When the blackmailer proved to not be Hunter, Zoë seethed. Of course, of course it was back to Frankie. That conniving little bitch. It wasn't enough for her to almost ruin Zoë's life with her testimony in court or for her to try and turn all of the squad against her, she had to get them in trouble, too. Telling on the squad would ruin them. And Frankie still claimed to be friends with some of them!

Frankie had never been a good friend. Not to Zoë, and now not to Shay or Lola. Frankie was willing to turn on them the same way she had Zoë.

Well, Zoë wasn't gonna let that happen. She wasn't going to let Frankie Hollingsworth ruin the one good thing Zoë had at Degrassi.

So Zoë tricked Frankie into thinking she'd be welcomed back on Power Cheer and snapped a picture of Frankie mid-change, blackmail for the blackmailer. It was the only boob picture with a face attached, making Frankie the only one that any person could identify. The faculty wasn't going to go on a Match-The-Boobs expedition, talk about illegal.

Frankie stood there and called Zoë a villain.

Despite everything, it stung more than it should have. Zoë had been called worse. Hell, Zoë would claim the title of "villain" if it meant that nobody messed with her! She would cackle evilly and rub her hands together like a cartoon evil mastermind if it meant that no one could ever fuck with her, hurt her, ever again. Never again.

She didn't feel bad about owning a nude picture of Frankie that Frankie hadn't consented to. She couldn't. She didn't. She DIDN'T.

Plenty of people owned pictures of Zoë without her permission. So what if Zoë had the one of Frankie, especially if it would never see the light of day if Frankie kept her stupid mouth shut.

She didn't feel bad.

Right before going on stage to give a speech to the entire student body about how Nudes Are Wrong, she got a text from Becky.

"Sorry I'm not going to make it to your big speech, but good luck! It's so brave of you to do this!"

Brave? Manipulative, clever, self-serving. Not brave. Something like guilt coiled in her gut, snaking up towards her throat. She sent off a text in reply.

"Don't be stupid."

What felt like seconds later she got a ping back.

"No, seriously! Don't sell yourself short, Zo. You always do. I'm gonna start charging you every time you're down on yourself. You should know you're really amazing."

Becky fucking Baker. Why? Why was she always doing this to Zoë? Making her second guess herself, making her feel more- more like she should be nicer, or better, or-… Zoë didn't even know.

And it wasn't even like she didn't sometimes think those things herself, she was at the very least not one hundred percent the monster people saw her as. She wasn't all villain.

But Becky brought those thoughts to the surface more than Zoe would like. Definitely more than Zoë needed them brought up, when all Zoë wanted to do was survive in a world that was out to eat her whole.

Zoë closed the message window and went up to give her speech. But when she got up there, she couldn't read the speech she'd half-assed. She looked out at the student body of Degrassi and saw her squad, and she saw Frankie, and she couldn't do it.

She put her prepared speech down, swallowed the guilt in her throat, and started, "Everyone's been talking about the girls who did this. But we all know they aren't the first to share nudes online. Some do it willingly, while others, like me, have had their image shared without permission. When you think about showing your buddy a sexy photo of your girlfriend or buying nude shots or taking a compromising picture without permission and putting it online-" her chest tightened as she found herself looking at Frankie, the little Hollingsworth's doe eyes big, and she felt the weight of her phone in her pocket. "… you have a choice. You can be villains, and do those things… or you can act heroically and resist that urge. We've all done things we regret. But today we have the chance to move forward. We all deserve it." Do you deserve it, Zo? "No… we demand it."

Frankie didn't clap when Zoë finished her speech. Zoë noticed and looked back down. That was fine, Frankie had every right not to. She looked at her phone.

Zoë didn't want to be the type of monster, the type of villain, who would do to someone else what had been done to her. Especially not that. She deleted Frankie's picture.

And then her phone dinged.

Everyone's phone dinged.

Zoë was face to face with a photoshopped picture of herself, Shay, and Lola, heads plastered on top of censored nudes. It hit her like a truck. Her first thought was "not again, this was supposed to be on my terms".

Her second thought, following closely behind, was "Fuck".

Zoë held back her tears of humiliation as she marched her way to Principal Simpson's office.

.

Zoë thought, This is what you get for being nice. For not going for the throat.

She could have done it. She could have ruined Frankie Hollingsworth with the push of a button. Instead, she deleted her leverage. And she had to fabricate fake leverage to get her revenge.

Her weakness, her compassion, could have ruined her.

Maybe that's why she went all out making that Facerange page. It hadn't taken five seconds. She'd spent an entire night making it. Heck, she'd even texted Grace for some advice on formatting without telling her exactly what it was for. Zoë didn't get the sense that Grace would entirely approve. It wasn't like Zoë and Grace were friends, but they were business partners and she wasn't horribly offended by Zoë's presence or questions. She did fairly quickly get a "I'm done helping now" text from Grace, but by then she had answered enough questions anyway.

Luckily, she'd managed to get Mr. Simpson off her back, but she knew that Degrassi Nudes would be investigated and Power Cheer would be examined under a microscope.

She had to keep it together. For her squad. For herself. Zoë wasn't going to be put through the media circus ringer again.

And if Frankie's rich daddy had to buy a really good lawyer to bail his precious little princess out of this jam, whatever. He had the money and the clout. She'd be fine. Not that Zoë really cared.

You couldn't trust anybody. That was the bottom line. You couldn't trust boys, because they only wanted one thing, which had been proven definitively that morning she'd woken up naked in the Hollingsworth pool house. And you couldn't trust girls because they were always out to stab each other in the back.

Zoë could call the squad her sisters all she wanted: she still couldn't trust them. They'd turn on her if they could. She wondered how anybody ever sustained friendships with the constant worry of being betrayed. It must be exhausting for everyone else, too, but they made it seem effortless.

Tristan wasn't hard, but that was because he was her snarky gay counterpart. She didn't have to worry about Tris getting handsy and she knew that she could say most of the terrible thoughts she had and he wouldn't get all judgey on her. Or, no, he got judgey, but he wasn't about to try and change who she was, make a shame-shame finger gesture at her and "tsk" at how she was so naughty. He accepted her for herself. The first person who ever had.

And, weirdly, Becky wasn't shaping up to be too hard either. Sure, there was the sticking point where whenever Zoë saw Becky's last name written out her heart leapt in her throat. But she'd take a breath, picture Becky's eyes, her smile. Pushing Luke out of her head was getting easier.

Zoë wanted to trust Jack, Lola, Shay, and all the rest. But she heard them whisper, she saw their glances at one another, and fear churned in her chest. She knew those whispers and those looks. She'd grown up seeing them on set. She wasn't a Frankie Hollingscrybaby, bursting into tears whenever she thought someone might dislike her. It still wasn't easy to keep her captain's cool.

Zoë knew she had to deal with this Degrassi Nudes mess and pin it all on Frankie so Power Cheer didn't get caught. If she didn't fix it, everything would be over for her.