Top 8 (13 page)

As she led me over to the pedicure area, I wondered what she had meant. Was nail polish color
seasonal
?

I didn't have time to reflect on this, however, because suddenly I was sitting in the chair next to Kittson. I still wasn't sure what I was going to say to her. The counter woman told me that Olga would be with me soon, and to put my feet in the water. I rolled up the legs of my jeans and obliged, trying to think of a strategy. I thought back to one of Agatha Christie's most famous detectives and wondered,
WWHPD
? Or,
What Would Hercule Poirot Do?

“Hello Kittson,” I finally said. This was the best I could come up with after trying, and failing, to figure out a strategy.

She looked up from “Stars — They're Just Like US!” and flicked back her long blond hair while her pedicurist massaged her feet. “Oh,” she said. “Hey Madison.” And with that, she went back to the pictorial evidence of Uma eating a cheeseburger.

If Kittson was guilty, she was certainly hiding it well. I looked at her, trying to discern if she was someone who would be capable of ruining lots of lives just so she could go out with Justin. “I need to talk to you,” I said, wishing my friends had come with. I could have used the backup.

Kittson sighed and put down the magazine. “God, Madison,” she said, “I'm not changing the prom theme! I've already launched the website.”

“No, not that,” I said. “Something more personal.” I tried to raise one eyebrow and look at her significantly.

“Are you okay?” she asked, wrinkling her nose slightly. “Your face is acting weird.”

I stopped trying to raise an eyebrow. “I'm fine,” I said. “I just wanted to talk to you about something.”

“Go for it,” she said, picking up the magazine again and flipping through it. “Hey look,” she said, angling it toward me, “Reese went shopping.”

“Fascinating,” I said, trying to stay focused, even though I really wanted to look over and see what she'd bought, “but listen. My Friendverse got hacked over spring break.”

“Bummer,” Kittson said. She frowned down at the magazine. “Would this shirt work on me?”

“I'm trying to talk to you about something,” I said, but glanced over against my will to see the picture of Mary-Kate. “No,” I said, “not really.”

“I didn't think so,” she said, “but it might look cute on my sister.” She folded down the corner of the page.

“Listen,” I said. “My Friendverse got hacked. Whoever hacked me broke up with Justin. You know,” I added significantly, “my
boyfriend
.”

“Ex,” she said, flipping a page.

“Well, yeah,” I conceded, “because whoever hacked me broke up with him. And really messed up my life and a lot of other people's in addition.”

“That sucks,” she said, looking over at me, “but why are you telling me this?”

“I just want to know if you did it,” I said, tired of dancing around the situation. The villains in Christie novels were always a lot more forthcoming with their crimes. Also, I was pretty sure none of them had read
Us Weekly
while being interrogated. “If you hacked me.”

Kittson rolled her eyes. “Of course I didn't hack you, Madison.” She closed the magazine and offered it to me. “I'm done. Want to read it?”

I was torn between my righteous indignation and really wanting to see what Reese had ended up buying. “Thanks,” I said, taking the magazine. “But, I mean, just tell me if you did it. I have someone working on the case,” I lied, “and I'll find out anyway. And according to Dr. Trent, there will be dire consequences.” This was not so much a lie as an assumption. But whatever, Kittson didn't have to know that.

“Madison, no offense, but why would I have wanted to hack you?”

I opened my mouth to reply when my pedicurist came up and introduced herself as Olga.

“Hi Olga,” I said, trying to get back to the matter at hand. “Because —” I started to say to Kittson.

“Spa pedicure?” Olga asked.

“Just regular,” I said, trying not to spend more money than I had to on a pedicure I hadn't wanted in the first place.

“You should get the spa,” Kittson said. “Seriously. It's worth it.” She frowned down at my feet. “And it looks like you could use it.”

“Regular,” I said to Olga. “You would have hacked me because I was going out with —”

“No, really,” Kittson said. “They do a whole exfoliation thing and a mask, and —”

“Fine!” I said to Olga. “The spa is fine. Whatever.”

“Excellent choice,” Olga said. She began sloughing my feet, and I tried not to giggle uncontrollably.

“You won't regret it,” Kittson said, picking up
In Touch
.

“Listen,” I said, feeling quite sure that Hercule Poirot had also never had to interrogate anyone who apparently had the attention span of a sand flea, while getting a pedicure, “you would have hacked me because you wanted to go out with Justin. And you were mad at me about the whole prom theme thing. And you could have done it — you said at the end of the last committee meeting that you're really good with computers.”

Olga looked up at me and raised her eyebrows. Truth be told, it had sounded a lot more convincing in my head.

Kittson smiled as she flipped pages. “Seriously, Madison, if I wanted to go out with Justin I would have just gone out with him. I wouldn't have had to pretend
to be someone else on Friendverse to get him to go out with me.”

I looked at her — blond, C-cupped, perfect skin — and conceded that she probably had a point.

“Plus, I got the theme I wanted because, no offense, mine was better than yours. And it's a good thing I'm good with computers, because otherwise we would have had to pay what's-his-face to do the website, and you know what the prom budget is like.”

“Dell?” I asked.

