Top 8 (12 page)

“But you were glaring at me.” I knew I was grasping at straws, but I wasn't quite ready to admit defeat yet.

“When?” he asked, looking puzzled.

“Just now.”

“Oh,” he said, “I can't find my contacts. I can barely see anything. That's why I got kicked out of the game. I was talking about the ref, and didn't see him standing next to me. I need to find them soon, though, or my mom's
going to make me get laser surgery, and I really don't want it.”

“Oh,” I said, starting to feel foolish. Before I could leave, however, I had to get one last question answered. “But why did you tell Dr. Trent about my hacked profile?”

“Oh, that.” Connor stood up, finished putting his lacrosse gear into the back of the car and pulled on a black hooded sweatshirt. “I think he felt bad about the whole recount thing. He asked me to be the school's Internet Liaison.”

“What's that?” I'd never heard of the position, and was positive that if Lisa had, she would have applied, as she did to anything vaguely French-sounding.

“He just created it,” Connor said. “I guess he's been worried about how everyone in school has a Friendverse account. He just wants me to keep an eye out for anything suspicious. And your profile definitely fell into that category.”

“Oh,” I said, mulling over everything that he'd said. And beginning to feel just how embarassed I was. “Got it. Sorry for the whole false accusation thing.”

Connor shrugged and smiled. “It's really okay. I was actually meaning to talk to you….”

I held my breath, hoping he wouldn't try to ask me out. But he wouldn't, right? I mean, he'd used the past tense when calling me cute. “Um, about what?”

Connor blushed again. “Is your friend Schuyler dating anyone right now?”

I let out my breath and told Connor that Schuyler was single, but not in emphatic enough terms to make her sound like a loser. I also told him that he should really avoid any discussion of sailing or boats when talking to her.

Connor thanked me and drove off, leaving me standing in the parking lot. I watched his taillights disappear, then headed to my Jetta.

In the distance, I heard a police siren wail. And then, from the window of an idling SUV that I hadn't previously noticed, I saw a silver Razr arc through the air and smash into fragments on the pavement.

I walked over to the car. I could see a red-headed girl slouched down in the driver's seat, and I had a feeling that it was Schuyler. Plus, I really couldn't think of another person who would have thrown a phone out a window.

As I got closer, I saw that it was her. Schuyler's eyes were fixed on the rearview mirror, which was angled so it would have shown where I'd just been standing and talking to Connor. I walked over to the passenger door, which luckily had the window down.

“Hey.”

She gasped and turned to see me, hand pressed to her chest. “God! Mad!” she said. “You scared me.”

“Sorry,” I said. I leaned my elbows on the open window base. “I saw the phone, so…”

“Yeah.” Schuyler shook her head. “It's just total habit now. The car wasn't even moving. I'm like that guy's dog with the bells.”

“Pavlov,” I supplied.

“Yeah, him.” She leaned out the driver's side window, looked down at the shards and sighed. “That was the second one this month.”

“Maybe you should just think about one of those handsfree attachments,” I said. “It might be a lot cheaper.”

“Maybe,” she said. She sat up straighter and adjusted the rearview mirror so it was facing the back of the car. “So, um, what's up?”

“You tell me,” I said. I watched Schuyler, who was fidgeting and seemed very focused on looking at anything but me. I had been meaning to find out what had been going on with her for a while, and now seemed as good a time as any. “Mind if I get in?”

“Sure.”

She unlocked the door, and I climbed into the car, turned in the passenger seat and looked at her. “What's going on, Shy?”

“What do you mean?” she asked, sticking a lock of hair in her mouth.

“Hair,” I reminded her.

“Thanks,” she said, pulling it up into a messy bun. She fiddled with the stray tendrils. “Nothing's going on. What do you mean?”

“What are you even doing here?”

“I don't know,” she said, running her fingers along the steering wheel. “I just, um, wanted some fresh air.”

“Shy, come on.”

