SEASON TWO, EPISODE THREE

MOMENT OF TRUTH

SASHA

          SASHA WAS NO QUITTER.

          Landon would usually say she was as stubborn as a mule and he'd leave it at that. She liked to think of it as tenacity, refusing to give up on stuff that mattered, which was why she had followed A.J. after the latter had unceremoniously stormed out of the auditorium.

          Under any other circumstances—literally—Sasha would be up to deliver a wonderfully improvised speech about entitlement and how she was shitting on people who genuinely cared about her, but this wasn't the time for that. It was time to be the bigger person and acknowledge some people needed help, even if they refused to admit it.

           "Can you walk slower?" she asked, panting, while A.J. gave no signs of ever wanting to wait for anyone. She'd never been one to do so, anyway. "A.J., seriously—"

          "You don't need to check on me," A.J. dryly retorted, before finally coming to a halt and sitting on a staircase. "I'm doing fine. Just peachy."

          "You've lost, like, five pounds since Sectionals."

          "Six, actually." Sasha huffed. "Look, Sasha, you can go back to glee club. You don't have to pretend to care about me anymore; I'm no longer there to steal your solos. Go shine. Go be the star you were always meant to be. There's no one standing in your way." She wrapped her arms around her knees, while Sasha genuinely, genuinely wanted to slap her. "Someone made sure that would happen, anyway."

          That was the goddamn last straw.

          "Excuse me? You cannot possibly think I had something to do with what happened!"

          A.J. shook her head. "No. I just think it was awfully convenient that the NYSPA blog had declared their public support for you right before I got the solo at Sectionals. They like you a million times more than they like me, so I'm not surprised they wanted you to succeed—especially at my expense. They knew I'd never give that solo up out of the generosity of my heart."

          Sasha sighed, then occupied the empty space to her left, not caring that they were blocking the way. "You're insufferable."

          "Good." She stared at a blank wall. "Where does that leave us? Where does that leave me?"

          "I think you should come back." A.J. glanced at her from the corner of her eye, lacking the energy to deliver yet another snarky comment. "I know it's easy for me to say and hard for you to do, but people miss you. The club needs you."

          "No, it doesn't. You did just fine without me at Sectionals. You just needed me to kickstart everything."

          "The last thing I want to do is feed your already enormous ego, so I'm not going to do that. Yes, we did fine without you. Yes, the club went on without you and the world didn't stop spinning when you left. That doesn't mean we don't want you back. We're missing out on talent and you're missing out on hanging out with people who actually care about you instead of moping around in your apartment every day. Listen to me," Sasha insisted, knowing she was losing A.J.'s interest. "After what happened to me in freshman year, I felt like I couldn't trust anyone, not even my own friends. It took me a long time to get back to my old habits—going out, staying on campus after my lectures, trusting people—but it happened. It gets better, A.J.; I'm not saying our situations are remotely similar because they're not, but the point is: it won't hurt forever. It takes a lot of work and it'll be painful, but you have to put in the effort and fight for yourself."

          "What happened to you was so much worse, though."

          "I don't partake in Trauma Olympics. Was it horrible? Yes. I think about it every day and I'm still furious; sometimes, things get bad. Sometimes, I can't get out of bed."

          A.J. scooted closer to her, almost imperceptibly. "What happened? Did they ever catch the guy?"

          Sasha's chest tightened, like it always did whenever her mind darted towards that particular subject.

          It took her back to lying in her bed, refusing to come out, refusing to see anyone, out of fear of what—or who—could be lurking in the shadows or in the corners.

          It was the way she avoided being touched, the way her so-called friends avoided her eyes in the lecture halls like she was radioactive, like she had done something wrong. It was the way people acted like she should be ashamed of tarnishing a good boy's perfect reputation. It was the way she became defined by her trauma.

          "He wasn't a student here, so there wasn't much NYSPA could do to help," Sasha began, softly. "It was hard to find him, but thanks to social media . . . you know. I tried to retrace my steps, called Landon for help, tried to live with the shame. He goes to NYU."

          "Goes?"

          "Yeah." A.J. groaned, rolling her eyes. "He went to Columbia previously, so I guess it's a step-down, but . . . you know. It never felt enough. People kept talking about how I could live in anonymity while slandering his name, but I was also the one being slut-shamed online. Everyone thought I was ruining his life, even after how hard I fought to have a voice and find justice." Sasha exhaled through her mouth, throat closing. "I couldn't sleep. I couldn't eat. I dreaded having to get out of bed. I hated going to court. Most of all, I hated being so . . . powerless. I hated that I didn't matter."

          A.J. laced her arms through hers, then rested her head on her shoulder. "You matter. You matter to me."

          "He got away with it. Got expelled from Columbia, sure, but all he had to do was six months of community service. Just a blemish on his resumé. Meanwhile, I have to carry this with me everywhere I go, for the rest of my life." She sighed, but it came out so shaky, so weak, she wanted to be anywhere else but there, talking about anything else but that. "I hate that this happens to so many girls out there. It's always about the promising young men, but never about the lives they've destroyed. Why didn't my life matter?"

