by Shana Norris
“Nice,” I told him as I sat down at the scratched wooden table. “Can’t you stifle your bodily functions until you get to your own room?”
“If it has to come out, it has to come out.” Ian was thirteen and still stuck in that phase in which he thought bodily noises were the most hilarious things in the world.
“Ian, stop tormenting your sister,” Dad said. “And, Avery, stop tormenting me. A little chili cheese won’t hurt us.”
“Remember that when your heart decides go into cardiac arrest,” I said.
“I can live with that.”
“If you keep eating so much junk, not likely.” Without me, Dad and Ian would eat cheeseburgers and pizza for every meal.
Dad wiped a spot of chili from his chin with a napkin. “I’m going to bed. I have a date with Trisha tomorrow after work, so I won’t be home until late.”
I rolled my eyes at the mention of Trisha. Ian and I still had yet to meet Dad’s latest girlfriend, though I knew it was only a matter of time before she showed up at our dinner table. Dad had this two-month rule: If the relationship lasted more than two months, then he’d bring her home to meet us. I thought the idea was brilliant. It had saved me from putting up with a few nameless women who hadn’t made it past a second date. But honestly, a two-year rule would have made me even happier.
Dad had now been dating Trisha for two months and one week.
“So there’s a lasagna in the freezer,” he continued. “And make sure Ian works on his history paper.”
“I don’t need a baby-sitter,” Ian grumbled.
“Yes, Dad,” I said. Sometimes it seemed as though Dad believed Ian and I were still little kids unable to take care of ourselves. Like we hadn’t been mostly caring for ourselves for four years now.
Dad leaned over and kissed the top of my head. “Okay, I can tell from your tone that you don’t need baby-sitting instructions from your old dad. Good night.”
Once Dad left, I grabbed a washcloth and wiped down the table and counters. I silently recited the names of the bones in my hands as I worked. Distal phalanges, intermediate phalanges, proximal phalanges, metacarpals, carpals. The words had a nice, soothing rhythm in my head as I put everything back in its place, making sure the bowls were stacked neatly and the spoons weren’t toppling over in the drawer. Returning everything to its rightful place, neat and organized, always made me feel calm and in control.
Under a pile of junk mail, I found one of the countless self-help books Dad always bought. The New You: Getting Over Disappointment and Heartache So You Can Find Happiness. I tossed the entire stack, junk mail and the book, into the trash.
“Try not to get into trouble tomorrow,” I told Ian as I turned toward him. “Just because Dad won’t be home doesn’t mean you can go wild. I can’t be called out of work again because you were caught sneaking into the movies.”
“Correction,” Ian said, “I was caught sneaking out, not in.”
“Only because you sneaked into the wrong movie in the first place. Next time I’m telling Dad.”
“You’re a traitor to the sibling oath,” Ian muttered.
I headed back to my room to get ready for bed. As I walked toward my closet, the brochures stacked on the corner of my dresser caught my eye.
“Spend the summer in Costa Rica!” the bold orange letters on the front proclaimed.
I’d read the brochures so many times they were coming apart at the folded edges. It wasn’t a vacation, it was a three week stay on the outskirts of San Jose, volunteering with doctors and humanitarian workers. It was very educational and would look great on my college applications, giving me a little head start on my future career in medicine. It was the experience of a lifetime.
It was also four thousand dollars.
I had over two thousand saved up, after working part time at Diggity Dog House for over a year and saving my birthday money from my grandparents. But I still had a long way to go and with only two months until the program started, I wasn’t feeling confident that I’d get to Costa Rica this summer.
But I had already paid the deposit to reserve my spot, which was non-refundable even if I didn’t manage to save up the rest of the money in time. It had to be this summer, before my senior year. Colleges would be looking at my applications and this trip would go a long way toward securing my acceptances.