“What?” she sat on her hands. “What makes you think something's going on?”

“Well,” I said, “you've been acting kind of weird ever since I got back from spring break. What is it?”

“
Nothing
,” she insisted, staring down at the steering wheel.

“Schuyler,” I said, “tell me. We tell each other everything.” As I watched her continue to stare at her odometer, I felt my stomach drop a little. “Don't we?” Schuyler still refused to look at me, and I flashed through how she had been acting strangely — as though she was hiding something, or guilty about something — since the whole hacking thing began. And a thought so terrible I almost didn't want to say it out loud was crystallizing in my head.

Had Schuyler been the one who'd hacked me?

I had no idea why she would have wanted to, but the rest of it seemed to fit. After all, I'd told her all the secrets the hacker had somehow known.

I sat back against the seat. “Shy,” I said slowly. “Did you…I mean…”

She looked over at me, guilt written all over her face.

“Did you hack me?” I asked, my voice trembling.

“What?” she asked, looking shocked. “Of course not, Madison. How can you even ask that?”

“I don't know —”

“I thought I was one of your best friends —”

“You are!”

“I mean, I know Ruth is your BFF, but I thought I was up there, too. I mean, I was above Lisa in your Top 8 last month. I never would have done that to you!”

I let out a huge breath, incredibly relieved. The thought that I had been betrayed by one of my friends had turned my stomach. “Then what's going on?”

Schuyler sighed. “It's Connor.”

That had not been what I'd been expecting to hear. “Connor?”

“Yeah,” she said, blushing. “I have a crush on him.”

“Connor
Atkins
?”

“Yeah,” she said. “He's just so cute, and really sweet and really nice…” she trailed off happily.

“Right,” I said, trying to give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he
was
really sweet and nice when he wasn't accusing you of rigging an election or calling you a kleptocrat.

“But, I mean, I knew he liked you, Mad. So I kind of told him that you were going out with Justin — back when you were, I mean — and that you probably wouldn't
be interested.” She glanced over at me, guiltily. “I'm really sorry.”

“Why?” I asked, genuinely puzzled. “You did me a favor—I
wasn't
interested.”

“Oh,” Schuyler said. “But I just thought…I know that sometimes when one of your friends likes someone, you decide you like them too, and I just didn't want that to happen here.”

“No danger of that,” I assured her. Then something she had said hit me. “You were speaking about the big-picture ‘you,' right? Because I've never done that to a friend.”

Schuyler paused for just a second, then said, “Right.”

“Shy, I think it's great that you like Connor. I think you guys will be really cute together.” I meant it, too. I was just excited Schuyler had decided
she
liked someone, rather than the other way around. And they would look cute together, I realized, with their red hair and freckles. Very Gap ad.

“Really?” she asked, beaming. “Because I like him so much, but don't really know what to do. And I swear I wasn't following you, Mad. I just came over to watch the game and saw you talking.” She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. “So, um, what were you guys talking about?”

I smiled at her. “You.”

Schuyler shrieked so loudly, I was glad the windows were down, for the sake of my eardrums. “Really?
Really?
I mean, really?”

“Really,” I assured her, and filled her in on the conversation, with Schuyler gasping every third word. “So,” I said when I finished, “it seems like you've got a date coming your way soon.”

“Omg,” she breathed. “This is so exciting! Mad, thank you so much!”

“No problem,” I said. I pulled out the list Ruth had made for me from my bag. “Although I'm glad Connor didn't do it, it does mean I'm down to one suspect.”

Schuyler peered over at the list. I crossed Connor off and stared down at the only name left:
Kittson Pearson.

“Fore!” Lisa yelled, lobbing a tennis ball over the court's fence.

“That's golf,” Ruth reminded her and she and Schuyler picked up balls from around the perimeter of the court.

Lisa shrugged. “Whatever.” Ruth handed her a handful of balls, and Lisa whacked them over the fence.

