Getting Caught

by Balog, Cyn

  I run my fingers through the pup’s fur, and that’s when it hits me. “Gav, that blazer of yours… you said it still fits?”

  “Sure.” He studies me. “You’re getting a very sinister look on your face. I like it. I like it a lot.”

  I clench my fists in excitement. “Then let’s get to work.”

  Chapter Five

  Peyton

  I’ve officially hit the refresh button on my email browser for the one-hundredth time.

  Today is D-day: SAT scores are supposed to arrive via e-mail. So far, all I’ve gotten is something about Viagra, a Facebook comment notice, and a slew of email forwards from Bryn. She’s really into those, “send this to ten people and your crush will kiss you!” emails. It’s just as well; it’s probably the only way her crush will kiss her. I feel bad, really. But she shouldn’t be going after Ken, the biggest asshole in our senior class—he looks like an Abercrombie model, and he knows it.

  When someone knocks on my door, I turn my eyes away from the computer for the first time in over an hour. I hope it’s not Tina, coming to assign me more chores.

  “Come in,” I say, spinning around in my chair. I’m already wondering if the e-mail is in my box, and I don’t know it because I’m not hitting refresh. If Tina would just let me get a smart phone, I wouldn’t have to be doing this in the first place. But nooo, she had to talk about starving children in Africa when I brought it up. If only I had time for a job, I could pay for it myself.

  My brother, Evan, steps through the door. He’s wearing green cargo pants and Vans, along with a ratty black T-shirt from the X-games. His hair is dyed an atrociously fake color of blond, but it’s hidden underneath a green trucker hat. I suppose in some circles, he’s considered hot. He leans against the doorjamb. “Hey. Still going to Harvard?”

  It’s our inside joke, the one question he asks me every day.

  After years of being practically non-existent, our mom left us for good when I was in third grade; he was in seventh. My dad hired a babysitter to hang with us in the evenings, back when he worked in the city and was hardly ever home. Andrea, the sitter, was the closest thing I ever had to a real mom and a big sister, all rolled into one. Somehow we just clicked. For the first time in my life, someone understood me. She liked reading books. She liked black and white movies, winning at every board game in the house, and studying for hours on end. We talked about life, goals, politics, world events… We even scoured the newspapers together, trading the business section for the world section, and then she’d quiz me about it to be sure I understood. She used to tell me I’d be president someday, and even though I’d laugh it made me feel good. Someone had big plans for me. Someone believed in me.

  Andrea had one goal in life: Harvard. She said it would be filled with people like her. People like me. I knew in that instant I wanted it too.

  When I hit sixth grade, Andrea got her acceptance and Dad decided we didn’t need a sitter anymore. I haven’t talked to her in years, but someday, when I get my acceptance, I’ll look her up.

  My brother never understood what Andrea and I did half the time. Sometimes he’d get the comics from the paper and sit with us, but mostly we just bored him. The day Andrea told me about Harvard, I told my brother I’d be going too.

  He, in all his seventh-grade wisdom, just laughed and told me how hard it was to get into an Ivy-League school. I just stuck out my tongue and told him I was going to be accepted.

  So the next day he asked me if I still planned on going, like he thought I’d come to my senses after a good night’s sleep. I puffed out my chest and told him I was going to be accepted.

  And the day after that, he asked again.

  It had started out as a joke, but as I got older—and my grades got better—it turned into something else. Now when he asks me, it’s like a reminder of what I’m working toward. He’s not teasing anymore. There’s a sparkle in his eyes, and I know the day my acceptance letter comes, he’s going to celebrate with me.

  You see, if it weren’t for him, I’d have probably gone insane by now. He’s the only one in my family who really believes in me. Tina and my dad probably couldn’t even name which Ivy-League school I’m obsessed with. I’m glad Evan has never moved out even though he’s twenty-one now. I sort of need him as my personal cheerleader.

  Besides, I help him a lot too. I must spend five or six hours a week filling out job applications, tweaking his resume, and scouring Craigslist for jobs. We have a Sunday evening ritual, and I never miss it.

  Maybe some siblings don’t get along, but my brother and I, we’re practically besties. As long as he’s not wearing sweaty socks, anyway. Then I won’t let him come within a ten-foot radius.

  “Of course. As long as these stupid SAT scores arrive, and they’re better than last time,” I say.

  “I thought you got a twenty-two fifty last time,” he says. My brother is not a book-smarts kind of guy. He barely made it through high school with a one-point-four GPA and never even took the SATs. To him, my score is good enough.

  “I did. But seriously, that’s not Ivy-League material.” I can’t believe he thinks 2250 is the sort of number I’d attach to my Harvard application. Is he nuts?

  “Move,” he says, walking up to my swivel chair.

  “Now is not the time to patrol eBay.” I glare at him. He’s not really going to make me move, is he? My hands grip the sides of the chair. He might actually pick me up and force me to move, and all the while my entire world is about to be handed to me in a single email. How can he do this?

  “Chill. You look like you’re coming down from a crack binge or something. I’ll watch your e-mail. If you don’t move, you’re gonna have a meltdown.”

  “You have to refresh it at least once per minute.”

