like she was kidding.

I went to the computer and turned it on.
Come on,
come on
, I thought as I waited for it to boot up.
Hurry up!
When I finally got on that site, I couldn't believe my eyes. Hayley was right; forty-three people thought the girl in that picture was her. And only twenty-seven people thought it was me.

Hayley wasn't upset that I used to be fat; she was upset because people thought
she
used to be fat.

That picture was three years old. Was it possible people had forgotten I used to look like that? If so, there was still time to salvage this. All I had to do was get that picture removed from that website. Which meant … I was going to have to talk to Zebby and Amr.

I hadn't spoken to either one of them in close to three years. But I was pretty sure they were the ones who put that picture up. I was even more certain they were the ones who ran that website. So what choice did I have? As soon as I got off the phone with Hayley, I wrote Zebby an email.

What? Forty-three people thought the girl in the picture was the most popular girl in school? Were these people blind and stupid? Or just stupid?

I needed to set the record straight.

“i just got an email from Lilly,” I instant-messaged Amr on Saturday. “did u get one, 2?”

“no. what duz it say?”

I picked up the phone and called Amr so I could read it to him. “It says, ‘I know you and Amr are the people who started the Truth about Truman.com, but I bet no one else does. I also know that you guys are the ones who put that picture of me up on your site. I want you to take it down. If you take it down before anyone guesses it's me, then I won't tell anyone that it's just you guys doing that site.' Can you believe that? ‘
Just
you guys,' like we're nobodies or something.”

“We
are
nobodies,” Amr pointed out.

“Yeah, well…” I paced back and forth in my room. “She didn't need to say so.” It just reminded me we weren't all friends anymore. Sometimes it was hard to believe we ever were.

“Did she say anything else?” Amr asked.

“No. That was it.” Wasn't that enough?

“Are you going to write back?”

“Yes, but I'm still figuring out what I'm going to say.” So far, I was thinking something along the lines of,
First of all, we don't care that you know it's us. Second of all, what makes you so sure we're the ones who posted that picture of you? Anybody who went to Hoover could have taken it out of our fifth-grade memory book. I'm sure we're not the only people you've ticked off.
And third of all, we're NOT taking it down! Where do you get off talking to us like that? You're no better than we are. In fact, you—

“Uh … it probably doesn't matter what you say,” Amr said all of a sudden. I could hear him typing in the background. “It looks like we're too late.”

“What do you mean we're too late?”

“Go to the site.”

I sat back down at my desk. Cradling the phone between my shoulder and my ear, I typed in www.truthabouttruman.com. It was kind of slow loading this time. Was that because there were a lot of people trying to load it right now?

When the page finally came up, I clicked on the Who's-the-biggest-poser-in-our-school link. If I thought the main page was slow to load, this page was even slower.

“Is it loading slow for you, too?” I asked Amr.

“Yeah. You'll see why in a minute.”

Finally, Lilly's picture came up.

But it looked different. Someone had gone in and edited it! They made her eyes bigger, and drew horns on her head, a mustache under her nose, a beard on her chin, and two big teeth hanging down from her closed mouth. There was a box with an arrow pointing to the teeth that said click here. So I did, and a little speech bubble popped out of Lilly's mouth. It said, “Oink! Oink! I am Lilly Clarke.”