by Sarah Price
And then it hits me: my Get Out of Jail Free card. One phone call and this whole thing can be resolved. When the chips are down and things appear hopeless, there’s only one person to call: the Fixer. After all, she owes me because I never told Mom about the super-secret sneak-out incident last summer.
She answers on the first ring. “Aren’t you in school?”
I cover the bottom part of the phone and turn my back to the door. “Brooke! Code red!”
“What?”
“It’s a red M&M!”
She laughs. I can visualize her holding the cell phone with one hand and twirling a strand of her hair around the fingers of her other hand. “What are you talking about?”
Doesn’t she remember anything? Red M&Ms is our secret code word for danger. “You’ve got to help me. I’m in trouble at school.”
There’s a slight pause. I know what she’s thinking. Getting in trouble is Alex’s gig, not mine. Mom loves to tell the stories about how many times he got in trouble in kindergarten. She was on a first-name basis with the principal. Now that he’s in high school, he still gets in trouble, but Mom doesn’t think it’s that cute anymore. “You? What did you do?”
“There’s no time for details!” I snap. “You need to come and rescue me.”
“Cat! You’re crazy!”
The clock is ticking. If lunch ends and Rittani makes it to the office, I’m done.
“Please, Brooke!” I glance at the clock. “Just get here as fast as you can.”
“I can’t take you out without permission! That’s kidnapping and a federal offense according to my political science course last semester.” But I can hear the sympathy in her voice. She knows what the edge of the cliff looks like. She remembers how I didn’t tell her secret to anyone. “Besides, no one will believe I’m your mother.”
I already thought of that. “Just call the office. Pretend you’re Mom and you’re sending someone to pick me up.”
She sighs. “Fine!”
Inside I cheer.
“But only if you tell me what you did.”
“It has to do with Aiden. “
Another pause. She wasn’t expecting that answer. “Joffrey?”
I slap my palm against my forehead. Seriously? Aiden Joffrey? That weirdo kid who stole my lunch bag in second grade? Unlike Leslie Murphy, he really was allergic to peanuts, which is the only way we solved the mystery of who stole my food.
What’s wrong with this girl? Why on earth would I be talking about Aiden Joffrey?
“Not Joffrey. Quinn! Aiden Quinn!” I shake my head and roll my eyes. “Look, I really don’t have time to explain!” For a second, I even wonder if we are really related. How could my older sister be so out of touch with the real world? “Look, just call the school! Please!”
She bursts out laughing but hangs up the phone after telling me to keep low for ten minutes. Once more, I glance at the clock. Lunch gets out in twelve minutes. It’s going to be a close call.
Pushing the thought out of my mind, I look back at my phone. Since I have some time to kill, I return to the videos and let them loop while I’m waiting. After every third video, I glance at the clock until seven minutes have passed.
It’s time.
I slip out the door into the empty hallway and hurry in the direction of the main office. When I walk in, the receptionist looks up and smiles. She’s older with curly hair and she wears glasses that sit on the edge of her nose, a fancy beaded chain dangling from the two ends so that she doesn’t lose them.
“Your mom texted you?”
I nod, not trusting my voice. I’m not a liar. At least, not usually.
She points to the clipboard. “Just sign out here, dear.”
I’m tapping my toes, nervously glancing at the clock as I wait for Brooke to text me and tell me she’s here. Come on, come on! I know there’s a chance that Rittani will come marching down here any minute to ask the receptionist if I came down. I really just want to be gone.
My phone vibrates in my pocket.
Thank you, Jesus!
“Um, my mom’s here,” I say, waving the phone at her.
“Have a good rest of the day, dear.”
Dear? I wonder if she calls everyone that.
I barely get through the glass doors when I hear the bell echo down the hallway behind me. It fades as the door shuts and I realize I’m home free. But the best part is that I have the rest of the afternoon to watch videos of Aiden. It’s only a matter of time before he reads my clever comment and follows me on Twitter. Score! Three points for Cat Lansing!
