“You decide.”
My decision. Right. I hesitated long enough that Dad, on his way to the table with the frying pan, rolled his eyes at me. He doubled back, pulled the OJ from the fridge, and plunked it down on the table like a centerpiece. I sat across from him, sopping up egg yolk with the crust of my toast, pretending we could go on like this forever.
After dinner, I loaded the dishwasher so Dad could watch the Twins game. Back in my room, I ignored my laptop for a good five minutes. It helped that I had a text from Rhino. It read:
Your boyfriend is about to take the mound if you want to come over for the rest of the game.
One time, just one time, I had mentioned that the Minnesota Twins relief pitcher was kind of cute, and Rhino had teased me about it ever since. The downside to having a guy as a best friend? Talking about other boys, cute boys, any boys, was off-limits. Rhino had been working this particular joke since May, and it was getting old. I deleted the text and switched to email.
All I had was a message from my mom, recapping what Dad had told me earlier. She signed off with:
Love you and see you soon. (Like on campus next fall!)
Mom had a way of making difficult problems all the more impossible. The second I closed her email, a new one popped up, this one from Elle. My hand froze on the mouse. For a moment, I just sat there. Then, I opened it.
Camy,
Sorry about earlier. I was dealing with ... a problem. I think it has something to do with what you sent me. Don’t want to do this in email. Call me.
She listed her number. In the seconds before I picked up my phone, the obvious, and most embarrassing, scenario flashed through my mind. The cheer squad gathered round, hands clamped over their mouths, giggles stifled, my voice broadcast on speaker, saying all sorts of stupid things.
But that wasn’t Elle’s style. At least, not that I’d ever seen. I wouldn’t put it past a few girls in her crowd to do something like that (I’m talking about you, Clarissa Delacroix) but Elle didn’t usually rule through intimidation or mortification. I woke up my cell phone and dialed.
“Hey,” Elle said. “Great. You called. This is going to sound dumb, but you know how some of us went on that student trip to Greece this summer?”
Oh, of course. Some of us went to Greece, some of us went to Iowa City. Therein lay the difference.
Elle took a breath. “Anyway, we were at the beach, following local custom, and apparently some asshat snapped a cell phone pic.”
“Wait. Explain ‘local custom’.”
“You might say we forgot our bikini tops.”
No bikini tops + cell phone. The only answer to that equation was: Oh. My. God.
“Oh,” was all I managed to get out.
“Anyway, I think it has to be Aiden, since he was the only guy from Olympia on the trip, but really? It could’ve been someone from Prairie Stone, or anybody. Now I think Jason has the photo. Click over to my Facebook page. It’s all there.”
I waited a beat, then another, wondering when Elle would figure out the obvious, and astoundingly humiliating, fact.
“Hang on,” she said a moment later. “I’ll friend you.”
It took only five seconds, but it felt like five hours.
Sure, I had a page on Facebook and maybe thirty friends. Ten of those were family. And yeah, your dad reading your Facebook entries is So. Not. Fun. But Elle? I clicked through and joined her nearly six hundred friends.
Jason had posted five comments in a row on her wall, things like:
Can we see more of you?
And:
Wow, no tan lines.
“He didn’t do anything helpful, like post the photo and tag you, did he?” I asked.
“Not that I can see. But if this gets out, there goes ... everything. I swear, if I lose homecoming court over this, he’s dead. I’ll make sure he doesn’t play baseball in the spring, one way or another.”
“Do you think he’s sending the picture around?” I asked.
“Maybe, but I was wondering about the link you sent me.”
“The wiki?”
“Could it be on there?”
“I didn’t see anything like it on your photo page,” I said, then rushed to add, “I hope you don’t mind. I was trying to figure out what it was.”
Elle laughed. “No worries. I’m doing the same thing. What is it, anyway?”
“Technically, it’s a wiki. You know, like Wikipedia? It’s supposed to be a place where a group can share knowledge.”
“Talk about an over-share.”
