“Interesting,” said Austin.
Even as he spoke, Abby had started to go through the ballots. “Mine’s not here either,” she said after a few minutes.
“How do you know?” asked Austin.
“Easy,” Abby said with a cocky grin. “I voted for myself six times.”
If it hadn’t been so serious, I would have laughed out loud. I wondered what Abby had voted herself for.
But this was no laughing matter. “I haven’t seen anything with Kristy’s handwriting,” I said. “I’d know her handwriting anywhere. Or Claudia’s. And I know she used her purple pen and her red pen because those were her lucky colors for the day.”
“Nothing like that in here,” Austin said after looking through the piles.
“Plus, she would have misspelled at least one name,” Abby added with an affectionate smile. (Claudia is a notoriously bad speller.)
“I think this is my ballot,” Austin said.
“Yeah, but we have at least four unaccounted for,” I pointed out.
“And a suspicious number of votes …” Abby began.
“I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation,” Austin said, interrupting her, although he didn’t sound all that convinced.
The door of the office slid shut and I looked up to see Grace slipping out of the room. She hadn’t asked who won this time. Interesting, I thought.
Whenever we have a vote, the teachers count the ballots in their homerooms, then write the number on the ballot boxes with their initials.
When we added up the numbers on the sides of the ballot boxes and then the number of actual votes counted, we were twenty votes short.
“Ballots are missing,” said Abby firmly. “I think it’s pretty clear what happened here.”
“A fix,” said Austin. “Great. Now we have to tell Mr. Fiske.”
Mr. Fiske is our yearbook adviser. He hadn’t been in school that day — which may have been why Cokie thought she could get away with fixing the election.
“First thing tomorrow morning,” Abby said. “I can be here early.”
“Me too,” I chimed in.
“I can’t,” said Austin, looking just a little relieved. “Dentist appointment.”
Going to the dentist almost sounded better than having to tell Mr. Fiske our suspicions. He was going to be upset by this.
But it had to be done. We couldn’t let Cokie get away with it.
“What about the ballots?” asked Abby. “They’re evidence. We don’t want to leave them around.”
“We can lock them in our lockers,” I said. “We’ll split them between the two of us, Abby. That way all the boxes will fit.”
Abby nodded. “Let’s do it.”
Mr. Fiske wasn’t in his room when we got there the next morning, which meant he was probably in the yearbook office. Abby and I got the ballot boxes from our lockers and headed for the office.
We found him. We also found Cokie.
“There you are,” she said. “So who won?”
How could she act as if everything were normal?
Abby and I ignored Cokie. I looked at Mr. Fiske and we set the boxes on his desk. “We have a problem,” I said.
“What?” asked Cokie. She was convincing. So convincing that I might have given her the Best Sleazy Actor award.
Still pretending that Cokie wasn’t in the room, Abby said bluntly, “It looks like this election has been fixed.”
“No way!” Cokie exclaimed. “What did you do?”
Looking upset, Mr. Fiske raised one hand as if to stop us from telling him. Then he dropped it. “Tell me what happened.”
“When Cokie gave us the ballots yesterday, Abby, Austin, and I counted them. Three times. Abby and I realized that our own ballots weren’t in there. When we compared the number of ballots recorded as being collected by the teachers to the number of ballots we counted, we discovered that we were twenty ballots short.”
“I never touched those ballots!” Cokie said. “Ask Rick! You’re just slandering me, Mary Anne, because you’re jealous.”
“Get real,” said Abby witheringly. “Who would be jealous of you?”
Before Cokie could answer, Mr. Fiske said, “These accusations will not help. We have no way of actually proving anything about anybody.” He paused. He studied Cokie for a long moment.
She tried hard to look innocent. This time she wouldn’t have won any awards.
“We should have a revote,” I said.
“No!” cried Cokie. “That’s not fair!”
“Why not?” asked Abby. “You don’t even know who won … unless you know something about those votes that only Austin, Mary Anne, and I should know.”