We were in PE, the only class the four of us had together, on the outdoor tennis courts. Justin had Boys' PE the same period, and I kept looking over to the open gym doors to try and get a glimpse of him.

His class was doing rock climbing on the indoor wall. We had been given a choice this gym class between tennis and rope work, but when Lisa had caught me staring,
transfixed, as Justin did pull-ups, she'd hustled us out to the courts.

Truth be told, I wasn't the only one who had been transfixed. Ruth and most of the rest of our class had been staring as well. Justin's triceps were pretty mesmerizing that way. I was just glad that I hadn't been responsible for spotting him. I would have kept spotting the wrong things.

But since we were out on the tennis courts, away from my ex-boyfriend and his delts, this temptation was removed. The four of us were supposed to be playing doubles, but none of us really felt like it, except for Schuyler, and since she was really good, none of the rest of us wanted to play her, so we were simply hitting our balls into the woods behind the tennis courts. This way, when Mrs. Bellus, our gym teacher, came by, we could “go look for them,” i.e., continue talking.

“So I checked in with Dell yesterday,” I said as I did “froggy in the frying pan,” bouncing my ball up and down on a flat racket. Marilee Suarez had been sent to the office after she'd refused to do the exercise on the grounds she was a vegetarian, which had been a highly entertaining beginning to the class.

“Oh yeah?” Ruth asked. “What about? Is your computer still acting up?”

“Yes,” I said, “but mostly it was about the hacking thing. But I also,” here I threw a sidelong glance at Ruth, “asked him if he was dating anyone.”

I saw that Ruth had begun to flush slightly. “What did he say?” she asked.

“He said ‘not yet,' which I thought was interesting.” I looked closely at my BFF. “Rue, do you like Dell? You can tell us.”

Ruth was full-on blushing now, and looked incredibly uncomfortable, all signs that seemed to point to YES.

“
C'est vrai?
” Lisa asked. Her voice rose about an octave. “Really? OMD, this is so exciting!”

“No,” Ruth said, fiddling with her initial necklace. “I don't. Seriously. I've just gotten to know him because of our physics project. I don't have a crush on Dell. Okay?”

“Okay,” Schuyler said.

“Okay,” I said.

“But do you have a crush on
someone
?” Lisa asked. Ruth blushed more deeply. “I knew it!” she yelled. “Who is it?
Qui?
”

Ruth, smiling and shaking her head, opened her mouth to say something.

“Girls!” Mrs. Bellus, sporting one of her multicolored track suits and carrying a clipboard, walked up to the court and stared at the four of us standing clumped in a corner, beyond the baseline. “What are you doing?”

“Tennis?” Schuyler asked, after a pause.

“We lost all our balls,” Lisa said, pointing over the fence.

“All of them?” she asked incredulously.

“Yup,” Lisa said. “Schuyler here has a mean ace.”

Mrs. Bellus rubbed her temples. “Go get them, please,” she said as she walked away, shaking her head. The four of us headed out into the wooded area just beyond the court.

“So?” Lisa asked excitedly as soon as we were out of gym teacher earshot.

“No,” Ruth said, laughing. “Which is what I was going to tell you. I don't have a crush on anyone right now. But as soon as I do —” she said, maybe in response to Lisa's crestfallen expression, “you guys will be the first to know. Of course.”

“
C'est dommage
,” Lisa grumbled.

I glanced over at Ruth and tried to raise an eyebrow. She shrugged and mouthed,
Talk to you later
. Which I took to mean that Ruth
did
have a crush on someone, but wanted to talk to me about it first. Which was totally understandable. She was the first one I'd told about my crush on Justin. It was BFF prerogative.

I looked at her closely and wondered who it could be. Ruth was usually pretty private about that stuff, much to the frustration of the rest of us.

“So did I tell you guys about Connor?” Schuyler asked excitedly.

“Yes,” Ruth and Lisa chorused, but undeterred, Schuyler launched into the story again.

