“Taylor,” Andrea snapped. “Get up.”
Taylor’s nostrils were flaring, but after staring down at me for a few more minutes, he got up. Andrea helped me carefully navigate the wood of my broken bed frame and guided me over to sit in my desk chair. My back stung and Andrea lifted my shirt and whimpered. “Oh no. Okay. Take this off. You’re bleeding.”
My dad facepalmed Taylor and shoved him to the side so hard he fell over. “Don’t just fucking storm in here and start fighting! You seriously hurt your brother!”
“Stop it!” Andrea yelped. “No one else touches anyone unless it’s me tending to injuries!”
Taylor stood up off the floor and sat down in my gaming chair, and glared at me. “You still haven’t explained yourself.”
“I already told you I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I hissed back, letting out a yowl when Andrea touched my back with a towel that I assumed she’d maybe put some sort of peroxide or other cleaning agent on. “Don’t come in here and fucking punch me for nothing.”
“If you both don’t stop swearing in my goddamn house—” my dad started, but then Andrea glared at him and he recoiled. “What? I’ll take it outside.”
“No more violence,” she said. “Honestly. You’re peas from the same pod.”
My dad looked at Taylor. “Even if he knows, we don’t, so tell me what the hell you’re talking about.”
“Tristan thought it would be real funny to play a big, elaborate joke on a girl whose only crime was liking him,” Taylor said.
“What?” my dad said. “What kind of joke?” Taylor pulled his phone out and I watched in confusion as he handed it over to my dad. He took the phone and looked down at it, scrolled a little bit and then looked over at me. I’d never seen my dad look at me in such a way, and more than it was scary, it was upsetting. “How could you do this? I’ve raised you better than this.”
“Do. What?” I growled.
My dad walked over and handed me Taylor’s phone and I looked down at it, with Andrea looking over my shoulder. On the screen was a picture of Aria and I kissing from the night before on a hate social page called “Plow the Cow.” I’d heard of it before from Ceradi, but I knew for a fact she hated the page because someone submitted a picture of her to it once, sending her into a tizzy, not to mention an insanely unhealthy diet.
Under the picture was a caption that said I was the one who’d submitted the photo and was the day’s victor with a hundred points, fifty for the cow, and fifty for the plow.
“How could…” Andrea started and I opened my mouth to respond, but then she shot a look in my dad and Taylor’s direction. “How could you honestly believe that he did this? You’re his two biggest role models and you respect women more than yourselves. Watching you, how could you think that he’d do something so horrible. Honestly. I’m disappointed in the two of you.”
“It says his name and handle,” Taylor said.
“So? It’s the internet, people can say whatever they want. It could have been anyone who knew his name and handle that submitted the page under his name. He clearly wasn’t aware this photo was being taken.”
I looked up at Andrea. “Thank you.”
I walked over to my busted bed and pulled my phone from the wreckage and saw that my phone was blazing with notifications. Despite the fact that Ceradi hated the page, my group message was alive with them telling me how funny it was. They were being particularly cruel, but I knew they weren’t the ones who submitted the picture.
I had a feeling I knew who did it, though.
Instead of explaining myself to Taylor, because I was still hurt that he honestly believed I’d do that, I just took a shirt from my dresser and limped out of the room.
“Where are you going?” my dad asked.
“To figure this out,” I said. “I think I know who did it.”
“Tris!” Taylor bolted out from my bedroom and I stopped in the hallway and looked back at him. “I’m… I’m sorry.”
“It’s my fault. Because of the way I acted at my party, it made you believe I was capable of this.” I swallowed to hold back emotions. “Can you see if you can get the picture taken down?”
Taylor nodded. “Something like that has to be illegal. I’ll have the whole page down within an hour.”
“Thanks,” I said. “See if you can find out who sent it in. An email address or handle maybe.”
“Yeah. I’ll call you when I know more,” Taylor said.
It was still pretty early in the morning, but I didn’t care. I got in my car and started off for Hannah’s house. I needed to be with a friend and I needed to get to the bottom of the post. I was so close to Aria and now this?
To confirm what I already feared, I tried to call her, but the call never went through. I was blocked.