I reluctantly emailed it to Chase just under the evening deadline, cringing as I waited for his reply.
It finally came in the form of a Facebook IM as I was tending my FarmVille plot that night, laptop on my legs while I lay back on my bed, digesting the last of Mom’s gluten-free corn spaghetti with texturized vegetable protein balls.
got ur article, it said.
I paused, ready to defend its contents.
u happy with it? he asked.
I bit my lip. But any defense I had fell flat on my own ears, so instead of faking it, I told the truth.
it was fluff.
*grin,* he typed back.
i’ll have something better soon. i swear!
i know.
Something about his confidence in me suddenly made the TVP balls in my stomach roll over one another. Especially since the faith was totally misplaced. Truth was, I had a lot of theories, but no real evidence that pointed to anyone as the Twittercidal maniac that had killed Sydney. And I was at a total dead end when it came to how Nicky had gotten those test answers, or if the two were even connected.
Which is why I was glad when Chase changed the subject.
hey . . . got plans 2morrow nite?
Okay, I was glad for about half a second. Then those TVP balls started moving again in nervous circles as I typed back, no. y?
meet me @ pizza my <3 4 dinner? 6?
For a full five seconds my entire body froze. My heart stopped, my lungs forgot how to breathe, and my fingers hovered stupidly over my keyboard. It sorta sounded like he was asking me out. But it had sorta sounded like that before with the football game. But this sounded more like it. Sorta.
u there?
yes, I typed back quickly.
yes ur there or yes 2 pizza?
I paused, my heart suddenly going from frozen to racing at a hundred miles a minute. And while I still wasn’t sure what this all meant, somehow I found my fingers typing back the word both.
Cool, Chase responded. c u then.
Then he logged off, his icon disappearing.
I stared at the screen trying to process what had just happened.
I thought I had a date with Chase.
“I think I have a date with Chase tonight,” I concluded the next morning as Sam and I stood outside Señorita Gonzalez’s classroom waiting for Jenni Pritchard. (I’d found out last night from Erin Carter that Jessica Hanson said Cody Banks said that he had Spanish with Jenni first period. I only hoped my sources were correct.)
“No way!” Sam said, smacking me in the arm. “Deets.”
I complied, relaying the IM conversation I’d had last night. When I was done, Sam was grinning so wide I could see her molars.
“Holy fermenting fish sticks! He’s totally into you. I knew it!”
My stomach did that rolling thing again, only this time all it had to churn over was the breakfast latte I’d stopped for at Starbucks on the way to school.
“So,” Sam asked, leaning in. “Are you into him?”
I bit my lip. “I don’t know. Maybe. Sorta. We’re friends, I guess.”
“You guys would make such a cute couple,” she said, staring off into space at a bank of lockers to our right. “You know what? I totally have some yarn leftover. I could make you matching heart bracelets!”
“Look, isn’t that Jenni?” I asked, pointing to a brunette down the hallway, infinitely glad to be saved from that disturbing thought.
Jenni Pritchard had dark hair, dark eyes, and a tan complexion that had nothing to do with her ethnicity and everything to do with the tanning salon on North Santa Cruz Avenue. As usual, her hair was teased up a good four inches off her head, giving her five-foot frame a much needed boost in height. She was wearing short shorts, tall boots, and a chunky necklace with a lot of fake rhinestones in it. A wad of gum popped between her teeth as her head bobbed back and forth to a song in her earbuds.
I waved as she approached. “Jenni?” I called out.
She looked up, blinked, and frowned at me as her little brain worked overtime to forage for recognition.
“Hartley Featherstone,” I supplied. “I’m on the school paper.”
She pulled one earbud out of her right ear. “Huh?”
“Um, Hartley Featherstone,” I said again.
“Oh. ’Kay?” she said, more of a question than a statement.
“Can I talk to you for a minute?”
“Um, I guess,” she said, popping her gum. “Why?”
“I wanted to ask you a couple questions for a story I’m doing for the school paper.”
