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By Root 741 0

Winston after my accident. I was still on restriction for the next three months, and I’d been moved to working in the library so I could still help pay for the statue as long as I was in a cast, but everyone else was off restriction. My dad had hinted that Dean Winston’s actions had been designed to ostracize me and no doubt had led to the amount of stress I was under. Winston was probably worried that we would sue him for emotional distress that resulted in me throwing myself off the administration building. My dad had clarified that I’d been after my passport and not trying to do myself in, but clearly my decision-making had been impacted by all the stress. I was willing to bet Dean Winston couldn’t wait for spring to come and for me to graduate. However, he had decided to allow me back at school, and there wasn’t going to be anything on my permanent record either.

“It won’t be a wild party. No strippers or Jell-O wrestling. More of a friends-welcoming-a-friend-home party. How can he have a problem with that? If it makes you feel better, we can say the party is a going away party for Mandy.” He glanced over quickly to see my reaction.

“She’s leaving?”

“She may have already left. She wasn’t around this morning. The official story is that she wants to move back to New York to be closer to her half sister.”

“I didn’t think she spoke to her sister.”

Tristan shrugged. “I’m not sure she’s even met her half sister before. Her mom has been married more often than most people change their underwear. I don’t think anyone buys the story, but if it makes her feel better about things, it’s no skin off my nose.”

In the hospital I’d debated how to handle the Mandy situation. Drew had been right; it wasn’t illegal, so the police wouldn’t care. I could have turned her in to Dean Winston, but I wasn’t interested in helping Winston out in any way. I could have confronted her myself, but ending up in a catfight with her didn’t seem like a good plan. She struck me as the kind who would fight dirty. She was probably a hair puller. Then I’d end up with a bald spot in addition to the cast on my leg.

In the end I went to the person who had the most experience with the tabloids, Tristan. He’d come to the hospital, and we’d had a chance to talk. Being able to focus on the situation with Mandy let us get over what was between us. Seeing him reminded me how much I liked him. I didn’t love him, but I did want him in my life. If he was going to be dating my best friend, there had to be a way for us to be friends.

Tristan and I discussed the idea of leaking our own story to the tabloids that would out what Mandy had done. The public would eat up the idea that she was so desperate for attention that she’d placed her own stories in the news. I could picture the headline PAY ATTENTION TO ME! in a giant font smeared across a picture of Mandy running from a pack of photographers. While that was an appealing image, I didn’t like stooping to her level, and Tristan wasn’t keen to help the tabloids sell any magazines.

In the end Tristan met with Mandy. He let her know we knew what she had done, and if a single story about anyone on campus came out, we would make sure stories about her flooded the press, and they wouldn’t be stories she wanted. Tristan said that she had started off by crying, but had ended up yelling that everyone was jealous of her fame and then storming out. When he’d told me that, I’d felt sick. I’d hoped the whole situation would be resolved, but it seemed like Mandy might make things worse.

What neither Mandy or I had counted on was the reaction of everyone else at Evesham. The night after Tristan met with Mandy, we filled in Kelsie and Joel, and word started to spread that Mandy was the leak. People stopped speaking to her. They shunned her. Tristan said it was like people thought she had leprosy or a really nasty STD. Apparently it was all too much for her. I shouldn’t have been surprised. Mandy didn’t mind if people liked her or loathed her, but she couldn’t stand to be ignored.

“There’s something else I should tell you before