  “I know,” he says, exasperated. “I swear, sometimes I have to save you from yourself.” He gingerly picks me up by the elbows and removes me from the chair.

  I stare, testing him. He stares back. I know he’s not going to mess with me. So finally, I sigh in relief and throw myself down on my bed as he takes my chair. My eyes were starting to hurt anyway.

  “You can be my aide-de-camp,” I say.

  He raises an eyebrow.

  “An officer who receives and transmits the orders of a general,” I recite.

  “Oh. How many of those words did you memorize?”

  “Five thousand.”

  He snorts.

  “Okay, at least half of them I already knew. They had words like alcoholism, and parallel, and enormity. You know, every day vocabulary.”

  “Ri-ight.” He clicks the refresh button for me, and for a moment the room is silent. “Nope.”

  I let out the breath I’d been holding. I’m not sure if this is an improvement.

  “You realize Harvard is completely crazy if they don’t accept you. You’re the model student.”

  “Are you sure?”

  We have this conversation at least once a week. It’s the only thing that makes me feel better. My brother knows this, and he knows I have his entire argument memorized. But he goes through it all again anyways. “Peyton. Look at me.”

  I prop my elbows up against the green plaid comforter and look across the room at him. He’s much more relaxed, sitting in that chair, than I was. Sometimes I wish I could just float through life like he does, even if he doesn’t have any direction. “You’ve got valedictorian in the bag. You’re class president. You got twenty-two fifty—soon to be twenty-four hundred—on your SATs. You’re in all AP courses. You volunteer at the senior center. You’re in the musical, science club, and the honor society. And you’ve been working on your application and admittance essay for a year. I think you’ve got it covered.”

  “Thank you,” I say, plopping back down on the bed. I stare at the ceiling. It’s completely blank. My entire room is a boring display of white walls, neutral colored carpet, and golden oak furniture. It should have posters and CDs and a vanity piled high with makeup.

&n
bsp; It should look more like Jess’s room, just across the lawn. She always had all these bizarre indie rock band posters. I loved to tease her about them and act like they were totally lame, but secretly I thought it was sort of neat, how passionate she was about music.

  Of course, that was before she got weird, with a thousand different dyes in her hair and fishnets on her legs. I bet if I peeked over the fence, into her room right now, I’d see her sacrificing a live animal to the devil or something. Which is why I keep my blinds shut.

  Maybe when I have a dorm at Harvard, my roomie and I will decorate it with cool posters we both like, or funky art deco pieces.

  I hear him click the mouse button again and resist holding my breath.

  “Nope,” he says.

  I wonder, briefly if I should try and go do something. But then I discard the thought. There’s no way I can do anything without obsessing over the computer.

  “Tina has an art show next weekend,” he says. “You going?”

  “You’d have to drag me there kicking and screaming.” I roll my eyes. “What kind?”

  “Modern.”

  “That’s a new one.” My stepmom has never stuck with one kind of art for more than a month. So far she’s done watercolor, oil, pencil, ceramics, stick-and-string-sculpting, something weird with shards of glass and tiles, and even a week of welding class. She’s decent at everything she tries, but she never sticks with it long enough to master it. It drives me insane. “Where’s it at?”

  “Donelli’s,” he says, grinning at me. “Brownies.”

  “Um, okay. Maybe,” I relent. Donelli’s is the local framing shop. I would rather cut off my own hands than voluntarily go to one of Tina’s shows, but Donelli’s does have brownies to die for, so it may be worth the torture.

  Plus, I know my brother is definitely in because he has a thing for the front-counter girl. It will be okay if we both go. Hopefully we’ll remember to pretend we’re there for the art.

  He clicks the mouse again, but this time he doesn’t immediately say, “nope.”

  I sit up abruptly and stare at him.

  “It’s…” He doesn’t finish his sentence before I’m shoving him, rolling chair and all, out of the way. I click on the email, and it immediately brings up a link and a password to use on the results site.

  “Ohmigod,” I say, so rushed that it sounds like one word. My hand is trembling as I try to type succeed into the password box. I think it comes out as sucede, so I have to backspace and try again.

  After a long moment, I’m about to scream in agony at my computer. It’s as if the Internet itself has stopped working. And then the page starts loading, and I curse the day Tina downgraded our broadband speed just to save ten bucks a month. Some of the banner ads and background have loaded, but there is not one piece of pertinent information.

  By the time it pops up, I’m not even aware of my brother sitting next to me. All I can see is a computer screen, and four simple digits:

  2370

  “Twenty-three seventy!” I shout, jumping up. I trip over the leg of the swivel chair and fall backwards. Thank God Tina installed plush carpet right after she moved in. “Twenty-three seventy!” I kick my legs up and down and look like a complete loser, as if I’m doing a bizarre form of Pilates.

  My brother grins down at me. He reaches out, pulls me to my feet, and gives me a giant hug.

  “Ew, have you been skating all morning or what?” I shove him away.

  “Yeah. I almost nailed a five-forty. You should have seen it. It was sweet.”

  “Cool. But, um, twenty-three seventy?” I say, turning the attention back to me.

  He laughs. “Yeah. Congrats. Told you you’re a genius.”

