Top 8 (23 page)

Putnam Park was one of the smaller parks in town, but it had always been my favorite. It had shaded paths surrounding a wide, open expanse of green and a small pond that always held ducks, and occasionally swans. There were benches on the perimeter of the pond that were excellent for duck-watching on nice days. I put my phone in my pocket, took a deep breath, and walked over to the benches.

Ruth was there, waiting.

“Hey,” I said. “Have you been waiting long?”

“No,” she said. She stood up, playing with her “R” necklace, which was visible below the scarf she had wound around her neck. “What's up?”

I took a deep breath. “I figured out who did it,” I said. I looked around the park, which was empty except for a
few senior citizen power walkers who were doing loops around the pond. “Who hacked me.”

“Really?” Ruth said, sliding her “R” back and forth. “That's great! Who was it?”

“They're coming,” I said. We stood in silence for a second. “I remember the first time I came here,” I said. “It was in third grade, I think. Carrie Tolliver had her birthday party by the pond and people kept trying to feed cake to the ducks. Remember?”

Ruth adjusted her scarf. “No,” she said. “I wasn't invited.”

I tried to cast my mind back eight years. “Really?” I said. “I could have sworn —”

“No,” she said. “I had been really good friends with Carrie, but as soon as you moved here, that was all over. I remember,” she said with a small laugh, “what it was like when you came. You were from
Boston
! And you wore all these amazing clothes from Gap Kids. Like, whole matching outfits. And everyone just fell all over themselves to be friends with you.”

I stared at Ruth levelly. “I didn't know any of that,” I said. “I was just so happy to meet you — to have a best friend.”

“Me too,” Ruth said, after a moment. “Of course.”

I looked across the park. “They're here,” I said.

Just a little late, Dell and Turtell were entering the park from opposite sides and walking toward us.

“Is that Turtell?” Ruth asked. “And Dell?”

I sighed. “I'm afraid so.”

The guys were looking at each other warily. I couldn't help notice that even though he looked apprehensive, Turtell also looked very happy, and I guessed that things had gone well with Kittson last night.

“What's this about, Madison?” Dell asked when they reached us. “I don't have time to be hanging out in parks. I have work to do.”

“I'm sure you do,” I said evenly, staring at him. He stopped protesting.

“Seriously, Mad?” Turtell said. “I'm happy to hang whenever — that is, if Kittson says it's okay — but what are we all doing here?”

“We're here because my Friendverse got hacked,” I said. “Because someone set out to hurt me and wreck my life — and not only mine, but other peoples', too. To break up me and my boyfriend. To break up a longstanding couple. To possibly jeopardize my position in student government and turn my friends against me. I know who did it. And I think I know why. And that's why we're here.”

Dell opened his mouth to protest.

“Dell,” I said, “you hacked me.”

Dell closed his mouth.

“When you repaired my computer, you got my Friendverse password off it. You were able to hack into
my account with no problem because you knew the password. You also knew the letter
Q
wasn't working, which is why no
Q
s showed up in the hacked profile, and you were the only one who knew that.”

Dell was staring at me, his face growing red.

“When you set up the locker combination database for Dr. Trent, you kept a copy for yourself. That's how you were able to open my locker when I was in class, take my laptop out of it, and then return it again. I wasn't supposed to get out of class early, so I wasn't supposed to have known this. But I found out. And when you stole my computer, you got my password off it to hack me again. Luckily, I changed my password again before major damage could be done.”

Dell's face was incredibly red now. He looked both embarrassed and angry, but still wasn't saying anything.

“Did I get something wrong?” I asked. “I can understand how you did all those things — I just can't understand why you'd have
wanted
to. You have means and intent. But you're missing motive.”

“Um, Mad,” Turtell said, “I really don't understand why I'm here.”

“Oh, you're just here for moral support, Glen,” I said. Then I turned to Ruth. “So why'd you do it?”

Ruth blinked at me and laughed. “What are you talking about?” she asked. “I don't know what you're talking about.”

I stared at her. I felt a tiny flicker of hope that maybe, just maybe, I'd gotten all this wrong. But deep down, I knew it wasn't the case, as much as I might want it to be.