This time, I added what had happened in terms of my conversation with Connor about the hacking, which Schuyler seemed to feel stole her limelight a little, as she started pouting until Lisa threw a tennis ball at her.

“So if Connor didn't do it —” Lisa started.

“I always knew he didn't do it,” said Schuyler a little petulantly, rubbing her head where Lisa had hit her.

“If he didn't do it,” Lisa continued, “who did?”

I picked up one of the bright green balls and contemplated the question. “I don't know.”

“Kittson,” Schuyler said. “Right?”

“Yeah,” Ruth said. “She's on the list, right?”

I thought about it. I'd been thinking about it ever since I crossed Connor off. All the pieces fit, everything I'd learned from Agatha Christie et al. — motive, means, intent. Only I wasn't relishing the thought of going up to her in school, probably having to interrupt a makeout session with Justin, and confronting her in public. “Well, I'll talk to her after the next prom meeting, I guess.”

Lisa gaped at me. “But that's a week away! You have to act now!”

Schuyler nodded. “Iron while it's hot.”

“Girls!”
Mrs. Bellus yelled. “Have you found your balls?” This, of course, sent Schuyler into paroxysms (SAT vocab word) of giggles.

Lisa pointed at me. “Madison found one.” I held it up as evidence.

“Less talking, please?” Mrs. Bellus said, making a note on her clipboard. I had a sudden fear I had just dropped a letter grade in PE. As soon as she walked away, we began talking again.

“I just don't want to confront her about it in school,” I said, grabbing a second ball. “I don't need a big scene with her in the Student Center. People are talking about me enough already.”

“Un moment,”
Lisa said as she took her phone out of her sweatpants pocket and began scrolling though her calendar. “I think Kittson might get her nails done on Wednesdays. I have a standing appointment after my French Appreciation Society meetings, and she's usually leaving as I go in.”

Ruth stared at her. “You have a standing appointment?”

“
Mais oui
,” Lisa said. “You would too, if you had my cuticles.”

“Mad, you should go!” Schuyler said. “Go talk to her while she can't get up and leave. That's why my stepmother is always buying me spa packages, so she can talk to me while I'm incapacitated in a mud wrap or whatever.”

“Interesting idea,” I said. I tossed a ball back over the fence, and as I did so, I saw Justin walk to the side of the gym by the doors and begin stretching. He looked flushed and sweaty and really good. Although, I couldn't help but notice, a little bit on the short side.

The bell rang, and we tossed the other two balls we'd found over the fence onto the court. “So?” Schuyler asked. “Are you going to the nail salon?”

Ruth smiled at me. “Go for it,” she said.

“It's a plan,” Lisa said. “I'll just call Olga and make sure she's free for you after school.”

“Okay,” I said. “I'll do it.” Lisa secured me an appointment, and I resolved to head to Nails “R” We (they had to change the name after they got sued) immediately after school.

After PE, I changed and headed to AP history where I found, to my great surprise and distress, that I had a fifteen-page essay on Queen Victoria due on Friday. But happily, Mr. Karlyle didn't specify font/type size. And whenever that happened, I was a big fan of Courier/14 point, which could turn eight pages into fifteen, no problem.

When the last bell of the day rang, I headed to my locker and saw Liz slamming her door shut and picking up her bag. When she saw me, she paused for a moment, like she was thinking about saying something, but then just turned and walked away.

I had packed my own bag up (trying to ignore the freshgirls two lockers over who were giggling at me) when Sarah Donner walked up to me.

“Hey Mads,” she said in a super-sympathetic voice. “How's it
going
?”

I turned and looked down at her. Sarah was about four inches shorter than me, which was one of the reasons she said I shouldn't have gotten the part of Felia, since Josh Burch, who was playing Ham, was about an inch shorter than me. When I'd gotten cast, she'd told Mr. Allan that it would look ridiculous to have the ingénue towering over the leading man. I don't think he cared about the height difference, but I pointed out that as a farm girl in rural Kansas, I'd be barefoot most of the musical, while Ham, who'd just returned from the University of Wittenberg, would no doubt be wearing shoes, which would even out the height difference.

