“Mr. G suggested that Frankie may want to consider dropping AP Euro, today.” The words were bitter, edged in an offhand disdain for a teacher that Jake and Frankie usually enthused about. “Asshole.”
“Wait…” I stared at him. “Why?” Frankie had one of the best GPAs in our group. She was an overachiever. She never quit.
Well, she hadn’t ever quit anything before she dumped our asses. But we’d more than earned that even if I didn’t like it.
“She’s not had the best time with the last couple of tests.” Jake shrugged it off. “She’ll be fine. We’re studying this onourtime. It’s not for a damn grade. We’re studying it to take the AP exam.” Hostility underscored those last words. “She took off and I didn’t catch her. I wanted to follow but I have a feeling, right now, she doesn’t want much to do with me.”
“She doesn’t want much to do with anyone,” Archie said flatly. The sympathy some of us might have expressed wasabsent. “If you think he’s going to be a problem, tell me. Until then, we need to focus on other, more hot button issues—like Sharon.”
Sharon. The name alone made all of us tense. I could see the wheels turning in Archie’s head. He was the only one thinking five moves ahead while the rest of us were bumping around like kids in a bumper car. His quiet was the storm before it broke—protective, shrewd, maybe a little possessive, and utterly dangerous if anyone crossed the line.
I used to find it a little unnerving and overwhelming. No teenager should ever be as directly confrontational and cutthroat as he could be. Not always was, just when we were attacked. Now I was just glad he was on our side.
Onherside.
“It’s only been a couple of days but what did the attorney say?” What the hell had I ever seen in Sharon? It was the one thing I’d been kicking myself about since she dropped that first bomb.
“Cease and desists are being sent,” Archie said, before he finished a fry and washed it down with a drink. “He’ll notify us once they’ve all been served. Each of the social media platforms will be addressed individually, Sharon and her parents are going to each receive one.”
That snared Coop out of his guilt-laced fugue. “Why her parents?”
“Because technically, she’s a minor and three of the sites indicate she’s been a member since well before their minimum age requirements. We can make a case that they are responsible for what she does.”
“The counter argument is they could accuse our parents of the same thing,” I said slowly. Granted, I was eighteen in a lot of those videos, at least all the ones from the back half of summer. I was the only one who was eighteen.
“Doesn’t matter,” Archie said, waving that off.
“It does matter,” I countered. “My parents are already not happy with me, but I am the one who made those decisions. If I’d consulted them, no way in hell they would have agreed.”
“No way in hell would we have consulted them,” Jake said sharply, maybe too sharply. Not that I disagreed.
“It doesn’t matter,” Archie said, leaning forward. “What we did was salacious, what she did was arguably criminal.”
Arguably. I scrubbed a hand over my face. “Explain that to me like I’m five.” Because all of a sudden, I wasn’t hungry anymore. “We knew there were pictures and video.” I kept my voice down because yeah, we knew about it. “We have some.”
We had more than some.
“But shepostedhers,” Archie countered. “We can quite categorically label it as revenge porn considering she basically threatened you directly, and then after you still turned her down, she posted it. While it may not say much about our characters…” Not that he sounded like he gave much of a damn. “The point is, we can repair any reputational damage.”
“Says you,” Jake muttered.
“Yes,” Archie snapped back. “Says me. Unfortunately, we live in a world where power and money can do a lot more to rehabilitate our images than good deeds and good thoughts. We’re also male.”
“That’s a shitty excuse,” Coop said, rousing to give Archie a sour look.
“I don’t make the rules,” Archie retaliated. “I think they’re bullshit. Doesn’t mean I won’t use every advantage in our arsenal to make this go away.”
“Does anything get to you, Arch?” Coop studied him like he was truly trying to understand him. “We’re all sweating this, but you’re just—not.”
“Worrying doesn’t solve anything, it just leads to headaches and heartburn.” Rather than sound dismissive, Archie answered Coop directly. “Disappointment is bitter when it comes from people we care about. You three have your parents, mine are already a lost cause.”
He shrugged that off with the kind of indifference no one should have when it came to their parents. Then again—Archie’s parents were not ours and I wasn’t going to pretend otherwise.
“It makes me a little more sanguine about most of this, except for one thing…”
“Frankie.” I supplied and Archie raised his coke glass to salute before he took another drink. He could and would go scorched-earth for her, and anyone who made the mistake of thinking otherwise would go down in the same flames.
As much as I wanted to keep a steady hand on everything, keep us all balanced, I wasn’t entirely sure that was possible. Jake was raw, reactive, and far more prone to his temper right now. Coop? Fuck, Coop’s guilt was eating him alive. I couldn’t say mine was doing much better except…