CHAPTER SIX
Twitter Overload
He’s not getting the picture!
That’s what I’m thinking as I pound furiously at the keyboard on my laptop:
@AidenQuinn I’m begging you.
Please please please follow me!
Please!
I type those words into the small white window on my screen and hit return. Again.
I thought for sure he would have commented on my post about getting sent to the principal. Unfortunately, it’s been radio silence on his end. WTH? I thought my post was original, but apparently lots of girls get sent to the principal office on account of him, at least judging from their comments to me anyway. Some are nice about it, but a lot of those girls are mean and nasty. Anyway, I don’t want his followers to post to me; I want to hear from Aiden.
I can’t understand what the big deal is. All Aiden has to do is just click one button ... one stupid little Twitter icon ... and follow me back.
He’s a nice guy. I can tell from his videos and tweets. So why isn’t he giving me what I want? A follow. Doesn’t even cost him anything.
“What’re you doing?”
Brooke.
I glance at the door. It’s closed but she pokes her head inside. Ever since she picked me up from school last week, I notice she’s been paying more attention to me. And that’s not a good thing.
Seriously, she needs to go back to college. She’s been hanging around the house a lot more this summer, probably because of those hunky camp counselors who are constantly stopping by the house on Friday nights to pick up their pay for the week. I think she has her eyes on that Fernando guy from Chihuahua, Mexico. Whenever I see him, I think about the mountain of Chihuahua dogs finding their bark in that Disney movie.
The only problem with summer, which hasn’t officially started for me yet, is that Brooke isn’t working yet. Camp officially starts in twenty days and fourteen hours when school’s out. Brooke doesn’t have to go through Marcus’s grueling training program, like the guys from Chihuahua, so she isn’t hanging out at the stables, she’s home. She’s already been a camp counselor for the past three summers. But I can still tell when she’s been spending time at the barn; I can smell the horses on her clothes when she comes home at night. Or like now.
“Girl! You need a shower!” I wrinkle my nose and make a face at her, even though I love the smell of horses.
She laughs and flops on my bed. I get another whiff of horse when she does that.
“Seriously, Brooke!” I glare at her, hitting return on my computer screen. Again. “You stink.”
Ignoring me, as usual, she lifts her head and glances at my computer screen. “Homework?”
“Yeah. Homework.” I try to minimize my Twitter screen, but my laptop track pad decides to freeze at that exact moment.
“Really? Looks like Twitter to me.”
“Social studies.”
“Yeah, right.” She sees my post. “Aiden Quinn? Again?” But as she keeps reading, she realizes what I’m doing. She rolls her eyes and shakes her head. “This is getting to be a little much, isn’t it?”
I tilt my laptop away from her prying eyes and play dumb. “What?”
“How many times are you going to tweet that kid?”
My ruse is up. She saw my screen before I could minimize it.
Swinging her legs over the side of the mattress, she sits up and leans forw
ard. I hate her hair. As in really hate it. It hangs over her shoulders, completely perfect and full. How did she get to be pretty, nice, and smart all wrapped up with great hair? Mine’s long but fine and poker straight. Hashtag: not fair.
“Cat, you can’t keep tweeting this kid,” she says.
“He’s not a kid, Brooke! Geez!”
She presses her lips together and gives me a look. “Fine. You can’t keep tweeting Aiden Quinn!”
“Why not?”
“First of all, he’s like totally famous.”
I make a face at her. What’s that supposed to mean?
“He has over 150,000 followers now,” she adds, as if that’s supposed to make me feel better. It doesn’t. No one knows more than I do about how his followers seem to be giving birth to more followers. Where are these girls coming from? How are they finding him?
“And ...? What’s your point?” I ask defensively.
“He has better things to do than to follow you. I mean ...” Brooke pauses and flips her hair over her shoulder, again! “You’re just a kid.”