That stopped Cokie. But if looks could kill, Abby would have dropped dead at that instant.
Mr. Fiske said, “Under my direct supervision, we’ll reprint the ballots. I will also supervise this time.” He paused and consulted his calendar and then went on. “We’ll have the revote next Monday morning. After the voting, I’ll collect the boxes and keep them locked up until it’s time to count the ballots.”
“This is ridiculous,” huffed Cokie.
“I see no alternative,” said Mr. Fiske. By the way he said it, even Cokie could tell that the decision was final.
As we left the office, Cokie said to me, just softly enough so Mr. Fiske couldn’t hear, “Loser.”
Once that would have hurt my feelings. But not this time. I smiled at her. “We’ll see who the loser is,” I answered. I left the room before she could reply.
* * *
When the announcement came over the loudspeaker that morning saying that another vote for Most and Best would be held, heads turned in my direction. The kids in my homeroom knew I had been involved in the election.
The old Mary Anne wouldn’t have wanted to talk about what happened. The new Mary Anne — well, she didn’t want to talk about it either. But if I didn’t, Cokie would get away with her dishonest behavior.
So when Howie Johnson said, “Ooh, Mary Anne. Weren’t you able to count high enough to include all the ballots?” I didn’t turn away and roll my eyes like I once would have.
And when Emily Bernstein stopped by my locker and said, “What gives with the new election? Is it something I can use in the school newspaper?” I didn’t say, “No comment.”
I laid out the evidence. I knew Howie, with his big mouth, would spread it around immediately.
And even when Emily shook her head regretfully and said, “I’m not sure it’s something I can print, but thanks for the information,” I felt sure that Emily and her friends wouldn’t just let Cokie take the election and run with it.
I was even more sure when Emily told me that afternoon that Cokie was spreading the rumor that I was trying to steal the election. “She tried to pretend it was because Logan likes her and not you, but I know better than that.”
Emily’s sharp. She watched me to see what my reaction would be. I nodded. “It’s true. Logan and I are friends now and we talked about it. And, of course, Logan feels sorry for Cokie, trying so hard to get his attention when it’s useless.”
Emily’s lip curled. “Gotcha,” she said, and pushed off to her next class.
When Kristy, Claudia, Stacey, and I got together for our Monday afternoon BSC meeting, we discovered that we had been engaged in a sort of Stop Cokie! campaign. That is, we’d all been telling the truth about how Cokie had tampered with the voting in order to make sure she and her friends had won.
“You know,” said Kristy, “I’ve had no trouble at all convincing people Cokie is up to no good. The moment they realize it’s Mary Anne’s word against Cokie’s, they side with you, Mary Anne. Abby told me the same thing.”
“Most trustworthy,” agreed Claudia. “That’s you, Mary Anne. Among other things.”
“Most likely to give Cokie what she deserves, these days,” said Kristy.
I blushed but I accepted it as a compliment. It felt good to be fighting back. “Thanks,” I sa
id. “But you know, I wouldn’t mind making my revenge a little more complete. I mean, something more along the lines of all the awful things you and I put on our lists, Kristy.”
Kristy got a thoughtful look on her face. “You mean that?” she asked.
“I do.”
“Then there is only one thing to do. Talk to the master of practical jokes and diabolical schemes,” Kristy pronounced.
“Who?” I asked.
“Cary Retlin, of course.”
Cary Retlin is a mystery student, a cute guy who believes, in his own words, that “complications make life more interesting.” He also believes in making the complications himself and is, according to Kristy, one of the sneakiest, cleverest people around.
I don’t know about that, but I do know that Cary seems to have no limit to his skills. He can open lockers, has slipped the watch off Kristy’s arm without her being aware of it, and is probably behind more of the jokes and puzzles that occur around SMS than anyone realizes.
Since Cary has also included the BSC in more than one of his pranks, I was a little worried when I finally tracked him down between classes on Tuesday morning. What if he thought Cokie’s schemes and lies were just more of those complications that add interest to life?