She blinked at me. “We have a school paper?”
I barely resisted the urge to roll my eyes.
“Yeah, we do. So, can I ask you a couple questions?”
“What kind of questions?”
“About Sydney Sanders’s death.”
“She committed suicide, right?”
“Actually, we think it might have been Twittercide,” Sam said.
Jenni gave her a blank look.
“We think Sydney might have been killed while tweeting,” I explained.
“No way! What a total dramathon that would be, right?”
“Right,” I agreed. “Did you know that your boyfriend was going out with Sydney?”
Jenni looked from Sam to me. “Well, yeah, but that was totally in the past. Like . . . last week.”
A whole week. It was getting harder and harder to resist that eye roll.
“Did you know Sydney?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Not well. I mean, I knew who she was, but we weren’t, like, friends or anything, ya know?”
“What about Connor?” Sam jumped in. “How well did you know him before you guys got together?”
She shot Sam a blank look. “What’s to know? He’s hot.”
One could resist only so long. My eyes did a three-sixty.
“So hot you dumped Ben Fisher for him?” Sam asked.
She shrugged her shoulders, her top’s spaghetti straps coming *this* close to falling off. “Yeah. So?”
“After Connor dumped Sydney for you,” I said.
“After she was kicked off the homecoming ballot,” Sam added.
Jenni shrugged again. “So? She totally brought that on herself. Cheating is, like, way not cool, ya know?”
I formulated my next question carefully. While I didn’t necessarily owe any vow of secrecy to Connor, I didn’t really want to be the one to let his plan out of the bag.
“You weren’t afraid that maybe Connor was only dating you to get the homecoming nomination?”
Jenni blinked at me again, popping her gum.
“Or that he might go back to Sydney after he won?”
“Why would he?” she asked.
Either she was ignorant of Connor’s intentions or really good at playing dumb.
“I gotta ask,” Sam said, cutting in. “What do you see in that guy?”
“Who, Connor? You’re kidding, right? He’s gorgeous.”
“He certainly seems to think so,” Sam mumbled.
“What?” Jenni asked, leaning in.
“Nothing.”
“Back to Ben,” I cut in. “You were seeing him before Connor?”
Jenni nodded. “That’s right. But when Connor asked if I wanted to go out, I totally gave Ben the boot.”
“Why?”
Again she blinked at me as if I was asking the most obvious questions in the world. “Um, Ben is a linebacker and Connor is a quarterback. Duh!”
Did her depth have no bounds?
“Where were you when Sydney died?” I asked.
“I dunno. What time was that?”
“Just after three.”
She pursed her eyebrows together, scrunching up her nose as if thinking that hard really hurt. “Um, pro’ly shopping. I didn’t have any shoes to go with the color corsage Connor was getting me. So I was at the mall every day last week after school.”
Hardly an ironclad alibi, but the more time I s
pent chatting with Jenni, the less sure I was that she could carry out a plan to tie her shoes, much less kill someone. While shoving someone in a pool might not take a PhD, covering your tracks afterward did. I’d venture to say that if Jenni had been the one to off Sydney, her teased DNA would have been all over the crime scene.
“Lookit,” Jenni said, popping one hip out. “If you really think someone killed Sydney, I’d take a look at that so-called best friend of hers.”
I raised an eyebrow. “So-called? Why do you say that?”
“Because Quinn hooked up with Connor before he dumped Sydney.”
“O. M. G,” Sam said. “She did not!”
Jenni smirked. “Oh, yes she did. Right before Connor and I got together. He told me he was studying after school with Quinn and Sydney one day, and Sydney had to leave for yearbook committee. The second she was gone, Quinn was all over him. She totally made out with him.”
I refrained from pointing out that it took two to tongue tango, instead asking, “Did Sydney find out about it?”
Jenni shrugged. “I dunno. But it might explain why she ratted Quinn out to the vice principal.”
