Top 8 (11 page)

“So here's the thing,” I began.

“Your Friendverse was hacked,” he said without looking up from the monitor of the desktop he was rapidly typing on.

“Yes!” I said, relieved I didn't have to give the speech again. “How did you know that?”

“Word gets around, Madison.” He paused in his typing and looked at me. “I mean, you misspelled the name of the town we live in.”

“
I
didn't,” I reminded him. “Someone else did. And you need to tell me how this happened. I mean, how could someone have done this?”

“It's not that difficult,” he said, going back to typing. “I assume you have only the standard security measures in place?”

“Um, yes?” While I was better with computers than Ruth was, I could really only do the most basic stuff, and when something went wrong, I tended to give my laptop to someone else to fix rather than trying to figure it out myself.

“That's probably your problem there,” he said. “Personally, I have a 128-hex encryption on all my passwords, and I've been doing the same thing for Dr. Trent. It's the only safe way to go.”

“Does my computer even have that option?”

“It can,” he said, walking over to a laptop and powering it up. “Was your password easy to guess?”

“Not that easy,” I said, thinking about how many possibilities that existed for each person's password.

“Well,” he said, shrugging, “you can't hack into Friendverse and change people's profiles. They have firewalls even I don't know how to touch.”

“Have you tried?” I asked, joking.

“Sure,” he said, completely serious. “The only way to get known in this business is to show people the weaknesses in their defenses so you can tell them how to build them up. But Friendverse is solid.”

“So someone just guessed?” I asked, surprised and disappointed. I had been hoping that we'd have uncovered some kind of hacking trail that would have led us to the hacker, who we would then bring to justice.

“Most likely,” he said. “Unless someone had access to your computer when the hacking happened.”

“No,” I said, “I was away.”

“Then someone probably just guessed,” he said. “I mean, they'd have to know the e-mail address you use to log in, and probably something about you. And after
you've tried to log in unsuccessfully three times, Friendverse shuts the profile down until you answer an e-mail from them. So they would have had to have a pretty good idea.”

“Hmm,” I said, pondering this. I'd always figured that the hacker must have known me pretty well— they'd known too much information about my life, and had been able to convince people that they
were
me — but this really drove it home. Who was it?

And more importantly, would I ever find out?

The first bell rang, and Dell began shutting down his various machines. “Well, thanks,” I said, heading for the door.

“Certainly,” he said. “How's the MacBook holding up?”

“Fine,” I said. “Except I still can't type
Q
's.”

“But who needs
Q
?” he asked with a grimace that, for him, seemed to pass for a smile.

“Oh,” I said, remembering, “Liz Franklin said her computer was still acting up.”

“Oh yeah?” he asked, straightening up. “Did she say anything else?”

“No,” I said, “she's kind of pissed at me right now. Why?”

“Nothing,” he said, leaning down towards a monitor, his pale face flushing. “Just wondering if she'd had any other problems with it. That's all.”

The second bell rang, and I realized that I was now going to be officially
tardus
to Latin. But as I looked at Dell illuminated by the light of the monitor, I remembered what Lisa had speculated yesterday: that Ruth had a crush on him. “Dell,” I said, with all the casualness I could muster, “you're not dating anyone, are you?”

“No,” he said, looking up at me. Then, leaning back down toward the monitor, so softly that he must have been talking only to himself, I heard him add, “not yet.”

“Any new prom business?” Kittson asked cheerfully from the front of the classroom where we were having our weekly junior prom committee meeting. It took all my self-control not to fling my after-school snack of SweeTarts (minus the blue ones) at her.

Kittson had decreed, at the start of the meeting, that due to my breaking the “promfidentiality” agreement — which I did not remember agreeing to — by posting insider-committee knowledge on my Friendverse, my status as a member of “the school's most important committee” was now considered probationary. I now could not speak without being spoken to and had to address Kittson as “Chairwoman Pearson.” All of which might have been really upsetting if I didn't have so much else to think about.

My head was filled with thoughts of Connor and Dr. Trent and Dell and the fact that Jimmy had — twice — managed to “accidentally” knock my books off my desk in English, and that Liz had turned and started walking the other direction when she saw me heading toward her after classes were over. Also, the fact that Kittson had a huge hickey on her neck, and wasn't even trying to hide it, but was instead wearing one of the lowest-cut shirts I'd ever seen. I was trying not to think about how Justin had probably given the hickey to her, or that most of my
Dane
lines were still unmemorized, or what the real meaning of Nate's haiku could be, and if it could possibly have something to do with me.

