Caught in the Web

by Laura Dower

  Aimee grinned and struck one of her dancer poses. “Thank you.”

  “And that’s a nice sweater,” Madison said, rolling her eyes and half laughing. “Is it new?”

  Aimee was wearing a black ski sweater with a big purple stripe.

  “Oh my God, this? Not even. And it makes me look so huge,” Aimee quipped. “You’re not supposed to wear stripes across. Totally unflattering. But I thought it would be warm, so I wore it. It’s wicked cold out today.”

  “You’ve got a lot of energy this afternoon,” Mom declared.

  “My brother Roger made me herbal tea when I got home from school,” Aimee said. “You know how he always makes these drinks with ginger and ginseng. It’s good for you.”

  Madison had never eaten or drunk anything with ginseng in it. It sounded too mysterious. She glanced at her own outfit and compared it to what Aimee had on. Aimee always seemed to dress the part of cool while Madison usually felt uncool in comparison.

  Honk honk.

  Aimee peeked out the window. “It’s your dad, Maddie! Bye, Mrs. Finn!”

  “That was good timing, huh?” Madison said, looking at Mom. It seemed hard to believe Dad was in the driveway on time. Mom said that in fifteen years of marriage, Jeff Finn had never been on time.

  Dad stuck his head out the window to wave to Mom, who was standing on the porch. Mom waved limply and walked back inside.

  Approaching the car, Madison saw Stephanie seated in the front seat. Stephanie had been riding up front since she’d begun dating Dad. Madison had a sinking feeling she would never ride shotgun in Dad’s car again.

  Madison and Aimee jumped in the back.

  “How was school today, girls?” Dad asked, pumping the gas pedal. He started driving and asking so many questions that Madison was sure he must have had six cups of coffee. Dad was like a little kid when he got excited.

  “So we have the entire afternoon planned out,” Dad explained. “First the pumpkin patch—then cider—hmmm—what time is it, Stephanie?”

  Stephanie turned to the girls in the backseat and winked as she said to Dad, “Slow down, will ya, Speed Racer? It’s almost four o’clock.”

  The two friends chuckled. The farm closed up shop after six. They had plenty of time to get there and find the right pumpkins.

  “Your dad got a new digital camera that we’re going to try out,” Stephanie said. “Did he tell you, Maddie?”

  Dad spied Madison in the rearview mirror and smiled. “You up for a photo session, girls?”

  “Yeah, I guess. I’m sure Aimee is,” Madison teased.

  “Hey!” Aimee laughed. “Well, I don’t mind having my picture taken, if that’s what you’re asking, Mr. Finn.” She gave Madison’s shoulder a gentle nudge.

  “That’s good!” he said.

  “How come you guys aren’t at work or something?” Aimee asked.

  Stephanie laughed. “Aren’t days off a wonderful thing? We had a business meeting this morning. Saved the afternoon for you two.”

  “We’ll beat the Saturday rush at the farm,” Dad said. “You girls finished your homework like we agreed, right?”

  Madison and Aimee nodded from the backseat.

  Outside the car, tree branches shook their dead yellow, red, and orange leaves off in the wind. Madison pressed her nose up to the window on the passenger side and watched as her warm breath fogged up the cool glass. She traced a smiley face with her index finger. Aimee leaned over and used her fingers to draw squiggles in the same spot.

  Soon they were driving through the farm gates. After they parked, Dad led them to the horse cart transporting guests into the pumpkin patches.

  Madison, Aimee, and Stephanie posed for a photo op in front of “Megasquash,” a display of enormous zucchinis. Aimee stuck a piece of hay in her mouth and twirled around, working overtime to be the center of attention. Madison laughed hysterically while Dad clicked away.

  The greatest thing about Dad’s digital camera was all its cool features. He could eliminate or retake bad pictures right away, of course. But he could also add special effects, turn the photos into a black and white photo strip, or replace Madison and Aimee’s hair with fake neon-colored wig-hair or wacky hats. Later, Madison would download all Dad’s photos as screen savers for her laptop.

  The air on the farm smelled more and more like everything fall was supposed to smell like: horses, smoke from a chimney, apples, more hay. Madison took a deep breath of cool air. It was getting duskier outside.