“Really?” I asked, trying to keep my voice level. “You had nothing to do with my hacking?”

Ruth looked directly at me. “Maddie, of course not. You're my best friend.”

“Aren't you hot?” I asked. “It's getting warm out.”

Ruth looked down at her scarf and adjusted it, and as she did so, I saw a bright-red hickey on her neck. It was all the remaining proof I needed.

“You got Dell to hack me,” I said, knowing I had to go forward with this. “You masterminded this whole thing. And don't call me Maddie.”

“What are you
talking
about?”

“Are you seriously going to deny it?” I asked. Ruth crossed her arms over her chest and stared at me.

“Fine,” I said. “I can't believe I have to do this,” I said, staring at the person I'd believed to be my best friend, and telling myself not to cry until I got through it.

“So,” I said, trying to keep my voice from shaking, “you were my best friend.”

Ruth flinched at the use of the past tense.

“You knew everything about me. You knew I was going away on spring break, and that there wouldn't be any real internet on the ship. You had enough pictures from parties we'd been to together to fake a horrible profile. You knew all those secrets so you could blog about them. And you broke up me and Justin because you wanted to go out with him.”

Ruth's hand immediately flew to her neck.

“I assume that's from when you hooked up last night?” I asked. She stared at me, stony-faced. “I hope you also know that he asked me to go out with him again before that and I turned him down.”

“He mentioned it,” Ruth spat.

“You've had a crush on him for months,” I said. “You first started crushing on him when you were tutoring
him, right?” I asked. “Kittson knew about you — not who you were, but just that Justin was stringing along some girl. But when he started going out with me, you had to break us up.”

“Oh, it was more than that,” Ruth said angrily. “You didn't even appreciate Justin. You never did. You just thought he was cute — you never saw what was there.”

“And you did?” I shot back.

Turtell and Dell were looking back and forth between the two of us, as though we were the tennis ball in a particularly violent match point at the US Open.

“I did,” she said.

“But it didn't work,” I said. “Even after you hacked me to break up with him, he still chose Kittson.”

“You think that's the only reason?” Ruth asked with a short laugh. “You think that's the only reason I had Dell hack you? I was so tired of all of it — so tired of everyone buying into the Madison MacDonald myth. I was
sick
of it. I've been dealing with it since third grade.”

“What do you mean?” I whispered. I could handle this when I thought it had been about a boy. I didn't know if I could handle the way my “best friend” was looking at me at the moment.

“Oh,” Ruth said, her voice rising, “the fact that everyone thinks you're
so
nice and
so
sweet, when all you do is talk about people behind their backs. I didn't write
anything that you hadn't said, Madison. I just thought that people should know what you'd been saying about them. And I just wanted people to see that you weren't this great, wonderful person. Do you know what it's like to be
your
best friend? To have to listen to you complain about your boyfriend not paying enough attention to you, or the fact you have so many lines to learn for your lead in the play, or the fact that your parents are taking you to
Ecuador
for spring break?”

Ruth stared at me hard. “Do you know how tired I am of being in your shadow? You've been doing it our whole friendship,” she said, her voice breaking. “And I can't take it anymore.”

I was crying now; I couldn't help it. Turtell fished in his pockets and handed me a very grungy-looking tissue. “Thanks,” I said, trying to use the one clean corner.

“Are we done here?” Dell asked, looking uncomfortable.

“Not yet,” I said, trying to pull myself together. “Not quite yet.” I blew my nose and took a breath. “It was the breakup of Jimmy and Liz that had me puzzled. Why would whoever hacked me care about breaking them up? I didn't understand it until last night.”

I looked at Dell. “You had a crush on Liz, right?” I said. Dell's face, which had just about returned to its normal pasty shade, was going red again. “She's in your AP
Physics class, and you fixed her computer for her in March. But you didn't really fix it at all. You kept making tweaks to it so she'd have to come back. And since Ruth is terrible with computers, she couldn't hack me on her own. So when she came to you for help, you had a reason to do it — to break up Jimmy and Liz so you could go out with her.”

Dell still wasn't saying anything. He just stared at me, impassive, almost bored.

