Top 8 (10 page)

Then he got in the passenger seat, leaving me staring at the neon ice cream cone blinking against the darkening sky, wondering what was beautiful about it.

Giving up, I got in. When I turned the car on, he cranked the stereo up and pointed to the small glowing screen of the iCar. “I knew it!” he said, laughing. “Kelly Clarkson.”

Later, after we'd gotten back and I'd blamed the delay on late-night traffic and said goodbye to the Ellises and helped Dad with the dishes and added
Clue
to my Netflix queue, I checked my Friendverse.

 

Madison's Inbox

Buddy Invites: 1 New

North by NE/Nate Ellis wants to be your friend!

FRIENDVERSE
…
for your galaxy of friends

About Me

General:

Lee, Hospital, Admission, Electric

Music:

MU-330, Pop Girls Etc, Pavlov's Dog, Fruitless Gourd, Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan

Movies:

Terrence Malick, Robert Altman, Noah Baumbach, Wes Anderson, Whit Stillman, Woody Allen, Francois Truffaut, Serge Gainsbourg, Billy Wilder, Alfred Hitchcock

Television:

I don't watch TV.

Books:

Bukowski, Wodehouse, Carver, Whitman, Gorevitch, Didion, Sedaris

Idols:

Graven

Education:
High School

Graduated:
In 2 months…

Who's in my Friendverse?

185 friends

North by NE's Comments

Displaying 6 of 55

evan
Dude, glad you're back. Let's hit Stanwich Sandwich for a BLT stat.

they call me mr. gibbs
sweet profile song. Can I get my CD back one of these days?

em-squared
Hey hon, I missed you! How was Peru? Call me!

Brian (not Ed) McMahon
dude, you have no idea. He melted down. It was like Three Mile Island at my house. I'll call you when I'm allowed out again — maybe in 10 years?

Melissa
Went by our place the other day & thought about you. how've you been?

nickVerse
you went WHERE for spring break?

“So how was it?” Schuyler asked as she stood in front of her locker. It was Tuesday morning, and I had an open period, so I could stand with her and discuss Nate's profile while she struggled to remember her combination. This was not a rare occurrence. Schuyler forgot her combination about once a week. She'd started writing it down, but then she usually forgot what she did with the paper.

I leaned against the locker next to hers. I'd certainly spent enough time staring at the profile last night, and describing it over the phone to Ruth and Lisa. (We figured it would be too suspicious for people who were in my Top 8 to suddenly be friending him.) Ruth had seemed impressed, but Lisa hadn't been that much help in analysis, because as soon as she heard about the references to Truffaut and Gainsbourg, she'd decided he had good
taste, and had hung up so she could add them to her own profile.

I was more interested than I thought I'd be to see that his status was “Single.” And that we had some writers and directors in common. Mostly, though, his prof seemed really intimidating. And it was a little weird to think about the fact that, after I'd accepted his buddy invite, he could now see
my
profile as well. I was really wondering what he thought about it, for some reason.

And I couldn't help getting a little fluttery feeling in my stomach when I thought about him looking for me on Friendverse.

But the thing that was giving me the most food for thought was his most recent blog entry, entitled “ice cream.” It must have been posted right after he'd gotten back from our house. It simply said:

 

it's always when you
are not looking that you get
a treat. mint choc chip.

 

It had taken me a little longer than it should have (don't tell last year's English teacher) to realize this wasn't just a weirdly formatted blog, but a haiku. I figured that it was probably just about what the title said: ice cream. But I'd still looked at it for much longer than it takes to read seventeen syllables.

“Mad?” Schuyler prompted.

“Sorry,” I said, pulled out of my own thoughts. “It was good,” I said. “Just a little…intimidating. I don't know. He seems really smart and is into weird bands I've never heard of.”

“But you're smart, Mad,” Schuyler said. “And you like weird bands too!” she added encouragingly. “But, um, what about Justin?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” she said, twirling the dial again, “are you still going to try and get him back or have you moved on to this cute senior guy? Or, um, someone else?”