Kid? Now that’s below the belt. I might only be thirteen, but Aiden is only ... what? … fifteen? No, wait. Sixteen. He had a birthday last month. That’s only three years between us. Heck, Mom and Marcus have a fifteen-year age gap between them. “Shut. Up.”
Brooke levels her gaze and scowls at me. “How many tweets did you send him?” she asks. When I refuse to answer, she puts on her serious face. “Cat ...?”
I fail to see the significance of her question so I cross my arms over my chest, defiant to the end.
“And I bet you didn’t even do your homework yet.” Her tone is becoming more serious now, but still, I remain strong. It’s another completely irrelevant question and I have no plan to acknowledge it. “So what have you been doing up here for the past hour?”
“Two hours,” I correct her, the words slipping from my lips before I can stop them. Immediately, I slap my hand over my mouth. How could I have let that slip out?
The expression on her face is priceless. If I didn’t think I was in so much trouble, I might laugh. But she’s not amused.
“How many times?” She stares at me with the look, the look perfected by Mom and clearly genetically passed down to Brooke. “How many times did you tweet him?”
I try to look innocent. “In the past hour?”
“Let’s start with that.”
I glance at the pad of paper where I’ve been drawing tick marks. It’s easy to calculate; I did them in groups of twenty. “Uh, let’s see ... ten ...”
“Ten times?” She lifts her eyebrows.
“No.” I draw the word out as I say it. “Twelve.”
Brooke exhales and shuts her eyes. “Twelve times? You tweeted Aiden Quinn twelve times? You have a problem, Cat.”
I bite my lip, wondering if I should tell her ... let the old Cat out of the bag.
She must have opened her eyes and been watching me. She’s always been a good mind reader. “What? Tell me!”
“Well, it’s really twelve times twenty,” I mumble, reluctantly showing her the piece of paper where my tick marks cover three quarters of the page. “Plus these here ...” I pause to do a quick calculation. Sixteen. “That makes two hundred fifty-six.”
For a moment, Brooke’s eyes look like they might pop out of her head. The color drains from her cheeks and she moistens her lips. She’s speechless, completely without words. I set down the pad of paper and stealthily move my laptop over it, as if hiding the paper will cover up what I suspect should be my shame.
“I’m telling Mom,” she whispers, her eyes still bulging out of their sockets.
“Uh ... telling her what?” I ask. The mention of Brooke telling Mom anything sends me into a panic. I simply cannot get grounded. Again.
Brooke remains motionless, staring at me as if I’m an alien. “You’re a stalker.”
“I am not!” I practically scream back at her. How dare she insult me! “And don’t you tell Mom anything!”
“You’re stalking that kid, Cat!” Brooke starts to get up, a determined look in her eyes that counters the panicked look in mine. My brain works quickly: If she tells Mom, Mom will tell Marcus. If Mom tells Marcus, he’s going to tell her to shut down the Internet to my computer ... put parental controls on what I can or can’t do. The only thing worse than being a tech-savvy kid is having a tech-savvier mother! And then, they’ll take away my new iPhone. Lastly, Marcus will probably say that I can’t go to the barn. The triangle of torture: no Internet, no phone, no horses. Without the three of them, I’ll be doomed.
Think quick, I tell myself. Think of something ... anything!
A lightbulb goes off in my head and I blurt out the only secret weapon that I have in my arsenal. Fortunately, it’s nuclear in scope. “If you do, I’ll tell her you didn’t get home until three in the morning last Saturday!”
That stops Brooke dead in her tracks.
Touché, I think. Come back to me, my little minion.
I know she didn’t see that coming. Since my bedroom faces the front of the house, I’m the first one to see all of the activity. Lots of nights, especially on the weekends, I stare outside when I can’t sleep. With two large windows open and my bed pressed up beneath them, I have an unobstructed view of the entire front lawn. And, in the case of last Saturday night, seeing my twenty-year-old sister tiptoe up the driveway at three o’clock in the morning, had been priceless. I’m fairly certain that one of my stepfather’s pickup trucks had dropped her off at the bottom of the driveway, which could only mean one thing: She was hanging out with the Mexican horse trainers! Ay, Chihuahua!