The little voice in my head knew I was lying. I could have chosen a similar program much closer to home, but I’d picked this one specifically because it took place in Costa Rica. My eyes moved to the map tacked on the wall over my bed. There was a huge world out there, but the yellow thumbtacks marked only a few places: Belgium, Hong Kong, South Africa, Vancouver, and Costa Rica.
If I closed my eyes, sometimes I could picture her sitting on the edge of my bed, telling me stories about all these far off places she wanted to see. While Hannah Cohen’s designer-dressed mother dreamed of strolling past the Eiffel Tower or drifting down the waterways of Venice, my mom wanted to get lost in jungles, forests, and mountains. She wanted to hide from the whole world.
But I had never imagined she wanted to hide from us as well.
It had taken every ounce of bargaining ability I had to convince Dad to let me go to Costa Rica in the first place. The idea of sending me thousands of miles always still didn’t thrill him, but he had finally said I could—if I saved up the money to pay for the trip. Extra money wasn’t exactly something that my single-parent, one-income family had an excess of. Begging Mr. Throckmorton for another raise had been my last hope for extra money from my regular job.
I sighed as I tore my eyes away from the brochures and opened the closet to grab my pajamas from their place on the center shelf. I would make it to Costa Rica, no matter what it took. And I would search every bit of the country until I found the answers I was looking for.
Chapter 2
“Any idiot with a basic knowledge of firewalls could get into our school’s network,” my best friend Molly Pinski said.
“And how would you know that?” I asked. “Have you been hacking into the school’s network?”
Molly’s face turned as pink as the dyed stripes in her blonde hair. “Of course not. I was checking out the security features and noticed how obviously lacking they are.”
One of Molly’s favorite pastimes happened to be “testing” the security features of various establishments throughout town. Luckily for the businesses of Willowbrook, Molly didn’t hack into systems to do damage, only to see whether she could get in. She then offered the various businesses her services to help them increase their security—for a generous fee, of course. Molly was a natural-born businesswoman.
“I called Ms. Lancaster this morning—”
“Wait,” I interrupted. “You called our school’s computer lab instructor on a Sunday morning?”
“Yes,” Molly said.
“At home?”
“Where else would she be at eight A.M.? Anyway, I tried to explain the problems with the school’s firewall, but she hung up on me.”
I faked a gasp. “No. Really?”
Molly wagged a finger in my direction. “Mock all you want, but this is serious. I should do something to the school’s network to teach them all a lesson. Like change my grades.”
“I think that would hurt you more than it would anyone else,” I pointed out. Molly already had an A average. The only thing she could do was make her grades worse.
“Then they’d better hope no one else figures out how easy it is to hack into the grades.”
Molly could rant and rave about the injustice Ms. Lancaster had committed against her all day if I didn’t get her off the subject soon.
“I really need to talk to you about Elliott,” I told her.
No one was more surprised than me when Molly and Elliott suddenly started hanging out. She had had a few different boyfriends in the two years since she’d moved to Willowbrook, but Elliott was an entirely new species of guy for her. She wore ripped skinny jeans and combat bo
ots while he wore khakis and polos. Molly talked databases and firewalls while Elliott talked three-point throws and cheerleaders in short skirts. What could they possibly have in common?
Molly shifted her position on the floral print couch in her living room and turned her attention back toward the James Bond movie she was watching. Goldfinger, of course, her favorite. “Not this again.”
“You didn’t see him with Tara last night. Something is going on between them, I know it.”
“Did you see them kiss or hear him ask her out?”
I gritted my teeth together and said, “No.”
Molly squeezed my arm. “I trust Elliott. I’m not one of those crazy girls who freaks out whenever her boyfriend talks to another girl. And besides, we’re not really together. Just talking and seeing how things go.”
“No one is going to think you’re crazy for suspecting him. He did cheat on Lila Mahoney.”
“That was in the ninth grade,” Molly pointed out. “I think Elliott may have grown up a bit in the last two years.”
“Don’t count on it,” I muttered under my breath.
“Look, Elliott can have female friends. He can even be friends with you, if you’ll let him. Spend some time with him and I’m sure you’ll like him as much as I do.”