I logged in to the wiki and took another look around. If I wanted to hide something, where would I do it? Not somewhere obvious, like Hottest of the Hot.
On the main page, I tried a link I hadn’t before, one called Site Statistics. I’d figured it led to some dull readout on site use. I was both right and wrong. Below a table detailing time of visits, length of visits, and so on, I saw a few more links. I picked the one with the most boring label: Disclaimer.
Another login screen popped up.
“Uh-oh,” I said.
“What? Did you find something?”
“I think so. It looks like there’s a second layer of security.”
“Huh?”
“I have to log in again. I’m hoping whoever set up the site gave Jason access to this page. Hang on.”
I set the phone down to type in Jason’s information. The screen dissolved, or seemed to. All I could see was a shaky image of bright sunlight, immaculate white sand, a blue, blue sea, various shades of suntanned skin … and not a whole lot of bikini tops.
Not that you could tell, really. This wasn’t the sort of photo that would destroy Elle’s career as student council president—or her eventual run for the U.S. Congress. You probably couldn’t tell it was her without prior warning. But still …
“Hey,” I said to Elle. “Found it.” I directed her to the link and waited.
“Balls,” she said, then fell quiet.
“It looks like Aiden posted it, from what I can see.” Fewer comments littered this page. Someone controlled this site, maybe even removed messages when things got out of hand. Add in that second layer of security, and we definitely weren’t dealing with an amateur.
“Can we delete it?” Elle asked.
“I think so, but the question is, do we want to? We’re logged in as Jason. Someone might ask him why he pulled the photo.”
Static buzzed on the connection. I drew a breath and waited for Elle to speak.
“I like the way you think,” she said at last. “Even before all this, the guys in this school needed to be taken down a notch … or twenty. Remember that prom deal Jason started last year?”
Remember? Kind of. I hadn’t attended a dance, or paid too much attention to them, since a traumatic experience with Clarissa in the eighth grade. But rumors had gone around for weeks last spring. For fifty dollars (or an unspecified sexual act) you, too, could have an A-list jock as your prom date.
“I wasn’t really involved,” I told Elle.
“Yeah, well, you didn’t miss anything.” She paused. “The guys in our school are tools. But it’s more than that. It’s their whole attitude. They have some serious entitlement issues.”
I couldn’t disagree. After all, Jason now thought he had the right to sniff me whenever he pleased.
“I mean, honestly,” Elle continued. “The Hotties of Troy? Is that supposed to be some play on Helen of Troy? They want Greek? I’ll be more than happy to make their lives a freaking Greek tragedy.”
I snorted at that.
“You want to help?” she asked.
“Do I what?”
“Want to help. I could use it.”
A chill zipped down my spine and I sat up straighter. I could hear it in her voice: Elle had a plan. “What do you need?”
“A list of all the girls with a page on the site. And we need our target list too. Do you think you can find the names of every guy who’s posted a comment?”
“It could take a while,” I said. “Whoever set up the site was probably smart enough not to give Jason administrative rights.”
“Yeah, clearly not an idiot. But can you do it?”
“I might miss one or two.”
“I already have a good idea who the culprits are,” Elle said. “I’d like to make sure, though.”
“You know,” I said, wondering how to approach this subject, “Gavin Madison will be on that list.”
Elle and Gavin had been a couple since last year’s prom. And no, it hadn’t been a pay-to-date swap, but the real deal.
“Yeah,” she said. “I know.”
“He hasn’t said anything bad.” From what I’d seen so far, Gavin’s posts were downright mild-mannered; polite, even.
“Here’s the thing,” Elle said. Her voice grew intense. “Every boy who’s ever logged in to the wiki is guilty. There are no innocent bystanders here.”
I nodded, not that Elle could see me.
“So, do you think you can do it?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said, my voice catching.
“Will you?” she added.