          "But it does—"

          "I know that now. That's why I don't want to let this go. I don't want to drop this and wait for the next scandal. I want you to get justice for what those people did to you." A.J. barely lifted her head, looking up, and her walls completely crumbled down. She was letting Sasha in, for the first time in her life, and Sasha was going to keep going. "Let us help you."

          A.J. hesitated, then nodded before leaning back down. "Thank you. Wish I could have helped you."

          "SHOULD WE BE DOING THIS WITHOUT A.J.?" Gwen asked, sitting with a leg beneath her, as Billie arrived with their coffee order. Sasha was somewhat shocked by the number of people she'd managed to recruit, and was even more surprised by who those people were. Even Tommy Santos sat with them, but Sasha suspected it was primarily out of boredom and curiosity. "I mean, it sounds kind of weird that we're discussing her personal life without her being here."

          "If you can get her to stay here for five minutes, I'll give you twenty bucks," Levi retorted. Gwen frowned, shooting a brief glance towards Miyu, the only person A.J. would stay for. "Sorry, Gwen, but you know I'm right. She doesn't want to stay."

          Sasha sighed, crossing her arms over the table as she waited for her laptop to fully turn on. "If things work out, she'll understand."

          "What if she doesn't?" Gwen pressed. "What if they don't work out?"

          "That's why I'm here," Landon intervened. Sasha was grateful for him; he'd helped her once, with her own problems, and she truly wanted to believe he could do the same for A.J. this time. It involved technical knowledge, something she didn't really have. "People lie. Social media lies. Technology doesn't."

          It was a stupid plan and Sasha knew it deep down in her soul.

          It was a shot in the dark, a desperate search for a glimmer of hope in the middle of uncertain territory, and, though it had (sort of) worked for Sasha, there were no guarantees it would work again. Landon had been slightly reluctant to get involved, fearing the wrath of the blog club, and Waylon had to be the one to rope him into it.

          "So, here's what we're going to do," Landon continued. "I've hacked into the NYSPA blog's servers"—Angelina let out a shocked gasp at that comment, which reminded Sasha that inviting her could have been the worst decision she had ever made—"and I get to see who posted whatever post. Everyone who works for the blog is assigned a set of special credentials used to identify them, since all posts come from a single account, a single name, with multiple people behind them. A team effort. Normally, they wouldn't be available for access, but, considering I have access to the servers now . . ."

          "Angelina here claims she doesn't know who posted it," Waylon pointed out, then gestured towards Angelina with his head, "and argues she would have never given permission for it to go forward had she known it was being worked on. This means it was either drafted somewhere else—Word, Google Docs, whatever—or was written all on one go; if we get access to the revision history, we can see if it was progressively written or pasted in chunks."

          "This is an insane privacy breach," Angelina argued, in a high-pitched voice, and everyone turned to glare at her. "What? It is!"

          "Anyway," Landon said, through gritted teeth. "If we identify the credentials, we identify the person who posted it. That only answers one of the questions; we still won't know who took that photo and submitted it. It could have been the same person who wrote the blog post, but, if it wasn't, we'll be trying to take down two people here."

          "And that's where I come in," Zara piped in, cheerful. "Me and my perfect eidetic memory. Well, that and the actual photo. If we can identify the people who show up in the picture, considering everyone always sits in the exact same seat, we're good to go. Any questions?"

          Anyone who was involved in the plan had no questions, as they had gone through every single step countless times. The question was mostly directed at the odd person sitting in the choir room with them, looking so impossibly confused it was almost comical.

          "I still don't understand why I'm here," Nicholas St. Martin said. "I have no idea who you people are. You pretty much kidnapped me."

          "Damage control," Sasha explained, twisting a strand of hair around her index finger, and he stared back at her like she was trying to lecture him on quantum physics. "You help us pull this off by keeping Allison off our backs while we're busy investigating, because you and I both know there's a radar inside that pretty, blonde head of hers that goes off the second she suspects someone is doing something shady." Miyu's fingers clenched around the pen she was holding and Sasha refused to give her the time of day. This was not the time to watch those two fight for A.J.'s attention. "In return, we'll conveniently forget about the stunt you pulled at Sectionals to throw us off our game. You guys did steal our star."

          Nick scowled, then raised a finger. "First of all, we didn't steal anyone from you. She quit." Another finger went up. "That was a PR stunt, orchestrated by both our managements, and none of us even wanted to do it. We did what we had to do to secure the win." Third finger. "You think she won't suspect anything? You think it's not remotely shady that I randomly decided to waltz into a school that hates me over a show choir competition. We don't 'hang out'. We barely even talk to each other. Besides, what makes you think all of this"—he gestured around him, towards them, and sounded so horribly patronizing Sasha's stomach turned and twisted around itself—"is going to work?"