“His name is Nate,” I reminded her. “And of course I'm going to try and get Justin back! I'm going to show him that we belong together.” As soon as I said this, though, I felt a tiny twinge of doubt.
Did
we still belong together? But I quickly pushed the thought away.
Tortoise
, I reminded myself. “And who else would we be talking about?” I asked, genuinely puzzled.

Schuyler seemed not to hear me, as she stopped twirling and stared bleakly at her locker. “I think I'm going to have to go to the office again.”

“I'll walk with.” We headed down the corridor together. People were still pointing and whispering as I passed, but it was a little less pronounced than it had been the day before. This might have had something to do with the fact that Jimmy — whose new
Friendverse name was
Liz is a whore
—and Liz—whose name had changed to
Jimmy has a teeny tiny
…— had sent out multiple bulletins about each other, giving me much more information than I'd ever wanted to know about their relationship and certain parts of Jimmy's anatomy.

The office was deserted, except for Glen Turtell, who was sitting in his usual spot outside Assistant Headmaster Trent's office. Turtell greeted us with a “Sup,” looked at me for maybe a moment longer than usual, then went back to carving his name into the bench, which was one of the stupider things I'd ever seen him do, since he was practically confessing to the crime as he was committing it.

Stephanie, Dr. Trent's secretary, was manning the desk. She sighed when she saw Schuyler. “Combination again?”

“Yes,” Schuyler said meekly. “Sorry.”

“I thought I told you to write it down,” Stephanie said.

“I did,” Schuyler protested. “You told me to, Madison here told me to, and I
did
, I just can't find the piece of paper.”

Stephanie looked at me with interest. “You're Madison?” she asked.

“And then I put it in my phone,” Schuyler continued, seemingly unaware the conversation had gone on. “But then I threw it out the window —”

“Madison MacDonald?” Stephanie asked.

“Um, yes,” I said, beginning to get nervous. Unlike Schuyler and Turtell, I was almost never in the office, and I preferred to keep it that way.

“Just a second, Miss Watson,” Stephanie said to Schuyler. “All the locker combinations have been stored in a secure database on Dr. Trent's computer. We've had some problems with locker thefts.” As she said this, she glared at Turtell, who frowned right back. “Don't go anywhere, Madison,” she added to me as she disappeared into Dr. Trent's office.

Schuyler turned to me, eyes wide. “What'd you do?”

“Run for it, dude,” Turtell advised. “Don't look back.”

“I didn't do anything,” I said, wracking my brain for any violation of school policies I may have accidentally committed. But then I realized it probably was something to do with student government. Due to Connor Atkins's recount issues, I hadn't been at the initial meeting with the other officers. Dr. Trent just probably wanted to welcome me formally or something.

“Here you go,” Stephanie said, returning and handing Schuyler a piece of paper. “Please keep track of it this time.”

“I will,” Schuyler promised. I saw her eyes dart up to the clock above Stephanie's desk. “Um, is there any way you could write me a pass for class?”

“Shy,” I said quickly, hoping to get some info before she had to leave, “what did you mean before —”

“Madison MacDonald!” Dr. Trent stuck his head out of his office and motioned at me. “Would you mind coming in here, please?” He pointed at Turtell. “I'll deal with you in a moment, young man.”

“But I was here first!” Turtell protested.

“Madison,” Dr. Trent said again, and disappeared into his office.

I waved goodbye to Schuyler and followed. I'd only been in Dr. Trent's office one other time, due to a misunderstanding freshman year when I'd been assigned Boys' PE (stupid gender-neutral name) and refused, for obvious reasons, to go. Little seemed to have changed in two years; it was still stark and intimidating. However, there were now several framed inspirational posters of soaring eagles that said things like
Why run when you can fly?

Which didn't really make any sense to me at all. Unless it was an inspirational poster for actual eagles.

I took the seat in front of the desk and looked across at Dr. Trent, who steepled his fingers and frowned at me.

“I have an open,” I said, to fill the silence. “I'm not cutting or anything.”

“Miss MacDonald,” he said, pulling a file out from under his desk, “I'm afraid that a certain…matter has come to my attention.”

“Okay,” I said, beginning to doubt that he was now going to welcome me warmly into the PHS student government family.

He opened the file and I saw, to my horror, a printout of my hacked profile, in all its misspelled glory.

