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ShesGottaGavIt: jesus take the wheel
ShesGottaGavIt: tarts are not dessert
ShesGottaGavIt: tarts are just a stealth delivery system for fruit
ShesGottaGavIt: whoever said fruit could be a dessert perpetrated a fraud on countless generations of American schoolchildren
ShesGottaGavIt: it is wrong
ShesGottaGavIt: it is abuse
ShesGottaGavIt: please put rhubarb in my tart
ShesGottaGavIt: and no pears
ShesGottaGavIt: pears are loser fruit
ShesGottaGavIt: the accountants of fruit
PainAuChoCOLEat: Check. No pears.
PainAuChoCOLEat: Anyway . . .
PainAuChoCOLEat: Remember in middle school when Lauren Schoenmaker was always whispering to her friends and pointing at you and giggling?
PainAuChoCOLEat: And how we thought she was making fun of you?
ShesGottaGavIt: and I retaliated by spiking her hand lotion with numbing cream
ShesGottaGavIt: haha
ShesGottaGavIt: she couldnt feel her fingers all day
ShesGottaGavIt: she walked around like Frankenstein
ShesGottaGavIt: and had to be hand fed
PainAuChoCOLEat: Is that something you’re proud of?
ShesGottaGavIt: it was my finest hour
PainAuChoCOLEat: So you don’t regret taking revenge on her?
PainAuChoCOLEat: Even after we found out she was acting that way because she liked you?
ShesGottaGavIt: girls come and go
PainAuChoCOLEat: Uhhh . . .
PainAuChoCOLEat: Regarding girls —
PainAuChoCOLEat: — and you —
PainAuChoCOLEat: — they have to come before they go.
ShesGottaGavIt: this is what youre thinking about
ShesGottaGavIt: the girls that got away
ShesGottaGavIt: doesnt your mom have you sweating some extra credit since you botched your essay for drick
PainAuChoCOLEat: Mom doesn’t know about that.
PainAuChoCOLEat: And she’s not going to find out.
PainAuChoCOLEat: Thank you for your cooperation.
PainAuChoCOLEat: I have bigger problems.
ShesGottaGavIt: you ran out of flour?
PainAuChoCOLEat: Could be you were right about Greg.
PainAuChoCOLEat: I think he lifted his essay from Wikipedia.
PainAuChoCOLEat: So the question is . . .
PainAuChoCOLEat: Do I pull a Gavin?
ShesGottaGavIt: the answer is
ShesGottaGavIt: duh
WinWin: Hi
PainAuChoCOLEat: No way!
ShesGottaGavIt: yes way
ShesGottaGavIt: you have the opportunity to brain Greg
ShesGottaGavIt: it is a no brainer
PainAuChoCOLEat: That’s not what I meant.
PainAuChoCOLEat: Winnie is IMing.
WinWin: Hello?
ShesGottaGavIt: STEP AWAY FROM THE KEYBOARD
ShesGottaGavIt: do not respond
ShesGottaGavIt: let her wonder
WinWin: Are you ignoring me now?
ShesGottaGavIt: sit tight
ShesGottaGavIt: im coming over
ShesGottaGavIt: ill save you
ShesGottaGavIt: BLOCK HER
ShesGottaGavIt: better idea
ShesGottaGavIt: SIGN OFF
PainAuChoCOLEat: Hi.
PainAuChoCOLEat: Sorry.
PainAuChoCOLEat: Wasn’t at my desk.
WinWin: Let me guess
WinWin: You were in the kitchen
WinWin: Baking up a storm
PainAuChoCOLEat: Ha.
PainAuChoCOLEat: No.
PainAuChoCOLEat: (later)
WinWin: Do you make those special Rice Krispie treats anymore? The kind with the toffee and the cinnamon?
PainAuChoCOLEat: You like those, don’t you?
WinWin: I cannot lie
WinWin: They were/are my favorite
PainAuChoCOLEat: I do have some marshmallows lying around.
PainAuChoCOLEat: Maybe I’ll break out the breakfast cereal.
WinWin: You’ll never change
PainAuChoCOLEat: I guess that makes one of us.
PainAuChoCOLEat: So . . .
WinWin: So
WinWin: German
PainAuChoCOLEat: Huh?
WinWin: You’re piling on the language credits
WinWin: Not a bad idea
WinWin: But you should take something else
WinWin: Only malcontents and medievalists take German
WinWin: Like that weird girl
PainAuChoCOLEat: Okay.
WinWin: You should take Mandarin
WinWin: Or Arabic
WinWin: Like me
WinWin: The admissions officer at Princeton was totally impressed
WinWin: She basically told me I’m a lock
WinWin: Not that it matters
WinWin: I think I’ve decided on Harvard
WinWin: Unless I get a big enough scholarship from Yale
WinWin: I think they’ll fork it over
WinWin: When I get valedictorian
WinWin: Still there?
PainAuChoCOLEat: Thank you for the advice.
PainAuChoCOLEat: I think I’ll stick with my plan.
PainAuChoCOLEat: Did you just want to give me an update?
WinWin: I wanted to talk to you about what happened today
WinWin: I didn’t mean to be weird
PainAuChoCOLEat: How were you weird?
WinWin: When I saw you at the library
WinWin: Andrea’s going through a lot right now
PainAuChoCOLEat: Bad hair day?
WinWin: Her dad died
PainAuChoCOLEat: Oh man.
WinWin: You didn’t know? It was all over the news.
PainAuChoCOLEat: I had no idea. What happened?
WinWin: Some kind of freak accident
WinWin: It sucks
PainAuChoCOLEat: I’m sure you’re helping a lot.
