Chapter 14: Shayla Regroups

By Tuesday afternoon, Tern Lake could not decide whose side it was on.

I stood in the Piggly Wiggly parking lot with a cart full of groceries and watched the town change its mind in white letters.

【POLL (Dolly's Locals): Who do you believe about Saturday? Britta 49%, Shayla 44%, I just came for the lemon bars 7%.】

【Helen: I watched Shayla's video twice, and well, bless her heart, she is so upset.】

【Pete: Helen has returned to Team Shayla. Helen, you are a weather vane in a cardigan.】

【ShayStan_Official: THE COMEBACK IS REAL.】

【Sue: The comeback has 31,000 views and 600 comments, and 580 of those comments come from three accounts. One of them is her mother.】

I had a bag of coffee, a chuck roast, and nine cans of cat food for a cat I didn't own.

Dolly had told me it was a loyalty program.

I was unloading it into the trunk when a pair of white sneakers stopped at my bumper.

"Britt," Shayla said. "Please. Five minutes."

I turned around.

She wore no pastel and no ring light, and her hair had been pulled into a rubber band.

Her phone was nowhere I could see, and without it she looked like a girl I used to share a bunk bed with.

"There are eleven phones in this lot," I said.

"I know."

"Behind you, a boy is gathering carts."

The cart kid, in the same store apron, had stopped gathering carts.

His thumbs were already moving, and his tongue was between his teeth.

"Then they can hear it," Shayla said, and her voice cracked.

That was new.

She didn't tilt her head.

"The Legion wants the rest of the deposit by Friday, twenty-two thousand dollars," she said. "The sponsors are gone."

"Brock's mother won't pay for anything, and my brokerage is asking me questions."

"I have a dress I can't return. I have nine thousand four hundred followers who are now seventy-eight hundred."

"I'm sorry," I said. "That sounds expensive."

"You could fix it with one sentence."

"Which sentence?"

"'No hard feelings.'" She wiped her nose with her wrist.

"On my page. Just say it, and I'll take the video down."