“So,” Kittson said, banging her pink gavel on the podium and shaking me out of my reverie, “finally, we've come to the moment we've all been waiting for.”

I looked at the clock in surprise — I hadn't realized the meeting was over already.

“The final vote on the prom theme!” she continued brightly as she stared daggers at me. She had managed to shoot down all of my prom theme ideas so far, but the votes had always been close. This was because the rest of the committee members were mostly résumé kids who were on the committee just to put it on their applications, and tended to vote with whoever had spoken last.

“Now,” she said, her voice growing steely, “I know that…some…of you have proposed themes that are
‘punny.' But I can assure you, there is no place for humor at a prom. This is a special, sacred night that we will treasure always. Therefore, I propose that this year's prom theme should be A Night to Remember.”

One of the résumé kids raised his hand. “Wasn't that a Mandy Moore movie?”

“Walk,” the girl next to him said, “
A Walk to Remember
.”

“Oh,” he said. “Okay then.”

“So are we agreed?” Kittson asked. I raised my hand. She glared at me. “Madison?”

“Kittson—I mean, Madame Chairperson—”

“Chairwoman Pearson.”

“Right. Sorry. You do realize that's the title of that book about the sinking of the
Titanic
?”

She stared at me. “What?”

“Yeah,” I said. “We all had to read it in fifth grade.”

“Well,” she said, tossing her hair, “nobody remembers that now.
Do you
?” she aggressively asked the rest of the committee, most of whom were engrossed in their PDAs. She seemed to take their silence for consent. “Good. Anyone in dissent?”

I raised my hand, but I was the only one who did. Kittson banged her gavel. “Excellent,” she said. “A Night to Remember it is. We're adjourned.”

I was a half-second away from asking her if she planned to decorate the ballroom with plastic icebergs
and pictures of hypothermic Leonardo DiCaprio when it hit me that she would be going to the prom with Justin.

I
had been planning on going to the prom with Justin. And, true, he hadn't asked me, and we hadn't really made any plans, but I had been assuming we would go together. And now he was going to go with Kittson.

Maybe not. Maybe not if I could get to the bottom of this hacking mess. But the thought of them slow-dancing to power ballads was sobering enough to make me lose interest in mocking her theme.

“So now that we've locked down a theme — finally — I can go live with the website. Maybe we can do something with a scrapbooking motif and the captions can be links…” Kittson trailed off. The rest of the committee was heading out, no doubt to their next activity.

I remained frozen in my seat and stared at her. “You're doing the website?” I asked. “You know how to do that kind of stuff?”

“Sure,” she said with a shrug, packing up her designer messenger bag. “I'm great with computers.”

 

“But that doesn't mean anything, Mad,” Dave said as he leaned around his stack of pizza boxes to look at me. “Just because she's good with computers doesn't mean she hacked you.”

“I know,” I said, “but still.” We had all convened at Putnam Pizza, where Dave was working, to sit in the restaurant's biggest booth and drink free sodas and watch him fold the flat pieces of cardboard into pizza boxes. Generally, if we hung around long enough, Big Tony, the owner, would bring over a free pie. Which was always excellent, even if he did refuse to serve me pineapple. Tony insisted that fruit had no place on a pizza and hadn't been swayed by my “tomatoes are a fruit, too!” argument. He was also horrified — as were the rest of us — by Ruth's onion-anchovy-ham preference, so he usually just brought over cheese.

Dave had been working at the pizza place for three months now, and we all enjoyed the perks. Dave's father had made him take the job, since he wanted his son to “learn the value of a day's work.” What this really meant, though, was that Dave had to deliver pizzas in a BMW that Little Tony was always taking for joyrides without Dave's permission.

“A Night to Remember?” Ruth asked. “That's kind of morbid, isn't it?” she laughed. “What are the favors going to be, Life Savers?”

“My thoughts exactly,” I said. I'd known Ruth was going to get it, and not only because we'd done a project on the book together in fifth grade. Because Ruth had been in charge of most of the research, we'd gotten an A. “I'll suggest it at the next meeting.”

“Well, I still think Kittson did it,” Lisa said firmly. “She wanted Madison's man.”

Ruth shook her head. “Please, never say that phrase again.”

“But would she have known the rest of that stuff?” Schuyler asked. “I mean, about Jimmy and Liz and my sailing accident and everything?”

“She probably could have found out,” Lisa said, and I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. She probably
could
have, due to the fact that people I'd told were apparently not keeping things to themselves.