I pressed my lips together, gritting my teeth. Molly didn’t know that Elliott and I had been friends once. I’d made it my mission to ensure she never found out what happened four years ago.
She was basically the only friend I had, the one person I trusted outside of my dad and brother. We’d formed a connection when she spotted a sticker for this mostly unknown band called Hallow Flux on my notebook and gushed about how she had all of their songs on her iPod. Ever since then, Molly and I had been a team against the rest of the world.
I was supposed to be happy for her for having a new love interest, at least according to the unspoken rule of best friends. But the girl had a new love interest every other month. Before New Year’s she had been devoted to the president of the technology club. Before that she was into a goth phase and dated Brian Kelley, who wore black lipstick. (I could always tell when they’d been making out under the stairwell because his lipstick would be smudged all over her chin.) How much breaking up could one person possibly take? She was going to get dumped and then I’d have to eat cartons of full fat strawberry cheesecake ice cream with her again and I was supposed to be thrilled?
“With your predisposed hatred of Elliott, you blow any little thing he does out of proportion,” Molly told me.
My mouth dropped open. “Out of proportion? What else could he and Tara have been doing? Alone?”
“Discussing homework? Sports? The economy? Something totally unrelated to any of the scenarios you’re dreaming up?”
Poor naive Molly. Always wanting to believe the best in people. She hadn’t yet learned how cruel the world could be.
“Elliott is not entirely the bad guy you’re making him out to be,” Molly said, popping another piece of popcorn into her mouth.
Oh, yes, he was. But of course, I couldn’t bring that summer up as my reason for hating Elliott for the rest of eternity. So I had to rely on other wrongs he’d done.
“What about when he tripped me in gym class?
Molly raised one eyebrow. “You’re not taking gym this year. How could he have tripped you?
I flailed my arms. “In eighth grade! He tripped me in front of the boys’ and girls’ classes.”
“Tell me you are not bringing up something that happened three years ago.”
“My knee was bruised for two weeks,” I said.
“Okay,” Molly said slowly, a mischievous gleam in her eye, “since we’re talking about ancient history, what about the egg incident?”
I stuffed a handful of popcorn into my mouth all at once to save me from responding. I couldn’t believe Elliott had told her about the egg incident.
“Do I need to jog your memory?” Molly asked. “Third grade field day. Egg in a spoon race. You cracked your egg over Elliott’s head when he beat you.”
I swallowed the soggy lump of popcorn and said, “I do not recall such an incident.”
She tilted her head to one side, letting her pink and blonde bangs fall in front of one eye. “Sure, you don’t. Elliott told me all about it.”
“That was a long time ago,” I grumbled.
“So were all of the things you like to bring up in your case against Elliott.”
“His cheating on Lila was only two years ago. How do you know he won’t do it again?”
Molly frowned as she picked through the bowl for the cheesiest kernels. “I don’t. But you know what? I’d like to have the chance to find out for myself.”
Corrie, Molly’s mom, padded into the room in snowflake pajamas and Christmas tree slippers, even though Christmas had passed almost five months ago. “Oh, Sean Connery again?” she asked, leaning over the back of the couch to grab some popcorn. “I’ll take some of that, shaken not stirred, any day.”
Molly cringed. “Gross, Mom. Go have your middle-aged fantasies somewhere not within my hearing.”
Molly’s mom wasn’t old, as far as parents went, and she looked younger than she was, with long blonde hair and blue eyes like Molly’s. She hated it when I called her Mrs. Pinski, since she and Molly’s dad had been divorced for over ten years now.
“Corrie,” I said, taking advantage of having an impartial jury in my case, “give us your opinion. If someone is a complete jerk all hours of the day and flirts with another girl, shouldn’t any girl interested in going out with him realize the errors of her ways and kick him to the curb?”
Corrie tilted her head to the side, the way Molly always did. “Depends. How hot is said guy?”