“Cary?” I said. He closed his locker and turned his brown eyes in my direction.
“Hey, Mary Anne,” he said. He shifted his books and I involuntarily tightened my grip on mine, as if he might magically make them disappear from my arms. “What’s happening?”
“A lot. And I need your help.”
“Oh?”
“Oh, yes.” I told him everything that had been happening. I had a feeling he was more than up to speed on recent events, but he listened without interrupting.
“And so what I want is to teach Cokie a lesson,” I concluded. “To stop her from getting away with fixing the election. To get revenge.”
“Cokie,” said Cary. “Now, there is one of life’s complications.”
My heart sank. Was Cary going to side with Cokie? “Kristy said you were the one to talk to,” I added.
“Did she?” The corners of Cary’s eyes crinkled, and he looked both pleased and amused. “Well, Kristy’s never wrong, is she?”
“Does that mean you’ll help?”
“Life’s complications should be interesting,” Cary pronounced. “Not …” He paused, seeming to search for a word. “Not sordid, petty, and unimaginative. I’m afraid Cokie is all three. Yes, I’ll help. Any ideas?”
I slipped from my pack the two lists that Kristy and I had made and handed them to Cary. He glanced over them in a very professional manner, like a teacher eyeballing a test. “Hmmm,” he said.
I waited.
Cary said, “Are you free after school?”
I nodded.
“Good. Meet me at the SMS library then.” Cary folded the lists and stuck them into a pocket.
“We’re going to research revenge?” I asked.
“You’ll see,” said Cary, ever the mystery man, and he walked away.
* * *
Cary was waiting when I arrived at the library that afternoon. He was reading magazines. From the stack next to him, I could tell he’d been reading for a while.
“Am I late?” I asked, even though I knew I wasn’t.
“No. Grab a stack of magazines from the rack and bring them to the table so we can get started.”
Puzzled, I dumped my backpack on a chair and did what Cary had said. He thumbed the pages of his magazine and pulled out three subscription cards. He also found a page of three more that he tore out.
“Six,” he said. “Not bad.”
It was then that I realized he was reading Seventeen. This is not what you would expect a guy to be reading. But then, Cary isn’t a typical guy.
“How many are in that magazine you’re holding?” Cary asked.
I looked down. Popular Mechanics.
I found four subscription cards. I caught on. Sort of. “You want all the subscription cards from all these magazines?”
“Right.”
I decided not to give Cary the satisfaction of begging him for answers. “Okay,” I said, and went to work.
In a very short time we had about a hundred subscription cards. After we’d put the magazines back, Cary divided the cards in half and pushed one stack toward me.
“Now we fill in Cokie’s name and address on every one of these cards.”
“I don’t have Cokie’s address,” I began, but Cary was ahead of me. He slapped a 3x5 card down in front of me and I saw that all the information I needed was neatly printed on it.
“Let’s get to work,” he said.
“We’re ordering subscriptions to all these magazines for …” I looked around and lowered my voice even though no one was near, “… her?”
“That’s the idea.”
I liked it. I liked it a lot. I got to work, being careful to disguise my handwriting.
When we’d finished, I said, “There’s a mailbox at the corner. Or I can go to the post office. It’s not closed yet….”
“Stop.” Cary shuffled the thick stack of subscription cards into a neat pile, then wound a rubber band around them. He handed me the cards. “You don’t mail them. You hold on to them.”
“But …”
“The First Law of Revenge. Always have a secret weapon to fall back on. You can mail these anytime, and there is nothing Cokie can do to stop you.”
“But until I mail them, she won’t even know that I’m fighting back,” I protested.
“This is for confidence,” Cary told me. “You can jam her up with her own medicine later. I promise.”
I would have continued arguing, but it was getting late. Slowly I nodded, then tucked the cards into the outside pocket of my pack, where they bulged out like a wad of chewing gum in a little kid’s cheek. It was sort of comforting to know they were there.
