My X-Ray Vision Sees Right Through You novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Cut
Vott Court puts Cecelia on a live stage with a doctored clip, 400 students turn on her, and she pulls a stranger out of the crowd and kisses him.
The big screen over the quad lit up with my face.
Four hundred students were standing on the wet grass at Fall Fest, and every one of them looked up.
"Welcome to Vott Court," Dax Koehler said into his headset. "Where the internet gets the truth."
Dax was twenty-four, an alumnus who came back to Maple Valley Academy every fall with a camera crew.
He walked across the stage, and according to my contract, he owned me.
I was standing in the front row with a cup of cider, laughing at something Laney had said.
Then the screen played my voice.
"Honestly, I can't stand these losers," I said, in my own voice, from the speakers. "I only act nice for the views."
The quad went quiet.
I had said those words, but not in that order.
Six weeks ago I had filmed a joke video about a school club called the Losers' Lunch, a club I loved.
Somebody had cut the joke out of my sentence and left the knife.
"Cecelia Garroway, everybody," Dax said. "Four point eight million followers. Let's see how many of you she actually likes."
A girl behind me said, "Oh my God, she's fake."
A boy laughed and held up his phone.
Someone threw a cup, and cider hit my shoulder and ran down my sweatshirt.
"Cecelia," Laney whispered. "That's not what you said."
"I know what I said."
On the stage, Dax's little brother Rhett, twenty-two, pushed a tall stool into the light and grinned at me.
"Come on up, Cecelia," Rhett said. "Defend yourself. Or are you going to run, like you always do?"
I had never run from anything in my life.
I was eighteen, a senior at the Academy.
The week I turned eighteen, I had signed a contract that let Vott put anything it wanted on my handle.
Tonight I understood what anything meant.
The screen flipped to a poll.
GUILTY OR NOT GUILTY, it said, and the number under GUILTY climbed so fast I could hear the phones buzzing.
Dax leaned toward the camera.
"And remember," he said, smiling, "this is only the first clip."
He looked straight at me when he said it.
That was the part I understood best of all.
Last Tuesday he had asked me to be his girlfriend on camera, and I had laughed in his face.
This was his answer.
If I stood on that stage alone, I would be the girl who hated her own followers.
If I walked off, I would be guilty, and the crowd would never forget it.
I put my cup in Laney's hand.
"Don't let them post this," I said.
"Cece, what are you doing?"
"Something stupid."
I turned around and walked into the crowd.
Phones followed me.
I passed girls from my senior class and boys from my boarding house, and nobody would meet my eyes.
Even my roommate Brooke, eighteen and a senior too, had her phone up, and she was smiling.
Near the back, under the lamp by the library steps, a man was standing alone with his hands in the pockets of a plain gray coat.
He wasn't holding a phone.
He wasn't looking at the screen either.
He was looking at the stage, at the curtain behind it.
I had never seen him before.
He was tall, with dark hair and gray eyes, and he was not laughing.
That was all I needed.
"Hi," I said. "I'm sorry about this."
"About what?"
I grabbed the front of his coat, rose onto my toes and kissed him.
He went completely still.
His mouth was warm, and for one second I felt his whole body decide not to pull away.
The crowd made a noise.
Dax's voice cracked over the speakers.
"Is that a joke?"
I broke the kiss and turned to the stage with my hand still twisted in the stranger's coat.
"This is my boyfriend," I shouted. "Does he look like a loser to you?"
Nobody answered.
Four hundred people stared.
The number under GUILTY stopped climbing.
I laughed, because there was nothing else to do, and the stranger looked down at me with the calmest face I had ever seen.
I thought he would tell the whole quad I was crazy.
Instead he bent his head, and his mouth came to my ear.
"I'm Clark," he said, very low. "Don't look at the stage. Look at me."
I stopped breathing.
I knew that voice.
I had said goodnight to that voice almost every night since April.
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