  “Thanks. And you too. For skating, I mean. A five-forty is crazy. You’ll get it in no time.”

  He beams. Skating is the biggest thing in his life. No matter what we do, he’s not having any luck with getting a job. It’s probably the economy, or whatever, but he also has this one teensy-weensy blemish on his record—thanks to some former best friend who shall remain nameless—which keeps popping up, destroying his chances of ever getting an adult life and moving out of our house.

  Jess wants to ruin my life, just like she ruined his. And that’s why this prank war will not end until she loses. Because that’s what she deserves after the shit she pulled.

  “Not quite, but thanks. And at least you can send in that Harvard app now.”

  I stop moving and just stare at him. The excitement deflates into pure angst. “Oh, crap.” How am I going to let go of the application? How will I ever get the nerve to put it into that big blue mailbox on the corner?

  He looks right at me, one side of his mouth lifted in a half smile. “Red alert,” he says in a fake walkie-talkie voice. “We have just moved to a level-three meltdown.”

  I smack him on the shoulder. “Shut up.” But I still grin back at him, because somehow he makes my neuroticism seem funny. Once he leaves, it’s just me and the crazy voices in my head that tell me nothing is ever perfect.

  “You’ve been working on it forever, right? And you already have your transcripts, and the essay, and the SAT people forward the scores for you. ”

  I nod.

  “Good. So print it out.”

  “Right now?”

  He crosses his arms across his chest, and it makes him look even bigger than he is. Did he start going to the gym? I really have no idea what my brother does with his days. “Yes. Print it out, and I’ll drop it at the post office.”

  “But I have to reread it!”

  “No, you don’t. There’s gotta be a point that you let it go. So it’s today. After today, it’s out of your hands and you can stop being such a freak about it.”

  “But what if I could make it a little better?”

  “You can’t make it better. Just different.”

  “But what if different is better?”

  He rolls his eyes. “Print. It. Out.” He pushes the chair in front of me and nearly puts me in it. I take a deep breath and open the file and click print before I can change my mind. Thirty seconds later, he’s taking the stack of paper off the printer and walking out of my room.

  I consider running after him and ripping the paper from his hands. Except I know he’s right. Now I have every last piece of the application, and it’s time to let it go. So I just listen as his footsteps descend the stairs, and then as he slams the front door. When his car starts up, I let out a long, slow breath and listen to the broken exhaust pipe as he drives away.

  Now my fate is in the hands of a complete stranger. And I’ve never been so scared in my life.

  Chapter Six

  Jess

  In Hollywood, there’s something really cool and mysterious about being the loner. Just look at the Lone Ranger. Or James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause. Or Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke.

  Of course, in high school, the words “loner” and “freak” are interchangeable. If you don’t slide yourself into a clique by day two, life is more like navigating the wilderness with a broken leg and no food.

  In a blizzard.

  With a pack of wolves chasing after you.

  The leader of the pack today, meaning the greatest offender to all those who prefer to keep to themselves—Miss De Frisco, my gym teacher—has recently finished a badminton demonstration in which her fake boobs nearly spilled out of her Reebok sports bra just enough to hold every male student enraptured. Then she turned to us and uttered the words that have been the bane of my existence ever since I swore off friending anyone my age:

  “Pair up!”

  Everyone looks around. Some people, like Peyton and Bryn, just go on prattling about meaningless things like guys and nail polish and rehearsals for the school musical; they know they’re partners without even having to ask. Others begin to shuffle about, grabbing onto each other’s arms as if they’re staking their claim. Nobody, and I mean nobody, even dares to make eye contact with me. I don’t even bother to move.
I know that any leftover soul will be mine. Probably someone with a hygiene issue stemming from an inability to reach his or her most vital body parts while showering. Or one of the ESL students. And I’m totally okay with that. Really, I am.

  “Hill, do you not have a partner?” Miss De Frisco finally asks, taking in my fishnets and gym shorts. Okay, it isn’t the most attractive look ever. In fact, it’s straddling the line between normal fashion and attire Halloween costume. Last year I might have cared, but I guess I’ve matured. Plus, once attendance was taken and demonstrations were done, I knew there’d be, at most, only fifteen minutes of actual badminton going on. It just didn’t seem worthwhile to make the full change.

  “No partner,” I say as confidently as I can. I hear Bryn’s annoying giggle from halfway across the gymnasium.

  Miss DeFrisco looks into the crowd. “Anyone else?”

  “Here,” a male voice says.

  I check the clock. Only twelve minutes until change time. I wait for Miss DeFrisco to announce the name of the fellow freak who will be my partner-in-fitness for the next dozen minutes.

  Instead, she hands me a racket and says, “Great. You and your partner are at net nine.”

  I trudge across the polished hardwood, checking the clock again. Even if I were the least bit athletic, I would still hate gym. More time is spent changing in and out of clothes and socializing than actually getting exercise. It’s a total waste of time. Time I could be spending putting the final touches on the prank I’m going to play on Peyton next week. Maybe that’s why the sight of her face doesn’t make me want to retch as much as usual. In a week she’ll know a humiliation unlike anything she’s experienced before. And I can’t wait.