She’d picked up on my hesitation. Really, it wasn’t like I thought the wiki was okay. It was awful with a capital A. I could imagine Dad’s reaction to my name on that site, or worse, my post-modern, ultra-feminist mom’s. (Not that either of them needed to know about it.) But still, a girl like Elle Emerson could take on half the boys in our senior class and survive. For someone like me it was a much bigger risk. I could lose the tiny speck of popularity I’d managed to carve out for myself.
Of course, if I went against Elle, I’d lose that anyway.
“I’ll do it,” I told her at last, blowing out a breath afterward.
“Good. Thanks. And, hey, ask Pendergast for the tutoring room this Friday. Tell her we need the space for a homecoming project.”
“Sure, easy.”
Name-dropping Elle would get us the room and the privacy she wanted. Ms. P would be all, “Oh, Elle is such a good influence on everyone. She’ll draw you out of your shell.”
Barf.
“Oh, and Camy?”
“Yeah?”
“This is a secret. You can’t tell anyone about this.”
“Of course.”
“I mean no one. You haven’t, have you?”
“N-no.”
“Not even Rhino?”
“No, not yet.”
“Not ever. Got it? I don’t want any boys knowing about this.”
I almost said, “Rhino’s not a boy,” but I stopped myself in time. What I meant was, Rhino wasn’t an Olympia High asswad or whatever word Elle was using for them.
“I haven’t seen any comments on there that sound like him,” I said.
“I don’t care. There’s something very wrong about this site and about these guys.”
I laughed. “Come on, Elle, this is Rhino we’re talking about.”
Silence stretched between us, long and hollow. A muted cheer came from the television downstairs. When Elle didn’t speak, I broke the silence with, “I think the Twins just hit a home run.”
“And if I have my way, none of these guys will be making it to first base for a very long time.”
“Including Gavin?” The question left my mouth before I could reel it back in.
Elle coughed. “Let’s not go there. But, yeah, I’m willing to make a sacrifice or two to set things right. What is it the guys say? Take one for the team? How about you?”
We both knew I didn’t have an A-list boyfriend to sacrifice. But the truth was, I understood what she was asking, and what it would mean. Rhino wasn’t some guy I’d been going out with for a few months. We’d grown up together. We had a sixth sense about each other. We were the kind of friends who finished each other’s sentences. Still, I saw Elle’s point. I also saw, all wrapped up in the pretty package of helping, a threat.
“Okay,” I said. “I won’t tell Rhino.”
How do you know your day is going to be bizarre? When the queen of Olympia High sidles up to you … and sniffs. Twenty minutes before first bell the next morning, that was exactly what Elle Emerson did.
“Damn, girl,” she said. “You do smell good.” She lowered her voice an octave and, in a dead-on impression of Jason, added, “Like a chick should.” Then she rolled her eyes. “Seriously, though, what do you use?”
I shrugged. “Burt’s Bees, a little Suave, some organic stuff my mom bought me.”
The downside to living with Dad: He didn’t see the need for more than one kind of product, of any sort. Like plain ChapStick was going to cut it, even for me.
“So?” She nodded toward my binder.
I glanced up and down the hallway. Over Elle’s shoulder, I caught sight of Gavin, star quarterback to Elle’s head cheerleader, the other half of their perfect couple.
Elle tapped on the notebook, demanding my attention. “So?” she said again.
I sucked in a breath and banished Gavin from my mind. “We have a list, minus two.”
By ten o’clock the previous night, I’d scoured all the pages of the wiki and had:
A definitive list of the Hotties of Troy, every last girl, including myself, who had a page on the site.
A list of perpetrators, minus the identities of Admin and Adm*n.
A whole new perspective on a large number of my classmates.
I slipped Elle both lists. “I think,” I told her, “that the admin IDs are two different guys, and I’m guessing that they might have regular IDs as well, but unless they slip up—”
“Don’t worry. We rattle these guys enough, and I’m sure they’ll slip up. In fact, I’m counting on it.”
