Holy cow!
I rush back to the living room in a daze, so shocked that I’m not sure what to check first. Julie sits next to me on the couch, looking over my shoulder.
“Oh my,” she says, eyes wide. “What happened?”
“I don’t know!”
I swipe away the missed phone call notifications and then go to the texts, seeing my mom’s name at the top. I click on her texts first.
Momma:Annie, what on earth is going on? A movie star???? Call me!
“How does she know already?” Julie asks.
I shrug. “I don’t understand… I haven’t even told anyone that I worked as a body-double on the film set!”
My confusion makes the world seem to slow down. In a panic, I click through various texts, but they all sound a lot like my mom’s. Everyone is asking me what’s going on with me and the movie star, but no one is telling me how they found out.
“Oh no,” Julie says, looking up from her own phone. “I found out what’s happening. It’s all over Twitter.”
“What?” I say, dropping my phone and reaching for hers. She pulls it back before I can grab it, her bottom lip curling nervously under her teeth. “I don’t know how to tell you this…” She glances at the phone again. “And honestly… I don’t know how this photo even got out.”
“Tell me!” I snap.
She turns the phone screen toward me and my whole world falls apart.
CHAPTER22
Annie
The next day is one of the hardest days I’ve ever endured. Trevor never showed up yesterday, and I guess I can’t blame him. He would have discovered the same thing I did, only this affects his life way more than mine. The only explanation Julie and I could come up with is that he must think I purposely sold out the photo to the press, and that’s why he never contacted me or came back over to see me. I guess I can’t blame him.
I ended up deleting every single text on my phone, just wiping out everything with a tap of my finger instead of wasting my time entertaining everyone’s prying questions about the photo of me and Trevor Owens that’s circulating the internet. I called my mom and gave her the whole story. I assured her that no, I wasn’t sleeping around with celebrities, and that yes, Trevor and I did have feelings for each other. Her biggest question was that if I didn’t leak the photo, and Trevor didn’t have the phone on his own phone, who leaked it?
She thought maybe I had been hacked, which was a horrifying thought. What if someone had secretly infiltrated my cell phone and was able to listen to everything I say or watch me through the phone camera without my knowledge? Julie and I go straight to Sterling’s only cell phone store and talk to the manager about it. He checks out my phone and my account and says he doesn’t think it’s very likely, and then he has an idea that I can’t believe I didn’t think of first.
He asks if anyone besides me had access to my phone.
And then the truth hits me like a ton of bricks. I remember that day at the coffee shop when I ran into Jackie, the woman who also played an extra on the set ofOakbrook Lake. I’d stupidly shown her the photo of Trevor and me. And then I walked away, leaving my phone on the table. It was such a short time, but I guess it was long enough for her to have stolen the picture.
The guy at the cell phone store tells me to check my texts to see if she texted it to herself, but I’ve already stupidly deleted all my texts so I can’t be sure. He’s such a nice guy though, that he helps me pull my phone records and check them against the contacts I have saved, but there are no messages sent to numbers I don’t recognize. Then he tells me to check my email.
And sure enough, there it is. A blank email with no text or subject line, with just that one photo attached, sent to Jackie’s email.
The horrible woman was so greedy and desperate to sell a photo to the paparazzi that she’d emailed the photo to herself in just a split second while I’d gone up to the counter to pay for my coffee.
My blood turns to ice as I stand here in Sterling’s small cell phone store, my best friend beside me and the helpful manager watching me curiously.
“I can’t believe she did that.”
“You might have a lawsuit on your hands,” he says.
“Thank you so much for your help,” I tell him. “I think I need to go home so I can throw up and cry.”
He frowns and looks to Julie. “Take care of her.”
She nods and wraps an arm around me. “I will.”
At home, I sit on the couch, wrapped in a fuzzy blanket. I feel like a zombie. I feel betrayed. Lost. Heartbroken. Angry.
