Social Suicide

by Gemma Halliday

  Chapter Seven

  “SO, HOW WAS THE DATE WITH CHASE?” SAM ASKED THE next afternoon as she pulled her American Government book from her backpack.

  “Stakeout,” I corrected, mirroring her actions and adding a notebook to the pile of studying materials on her bed.

  “Bummer.” She paused. “Did Chase even mention your outfit?”

  I fought down heat in my cheeks as I answered. “Yes. And I am never going out looking like that again.”

  “Why? You looked hot.”

  “I looked like a girl who thought she was going out with a guy and ended up on a stakeout, squatting in the mud in a pair of heels and smelling like jasmine! I felt ridiculous.”

  “Oh.” Sam bit her lip. “Sorry. I was just kinda hoping you guys would get together.”

  “God, why?” I asked, trying to ignore the blast of embarrassment still coursing through me.

  Sam shrugged. “I know how uncomfortable you get around Kyle and me.”

  I bit my lip. Was I that obvious? “You guys aren’t that bad.”

  “I just thought it would be fun to double-date. Then maybe our kissing and stuff wouldn’t squick you out so much.”

  “Thanks.” I shot her a smile. “But I’m not squicked. You guys are fine.”

  “Cool,” she said, grinning back at me as she reached into a drawer in her desk and came out with a pencil, pad of paper, and an eraser, all in a matching purple desk set.

  My school supplies, on the other hand, consisted of a beat-up spiral-bound notebook and a number two pencil with bite marks on the end.

  While Sam is my best friend, her bedroom could not look more different from mine. My walls were a blank eggshell, the same color that had been there when Mom and I had moved in, and were covered in posters and photos ripped from fashion magazines. I had a corkboard tacked to the wall, where pictures of Sam and me were attached with different-colored tacks, and a full-length mirror on the other side of the room. I had a desk, somewhere, but it had been a while since I’d actually used it as a desk—more often it just doubled as a place to put clothes from the overflow of my closet. My bed was rarely made, school papers kind of lived where there was a surface to put them down, and the overall appearance was lived-in.

  Sam’s room, in contrast, looked like an ad from Pottery Barn. The walls were pale violet, to go with the bedspread on her perfectly made bed, and all her furniture matched: a white clapboard look dominating the headboard, dresser, and desk. Above the desk in the corner was a board covered in quilted fabric with ribbons running diagonally across it to keep photos in place (a couple of them copies of the ones on my board at home), and every drawer, cubbyhole, and cupboard was perfectly ordered inside and out with organizers of every size.

  And, for as much as Sam was into fashion, I didn’t see a stray piece of clothing anywhere.

  Sam was like my tidy evil twin.

  I shifted on her bed, almost afraid to make a wrinkle as I flipped my binder open to my American Government notes.

  “So how did the stakeout go?” Sam asked.

  “Terrible.” I shoved my book bag onto the floor then filled Sam in on the Chris fiasco.

  “And by the time we got back to the rock,” I finished, “the cash was gone. We’d totally missed him.”

  “Wow,” Sam said, shaking her head. “Chris Fret. I never would have figured him for a cheater. He always seemed so . . . normal.”

  “Yeah, well, apparently ‘normal’ also means too busy to study for a quiz.”

  “You know,” Sam said, scrunching up her face, “it’s totally unfair to those of us who are struggling to get those good grades. I mean, take this American Government midterm we have coming up. How many people do you think already have the answers to that? Mr. Bleaker grades on a curve, you know. Those cheaters are ruining the curve for the rest of us.”

  I had to agree—it sucked big elephant balls.

  “Not only that,” Sam went on, “but we have to compete against these cheaters to get into good colleges. Chris is my Stanford competition. How can I compete with someone who’s buying all the fudging answers?”

  I raised an eyebrow at her. “‘Fudging’?”

  “What? You liked ‘fluffin’’ better?”

  I shrugged. “Either way, I don’t think Chris is much competition for you, stolen answers or no,” I said, recalling our encounter.

  “So, what do we do now?” Sam asked.

  “Well . . .” I hedged. “Chase had an idea last night.”