  “Look at this one, Maddie! It has boobs!” Aimee screeched when they jumped off the cart into the pumpkin patch. She held up a giant orange pumpkin with two funny-looking bumps on the side.

  Madison laughed and ran over to join Aimee. They sorted through plump ones, round ones, flat ones, and even green ones. Stephanie found a teeny patch that had been picked over already by some crows. Dad found a pumpkin so big that it barely fit in the wagon they were using.

  At five o’clock, Madison and Aimee ordered cups of cider at one of the farm stands and sat out on a picnic bench, even though it was a little too chilly to sit in one place for very long.

  “How did you meet Mr. Finn?” Aimee asked, blowing on the cider before taking her first sip. She was so good at asking the right questions. Madison envied Aimee’s ability to say whatever was on her mind.

  Stephanie said that she was a computer sales rep. and met Madison’s dad at a technology conference a few months back. In her head, Madison tried to do the math just to make sure that Dad had started dating Stephanie after the big D.

  They had.

  “Steph—” Dad started to groan. “Do you girls really wanna hear this?”

  “Of course we do, Mr. Finn!” Aimee blurted. “Every detail. Like, what were you wearing when you met?”

  “I think I had on a gray sweater.” Stephanie chuckled. “And plaid pants.”

  “Plaid? Ohhh!” Aimee bristled like plaid was bad. She continued with her questions. “Have you ever been married before?”

  Madison couldn’t believe Aimee would ask something so personal.

  Stephanie smiled. “Well, not exactly.”

  “What does ‘not exactly’ mean?” Madison asked.

  “Well, here’s the thing. I was engaged,” Stephanie said. “Once. I was engaged, but I didn’t go through with it. Couldn’t go through with it.”

  “And am I glad for that,” Dad said, wrapping his arm around Stephanie’s back and leaning in to kiss her head.

  Dad looked up just in time to see the expression on Madison’s face. It was a “why did you just do that?” look. It had taken Madison her whole life to get used to Dad kissing Mom. Now she had to get used to Dad kissing someone else?

  Eeeeeuuuw.

  Madison remembered to grab a jar of Mom’s favorite relish as they left the farm. She triple-checked the label to make sure it was the correct kind: extra spicy, Peterson’s specialty.

  Dad paid for all the pumpkins, including the one with boobs, and the relish, and then the foursome headed back to his Far Hills loft. He was preparing a “Finn Feast,” or so he said. Stephanie promised she’d toast pumpkin seeds.

  While Madison’s dad and Stephanie cooked dinner, Madison logged on to Dad’s newfangled computer with its slick chrome edges. Aimee just watched at first. Then she sat down and grabbed the cordless mouse.

  “Let’s go to that site you were talking about yesterday,” Aimee said. “With Fiona. You know the one.”

  “You mean TweenBlurt.com?” Madison asked.

  Aimee nodded. “I wanna get a screen name. Can we do it now? Tonight?”

  Madison smiled. After all this time, she was so happy to hear that Aimee wanted to log on for real. It meant the three friends could gab on the computer in three-way conversations. Finally. They signed on under Madison’s screen name to start. Madison punched in her secret password.

  The home page was a giant advertisement for the Caught in the Web Halloween story contest, with flashing spiders and cobwebs a
nd witches floating past on on-screen broomsticks. If you moved the cursor over one of the fish inside the homepage bowl, you saw its skeleton.

  All at once, a shaded green box popped up. The cursor blinked quickly.

  ENTER SCREEN NAME

  “I don’t know what my name should be, Maddie. Whaddya think? Twinkle toes?” Aimee joked. “Bertha big butt? Ha! You’re good at nicknames. You gave Egg his nickname, didn’t you?”

  Madison laughed out loud. “Yeah, right.” She had.

  They punched in a perfect screen name for Aimee’s personality.

  BALLETGIRL

  The screen flashed like a strobe light.

  NAME TAKEN. SELECT ANOTHER. MAY WE RECOMMEND BALLETGIRL12?

  “That’s lame. What’s the twelve for?” Aimee asked, disappointed. “Are there really eleven other ballerinas on this Web site? I don’t get this.”