We walked out of the library. At the bottom of the steps I said, “Thanks, Cary.”
“Hey,” he said. “It’s only the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant by that, but before I could ask, Cokie materialized.
“Cary,” she said. “How nice to see you. I’m having a big party on Saturday night and I want everybody who is anybody at SMS to be there. And you too, of course, Mary Anne. Here, let me give you an invitation with an address on it.”
I shifted my pack and felt the bump of the subscription cards against my arm. “Thanks,” I said. “I’d love to come, Cokie.”
Cokie, who’d been rummaging in her purse, looked up in surprise. I gave her a big smile and added, “You don’t have to give me your address. I know where you live.”
“I’ll take it,” said Cary, extracting the invitation from Cokie’s fingers.
“Great,” Cokie chirped. She smiled at Cary. Her smile disappeared as she turned to me. “And I’m glad you’re going to come, Mary Anne. It’ll be nice for you to get out.”
I didn’t answer. Cary and I watched Cokie walk away. “Going into enemy territory?” Cary murmured.
I patted the subscription cards. “Why not? I have her address,” I answered.
He grinned. “And I have her cell phone.”
“What?” Sure enough, Cary had Cokie’s small, sleek, expensive cell phone in the palm of his hand. “When … how?”
“I have my methods, Watson. See you later.”
He sauntered off, leaving me to stare, open-mouthed, after him.
I was glad he was on my side.
Maybe it was a day of plotting to get even with Cokie that made the nightmare so bad that night. I woke up with the smell of smoke in my nostrils and tears on my face. It took me a long time to convince myself that I didn’t smell smoke, and that I wasn’t in a burning house.
This made it hard to go back to sleep.
I wasn’t the only one who was having trouble sleeping. I heard my father’s footsteps go up and down the hall several times, and then
I thought I heard the low murmur of the television set. My father does that sometimes when he can’t sleep. He watches old movies on television.
Neither Dad nor I was in the best of moods at breakfast the next morning. Dad retreated behind the newspaper, coming out only to pour more coffee or say, “Listen to this” and read some particularly disagreeable news item.
I rolled my eyes every time he read something, but I didn’t speak. Mostly I just drooped over my plate and felt tired from it all.
Sharon tried to lighten things up, but she didn’t help. Her cheerfulness only made the gloom and doom hovering over the table seem worse.
Arriving at school to discover that Cokie had started another rumor about me didn’t help either. This one was about how I had begged her for an invitation to her party when I’d found out that Logan was going to be there. Honestly, between making up lies about people and fixing elections, when did that girl have time to do her homework?
“This has to be stopped,” Kristy said, meeting me in the hall. “I know you talked to Cary, but maybe I should speak to him.”
“I can take care of it,” I snapped. “I’m not a total wimp.”
Kristy raised her eyebrows. “No. I guess you’re not. Anyway, I’m going to tell people that this rumor is just another one of Cokie’s desperate ploys to win the election.”
“Good,” I said. “Pass it along.”
Claudia, Abby, and Stacey did their jobs well. By the time I ran into Logan after lunch, he said, “I heard Cokie’s latest — and I also heard she’s doing it to get back at you for calling her on the election results.”
“Yup,” I said. “That’s our Cokie.”
Logan smiled that smile that still makes me feel a little breathless. “Are you going to Cokie’s party?” he asked. “She’s said to more than one person that you wouldn’t dare show up.”
Inside, the old Mary Anne was whimpering, “No, no, no. There’s no way I’ll go near Cokie’s house!” But the new Mary Anne said, “I’ll see you there.”
“Cool,” said Logan, and that was that.
Naturally, the Cokie-induced madness at SMS was the topic of much conversation at the BSC meeting that Wednesday afternoon. “If you’re going to the party, I’m going to the party,” Kristy announced as the meeting ended. “And Abby’ll go too.”
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