Good point. It also might explain why Quinn had seemed like she was hiding something when she’d talked to us. I wondered what else she might have been hiding . . . like the fact she’d Twittercided her best friend? (I had to admit, Sam’s new word was growing on me.)
“Why would Connor tell you this?” Sam asked.
Oh, good question. I leaned in to hear the answer.
“Quinn wouldn’t leave him alone,” Jenni said. “At first I thought there was something going on there, like Connor was totally cheating on me or something, but then Connor told me what had happened. I mean, she was texting him, like, all the time. Like, she seriously thought he might be into her.”
“And you’re sure he wasn’t?” I asked.
“Puh-lease. Quinn Leslie is not even close to homecoming queen material. Once Connor told me what happened, I was so not worried about her.”
But had Sydney been worried about her? Or, more important, had Quinn been worried about Sydney? It was hard to imagine someone killing over a narcissist like Connor, but I guess stranger things had happened.
As I contemplated this new bit of information, the bell rang, echoing off the pea-green hallway walls.
Jenni stuck her other earbud back in, effectively ending the interview, and ducked into Spanish. Sam took off for her AP statistics class, promising to meet me at lunch in the cafeteria, and I hoofed it to lit, still mulling over what Jenni had said.
If it was true that Quinn had made out with Sydney’s boyfriend, that put a whole new spin on their friendship. And if Sydney had retaliated by getting Quinn busted for cheating, maybe Quinn had upped the ante in her revenge and killed Sydney. One thing was certain: I had to talk to Quinn again.
I spent first period in a haze, barely paying attention to Shakespeare’s sonnets as I watched the clock tick down with agonizing slowness. Ditto PE and American Government, where I could have sworn the clock’s hands stood still the entire time Mr. Bleaker explained the Articles of the Confederation in excruciating detail. By the time I finally got out of fourth-period Spanish, I fairly raced for the cafeteria. Unfortunately, my sprint carried me right past the teachers’ lounge, and as the door opened, Mr. Tipkins emerged, a cup of coffee in one hand and a stack of papers in the other.
“Hartley,” he said, hailing me. “I was actually hoping I’d run into you.”
“You were?” I asked, wracking my brain to make sure I hadn’t said anything bad about him in the article that had run in that morning’s Homepage. “Um . . . why?”
“I saw the article in this morning’s paper.”
“Uh . . . you did?” I hedged.
He nodded. “It looks like you’re doing a very thorough job of investigating where Sydney got those test answers.”
I did a mental sigh of relief. “Thanks. I’m certainly trying.”
“Have you turned up any new information about how they got out?”
I bit my lip. “Not really.” Which was mostly true. While I knew Nicky was involved, I still didn’t know who had given Nicky the answers, so technically I didn’t know how his cheats had gotten out. Just where they went once they did.
And, as Nicky had pointed out, I had no proof.
“Well, I’d like to be kept in the loop on this,” Mr. Tipkins said.
I nodded. “Sure,” I said. “No prob.”
“I take the security of my tests very seriously,” he added.
“I understand,” I said, backing away. “Trust me—when I find out how those answers got out, you’ll be the first to know!” I quickly turned and continued my sprint all the way to the cafeteria.
By the time I got there, Quinn, fresh off her suspension, was already at a table near the back with half the lacrosse team, a tray of Monday Meat(ish)loaf in front of her.
I quickly approached, ignoring the way my own stomach growled at the scent of food. (Even if it was only food-ish.)
Quinn looked up, conversation around her hushing as someone clearly not of the Sporty Girl ranks came near.
“What?” Quinn asked. A less-than-friendly greeting, but then again, I had a less-than-friendly question to ask her.
“I have some new info about Sydney,” I told her.
At the mention of Sydney’s name, all eyes hit the floor, a mix of sadness and awkward emotions filling the air. I saw that several of the girls were wearing black mourning bands on their arms, Quinn included.
“I’d like to talk to you about her,” I pressed Quinn.
“So talk,” she challenged me.