  “Wait!” Madison exclaimed, punching in a different name without any numbers. She typed “BALLETGRL”—without the I for a change.

  That worked.

  At long last, Aimee was an official online member of the TweenBlurt community. She announced her name and her password out loud as she punched it in, like she was ordering something at the deli.

  “BALLETGRL! POINTE!”

  Aimee had a hard time keeping secrets. Even her own.

  After dinner, the duo signed online again to test Aimee’s new membership privileges in chat rooms and beyond. When Madison noticed that Wetwinz was online, she helped Aimee send her first message.

  They asked Fiona about soccer practice that day, and Fiona wrote back in an instant:

  I can’t believe this is YOU! That is so wow. C u!

  “What’s that?” Aimee asked, pointing to the letters C and U at the end of the message. She didn’t understand Web talk—yet.

  “C U. It’s ‘See you.’ Get it? It’s texting lingo, like computer shorthand. You’ll pick it up after a while.”

  Then Madison took her turn logging in. Dad poked his head into the room to say it was time to pack up for home. Madison ran to the bathroom, leaving Aimee to surf the site by herself.

  Aimee couldn’t take her eyes off TweenBlurt.com, clicking from screen to screen, searching for an available chat room that she liked. She couldn’t believe the made-up names she saw there: ChuckD4Ever, PrtyGrrl88, and Brbiedoll.

  All of a sudden, there was a message up on the screen.

  “Hey!” Aimee cried out to Madison. “What’s this?”

  “Huh?” Madison asked, walking back in.

  “Who is Bigwheels?” Aimee said, eyes locked on the screen.

  Chapter 4

  Aimee

  MY BFF FINALLY GOT online! But here’s the problem—Bigwheels was online at the exact same time!

  Aimee was sitting there staring at the Bigwheels message on my dad’s computer screen. I just flipped. I hit DELETE and told Aim it must be a wrong screen name, like a wrong number on the phone. Then I punched the RESET key and the computer went black. Why didn’t I just tell her?

  Rude Awakening: The truth IS out there. I’m just not ready to share it yet.

  THURSDAY AFTERNOON, MADISON WAS still feeling weirder than weird about deleting Bigwheels’ online message. It was like the flu. She couldn’t shake it. What was the big deal about telling Aimee that Bigwheels existed, anyway?

  She looked away from the computer screen to see if the librarian or anyone else was loitering in the school media center. She was up here in the middle of a Thursday test block. Her teacher, Mr. Sweeney, had given her one of those “get out of math free” cards. Madison always tried to play her cards right, which usually meant finding a computer somewhere. She loved the chance to escape into her files, even if it was only for the briefest moment.

  Once again she scanned the room to make sure no one was staring her way or spying.

  Madison punched the side of her computer power tower with her fist to get it thumping and chugging, but that didn’t help much. Some of the media center machines were real dinosaurs. Hitting them only made the monitor buzz like some kind of angry, prehistoric insect.

  From across the library where she was typing, Madison saw the flash of someone entering the library and did a double take. Most seventh-grade kids were at lunch, class, or study hall right now. The eighth- and ninth-grade classes were away on a day trip into the city.

  Who was that?

  It was hard not to be a little bit paranoid.

  As soon as she saw funny hair sticking out all over the place, Madison felt better. She knew that head. It was Drew, standing by the biography section.

  Madison waved and turned back to her files. But she heard something else. Breathing.

  “Boo!”

  Madison leaped out of her chair.

  “You should watch what you write when people are around, Maddie.” It was Egg. And he was breathing, right behind her—with lousy milk breath on top of everything else.

  “Egg, you stink,” Madison gasped. She meant it both ways.

  “Yeah, but I gotcha!” Egg cackled like he’d just played the best trick ever. “When are you gonna get a clue? I GOTCHA!”

  He was so good at scaring the wits out of her and everyone else whenever he got the chance.

  From across the room, Drew smiled wide. Was he laughing? Madison frowned. No more Little Miss Nice Guy with any of these boys, Madison thought. Drew was probably just Egg’s lookout.

  She had been tricked.

  “Whatcha doing?” Egg asked. “What are you writing?”

  “None of your beeswax, Egg. You are so nosy!”