  “What?” Sam asked.

  “He thought we should set up a sting. Try to catch the guy in action again.”

  Sam nodded. “Sounds like a reasonable plan.”

  “Only, we’re going to need someone to contact him about getting test answers.”

  “Right.”

  “And it can’t be me or Chase because everyone already knows we’re working on the story for the paper.”

  “True.”

  “So we’re going to need a third person to make the contact with the guy selling cheats.”

  “Good point. But it could be hard to find someone willing to do that.”

  I stared pointedly at Sam.

  She blinked back at me. “What?”

  I bit my lip and stared some more.

  Realization slowly dawned behind her brown eyes. “Oh no. Oh, no way, Hartley. I am not going to be your bait!”

  “Please, Sam,” I pleaded. “You’re perfect. Everyone knows how grade-driven you are, and you said yourself that we’re in trouble with the midterm coming up in American Government.”

  Sam shook her head so violently that her blond hair whipped at her cheeks. “No way. Big capital N-O. What if I get caught? Teachers are totally looking for cheaters now with the whole Sydney thing. I cannot get caught cheating!”

  “You won’t get caught,” I assured her. “You’re not actually going to cheat. We’re just buying the answers. Heck, you won’t even see the answers. If all goes well, we’ll catch this guy in the act of grabbing the money before he even has a chance to drop the flash drive.”

  Sam bit her lip. “This feels like a really bad idea, Hartley.”

  My turn to shake my head. “No. It feels like a really good story. A good story that I need to jump on now before someone else does,” I said, remembering Ashley’s total ton of hits. “And one that no one else is pursuing because everyone thinks Sydney killed herself. Her killer’s going to go free to commit Twittercide again unless we figure out who he is,” I pointed out, trying to butter her up with her own phrase. “Please, Sam. For Sydney?”

  Sam clenched her jaw. Then she finally threw her hands up. “Okay, fine. I’ll be your bait.”

  “Thank you!” I squealed, coming in for a hug.

  “But,” she said quickly, “if I get caught, I’m so pulling a Sydney and ratting you out to save my own GPA.”

  I nodded. “Deal. Fine. You rock, Sam.”

  “Yeah,” she said, grabbing her cell phone. “Let’s just hope I don’t rock it all the way to fudging suspension. What’s the guy’s number?”

  I rattled off the digits that I’d extracted from Chris last night and watched as Sam punched them into her phone.

  “What should I say?” Sam asked, turning to me.

  “Hmm.” I thought a second. “Say that you got his number from a friend.”

  Sam nodded, texting as I dictated.

  “And that you have too many honors classes to keep up right now. You need the answers to Bleaker’s American Government midterm.”

  I watched Sam’s thumbs fly across the mini keyboard as the words appeared on the small screen. I reread it over her shoulder, then we hit Send.

  “How long do you think it will take to hear back?” Sam asked.

  I shrugged. “Let’s hope not long.”

  We settled in to do our American Government homework together (if we weren’t really going to cheat, we did really need to study) and waited, Sam checking her phone every couple of minutes to make
sure we hadn’t missed him.

  About twenty minutes later, just as we were going over the checks and balances system, Sam’s cell buzzed. We both jumped off the bed and dove for it. The text was from our mystery cheat seller, and Sam quickly opened it, both of us reading off the screen.

  $50. drop under rock by mascot room friday b4 game. answers will b there @ 1/2time.

  I shook my head. “We can’t wait that long. The midterm’s Friday. Tell him you need the answers today in order to have time to memorize them for the test.”

  Sam complied, texting back. She hit Send and we both waited, staring at the blank screen. Three minutes later, a response buzzed in. Sam punched it open and we leaned forward to read the message.

  2 soon. need more time

  I pursed my lips together. “Tell him you’ll pay double for a rush job.”

  Sam raised her eyebrows at me. “And where are we going to get a hundred bucks?”

  “Don’t worry about that. Just type it.”

  She shrugged, then did.

  will pay $100 for answers 2day

  A minute later, our response came in:

  2morrow. oakridge mall. 1pm. $100 under the kangaroo’s paw at the kids playland.

