Not quite true but still I froze, the blood rushing from my cheeks. “Wh-what are you talking about?”
Simi’s smirk widened as she brought out a rose gold flask and poured whatever was in it into her Coke. She took a sip and released a sigh of contentment that only worked to pull out goose bumps on my skin.
“Better. But now,” Simi continued, paying no heed to my question, “it’s clear that there is something real between you guys. I didn’t know what the endgame was for both of you. I thought maybe you wanted a fast track to popularity, and Malakai saw you as a ticket to cementing himself in Blackwell society.” She ran her eyes across me. “But you don’t need that. I mean, you’re not on the same level as me, obviously, but people rate you for some reason. It’s the reason people turned up here the night Zack is throwing a party in a pathetic attempt to regain public favor since you announced his contest on your show. Bravo, by the way.” She brought her hands together in two staccato slaps. “Nice work.”
My brain was too slow to catch up with all the Simi happening, and all I managed to muster in response was “I didn’t know he was throwing a party tonight.”
Simi flashed a sharp smile. “Irrelevant. You’re siphoning his power away, and that, sweets, is a good thing. My point is, it doesn’t matter why you and Malakai got into this thing. It’s real now.”
I stared at Simi, stunned into mortified silence, and she laughed. It wasn’t unkind, and it was the first time I had my defenses low enough to actually hear it properly. It was rich, husky, perhaps . . . warm? Was it ever really unkind or had I just presumed it sounded unkind?
“Kiki, I am a gossip blogger, a journalism student, and I’m gonna be an MA student next year. I’m the best in my year. I saw you and Zack that FreakyFridayz and I knew you had been hooking up. I was gonna step in, but I saw that you had it handled. Then you and Malakai had it handled.” Her smirk widened. “Really handled.”
I blinked, trying to digest all the new unexpected pieces of information, chewing slowly, trying to extract sense from them. “Wait, so why did you drag me the next day? And bring him to Ty’s? And leak that video to make me look bad?”
Simi was unruffled, an easy smile on her glossy lips as she reclined and sipped the mystery cocktail she’d just concocted. “I needed you away from Zack so I could do my job properly. And I figured he wouldn’t mess with someone who’d publicly embarrassed him. He’s vain. I came with him to Ty’s because I overheard him saying he was going to crash and I thought if it was with me, I could at least help to control the damage. I filmed and leaked the video to make him look bad. Which he did.” She sighed, apparently finished, the need to explain herself to me a tedious inconvenience. “Look, Kiki, I knew you’d be able to handle some infamy as collateral.”
I nodded slowly as embarrassment cleared way for elucidation. My eyes widened, suddenly finding their way to Adwoa as she chatted to Chi in another booth. She’d said her girlfriend was a blogger.
“Were you investigating him?”
Simi saw where my eyes had drifted; she gave a slight nod. “Right. By dating him. Well, by flirting with him enough to make him think we could date. I mean, we never did anything, but for guys like Zack the promise is enough. I’m Simi Coker. I have currency. That turned Zack on. I needed to get close to him to get the tea. I couldn’t continue to watch him fuck up my legacy. I worked hard when I was in office, and I watched him undo everything I worked for.” She leaned closer, eyes diamond and flint.
“He severed all the connections we built, all the events we did with ACSs across the region. He wanted us isolated so he could do what he wanted to do, which was to have it all completely under his control with racist Whitewell’s institutional backing. He’s corrupt as fuck. Which is why I never really understood why you were hooking up with him.”
I shook my head, trying to process the fact that Simi had partly orchestrated a systematic takedown of the most powerful boy on campus, that she was possibly—possibly—one of the coolest girls I knew. “If you knew I was hooking up with Zack this whole time, why didn’t you blow my cover?”
Simi looked me up and down like she was seriously considering the question. She found her answer and punctuated it with an elegant twitch of her shoulder. “I don’t really know. I think you remind me a lot of myself when I was younger.”
It didn’t seem like an opportune time to point out to Simi that I was only about fifteen months younger than her, so I decided to focus on the other truly shocking element of the statement, which was that Simi looked at me and saw similarities. All this time, I thought when she looked at me, she felt a visceral sort of, if not loathing then at least scorn, like that of an auntie who has spotted your bra strap slipping at church.