“Hideous,” I said at the same time Molly said, “Smoking.”
Corrie laughed. “I see this is debate will be waged for a long time.” She popped some popcorn into her mouth, chewed for a moment, and then said, “The only way to settle it, girls, is to come to a compromise.”
“Which is?” Molly asked.
“Hook up with him a couple of times and then kick him to the curb,” Corrie said as she shuffled out of the room.
Molly shuddered. “Why do I have a scary image of my mom hooking up with random guys in my head right now? Ugh!” She slapped the top of her head a few times.
“Back to our problem,” I said. “I can’t be as forgiving and trusting as you are. Once a snake, always a snake.”
“People change,” Molly told me. She sighed as she selected a few kernels from the bowl. “Would it make you feel better if I promise not to fall in love with him until you have a chance to give me some concrete evidence to support your allegations?”
“Yes!” I shouted.
She shot me a dirty look. “You don’t have to be so enthused. I’m not saying that I won’t talk to him, but I’ll hold off on getting serious. Like a probationary period, one month. If he’s proven himself trustworthy, then I’m free to date him all I want. I’m free to marry him and have a thousand hacker babies if I want. Deal?”
I held out a cheesy hand toward her. “Deal.”
My lips curled into a satisfied smirk as we shook on it. All I had to do was wait for Elliott and Tara to slip up—which they undoubtedly would—and then I’d be rid of Elliott Reiser for good.
Chapter 3
“For the next six weeks,” said my business economics teacher, Mr. Freeman, on Monday afternoon, “we will be conducting an experiment.”
Most of the class groaned at his words. Business econ wasn’t exactly a class where you expected to do experiments. It was one of those easy A electives, where you read a bunch of stuff from the book, participated in discussions, and then took a few tests. Everyone liked Mr. Freeman, who was only a couple years out of college and had a laid back style of teaching, but nowhere in the course description was there anything about experiments.
Mr. Freeman held up his hands. “It won’t be that bad. All year long
, we’ve studied business law and how companies work. Now you’ll learn firsthand about the ins and outs of running a company. You will be splitting into pairs. Each pair will create a business from the ground up. You’ll write a business plan, prepare a loan proposal, and receive weekly reports about how your business is doing. Along the way, you’ll have a few twists thrown in, which I will decide randomly as we go along.”
Actually, that didn’t sound so bad. Some of the students had already started to pair up and so I turned toward Molly, intending to ask her to be my partner, when Mr. Freeman spoke again.
“I will assign pairs by drawing names from these two bowls.” Mr. Freeman held up two plastic bowls for us to see. “Boys’ names in one, girls’ in the other. Since we have more girls than boys, the remaining two girls will be paired together. I want this to be a true experiment, so you could be working with someone you might never have worked with before. Someone you can’t ever imagine going into business with.” He grinned. “Because in the real world, you don’t always get along with your coworkers.”
Molly held up her crossed fingers, hoping we’d be the odd girls out.
“The first team,” said Mr. Freeman as he took a name from each bowl, “is Nathan Thompson and Molly Pinski.”
“I demand a redraw!” Molly exclaimed. She looked over at Nathan, who was a skinny boy with huge glasses. He was my treasurer in the math club and was a pretty nice, though very quiet, guy. “No offense, Nate,” she told him, even though Molly knew for a fact that Nathan hated to be called Nate. His forehead scrunched into a scowl over his glasses.
“No redraws,” Mr. Freeman said. He pulled several more pairs from the bowls and then finally, “The next team is Zac Greeley and Avery James.”
I groaned a bit under my breath. Zac turned to look at me from his seat a few rows away and gave me the thumbs up sign. I doubted he’d take this seriously, which meant my perfect grade point average was in jeopardy. Plus, I’d probably have to keep track of everything so he wouldn’t lose it or drop it in a mud puddle. I wrinkled my nose as I took in the sight of his dirty Converse. The bottom of his left shoe was held in place with duct tape.