  Yes!

  Commence Operation Stakeout: the Sequel.

  By the time Sam and I finished studying and I walked the mile and a half from her place to my house, it was starting to get dark. I found Mom at the kitchen table once again, laptop open, eyes glued to the screen.

  “Hey, Hartley,” she said, still not looking up. “That you?”

  “Yeah.” I dropped my book bag on the floor and followed the scents of dinner into the kitchen. “What’s cooking?” I pulled the top off a pot on the back stove burner, leaning in to smell.

  “Lentil and quinoa stew,” Mom answered.

  I wrinkled my nose, wondering what the chances were I could sneak a pizza upstairs instead.

  “Hey, come look at this guy on Match and tell me what you think.”

  Oh boy. I could tell her what I thought without looking—nothing good could come of Mom internet dating.

  “Uh, wow. You know I have a lot of studying to do. . . .”

  “I thought you were studying at Sam’s.”

  “I have a lot more studying to do.”

  “This will only take a sec,” Mom said, hailing me over. “Come look at this guy’s profile.”

  Clearly I was not getting out of this, so I did glance at the screen. In the upper left-hand corner was a picture of a guy with graying hair and kind of a crooked smile. He was standing on the beach with a yellow dog next to him.

  “What do you think?” Mom asked.

  I shrugged. “He seems kinda old, doesn’t he? I mean, gray hair?”

  “He’s not that old,” Mom said, cocking her head to the side. “He’s just a little salt and pepper. And his profile sounds very nice,” she said, indicating the paragraph of description under the “about me” section.

  I scrolled down. “He says he likes long walks on the beach,” I read, rolling my eyes. “Cheesy.”

  “What’s wrong with the beach? I like the beach,” Mom said.

  I frowned at her. “And ‘holding hands at sunset’ and ‘candlelit dinners.’”

  “So?”

  “Mom! How cliché is that?”

  “It’s not cliché,” she argued. “It’s romantic.”

  I made a fake gagging motion.

  “All right, enough. Don’t you have studying to do?” Mom said, making a shooing motion at me.

  Thank God for midterms.

  Chapter Eight

  THE NEXT MORNING, I WOKE UP WITH ONE THING ON MY mind: how to get one hundred dollars and fast.

  Unfortunately, the only job I’d ever had was babysitting neighborhood kids, and even if I scared up a couple little guys to watch on short notice, no way could I make one hundred dollars in one sitting. Ditto Sam. Her parents didn’t allow her to have an after-school job, thinking it would interfere too much with her studies.

  That left us with precious few options to earn money in time for the drop. We would either have to (A) steal it or (B) borrow it. Since neither of us were the larceny type, Sunday morning found us standing in front of Sam’s brother, Kevin, pleading our case for a short-term loan.

  “I promise we won’t even spend it. We just need to use it as bait for a couple hours, then we’ll bring it right back,” Sam told him.

  Kevin blinked, giving her a blank stare. Though come to think of it, Kevin always had kind of a blank stare on his face. He was dressed in jeans and a faded Green Day T-shirt, laid out on the sofa with one foot hooked over the end in a sprawling pose. The TV was showing some nature channel with a bunch of ocean scenes, and the coffee table in front of him was littered with an empty Cap’n Crunch box and half a pepperoni pizza.

  “Dude, a hundred bucks is a lot of money,” Kevin said. “You know how many boobies I could save with a hundred bucks?”

  I almost hated to ask. . . . “Boobies?”

  Kevin nodded. “There are only like a dozen Abbott’s Boobies left in the world. The whole world, dude! That’s, like, really not a lot.”

  “Birds?”

  Kevin nodded solemnly. “Endangered birds, dude. They’re being killed off by Yellow Crazy Ants.”

  Clearly someone had been watching way too much Nature Channel.

  “Look, we’ll do anything, Kev. Please? We really need the money,” Sam pleaded.

  Kevin raised one eyebrow. “Anything?”

  Uh-oh. “Um, well, maybe not anything—” I broke in.