Realizing that I’m trying to blackmail her, Brooke quickly changes her approach, but I’m onto her. “You know, I’m only concerned about you, Cat,” she says, trying to remain calm. She gets up from my bed and lingers in the doorway, running her finger up and down the frame. She’s cool, too cool. I know that, deep down, she realizes I have the upper hand on this one. Marcus would start sending people back to Mexico if he thought his stepdaughter was out partying with them well after midnight. “You really have a problem. You’re obsessed.” She pauses. “No, it’s worse than obsessed.”
“I’m a fangirl,” I say, proud of my admission. “There’s a difference, Brooke!”
“You’re stalking him.”
Doesn’t she know anything about being a fangirl? I mean, seriously. I thought she was the cool sister. I’m pretty sure even Alex knows about fangirls. “No duh! That’s what fangirls do.”
She takes a deep breath. I know that I’ve won. There’s nothing for her to do at this point except to retreat. But, as she does, she says the one thing I don’t expect to hear, the only thing that causes me a moment of regret: “I’m sorry I ever set up your iPhone.” And with that, she disappears at the exact moment my phone dings.
Momentarily forgetting about Brooke, I push back the mouse pad, hoping to see those four glorious and long- awaited words: Aiden Quinn Follows You. Instead, the Twitter message in-box glares up at me, like salt in the festering wound that was left behind by Brooke: Account Suspended.
I feel my heart stop beating and I sit there, immobile, staring at those two ugly little words. A thousand questions race through my mind. Did Aiden report me? Did Twitter do this? What if Brooke is right? Am I, at thirteen, a stalker girl? How long will my account be suspended?
As if life can’t go from bad to worst! Not only is Brooke upset with me. Not only is my Twitter account suddenly suspended for who knows how long. But Aiden Quinn still isn’t following me, and even if he saw my tweets, there’s nothing he can do about it! My world just went from awful to imploding. There’s only one thing I can do at this point ... I cry.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Low-Profile Time
For the next week, while my Twitter account is suspended, I keep a low profile about Aiden Quinn. My addiction goes completely subterranean. For starters, I don’t want Brooke telling my mom about the “stalkin
g” incident, although I still don’t really think it was stalking-stalking ... just a little overzealousness mixed with irritation. How hard can it be to click one little FOLLOW button?
I mean seriously! I’m a fan and he must want more fans. So he should like us! Especially the ones that have been there from the beginning, and now that he has over 250,000 followers—actually 286,252 as of 11:46 a.m. yesterday morning, when my account was reactivated—I should be able to pull rank! I will forever be known as #3,134. That should count for something.
Apparently not.
Once my account got unsuspended, I tweeted in private, like a closet junkie, going to the bathroom or hiding under the sheets of my bed just in case Brooke walked into my room. She’s been staring at me all week with a weird look in her eyes, a mixture of fear and worry.
I figure that she’s just too old to get this fangirl stuff. She’s in college and probably likes debating scholarly things, not Instagrammer videos.
Of course, now that the counselors are back for Marcus’s equestrian summer camps, I’ve noticed a little spring in her step. She also takes a lot longer to get ready in the morning before heading to the barn. If that’s not a tell-tale sign, I don’t know what is. I mean, seriously! Who goes riding complete with makeup, hair accessories, jewelry, and perfume?
As if I don’t know that she’s making eyes with one of the Mexican guys. Again.
So it looks like we both have our little secrets.
The one thing that amazes me is how quickly followers are catching onto the Aiden Quinn craze. Each day his numbers increase. And I don’t mean by a few hundred or even a few thousand. It’s like his followers are breeding litters of more followers every night! I’m almost afraid to look at the numbers today. And some of these girls are posting things that shock me. I can’t even read them, that’s how dirty they are.
Who are these girls? And do they really think Aiden is that kind of guy? I mean he’s sixteen, for crying out loud.