“What I can't believe, though, is that you would have sold out Glen. You had your copy of the locker combinations and have been stealing things out of people's lockers, and then hinting that Glen here might have had something to do with it, knowing that Dr. Trent would never suspect you.”

“So?” Dell asked, smirking. “So what? So I hacked you, Madison. And Dr. Trent's too much of an idiot not to realize that of course I was going to keep a copy of the locker combinations. But you're never going to prove any of this. I hope you've had fun playing Veronica Mars. But now I have to go.”

“Not yet,” I said, pulling my phone out of my pocket. “Did you get that, Connor?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Connor said on the other end, sounding stunned. “
Jesus
, Mad.”

“I know,” I said. “And you recorded it for Dr. Trent?”

“Every word,” he said.

“Thanks, Connor,” I said. “I appreciate it.” I dropped my phone back in my pocket. Dell had now turned white, and Ruth was staring at me open-mouthed. “Sorry,” I said. “But you can't do that to people and get away with it.”

“Dude,” Turtell said, giving me a fist bump. “Nice.”

“What is he even doing here?” Ruth snapped.

“Glen was instrumental,” I said. “He'd been able to witness Dell coming and going from Dr. Trent's office, and was able to overhear enough so that he could guess that Dell had no intention of ever destroying the locker combination database and in fact, fully intended to let Glen take the blame.”

“You got it,” Turtell said. “Sorry I couldn't tell you that last night. But I got, um, distracted.”

“It's okay,” I said. “You told me this morning.”

“Gotta bounce,” Turtell said. “Good luck with…all this. Oh, and Kittson wants you to call her.”

“Okay,” I said. “Thanks, Glen.”

Turtell walked across the field, hopping the low stone wall rather than opening the gate.

I turned back to Dell and Ruth, who were arguing.

“You promised me,” Dell said in a low, angry voice, “that nothing would happen. My academic career is on the line —”

“I didn't know this would happen,” Ruth cried, cheeks flushed. “I didn't think she'd figure it out!”

“Sorry to let you down,” I said.

“I'm leaving,” Dell said, glaring at both of us. “I don't think I should say anything else.”

“Just FYI, Liz is going out with Jimmy again,” I said before he could walk away. “Sorry. But they activated their joint Friendverse account this morning, and both their statuses say ‘Taken.'”

I saw Dell's face fall before his usual impassive expression returned. Then he turned around and stalked out of the park.

It was just Ruth and me now. Exhausted by all of this, I sat down on the nearest bench. To my surprise, she sat down as well, on the opposite end.

“How'd you figure it out?” she asked after a moment. “That it was me?”

“It wasn't easy,” I said with a sigh. “You did a really good job. But there were clues. You were the one who sent me on a wild goose chase of people who had nothing to do with this. You had your pizza delivered to Dell's house on Lower Cross Lane — I Googled the address — twice, back when you were hacking me during spring break, and then on Friday night, while I assumed the two of you were planning for the party. I saw you with someone at Stanwich Sandwich — someone who wore a black hoodie — Dell. And you were talking to Jimmy at the party, trying to convince him it was totally over, right? While Dell was putting the moves on Liz.”

“Yes,” Ruth said, sounding exhausted. “You got it.”

“But what really tipped the scales happened last night. You called Nate ‘Jonathan.' I'd never called him that, but it was the name in my second password.”

“Yeah,” she said. She slumped back against the bench. “What's happening with that, anyway?”

Out of habit, I was about to tell her all the details. But then I realized she wasn't my best friend anymore. And if she'd been feeling this way for as long as she said, she probably hadn't been my best friend for a while. “It's a WIP,” I said finally, and she gave me a sad smile and stood up.

“I better go,” she said. She looked as shaken as I felt. I looked up at her and knew our friendship was over. It had broken, right there in the park. “Talk to you later?” she asked.

I couldn't fill in my response. It just didn't feel right. “Yeah,” I said sadly.

Ruth seemed to realize this, and after a moment, she nodded and walked away, her shoulders hunched.

 

I cried on the bench for sixteen minutes, according to the clock on my cell phone. But then, with the help of Turtell's tissue, I attempted to pull myself together.

I had a boy to talk to. And I had a bulletin to send.