“How…how did you get that?” I choked out.

“You're aware, of course, that all Putnam High students belonging to this social networking site have to ‘buddy' the profile of Putnam High School?”

Faint, faint bells were ringing from when I joined Friendverse. I remembered getting the bulletin from the school, which stated that all students had to approve the invite from the incredibly lame PHS profile. Apparently, it was to prevent students cheating and posting tests. But I hadn't been doing anything like that.

“Yes,” I replied slowly.

“Well,” Dr. Trent said, flipping through the pages of my profile, “your particular profile has recently been… brought to my attention.”

“Wait,” I said quickly. “My profile was hacked while I was away on spring break. I didn't write any of that stuff.” Inwardly I sighed, wondering how many more times I would be required to say that sentence. “If you check it now, you'll see it's all been restored.”

“Hmm,” he said, making a note on the file. “I'll look into that. But this is troubling,” he said, looking over the tops of his glasses at me. “Quite troubling.”

“I agree!” I agreed. “I mean, I don't even know how someone managed to hack my profile in the first place!” As I said this, I realized that I'd failed to ask myself that very question. How
had
someone managed to hack into my profile?

“Well,” he said, closing the file, “I'll continue to monitor the situation. But as Mr. Atkins pointed out, Miss MacDonald, this” — he held up the file for emphasis — “is not the kind of thing we expect from our student government officers.”

I had been in the process of getting my stuff together, but I stopped and sat straight up. “Mr. Atkins?” I asked. “
Connor
Atkins? He's the one who told you about this?”

“I don't know if I'm at liberty to disclose that,” Dr. Trent said stiffly, as he placed my file in his drawer. “But he did point out — and I quite agree — that our student officers need to represent the best parts of Putnam High School, and —”

“Naturally,” I said, inwardly seething. “But as I've told you before, I had nothing to do with this. My
profile
was
hacked
.”

“Nevertheless,” Dr. Trent said. He picked up a different folder, this one about the size of a phone book, and sighed as he looked at it. “Would you please ask Mr. Turtell to come in?”

“Sure,” I said, still furious about Connor. “Thanks, Dr. Trent,” I said, leaving the office. I wasn't sure what I
was thanking him for — implying that I might lose my hard-won position as class secretary because I'd been hacked?

I waved goodbye to Turtell, who advised me to “fight the man” and “speak truth to power.” I nodded, held up a fist in solidarity, and headed out into the hall, my thoughts racing.

What if it wasn't just a coincidence that Connor had reported my profile to Dr. Trent?

What if he'd been the one who'd hacked it?

He'd been on my list, of course, but I hadn't really believed it was him — I couldn't imagine him doing something so duplicitous, since he was so by-the-rules.

But then again, I reasoned, so was Mussolini.

I texted Ruth the situation, knowing that she'd be in class, but could read it when she got out. Then I pulled out my list and added to it.

 

Mad's Friendverse Hacker/Possibilities:

I folded up my list and checked my watch — although I had Latin in twenty minutes, I wanted to get some answers as to how this had happened in the first place. Armed with a Diet Coke, I went to see Frank Dell — hold the Frank.

 

“Can you keep that away from the equipment?” Dell asked, eyeing my can of soda warily. “I can't tell you how many computers I've had to repair because people dump soda on them.”

I picked up my DC and held it tightly. Dell worked in the basement, out of what I was pretty sure was a converted maintenance cupboard. At any rate, it was tiny and dark and carried the lingering scent of lemon Pine-Sol. It was also filled with laptops and desktops, keyboards, dismantled hard drives sprouting wires, and pieces of equipment I couldn't even begin to identify, beeping softly and blinking occasionally.

Technically, Dell was doing an elective in computer studies, but everyone knew the reality — Dr. Trent had figured out that it was a lot cheaper to employ a student for credit than have to pay a professional to fix the school's computer glitches. So Dell got two free periods a day to keep PHS wired.

Dell looked like he spent most of his time down in the computer lab, or at least out of the sun. He was shortish and pale and seemed to wear mostly black. I didn't think I'd ever seen him out of a hoodie. His hair was tangled and dread-y, and stood up in many directions, apparently of its own accord.