“So Kittson Pearson was hitting on me?” Dave asked. “Awesome.”

Lisa knocked over Dave's stack of boxes. “Whoops. I mean,
houp!
” she said. Dave grumbled and began picking them up.

“But then what was your text about?” Ruth asked. “The one you sent me about Connor?”

“What about Connor?” Schuyler asked, flushing.

“Well, I think he might have done it too,” I said as I related what Dr. Trent had told me.

“OMD, Shy, learn your combination,” Lisa said when I'd finished the story.

“It certainly sounds like he had a motive,” Ruth mused.

“No!” Schuyler said. “Of course he didn't. He was just looking out for the good of the school.”

“What is up with you and Connor Atkins?” I asked, looking at Schuyler's beet-red face.

“Nothing. What? Why?” she stammered.

“Well, if you want to shake him down, he's playing a lacrosse game today against Stanwich. He's probably out on the field,” Lisa said.

“How do you know that?” Schuyler asked, frowning at Lisa.

“Yeah,” said Dave, gripping the cardboard so tightly it seemed in danger of ripping.

“It's a thought,” I said, checking my watch.

“Go for it,” Ruth said. “Get the dirt. Talk to you later.”

“Talk to you soon,” I replied, out of habit. “Okay,” I said, gathering up my stuff. “I'm off.”

“Mads,” Schuyler said, looking agitated. “Don't — I mean, when you see him, don't mention —”

At that moment, Big Tony dropped a pizza on the table and whatever Schuyler was saying was lost in the scramble for slices. Since she immediately grabbed one and started eating, it seemed she didn't want to continue the conversation.

I grabbed a slice and then headed out the door without looking back.

I was on a mission, after all.

I headed back to school, eating my pizza as I drove over to the lacrosse fields, which were located behind the main building. I realized as I did so that it'd been a while since I'd been to any kind of sporting event.

Schuyler didn't like us to come to her tennis matches, claiming that our cheering — particularly when it was in French — made her mess up her serve. And after we started going out, I saw no reason to keep going to Justin's rugby matches and pretending I had interest in watching one of the most frightening and violent sports I'd ever experienced. I wondered, with a small pang, if Kittson went to the matches now.

But mostly, it felt nice to be back as I headed over to the field, taking in the people sitting in the bleachers and on blankets, or standing around and
drinking the Gatorade and eating the oranges intended for the team.

I took a seat on the bleachers on the Putnam side and checked out the players. I spotted Connor right away; he was in the middle of the field arguing with the ref about something that seemed to be called high-sticking. As I tried not to giggle, I looked closely at Connor. He was actually not bad looking, with dark red hair and a few freckles. He might even have been cute, if only he hadn't been such a jerk.

Proving my point, his yelling got louder, he threw his stick down, and then, it seemed, got yelled at again for unsportsmanlike behavior. As he picked his stick up, he seemed to notice me in the bleachers. I waved at him, but he merely narrowed his eyes at me and went back to playing.

I was suddenly very glad I'd come. Clearly, if the eye-narrowing was anything to go by, he had something against me, which moved him to the top of my suspect list.

I looked around and saw, a few feet down from me, Brian McMahon, holding a notebook and looking fixedly at the field. “Hey Brian,” I said, sliding a little bit closer. “What's up?” I knew he was still mad at me — he refused to pass me anything in our Marine Bio labs, much to Marilee's delight, who by now had heard the whole profile story and was watching our unfolding drama with
glee. But I was hoping that he was getting closer to forgiving me.

“What's
up
?” he sputtered. “Madison, I'm practically grounded for life because of you. You and your stupid Friendverse comments!”

I sighed. I explained to Brian again that I'd been hacked. “But what did I — the fake I, that is — say to get you grounded?”

“You — or your hacker or whatever — put out all these bulletins about how ‘raging' all my parties are and what goes on at them. And posted all these pictures from my bashes. And my dad checks my Friendverse. When he saw all that, he hit the roof. I'm grounded until I'm thirty.” As Brian finished saying this, he slumped over, resting his elbows on his knees, clearly overcome by his tale of woe.

“Brian, I'm sorry,” I said. “I don't know who did this, or why, but I promise I'm going to find out.”

“Well, it must have been someone who's been to my parties, right? Because they knew details and had pictures.”

This was not exactly helpful. “But half the school shows up at your parties,” I reminded him. “We're not exactly narrowing the field here.”

