The Taming of the Drew by Jan Gurley Page B

explain on the way home.” The night had been a near-disaster, but we’d survived, barely, and now I had this idea, this ray of tiny hope. If I could somehow change the Dog’s pack, maybe he’d start to change too. Or maybe a change in his group would at least tone things down. We stood, dusting off, checking for wallets and bags, shaky but together. If I could just get all the pieces for my idea in place before Monday…  
    That's when Celia stomped so hard toward us, it seemed like her stilettos ought to be puncturing the concrete. “I knew you were up to something.” Celia’s voice rang down the school's empty hallway. “I knew it.”  
    She stopped in front of me, one hand on her hip, one palm flopped out. “I want my picture.”
    I raised my eyebrows.  
    “Of the Dog,” she said, her voice singsong, like I was an idiot.
    I so did not have time for this right now. “Look, Celia, if you're so desperately in love with the guy, sneak into the locker room to stare at him yourself.”
    “Ugh!” She reeled back in apparently genuine horror, as if I had suddenly pulled a big black bug out of my nose. “I don't like the Dog. Monosyllabic gorilla. What’s to like?”
    Tio and I exchanged looks. “Are we talking about the same guy?” Tio asked.
    Celia bit at her cuticle, already bored with us. “Pay attention. He can’t string two words together.”
    “And you care about vocabulary because…why again?” Phoebe asked, mesmerized.  
    Celia actually reached over and knocked on Phoebe’s head. “Hello in there? Me –“ Celia pointed at her semi-exposed chest, “family of lawyers. We don’t care much for Neanderthal cretins. Earning potential over and done before thirty,” She rolled her eyes, “and that’s best case scenario.”
    “Ooh,” said Robin, “harsh.”
    Celia narrowed her eyes at Tio and me like she'd just realized something. “Are you saying the Dog’s been droning on and on around you two? What’s he talking about, exactly ?”
    “Celia, you need to get over this weird stalker thing you’ve got going with the Dog. Now that you mention it, you’re right — he doesn’t talk around his friends.”
    “He grunts,” she corrected me.
    “Whatever. The fact is, I snapped your photo, but I don’t have the picture.”
    “Well where is it?” It was like she thought I could pull an eight by ten of my bra.
    But she had a point. Tio and I looked at each other. So where was it?
    “I haven’t a clue. Probably Mrs. Bullard has it.”
    “Oh no she doesn’t. That woman wouldn’t know how to find a SIM card with a map in her hands and the entire Google staff shouting instructions. Besides, I know for a fact she didn’t leave the meeting with that camera in her possession.”
    Which meant the camera might still be in the Dean’s office, which meant that a cleaning lady or a secretary or an aide might have replaced it where it belonged without knowing what was in it.
    Oh. No. If those pictures were still in the school's digital camera…Tio and I realized it at the same time and he went “eep!”  
    We were looking a Homeland Security Level Mega-Red disaster. Someone on the school news staff would walk in Monday morning and turn on the camera. The football team bare-from-the-waist up photos would, at minimum, be plastered all over the school paper. Even if a teacher stepped in and stopped that from happening, the files would be passed all over the world, and there would be an investigation about how the pictures had been taken, and — especially — who illegally snuck out the camera to take them, and then the lawsuits from parents would pile up until the thick envelopes of subpoenas jammed the old-fashioned mail slot on the central office door.  
    It was my absolute worst fear — the reason I didn’t want him to tag along — Tio and I both would be dead.  
    So would the trees. The whole deal would be off. I’d be hung out to dry. And I couldn’t really blame the school or Mrs.