  “Okay, how about this?” Kevin proposed. “There’s this job I’m supposed to do this afternoon. It pays a hundred and fifty dollars, and if you two wanna do it for me, you can keep the cash.”

  “What kind of job?” I asked. As far as I knew, Kevin’s only real job since graduating from high school two years ago had been keeping the Kramers’ sofa from floating away.

  “Just a quick one.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “This job is legal, right?”

  Kevin did a short laugh-slash-cough thing. “Totally, dude. Look, all you have to do is stand in front of Chuck’s Chicken on Main Street and hand out chicken bucket coupons for a couple hours. Easy, right?”

  I had to admit, it did sound easy.

  “I don’t know,” Sam hedged. “Main Street is like three miles away.”

  “You can take the Green Machine,” he offered, sweetening the deal.

  I bit my lip. The Green Machine was Kevin’s puke-green-colored Volvo sedan that was, in fact, an environmentally friendly “green” machine by virtue of the fact that it ran purely on clean-burning vegetable oil instead of fossil fuels. Though the term clean was relative. The only places that had the volume of veggie oil needed to run a car were fast-food joints that threw out drums of used cooking oil. Which meant the Green Machine perpetually smelled like French fries and fish sticks.

  But, while I had a moment of pause over being seen driving around town in Kevin’s car, the truth was if we wanted to catch our cheat seller and figure out who killed Sydney, we had little choice.

  “Okay,” I finally said. “We’ll do it.”

  Kevin grinned, showing off a piece of pepperoni stuck in his back teeth. “Sweet, dude. The gig starts in an hour, and the suit’s in the Green Machine’s backseat.”

  I paused. “Wait—suit? What suit?”

  Kevin blinked at me. “The chicken suit, dude. You didn’t think you could hand out coupons looking like that, did you?”

  I closed my eyes and did a mental two count while I yoga-breathed, telling myself that this was all for a good cause.

  Forty minutes later, Sam and I were parking the Green Machine at Chuck’s Chicken in a haze of fried food–flavored smoke. Sam cut the engine, and we got out and stared into the backseat. Laid out across the cracked vinyl bench was a huge mass of yellow feathers.

  I bit my lip. “So . . .”

  “Yeah, no way,” Sam said, re
ading my mind. “I’m so not being a giant chicken, Hartley.”

  “It’s just for a couple hours.”

  “N. O.”

  “I think the feathers match your hair color better than mine.”

  “Nice try. We have the same color hair, Hartley.”

  “I’m allergic to feathers?”

  “Liar.”

  “I’m allergic to looking like a dork?”

  Sam grinned. “Ditto. Besides, I’m already putting my academic reputation on the line to buy these cheats.”

  She had a point. “Fine.” I sighed. “I’ll be the chicken.” So not words I’d ever wanted to say in my life.

  Reluctantly, I picked up the suit and held it up. Yellow feathers covered the torso, wings sticking out the sides with little arm holes for my hands. A pair of orange stockings attached to huge webbed feet covered the bottom half, and a hat with a mass of yellow fuzz sticking into the air capped off the outfit.

  I gave Sam one last pleading look.

  “You sure you don’t want to wear the suit?”

  “I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life.”

  “Sigh,” I said out loud.

  “Tell you what,” she offered, taking pity on me, “you can keep the extra fifty bucks.”

  “Swell.”

  I took the suit into the bathroom of Chuck’s Chicken, and after maneuvering uncomfortably in the tiny metal stall (and almost dunking my tail feathers into the toilet), I finally had the thing on. I purposely did not look in the mirror on my way out, sucking up the odd looks and snickers from the patrons enjoying their fried poultry and biscuits as I walked back out through the restaurant to find the manager.

  He turned out to be a short Indian guy with a pinched nose and a unibrow hunkering down over his eyes in a frown.

  “You’re not Kevin,” he observed, squinting past the costume to look at my face.

  I shook my head, molting a few yellow feathers onto the floor in the process. “He couldn’t make it. He sent me instead.”

  The manager paused, gave my suit a scrutinizing stare, then shrugged. “Whatever. Here, just hand these out to people on the street.”

  He handed me a stack of coupons.