WinWin: I’m trying to
WinWin: But it would be easier to be there for her if I didn’t have to worry about you and Gavin hassling Greg
WinWin: Maybe you two can lay off him
PainAuChoCOLEat: I didn’t realize we were laying on Greg in the first place.
WinWin: You know what I mean
PainAuChoCOLEat: Actually I don’t. He’s the one who got up in Gavin’s face after Drick’s class. And then again when he and Scott threatened me in the library.
WinWin: He told me you threatened him
PainAuChoCOLEat: If you believe that, then you were wrong and I really have changed.
PainAuChoCOLEat: And you might want to rethink Harvard/Yale/Princeton/all Ivies/wannabe Ivies/college in general.
PainAuChoCOLEat: Because Greg has dumbed you down.
WinWin: I don’t know what to say.
PainAuChoCOLEat: You might start with “sorry.”
Gavin arrived and looked over Cole’s shoulder as he gave the conversation a thorough autopsy, wondering whether a breakthrough with Winnie had been possible in the first place or it had been DOA.
“Seems pretty clear to me,” Gavin said as he flopped onto the bed, “and last week my Lit teacher asked me if English is my second language. Winnie is over you.”
“But it’s obvious Greg lied to her. She’s totally going to body check him on that. And look right here. Where she talks about my baking? Doesn’t that mean she’s interested and she still thinks about me?”
Gavin was examining the Wikipedia pages Cole had brought home from the library. “It’s sleight of hand. She’s like a pediatrician distracting a kid with a hand puppet before she stabs him full of MMR. All she cares about is getting you to leave her crybaby boyfriend alone. Which you should not do,” he added, waving the trove, “because you can use this stuff to bury him. It proves he lifted half his essay right out of Wikipedia.�
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Cole bit his fingernail. “Drick will figure it out eventually. Won’t he?”
Gavin scoffed. “Drick grades by taper light and calculates his bills with an abacus. Do you really think he can operate plagiarism-checking software? Greg would never try this with another teacher because another teacher would catch on, but not Drick. You have to bring it to his attention, and you have to do it with sirens and strobe lights.”
“If you think I’m going to rat on him, forget it. The soccer boosters would bury me in balls.”
Gavin was offended. “I would never advise you to tattle! I’m your best friend. You think I’d allow you to defile yourself? And me by association? You don’t need to clue in Drick face-to-face. This is the twenty-first century. You can do your whistle-blowing all anonymous-source-like.”
So deeply ingrained was Cole’s sense of decorum that it hadn’t even occurred to him that he could simply provide Mr. Drick with the evidence unsigned.
“But that way is for wusses,” added Gavin. “Besides, a bunker buster like this deserves to be dropped with flair. There’s a way to trigger maximum carnage for Greg with minimum repercussions for us. I just haven’t figured it out yet.”
Cole braced himself. He knew that if he spoke his mind now, he could never unspeak it. Gavin wouldn’t let him. “Maybe I already have.”
Gavin was intrigued. “Let’s hear it.”
“Look at this page I printed out. It lists all the Wikipedia RSS feeds Greg subscribes to.”
“So?”
“So he’s a thorough little copycat. He wants his work to be up-to-date with all the latest information on crazy killers. With this setup, he gets an e-mail every time somebody uploads a change to the entry. Well, in two days he’ll be giving his oral report. Why not make sure he delivers the most current information?”
“You want to set a trap?”
“It’d be a trap of his own making. All we have to do is supply him with some fool’s-gold facts to copy and paste into his report and let him hang himself.”
Gavin had to give Cole his due. It was a tidy plan. “The scheme is strong with this one.”
Cole hesitated. “It isn’t too drastic?” he hemmed. “I keep thinking I should just let it go,” he hawed. Gavin rolled his eyes. “Besides, Winnie asked me to keep the peace for Andrea’s sake.” Cole began to deliver the news about her father’s death, but Gavin cut him off.
“Have you been living under a cookie sheet? The guy’s been dead a month. He got flamed on Wikipedia and had a nervous breakdown on live TV. Then out of nowhere he got his head caved in by a falling light or something. Andrea will get over it. Look, she’s already tweeting about going to the winter formal.”
“Since when do you follow Andrea?”
“Not follow. Hate follow. It got juicy when her dad did a striptease on the local news. Here, look at this.” Gavin displayed her tweet on his phone.
AndreaHenderson
@WinWin @TruffleShuffle: Got my ticket to the formal!!! Cant wait 2 go w u guyz!!
“Sounds pretty grief-stricken to me,” said Gavin. “Though I could see her being moved to tears if she were forced to share a table with Winnie’s former ex-turned-soon-to-be-current boyfriend one Mr. Cole Redeker. Think about it.” Cole did. “How long will it take Winnie to drop Greg and come running back to you once she finds out she’s linked to a cheater?” Now he had Cole’s attention. “Quicker than I can finish this sente—”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ruth Baron has worked as an editor at O, The Oprah Magazine and Details. She grew up in Philadelphia, lives in Brooklyn, and thinks about deleting her Facebook account every day.
Copyright © 2013 by Ruth Baron
All rights reserved. Published by Point, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC, POINT, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available
“Boxcar” (Jawbreaker/Blake Schwarzenbach) reprinted by permission of Alexander Blake Schwarzenbach.
“Fault Lines” and “The Mess Inside” written by John Darnielle, published by Cadmean Dawn, administered by Pacific Electric Music Publishing. Used with permission. All rights reserved.
First edition, May 2013
Cover photo © Geoffery Jones
used under license from Shutterstock.com
eISBN 978-0-545-46955-5
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