As I said this, something successful and lacrosse-related must have occurred, as everyone on the Putnam
side stood and cheered. Brian and I clapped quickly. “Any idea what just happened?” I asked.

“No,” he said, frowning. “And I'm supposed to be covering this for the
Pilgrim
.” The
Putnam Pilgrim
was the school paper, but I hadn't known Brian was on staff. His extracurriculars had always seemed more confined to stuff like befriending the staff at Karl's Keg Kompany. I mentioned this, and he told me that as part of his grounding, his father was making him participate in more school activities. “I'd better go,” he said as the whistle announcing halftime blew.

“One thing,” I said, standing up. I needed to ask him what I'd been wondering ever since I saw Nate's profile. “Um, how do you know Nate Ellis?” It was strange for me to say his name out loud — I hadn't done it that often — and I found myself unable to stop smiling as I said it. It must have been because of the “s” sound in “Ellis.”

Brian stared at me. “How do
you
know Nate?” he asked. “We went to camp together, a million years ago.”

“Oh,” I said. “We were on a trip together over spring break, that's all.” I saw Brian's eyes light up as I said this.

“So
you're
the girl that —” he said, but then stopped just as it was getting interesting.

“I'm the girl that what?” I asked. “Did Nate say something about me?”

“Ask him yourself,” Brian said with a small smile that told me he was glad to be getting even a little bit of revenge for the Friendverse fallout. He pointed across the field to the Stanwich side. “He's right over there.”

I looked where Brian was pointing and saw Nate, looking almost unfairly cute, with a camera around his neck, heading across the field toward the Putnam side.

Brian took off toward him, and when he and Nate met halfway, they did a complicated guy handshake and then parted again. As Nate approached the bleachers, it became clear that he was heading in my direction. This made me much more nervous than it really should have.

I mean, I didn't
like
him or anything. He was just a guy with an intriguing profile that I'd eaten ice cream with. But as he got closer, I suddenly thought about how I now knew what his favorite movies were, and that we liked some of the same books, and that I'd never heard of most of his music. And that he'd written a haiku that might — but probably didn't — have something to do with me.

I stood up. I wished I'd reapplied my lip gloss, but knew I couldn't do it now, because it would be really obvious. I hoped I didn't have any pizza in my teeth. As he walked up to me, I could see him smiling, that kind of sarcastic smile that just pulled the corners of his lips up slightly.

I told my heart to stop
thump-thump
ing, but it paid absolutely no attention to me.

“Madison MacDonald, I presume?” Nate asked. As he had been the day before, he was wearing the emo-prep combo that I really liked.

I smiled at him. “Nate the Great,” I said, “the boy detective.”

“That was Encyclopedia Brown.”

“That's right. What are you doing here?”

“I'm the photographer for the
Stanwich Cardinal
,” he said. “Our paper.”

“How'd you get roped into this assignment?” I asked. Nate didn't really seem like the lacrosse type.

“Slow news day. What are you doing here?” Clearly, I didn't come off like the lacrosse type either.

“Well,” I said. I tried to raise one eyebrow at him, Nancy Drew–style, but I think I just contorted my face instead. I'd never been able to get the hang of that one. “I'm about to investigate a suspect.”

He looked at me and frowned. “Where's your trench coat?”

“At the cleaners, unfortch.”

“Unfortch?”

“Tewtally,” I said. “Get with the lingo.”

“I think I'll pass.” He gave me a wry, surprised smile. “Does this have something to do with your hacking?”

“It does,” I said. I pointed out Connor, sitting on the sidelines. “Number twenty-six. I think he may have done it.”

“How are you going to find out?”

“I haven't gotten that far yet,” I admitted. “Any suggestions?”

He shook his head. “No idea. But for what it's worth, I don't think the techniques they employ on
24
would be advisable.”

“I think you're probably —” I stopped when I registered what he'd said, thinking about his Friendverse profile. “Wait a second. I thought you didn't watch TV.”

He stuck his hands in his pockets and looked down at me. I fought back an urge to stand up on the bleachers so I could look down at
him
. “You checked out my profile, huh?”

I could feel my face get hot. “Well, yeah,” I said, wishing for a cold breeze to cool my face down. I was suddenly feeling very empathetic with Schuyler.

“I don't watch TV,” he said, “but I watch TV shows on DVD.”

“But that's the same thing!”

“No it's not.”

“Of course it is! You're just being a snob.”

He smiled down at me. “Oh, am I?”

I couldn't help smiling back. It was like I was powerless against it, like when you see someone yawn and can't help yawning as well. “You are,” I said.