  Madison tried to hide the computer monitor screen with both palms pressed flat. What had he seen? She quick-saved her document and then yanked the flash drive out of the computer and casually shoved it into her pocket.

  “Maddie, why are you always up here alone?” Egg asked. “You living up here or what?”

  Drew walked over. “Er … Egg, the bell’s about to ring.”

  “I’m going to get you guys back for this.” Madison pursed her lips. “Both of you.”

  “Yeah right.” Egg cackled again. “For your information, I’m not a little scaredy-cat. …”

  “Egg, the bell’s going to ring any minute.” Drew tugged on Egg’s sleeve.

  “Yeah, yeah.” Egg moaned.

  Madison got up to walk away.

  “Hey, wait up!” Egg called after her. “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “You didn’t ask a question,” Madison grumbled. She kept right on walking, out of the library and into the main stairwell. Whatever it was that Egg had to say, Madison wasn’t in the mood. She already felt bad enough with the whole lying-to-Aimee thing. She didn’t need Egg trouble!

  Madison made her way to science class. The room was chaos today, with kids talking and standing everywhere except their assigned seats. There was no teacher in sight. Madison slipped uncomfortably into her assigned seat next to Poison Ivy.

  On the other side of Ivy, Hart sat perched on his lab stool, nose in his notebook. Madison tried to catch his eye, just to say hello, but she couldn’t see him and he couldn’t see her. Every time she leaned forward, Ivy leaned forward. Whenever she pushed backward, Ivy pushed back, too.

  Hart was out of reach and out of sight.

  The worst part about Hart being so close and yet so far was all the secondhand listening. Ivy and Hart were having one of those drippy, flirty conversations.

  “Whassup?”

  “Not much. Whassup with you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “So … what’s going on?”

  “Nothing. What’s going on with—”

  Drip, drip, DRIP!

  Madison screamed inside her own head. She couldn’t understand why Hart was so nice to Ivy. Was he worked up over Ivy’s red, flowing hair? Was he under some kind of weird spell? (It was Halloween, after all.)

  Or worst of all—did he like her?

  That would be a real nightmare.

  Five mi
nutes after class should have begun, their regular teacher Mr. Danehy, still hadn’t arrived. A joker standing in the middle of the room said there was some kind of ten-minute rule they could follow if the teacher wasn’t there soon. No teacher after ten minutes meant class was automatically canceled. Madison wished for that. It would be like getting a “get out of class free” card, only better. It meant escape from Poison Ivy.

  Chet took the delay as another opportunity to stand up in front of the class and act like a clown. He liked to pretend he was the teacher, testing his bad imitation of Mr. Danehy’s unidentifiable accent.

  In the middle of all the fuss, the door to room 411 opened with a whoosh.

  Chet froze. He thought he’d been caught red-handed in the act of impersonating a teacher.

  But Mr. Danehy wasn’t the one standing there. It was a substitute teacher from central casting. And he was taller than tall.

  Everyone scurried into their seats and shut up.

  The big guy who’d arrived on the scene was wearing an average-looking white shirt, loose green tie, and khaki pants. But he was anything but ordinary. He leaned against the doorway casually so his head almost hit the top of the frame. Madison figured he must be seven feet tall.

  “Hello, seventh-grade science class,” the big guy grunted as he entered, eyes scanning the room. Everyone in class nodded back like a bunch of robots. They weren’t sure who this was, but they knew he wasn’t someone to mess with. “I’m Mr. Stein,” he said gruffly, writing it up on the board. “S-t-e-i-n.”

  He stepped back with a clop, kicking a wadded-up piece of paper on the floor. His hair was a jet-black helmet. The only thing missing was bolts in his neck.

  “Did you say you were Mr. Stein?” Chet blurted. “As in Frank-en-stein?” He chuckled at his own joke.

  Mr. Stein chuckled right back. “Not Frank. Bob.”

  “Ha!” Chet burst out laughing. “That’s funny!”

  “Yeah, well,” Mr. Stein continued. “I’m the funny science sub. What can I say? Now, let’s get to work.”

  The rest of the class laughed out loud as Mr. Stein told a couple more jokes about werewolves. Then he asked everyone to pull out their textbooks. He wrote the formal assignment from Mr. Danehy on the board.