Sweet Like Revenge

15 - Repercussions

Thursday afternoon was not business as usual at Irvine Academy.

Needless to say, Poppy's broadcast threw our entire school into turmoil. It was all that anybody could talk about for the rest of the day. Both her and Cameron were sent home from school early, while Kat, Jeremy, and Liam were immediately pulled out of class and sent straight to Walsh's office for questioning. As for Mr. Peterson ... no one had seen him since lunch period.

Still, the chaos at school was nothing compared to what happened when news traveled back to our parents.

Richie, for one, was outraged. When I arrived home that afternoon, he was reading the email that the school had been forced to send out over the phone to Mia.

"Does Ana know?" my mother asked as I read the message over my stepdad's shoulder.

"Everyone does," I answered simply. While the email stated that there was more than one student involved in the scandal, it was silent on the fact that I had also been present in the office when the broadcast went live. So, for the moment, I would be, too.

At breakfast the next day, Richie informed me that another message had been sent out in the early hours of the morning with more information.

"The school's been inundated with phone calls over this thing," he told me. "People really don't want these kids getting away with this. And rightly so. It sends a bad message."

"It does," I agreed.

"They've been suspended."

"Suspended?" My heart skipped a beat. Real consequences? For an Irvine elite? I never thought I'd see the day...

"A temporary solution," Richie clarified. "Awaiting further deliberation by the school board, I would hope."

"Me too."

Richie paused as he loaded our dishes into the washer, turning to peer at me curiously. "Do you know this girl? This 'Poppy'?"

"No." Lying to Richie was turning into a habit; one that I wasn't proud of. "I mean, we share some classes, and she's on the lacrosse team."

"And has she given you any trouble?"

"No—"

"Because they're asking people to come forward," Richie pointed back to the email on his iPad. "Anyone who might know more information. Students, parents, even teachers. Everything helps, Ana—"

"Wait," I stopped him, my mind flashing back to something he said earlier. "You said 'they'. They've been suspended."

Richie blinked back at me. "The kids involved," he clarified. "The kids who helped Poppy. Or the ones that she named, at least..."

I felt my heart sink to my stomach. Of course.

Poppy hadn't just thrown herself under the bus. She had also thrown Cameron, Kat, Jasper, and Liam. It was something that I hadn't expected her to do, something that I hadn't planned for. Moreover, though, I hadn't predicted that the repercussions for her abettors would have been quite so severe.

Kat, at least, was thrilled. She messaged me on Friday afternoon to tell me that she had cashed in the day off for a shopping spree with her older sister in the town over from ours. Jasper and Liam were merely names to me; faceless casualties, and I barely felt their absence. It was Cameron — my sweet, old friend — that I was worried about the most. If he was the same boy that I remembered, then academia was his life, and having a suspension on his transcript was surely tearing him up inside. What was worse, though, was that his reputation had been tarnished — a reputation that he had worked so hard for so long to rebuild.