          Miyu dropped her pen and jumped out of her seat, pointing an accusing finger at him. "This is the only plan that we have. Even if it's not foolproof, it's all we have. What have you done to help? You disappeared. I can count on one hand the number of times A.J. mentioned you'd called or texted after the whole mess went down. We're asking you to do one thing, just this one thing, and that's to spend some time with your best friend. Is that really so hard? Is it really that horrible of a thing to ask you?"

          "If the two bickering ladies have stopped arguing," Sasha chimed in, failing to hide the annoyance in her voice, "we have stuff to do. Nick, go." Nick threw his hands up in the air in frustration, huffed, and ultimately left the choir room, muttering whatever under his breath. Once the door closed behind him and she had one less thing to worry about, she handed Landon her laptop. "Do your magic."

          As Landon typed and scrolled around, leaving everyone hanging and waiting for answers, something, anything, Sasha decided she could no longer remain seated. She'd stayed in the same position for too long and Nick's words hung around, leaving her nauseous and a threatening sense of impending doom in the room, like a little rain cloud.

          She could deal with A.J. finding out about their plan—that wasn't even the worst thing about it all—but she wouldn't know what to do in case everything went wrong. She knew the feeling of failed justice all too well; it started off with hope and small trust in the system, trusting it would work as it should and protect the victims. Then, it fell apart, slowly, but surely.

          They'd shown empathy to the wrong person. They believed in his remorse, but never in her truth, never in her pain. She got no redemption arc—she was destined to forever be the villain, the one who'd thwart the hero's dreams, and she was just so evil. He'd go on to do greater things, even if he no longer attended Columbia, because NYU was almost just as wonderful.

          He was a wonderful, promising, respectable young man, in spite of his 'mistakes'. Sasha was just a dirty notch in his reputation.

          "Sasha," Landon called, interrupting her mental rambling, and she noticed, one second too late, he kept a hand on her shoulder. It was one of his rare demonstrations of affection towards her, but still his style—he kept her at arm's length, as he'd done so for years. "You okay?"

          "Yeah," she muttered. "Yeah. I was just . . . thinking."

          "Listen, I, uh . . . I can't help but think about the last time we did this. Or why we did something like this." She looked away, a hurricane forming in her chest, ready for havoc. "If you think it's getting too personal for you, maybe you should—"

          "It's not getting too personal. These things are not comparable." She shrugged off his hand, momentarily regretting it, as she wasn't sure when she'd be treated like that again. "This is not about me. We're doing what we have to do; it's not my fault social media is so invasive."

          He backed away, then turned to Zara once she raised her arms above her head and chanted in victory. Sasha had always found her omnipresent optimism to be quite terrifying, but, considering they were all putting so much faith in her supposedly perfect eidetic memory, the least they could do was give her proper credit.

          Angelina leaned forward when Zara pushed the laptop towards her, then her eyes scanned a list of numbers and names, which Sasha assumed were the credentials are the people associated with each of them. It was a long shot, and they could never be sure Angelina wouldn't try to protect her so-called friends, but Sasha knew all about betrayal. She knew enough to remember betrayal never came from strangers.

          "Jolene posted this," she said, quietly, begrudgingly, as though she couldn't believe Jolene Miller had done such a thing. No one ever believed the things human beings were capable of, sometimes not even when confronted with hard evidence, not even when confronted with personal testimonies. "These are Jolene's credentials."

          "Are you sure?" Waylon asked. "Is there a chance someone else could have used her account to screw her over or cover their tracks."

          Angelina shook her head. "We've sworn to tell the truth and nothing but the truth in this blog, and that includes not using another person's credentials. I mean, it's not like anyone would even know, not like we do right now, but we're legally required to turn on two-factor authorization. Jolene would know if someone had tried to use her credentials to log into the blog account and she would have made a fuss about it."

          Sasha took a deep breath. "Okay. That's one person down. What about the photo?"

          "Working on it," Zara said, jumping from her seat and skipping towards the whiteboard, already holding a marker. They all watched her draw a diagram of the seating arrangements, with circles for chairs and arrows pointed out of them, and it was genuinely unsettling how awkward it was. Sasha could barely even remember who sat behind her, but Zara somehow did. "Okay. All the names are down. Time for some role play. Levi, sit right there. Gwen, come here . . . okay, perfect. Lovebirds, to the front. I'll tiptoe around the back to try and find the right angle."

          They waited. 

          Miyu let them know A.J. was incredibly confused about Nick's presence and was already getting suspicious. Angelina looked close to tears. Sasha's blood boiled in her veins. Zara moved from seat to seat, trying to match the angle perfectly.

          "A-ha!" she exclaimed, jumping in glee. "I got it. Check who sat here and we have our guy. Or girl. Or person."

          "You can see my bracelet in that photo," Angelina said, pointing towards the laptop. "That's my arm right there, on the left. The person sat to my right . . ."

          Sasha turned to face the board. "Let's get that bitch."