“Well,” he said, “maybe someday you and I could…”

I didn't get to hear the rest of this sentence, because I suddenly noticed, over Nate's nicely broad shoulders, Connor throw his stick down again and storm off the sidelines and toward the parking lot.

“I have to go,” I said, grabbing my bag and then biting my lip as I looked at Nate. The wind I had been wishing for a few moments before had finally shown up and was blowing his hair down over his forehead. I had the strongest impulse to reach out and brush it back.

Which was so strange, because I had never wanted to do that with Justin. Probably because I knew my hand would have gotten stuck in the gel. But still. Thankfully, I stopped before following through with the impulse and horribly embarrassing myself.

I tried to remember what Nate had been talking about right before I'd seen Connor. “Um, what were you saying?”

“It's okay,” he said, looking — was I just imagining it? — maybe a little disappointed. “Never mind. You have to go interrogate the suspect, huh?”

I nodded. “The game is afoot.” I noticed, getting a little panicky, that Connor was almost all the way across the parking lot. “But, um—I mean…”

“I'll see you around,” he said, and I noticed for the first time how nice his voice was. Kind of low and a little bit gravelly, like he'd just woken up. “I mean, we're friends now. Officially.”

“Right,” I said, a little shocked at how much I didn't want to leave. But I had to! The suspect was fleeing the premises! “Bye,” I said, turning around and hustling toward the parking lot so I wouldn't have to keep looking at Nate and want to stay and listen to his voice and touch his hair or whatever.

“Connor!” I yelled as soon as I got within hearing distance. Even though he was halfway across the parking lot, he stopped putting his lacrosse stuff into the back of a Jeep and narrowed his eyes at me again.

“Madison?” he asked, as though he hadn't just been glaring at me.

“Yes,” I said, finally reaching him, a stitch in my side from all that fast walking. “I need to talk to you.”

Connor sat down on the edge of the way-back of the Jeep and raised his eyebrows. “What's up?”

I took a minute to notice the unfortunate shininess of his yellow lacrosse shorts. It's really hard to take anyone seriously when they're wearing shiny yellow shorts. “My Friendverse profile.”

He stared at me levelly. “What about it?”

I resisted the urge to pick up his lacrosse stick and hit him with it. “It was hacked,” I said slowly. “While I was away on spring break. But you know that already, don't you?”

He crossed his arms over his chest. “Maybe.”

“You know this because you told Dr. Trent.”

Connor continued to stare at me. “So?”

“So,” I said, gritting my teeth, “did you do it?”

“Did I do what?”

“Did you hack my profile?” I narrowed my eyes back at him and tried to look for any rapid blinking. “Just tell me. I'm going to find out anyway. I have Frank — I mean, Dell — on the case.” Which I technically didn't, but Connor didn't have to know that.

Connor rolled his eyes and laughed. “Of course I didn't hack your profile,” he said. “Jesus, Madison. Why would I have wanted to do that?”

I looked at him closely. It certainly didn't seem like he was lying. And I knew he wasn't a very good actor, if his disastrous audition for
The Seagull
had been any indication.

“I don't know,” I said, losing a little bit of confidence in my argument. “I thought you were mad about the whole recount thing. And then when I didn't want to go out with you…” I said this last part quickly, and could feel myself blushing again.

“Well,” Connor said, and I noticed that he was blushing too — you almost couldn't see his freckles anymore. “I mean, I was disappointed in the election results. But I feel I was justified in demanding a recount, as it was a defeat by the slimmest margin in PHS history, according to Dr. Trent.”

It took all my willpower not to roll my eyes.

“And, yes, I thought you were cute. But when I found out you were going out with that guy —”

“Justin Williamson.” I noticed I didn't smile at all when I said Justin's name. but that must just have been because of the lack of
s
's. At the end, that is.

“Right, him.” Connor frowned at me. “And seriously, Madison, that guy? He's such a jock.”

“Um,” I said, looking down at the shiny yellow shorts.

“I just play lacrosse,” he said. “There's a difference between wanting a well-rounded application and being a jock. The point is, when I was told you were dating him, I moved on. I wouldn't have hacked your profile over any of this.” He shrugged. “It wasn't that big a deal.”

“But…” I was trying to process many things.

Like the fact that it seemed like Connor really hadn't done it. That I'd just had one of my two suspects knocked down and was back to square one. The fact that I wasn't such a big deal, apparently. And that when he'd called me cute, he'd used the past tense.