“Yeah, him. The one who always wears that hoodie. Which, seriously? Ick.” She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “Anyway, it's not like Justin's this great catch or anything. I've been hooking up with him all year.”

I almost kicked Olga in the face as I sat up suddenly. “What? Sorry,” I said to Olga, who had begun to swear in Polish. “What?”

“What?” Kittson asked. “It's not like a big thing or anything. Just whenever I was between guys. My friends call him ‘Justin Case.' Isn't that funny?”

“Hysterical,” I said, my head spinning. Had they been hooking up while we'd been together? I suddenly felt ill, and didn't think it was just from the nail polish fumes. “So were you with him when we — I mean, Justin and I —”

“No,” she said, looking more serious that I'd seen her since I'd proposed both
Prom-iscuous
and
Prom-ises, Prom-ises
as themes in a single meeting. “I don't cheat. If he was going out with someone, of course I wasn't going to hook up with him. I didn't even want to hook up with him before he started going out with you, because he was stringing along this one girl….”

“What girl?” I asked. Olga had stopped even pretending to do my feet at this point, and was just listening to the conversation.

“I can't remember,” Kittson said. She lowered her magazine and wrinkled her nose. Apparently, this was what she looked like when she was thinking hard. I'd never had the chance to see it before. After a moment, she shrugged. “Nope, can't remember. But seriously? He's not that great. He keeps giving me hickeys. It's
so
seventh grade. I could really use…I don't know, more of a bad boy type. I'm thinking about breaking up with him. Do you like this bag?” She angled
In Touch
toward me.

“Yes,” I said, distracted, “but it'd be a lot cuter in white.”

“Totally!” she folded down the page.

“So you're going to break up with him?” I asked, trying to keep up with everything that had been revealed in this conversation. “You're not going to the prom with him?”

Kittson wrinkled her nose again. “Probably not,” she said. “I've already bought my heels, and I think he's too short for them. Ooh, look, Angelina bought groceries.”

I sat back in my chair. I believed Kittson. She hadn't hacked me. I hadn't been convinced from the beginning, and since she seemed to have some weird penchant for telling the truth, I believed her now.

But that was suddenly not my biggest concern. Justin had been stringing some girl along? What girl? And he'd been hooking up with Kittson all year?

I knew I hadn't known a ton about Justin when we started going out. But at the time, I'd thought it had been part of his Heathcliff-esque mystery.

Come to think of it, we'd never really talked about all that much. We'd mostly just made out. And I really was with Kittson on the hickey thing.

But Justin and I had a
connection
.

Didn't we?

“You okay?” Kittson asked, looking over. “You look kind of weird.”

“Just thinking,” I said. Suddenly, I was looking at whole chunks of my relationship with Justin in a different light. What else about him didn't I know? And if Kittson hadn't committed the crime, and Connor hadn't either, who had? “Just trying to figure out who could have hacked me.”

“Well,” Kittson said, flipping pages again, “first of all, you probably have to figure out who would have cared enough about you — no offense — to do it. Right?”

“Yeah,” I agreed. I watched as Olga began to paint my toenails Jungle Red in slow, even strokes. “I'm working on that.”

Friendverse Messaging

It was, I found, incredibly difficult to do a report on Queen Victoria when you had just been Friendverse messaging with a very cute guy.

It was even more difficult to concentrate on writing about Queen V because I kept going to my Netflix queue and adding new movies, some of which might have begun with
C
.

And I was finding it especially hard to write my essay on Queen Victoria because my computer refused to type the letter
Q,
which was, unsurprisingly, somewhat crucial to the essay.

After twenty minutes of staring at Nate's messages and trying to decipher hidden meanings in them; trying not to let myself get too excited about the fact that he was going to be only an hour and change away from Putnam at Yale, because what did I care?; deciding that he was mocking me with his final sign-off; wondering what that meant; deciding that it probably didn't mean anything, but if it did mean something, it was maybe good; and attempting to begin my essay by referring to Queen V as “Female Royal Person Victoria,” I gave up and turned off my computer.

I checked my phone and saw I had two new texts.

 

INBOX 1 of 81

From: Ginger Davis

Date: 4/9, 9:17
P.M.

Don't worry! Vote didn't go thru. Mr. A found out & called off meeting. Phewf!!

 

INBOX 2 of 81

From: Ruth Miller

Date: 4/9, 10:19
P.M.

Hey — I'm going into study mode for physics final Fri. We'll talk tomorrow, ok? ttyl

 

I immediately sent a response to Ginger, thanking her, and then one to Ruth. When Ruth went into her study mode, she was pretty much in Unabomber mode. She'd gotten into the habit of alerting me so that I wouldn't worry or wonder what was up when she didn't respond to texts or calls.

 

SENT 1 of 62

To: Ruth Miller

Date: 4/9, 10:25
P.M.
u got it. good luck hitting the books.

 

ttys!!

 

I headed downstairs to find my mother and father both sitting at the kitchen table with their laptops.

My father was wearing the ancient Cubs hat he wore when he wanted to indicate that he was working on his column and not to be disturbed. My mother's laptop was displaying about five different stock reports, all fluctuating wildly, and she was staring at the screen intently.