Sarah wasn't bad looking, with long brown hair and blue eyes. She would have been pretty, if only she wasn't so
intense
about everything.

“Hey Sarah,” I said. I looked at her outfit, overalls and a bandanna holding back her hair. She dressed normally most of the time, but had been wearing these clothes for rehearsals ever since she read that's all Meryl Streep wore while she was at Yale Drama. “Why are you dressed like that?” I asked. “We don't have rehearsal today.”

“I know,” she said. “But I'm going to go down to the blackbox to run lines. I'm off-book — of course — but it never hurts to do some extra practicing.”

“Right,” I said. I really was tempted to tell her not to worry about it, since I would never let her go on for me, but decided against it.

“So how are you holding up?” she asked with a sympathetic head tilt.

“Fine,” I said, figuring that she was talking about the hacking. “It all seems to be dying down a little, so that's good.”

Sarah furrowed her brow. “Mads, what do you mean ‘dying down?' The vote's today, isn't it?”

I stared at her. “What vote?”

“Why, the vote the Thespians are having.” She adjusted her bandanna. “A lot of them — myself included, I must admit — were very upset by some of the things you wrote about us on your Friendverse. We're convening to see if someone who's so clearly against the greater good of the Troupe should be permitted to continue as a member.”

I couldn't believe this. “Sarah,” I said, trying to keep my voice level, “I didn't have anything to do with that. My account was hacked.”

She frowned at me, as if in confusion, but I could see she was enjoying every minute of this. “But Mads,” she
said, “I know you've said things like that before. I'm pretty sure I've even heard you!”

“Yes, but…” Why didn't anyone seem to understand that there was a difference between telling one or two people and writing it on the internet? Because it
was
different.

Right?

For the first time, a little seed of doubt about all my information-sharing was planted in my mind.

“I never would have said those things to the Thespians,” I said, looking her in the eye. “And I didn't write them on my profile.”

“Then you really shouldn't have said it behind their backs, then, should you?” Sarah asked with a little satisfied smile. She looked down at her watch. “Oops, I better get going.” She gave me the head tilt again. “Best of luck, Mad. It would be
such
a shame if you had to drop out of the production.” With that, she walked off.

I stared down the hallway after her, furious. Sarah was clearly taking her own jealousy out on the other theater kids. But I was also angry at myself for ever saying those things about the Thespians in the first place.

I glanced down at my phone and realized I was going to be late if I didn't hurry to the nail salon. On the way out to my car, I sent a quick e-mail to Mr. Allan explaining what Sarah was doing — because I was almost entirely sure she'd arranged this vote without
his permission — and about my hacking and innocent (well, mostly) role in this situation.

Then I sent a text to Ginger, asking her to please vote against Sarah, and to let me know what happened as soon as the meeting was over. I got a smiley face in return, so I could be sure I had at least one vote in my favor.

When I got to Nails “R” We, I saw a pink Mini Cooper in the parking lot with vanity plates that read KIT KAT, so I figured Kittson was inside. I checked my reflection quickly in the rearview mirror, and wished I'd taken the time to put on mascara that morning. When you're going to accuse one of the most popular girls in school of stealing your identity and boyfriend, I had a feeling it helped to look pulled together.

As I walked in, I saw Kittson sitting in the pedicure area, in one of the leather massage chairs, reading
Us Weekly
.

“Hi,” I said to the woman at the counter. “I have an appointment with Olga. For a pedicure.”

She glanced down at the appointment book in front of her and made a mark on it. “Pick your color, please.”

I grabbed the bottle closest to me, a bright crimson. “Here.”

She raised her eyebrows at me. “Jungle Red,” she said. “Bold choice for this time of year.”