I glanced at the row of girls in matching ponytails and sweats seated next to her, all eyes trying desperately to avoid mine.
“I think maybe we should talk in private.”
A couple of the other girls exchanged glances, but something in my tone must have convinced Quinn, as she just shrugged and pushed away from the table and led the way to an empty table in the corner. She leaned against the end and crossed her arms over her chest, defensive before I could even begin. “Okay, what’s so private?”
Since she seemed to be a fan of the direct, I dove right in.
“You made out with Connor while he and Sydney were still going out.”
Fire instantly lit up Quinn’s eyes as she narrowed them at me. “Who told you that?”
I gulped. “Um . . . a source. Is it true?”
She pursed her lips, and I could tell a lie was just on the tip of her tongue.
But not knowing who my source was, she didn’t know what kind of proof (or lack thereof) I had. So she bit the inside of her cheeks and finally decided on, “So what?” She stuck her chin out defiantly.
“Did Sydney know?”
Quinn paused, seemingly genuine emotion suddenly welling in her eyes. “Yeah. She found out.”
“How?”
“She saw a text I’d sent Connor on his phone and called me out on it. So I told her the truth. Connor was into me.”
Huh. That wasn’t exactly how Jenni had described it, but I wasn’t going to be the one to burst Quinn’s bubble.
“I can’t imagine Sydney was very happy about that,” I prodded.
Quinn shook her head. “No. She was pissed. Not that I can blame her. She’d just found out her boyfriend was leaving her for me.”
“He told you that?” I asked, unable to keep the disbelief out of my voice.
“Well, no,” she admitted. “But I could see it coming.”
I wasn’t sure who I felt more sorry for, Dead Sydney or Clueless Quinn.
“So, let me guess,” I said. “To get back at you, Sydney told the principal that you were involved in the cheating.”
Quinn nodded. “Which was totally not cool. But, like I said, I don’t blame her for being angry.”
“But then Connor started dating Jenni, not you.”
Quinn squared her jaw. “It’s just because Jenni is up for
homecoming court.”
“So after the homecoming dance . . .” I trailed off.
“He’s dumping her and getting together with me.”
Oh boy. Was Quinn ever in for a rude awakening.
“Okay, let’s play ‘let’s pretend’ for a moment, shall we?” I said.
Quinn stuck her chin out again but didn’t stop me, so I plowed on.
“Let’s pretend that Sydney hadn’t been killed. And Connor was, as you said, only with Jenni for the homecoming vote. What if, after it was over, he was going to go back to Sydney and not you?”
Quinn blinked at me. “No. He was going to get together with me.”
Either she really believed that or someone had been taking after-school drama classes. “I hate to break it to you,” I said, “but that’s not what Connor told me. He said he was going back to Sydney.”
Quinn shook her head. “That’s not possible. He’s into me. He made out with me on his own bed. Guys don’t do that unless they’re into you.”
I bit my lip. I hated to tell her but some guys just made out with you to make out with you. Being into you wasn’t a given.
Quinn was still shaking her head. “You know what? It doesn’t matter. Sydney’s gone, so clearly Connor has one choice left.”
I gave her a hard look, hunkering my eyebrows down over my eyes. “Right. Now that Sydney’s gone.”
“Wait—what’s with the eyebrows?” she said. “What are you trying to say?”
“Did you kill Sydney to clear the field to Connor?” I asked point-blank.
Quinn’s eyes went big. “Me? No. God, no! She killed herself. Over the guilt from ratting me out to the VP.”
“I thought you said overachievers didn’t kill them-selves,” I pointed out, repeating what she’d told me in our first interview.
Quinn shrugged. “Well, I’ve had some time to think about it. And I think she did. I mean, I was her best friend. She must have felt really bad about what she did. Look, are we done? Because we only have fifteen minutes left of lunch and I gotta eat.”
While I would have liked to grill her further, I honestly didn’t know what else to ask. Plus, I intended to stuff as much meat-ish loaf into my own mouth in fifteen minutes as I could.
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