11. Zip Zap #2
But let Cordelia again state: She looks up only the students who might need something to push them over the line.
Tilly Benbow, for example. Mediocre academically, but an astonishing beauty.
Tilly has managed her academics just fine, she’s in charge of the music at the football games, she’s part of the tight-knit group of girls on the first floor of Classic South.
Admitting Tilly had been a good decision.
Is admitting a student based on looks any worse than admitting a student because her mother is the US ambassador to Ireland or her father runs the third-largest hedge fund in New York?
Cordelia somehow senses the answer is yes.
What she’s been doing is shameful, so shameful that she would deny it even if polygraphed.
The perplexing question is: How did someone discover this well-guarded secret?
Cordelia has never confessed this shameful habit to anyone—not Audre, not even Honey.
She reassures herself that nobody “found out.” Honey is right, the kids are simply giving themselves props and Cordelia became collateral damage.
She checks her phone again. The post now has 202 “ups” and so many comments that, if Cordelia read them all, she would miss the information session.
She thinks, 202 is a concerning number . Nearly the entire school is now on Zip Zap.
The second post on Zip Zap arrives bright and early the next morning.
Annabelle Tuckerman’s senior speech about her “three brushes with death” was fabricated. Annabelle has had… zero brushes with death. The entire speech was a lie.
Audre reads the post with her first cup of coffee.
Who has a beef with Annabelle? she wonders.
Who would post something so damaging? Audre can come up with only one answer: Lisa Kim, the Head Prefect.
Lisa and Annabelle are “friends,” but they’re also neck and neck for valedictorian.
But would Lisa, as the chosen student leader, blaspheme a classmate and risk being Honor Boarded and removed from her position?
She would not. It wasn’t Lisa Kim. But who else would have it out for Annabelle?
Audre had been so impressed with Annabelle’s senior speech that she mentioned it to Annabelle’s mother over Family Weekend.
Carolyn Tuckerman asked if Audre would send the video, which Audre remembered to do the week following with the subject line: Proud mom moment ahead!
Annabelle Tuckerman reads the Zip Zap post only moments after opening her eyes. She hears a gasp from the bunk above her and realizes that her roommate, Ravenna, must have seen the post as well.
Ravenna hangs her head down into Annabelle’s air space. She’s wearing a silk bonnet to protect her long dark hair from overnight breakage; it makes her look like Red Riding Hood’s grandmother. “Uh… did you…?”
Annabelle has to decide quickly: Should her reaction be righteous indignation or should she brush it off as no big deal? She’s too addled to figure out what an innocent person would say.
Her eyes fill with genuine tears, and all she can hope is that Ravenna doesn’t construe these as tears of admission.
Because… Annabelle did fabricate some/most of her senior speech.
First off, her mother never considered having an abortion.
By all accounts, when Carolyn Tuckerman found out she was pregnant, she jumped at the chance to pursue a non-partner track at Echols the correct course of action from an integrity standpoint was to come clean.
“But, Anna, you can’t use any iteration of this speech in your college essay. Am I clear?”
“Yes,” Annabelle said. Except she had already turned the speech into her college essay. Ms. Vandermeid said it was “very strong,” that it was “by far” the most compelling part of Annabelle’s application.
Annabelle could still use the essay—parents aren’t privy to them—but Annabelle believed in karma.
If she included the mendacious essay in her Princeton application, she would get rejected.
And so, for the past few days, amid studying for her government test and carrying the group project for Spanish on her back, Annabelle has been writing a new essay about her summer service trip to Ecuador.
Annabelle thought writing a new essay from scratch would be the only repercussion.
But now she’s been exposed by Zip Zap.
The only people who know that Annabelle lied are Annabelle’s parents—and they certainly didn’t post.
“Somebody has it out for you,” Ravenna says.
“Who?” Annabelle says.
“Oh, come on,” Ravenna says. “Isn’t it obvious?”
By the end of first period, everyone has read the Zip Zap post and drawn the conclusion that the anonymous poster was Lisa Kim.
Lisa coolly addresses the allegations at lunch.
“It wasn’t me,” she says as she blows on a spoonful of soup.
“Although I wouldn’t be surprised if Annabelle did lie about all of it.
That speech sounded like performance art. ”
That afternoon in the ’Bred Bulletin office, Ravenna is a fuoco.
“Everyone’s taking sides,” she says. “Annabelle or Lisa. I would suggest we run a poll in the paper, but I’m afraid Annabelle would lose and she’s my roommate, so…”
Annabelle would definitely lose, Charley thinks. Charley isn’t privy to all the gossip, though she does use the first-floor bathroom in South, so she’s heard plenty. People believe that Annabelle made the speech up and that Lisa is getting blamed.
“We should do an article about Zip Zap,” Ravenna says.
Gone is the corpse Charley found flung across the Senior Sofa over Family Weekend.
Today, Ravenna wears a Gucci belt and new Gucci logo boots, which were gifts from her parents to make up for their absence.
“I’ll investigate it myself. How great would it be if the ’Bred Bulletin uncovered the identities of the anonymous posters!
” Ravenna’s cheeks have color, her hair has luster, Charley can practically see the adrenaline pumping through her veins.
Grady and Levi turn their homely young faces to bask in her glow.
“This is the most exciting thing that’s happened all year, and something tells me there’s a lot more to come. ”
That, Charley thinks, is what she’s afraid of.