Down the hallway, Gavin was leaning against a locker. Jason was standing in front of him, hands swooping through the air, a mock windup and a pitch, last night’s Twins game on instant replay. Neither boy looked all that rattle-able.
“You get the tutoring room for Friday?” Elle punched something into her phone, her attention half on me and half on the screen.
“Pendergast wants to know what we’re doing, but yeah, we got the room.”
She flicked a hand through her hair, brushing aside such mundane annoyances as teachers. “We might have bigger problems if everyone shows. It’s going to be crowded, and—” She narrowed her eyes and took in the hallway and the students around us. “Pull out your calc book,” she said in an undertone. “Pretend to be helping me.”
I almost laughed out loud at that. “Blind leading the blind,” I told her.
We huddled against my locker, book open, me with a pencil so I could pretend to walk her through a problem.
“That many girls in one place could look suspicious,” she continued a moment later. “These guys aren’t stupid.”
Down the hallway, Jason was fading back to catch a phantom fly ball, complete with play-by-play (“Back … back …”).
“Okay, most of these guys aren’t stupid,” Elle conceded. “Anyway, do you know how to project what’s on the computer onto a screen?”
I nodded. “Easy.”
“Can you do that in the tutoring room?” Her voice held an edge.
Again, I nodded.
She pulled out her phone and started tapping. “I’m sending you links to some of the juicier comments I found on the wiki. Some of these guys really have a way with words.” She raised her eyebrows at me. “We might have to do the hard sell, and we have to be ready.”
Not that I knew what the hard sell was, but a roomful of girls, plus a way to project the wiki up on a screen? Well, even I could figure that much out.
“Oh, thanks, Camy,” Elle gushed, her words high-pitched and sudden. “You’re a lifesaver.” She slammed my math book shut and shoved it back at me. Then she whirled, facing a newcomer to our little group. “Hey, Aiden. What’s up?”
My heart thudded against my chest. Between Elle and the distraction of Gavin down the hall, I hadn’t heard or seen Aiden Tuttle approach. He frowned at E
lle, the crease between his eyebrows deepening when his eyes landed on me.
“Student council,” he said. “We need to meet before Friday, to hash out some stuff for homecoming, things like that.”
They stood in front of my locker, trapping me there. I started to pull out the binder I needed for that day’s block of classes, then decided it was more fun to eavesdrop.
“It’s Tuesday,” she said, her voice all honey and homicide. “And we’re meeting tomorrow. Soon enough for you?”
“I’m talking about you and me, without the others.”
“Oh, you mean vice president.” Elle slipped the pencil from my hand and pointed at Aiden. “To president?” She pointed to herself.
In that moment, when the light left his eyes and his lips went thin, a thought struck me. He might be the mastermind behind the wiki. After all, Aiden Tuttle excelled at school: in the academic decathlon, in cross country, and at being a jerk. He was, in fact, the worst combination: a guy with all the brains of Einstein and all the charm of a Neanderthal.
I slid a glance toward Elle, but if she was thinking the same thing, it didn’t register in her expression.
“I’ll be in my office after school and before cheer practice,” she said.
Everyone knew Elle’s “office” was the third row of bleachers next to the football field on sunny days. When it rained, she commandeered the stairwell next to the lobby.
She tapped Aiden’s shoulder with the eraser. “I’ll be sure to pencil you in.”
“You do that.” He pushed his glasses up then, which might have been a reflex, except he used his middle finger.
Elle stared at him until he really had no other choice than to turn and leave. Aiden never glanced over his shoulder, but he walked like he knew we were watching him, steps slow, neck rigid.
“I swear, if I could,” Elle said, her eyes still locked on Aiden. “I’d have surveillance on that kid, twenty-four seven.”
“You don’t suppose he’s the one behind the—” I began.
“Yeah, I do.”
I felt the air shift around me. Near the end of the hall, I caught sight of Rhino. He was slouching toward homeroom, gaze on nothing in particular, but I swore he saw me talking to Elle.
Dating on the Dork Side Page 3