“Hey,” I said as I grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and sat down at the head of the table.

“Hi hon,” my mother said without looking up from the screen. My father simply pointed to his hat.

“So I have to write this essay on Queen Victoria that's due on Friday,” I said as casually as possible, hoping one or both of them would conveniently forget it was Wednesday.

“Do you need me to proofread it?” my mother asked.

I wished. I supposed I could get her to check that I'd spelled “Female Royal Person Victoria” correctly, but there didn't seem to be much point to that. “Um, I'm not quite that far along yet,” I said. “The problem is that my letter
Q
has stopped working. Could I switch laptops with one of you?”

Both my parents looked up at me in alarm.

My father pointed to his hat again. “Madison, I'm in the middle of a column that has to run in tomorrow's paper, which is going to be put to bed very soon. I need to file it in —” he looked up at the microwave clock — “an hour and ten minutes. I don't have time to be switching laptops.” And with that, he pulled the brim of his hat down and continued typing furiously.

“You really shouldn't have left this assignment to the last minute,” my mother admonished.

I pointed at my father. “Daddy did.”

“Yes, well,” my mother said, sneaking a glance at her laptop, “this is what comes of having your computer painted without my permission.”

I took a sip of water. “So if I'd gotten your permission, this wouldn't have happened?”

“Probably not,” my mother said, “because I would have said no.”

“Which is exactly why I didn't ask.”

She sighed. “Go borrow your brother's computer.”

I perked up. This would give me the chance, with full parental authority, to spy on Travis's recent Google searches. “Really?”

“Yes,” she said, “but please work upstairs. I think we're bothering your father.”

My father was typing with one hand, the other pressed against his ear to block out our conversation.

“Sorry Dad,” I said quietly. I took a few York peppermint minis out of the cupboard and headed upstairs. Travis's door was open, but he wasn't inside his freakishly neat room. I walked over to his desk to pick up his laptop when I noticed something crumpled up in the wastebasket under his desk. It was just a piece of notebook paper, but I could have sworn I saw a piece of my name on one of the corners —
adiso
. I figured it was worth investigating.

I had no idea where Travis was — he might have been taking one of his weird hourlong showers that made me glad I had my own bathroom — and I knew he could be coming back at any moment. But I decided to risk it. I sat down on his desk chair and grabbed the paper out of the
wastebasket. In my brother's meticulous handwriting was written:

 

 

Oh my God. What the hell was this?

“What are you doing?”

I spun around in the chair and saw Travis standing in the doorway, holding his cell phone. I crumpled the paper in my hand and quickly transferred it to the front pocket of the Putnam Pilgrims Tennis Team sweatshirt I'd stolen — I mean, borrowed — from Schuyler the last time I'd stayed over at her house.

“Nothing,” I said, standing. “What's up?”

Travis frowned at me. “What are you doing in my room?”

I tried to look nonchalant. “Oh, Mom said that I could borrow your computer because mine is acting up. But,” here I did a big yawn and stretch, “I'm actually kind of tired. I'm going to turn in. But I might have to borrow your computer tomorrow, FYI.”

My brother was still frowning, and I noticed that he kept looking down at his cell. “Mom — Mom said that you could use my computer?” he asked.

I was surprised that this was his reaction, as I had been expecting more outrage. But he seemed kind of distracted.

“Yes,” I said, looking at him closely and speaking with emphasis. “But I promise I won't do anything to invade your privacy. Because that would
really suck
, wouldn't it?”

Travis looked up from his phone. “What are you talking about?” he asked, looking a little nervous.

“Oh, nothing,” I said, staring hard at him for one more moment. “Night,” I added, leaving his room and heading down the hall to mine. The piece of paper was burning a hole in my front pocket. I shut my door, climbed up onto my bed, unfolded it, and read it once more.

It was seriously suspicious.

Had the hacker been under my nose the entire time?

Had it been
Travis
?

Pieces were beginning to fall into place: all the time he'd spent on the internet on the ship, the fact that he lived to torment me, his weird comments about whether I'd gotten any interesting e-mails.

Oh, I was going to
kill
my brother. Once I had proof.

I took out my list, crossed Kittson off, and added Travis to it.

Then I looked at his paper — which could only be his attempts to find out my password — and realized that if Travis had managed to figure it out, it must not have been difficult enough.

And considering most of the school now knew I'd been hacked —
ih8hackers!!
probably wasn't obscure enough either.

I gently picked up my laptop and logged on to Friendverse, happy to see that I'd had four new profile views since I'd gone downstairs. I couldn't help wondering if one of them had been from Nate.

I went into my privacy settings to change my password. I needed something nobody would be able to guess, something that nobody knew about….

Taking my cue from Travis's list, I changed my password to
Jonathangirl
, blushing a little as I did so.

Then, trying not to think about my unfinished — technically unstarted — essay, cute Yale-bound guys, or demonic younger brothers, I turned in.

However, once I'd set my alarm and switched off the lights, I realized that I hadn't yet memorized any of my
Dane
lines for the next day's rehearsal.