Page 9 of TJ Powar Has Something to Prove
Sighing, TJ tucks her phone back into her purse and heads into the school again. She’s only got a few minutes to get to class.
She re-enters the same way she went out, and a group of eighth graders look at her and do a double take. Maybe they think she was out there smoking. Busybodies. She levels them with a glare, and they quickly look away. Once she passes them, she surreptitiously double-checks that there aren’t giant ketchup stains down her front or something. But nope.
She heads to her locker to stash her coat. She checks her face in the mirror and touches up the lip gloss that Liam kissed off. In the reflection, she notices someone watching her from across the hall: Alexa Fisher, who plays defense in soccer with her. Alexa drops her gaze when TJ meets her eyes. She walks away, but not before TJ notices she’s clutching the school newspaper.
No onereads the school paper. Well, except for the teachers, and the kids who work on it. Curiosity overtakes her. TJ closes her locker, glancing in the direction of the receptacle that normally holds the paper. It’s empty.
This has officially entered freaky territory. The newspaper only came out today. And TJ knows for a fact that normally Yara takes four copies from each stand to make it look like people are interested.
A few feet away, a couple of tenth graders peer over the paperat her. That does it. She scans the crammed hallway for anyone she knows holding a copy.
There. Rajan Randhawa. The resident stoner and juvenile delinquent of the grade-twelve class, reading the schoolpaper? Is she in a new dimension? As he swaggers past, a head taller than everyone else, she catches the sleeve of his ratty black hoodie.
Rajan lurches to a stop slowly, noticing her, and removes the toothpick out of his smiling mouth. “Hey, dude. Congrats on the debate thing.” He waves the paper in her face, too fast for her to properly look.
Her anxiety skyrockets. So itisabout her? “Can I see that?”
He shrugs. She snatches the paper out of his hand.
Sure enough, the headline Yara promised is splashed across the front page, along with a huge close-up photo of her and Simran’s faces. TJ winces. It’s one of those pictures in unflattering lighting where you can see every pore and flaw and imperfection and sweat shining on their foreheads. Simran definitely got the worst of it; she doesn’t have the same beauty routines that TJ does.
Okay, so that sucks, but not a huge deal. She scans the article itself. Whoever wrote the story clearly had a minimum word count they were struggling with. Nothing special. So what’s got everyone so excited?
She looks up to ask Rajan, but he’s already wandered off into the crowd. She catches up with him. “Why were you reading this?”
He glances down at her again, and this time has the audacity to flick her forehead. “Just because I’m failing half my classes doesn’t mean I’m illiterate, dude.”
She bats his hand away, irritated. She’s had a low opinion of him ever since they were in seventh grade and he said she had a big Indian-girl nose. “Sure, but I’ve never seen you read the school paper.”
“Usually it doesn’t have anything interesting.”
“But today it does?”
He tugs the brim of his cap a little lower over his eyes and shrugs. “Well, I just had to see it for myself.”
“Seewhat?” she demands, but he’s already sauntering away again. Just then, her phone vibrates. Piper.
did you see it?? I can’t believe anyone would say that.
Apparently, no one wants to be specific today.
see WHAT???TJ texts back frantically. She waits an agonizing five seconds for Piper to finish typing.
check Northridge Confessions.
TJ’s sense of dread skyrockets. The Northridge Confessions Instagram page is where everyone anonymously sends their dirt and their school-specific memes. TJ hasn’t visited it in a while.
She braces herself and pulls up Instagram.
The most recent post on the Confessions page snags her attention immediately. It’s that same unflattering photo of TJ and Simran, except it’s been cut into two individual images, of the two of them separately.
#1022
Hot Persian girls: Expectation vs Reality
UnderExpectationis TJ’s photo. She looks fine—even pretty—in it, despite the sweaty sheen. Her makeup held upwell. And then, underReality,there’s Simran’s photo.
It’s blown even bigger than the one Yara had in the newspaper. And it’s uncomfortably clear what difference between the two of them the caption is referring to: Simran’s facial hair. Her eyebrows are bushy, closer to a singular rather than plural; there’s visible hair on her upper lip and chin, and her sideburns are deep enough to meet her jawline.