Moonlight Secrets (5 page)

The car squealed to a stop, tires scraping the pavement.

“I'll pay you back,” she shouted. Her hoarse scream rang out through the shattered rear window. “You'll pay! I mean it!”

Was she shouting at Shark—or at me? Did she see that I was the one who smashed her car window?

No one moved. We stood and watched as Candy angrily shifted gears and the tires
squealed again as the little car started to pull away.

“You'll pay!” Candy screamed again over the roar of the engine. “You'll ALL pay!”

The words sent a chill down my back.

I froze as Candy's warning repeated and repeated in my mind.

“You'll pay. You'll
all
pay. . . .”

A week after I broke
Candy's car window, the weather changed, and the air started to feel wintry cold. The clouds hung low, gray, and gloomy.

Shark's mouth was still swollen. He looked like he had a duck beak or something. His lips were all black and scabby, but he said it was healing okay.

He was still raging about Candy. “I could have her arrested,” he said as we walked to my house after school. “That was assault. A definite assault. Look at this. I had six stitches.”

His big lips formed a lopsided grin. “Think she'd like that, Nate? Think Candy would like having a police record? That would look good on her application to NYU, wouldn't it?”

“But you can't do it, man,” I said. “If you
turned her in, everyone would find out when it happened. We'd be totally busted. Everyone would find out that we all sneak out at night.”

Shark frowned. “Think I don't know it? But, man, I'd love to get her. You believe this? Every time I pass her in the hall at school she turns away. Like
she's
the hurt one.”

He pounded his fist into a corner mailbox. “First she dumps me. Then she practically rips my mouth off. And
she's
the one who's hurt.”

I hated when Shark went into these rages. Sometimes he'd go ballistic for hours. It was really scary.

He was a big, strong guy, very athletic. If he wanted to, he could really hurt someone. He was my best buddy, and I knew he was a really good friend. But, whoa—I was afraid of his temper.

Not so much for myself. I was afraid of the trouble he might get into if he ever
really
lost it.

I unlocked the kitchen door, and we went into the house. No one was home.

We grabbed Cokes and a bag of tortilla chips and went up to my room. We played Grand Theft Auto—the original game—on my PlayStation for a while.

Shark's cell rang. It was Nikki. He talked to her for a while. She said she might sneak out and come to Nights tonight.

I had a chem final the next morning. I didn't plan to go out tonight. I planned to cram for the test until I dropped. But you never know . . . sometimes I'm already in bed, and I wake up at one or two. And the urge hits me. No way I can stay in bed. I think, I've
got
to go out and see what's up with everyone at Nights.

We played the video game a little more, and then
my
cell rang. It was Mom telling me she wouldn't be home till late. I had to get my own dinner. I asked her what she was doing, and she got kinda giggly and weird. Finally she said she was going out on a date.

Cute, right?

I'm sixteen and I don't go out on dates. Nobody I know goes out on dates. We all pretty much just hang out.

And my
mom
is going out on a date.

It made me feel a little weird.

I suddenly thought about my dad. He moved away from Shadyside after the divorce. Now he lives in an apartment on the ocean in
Santa Barbara. Man, it's beautiful there. I visited him twice, and I didn't want to leave.

I suddenly wondered if
he
was going out on dates.

Whenever I think about Mom and Dad, and how it used to be when we all lived together, and how it is now, with them not speaking and all . . . well . . . it makes me feel kinda sick to my stomach.

Shark and I pulled chairs over to my computer, and we went online. We like to go to this one Web site called meetup-place.com. It's a big chat room with guys and girls meeting up and coming on to each other. And mainly telling lies.

I got into this conversation with someone named Wildgirl345. My screen name is Straydog.

Wildgirl345: What do U like to do, Straydog?

Straydog: I'll do anything once. Especially with you. lol

Wildgirl345: U sound hot. What do you look like?

Straydog: People say I'm like a young Brad Pitt.

Wildgirl345: Ooh, I HATE Brad Pitt.

Straydog: Yeah. Me too. He totally sucks. I don't know y people say that about me. I don't look anything like him!

Wildgirl345: How old r u, Straydog?

Straydog: I was 22 last week.

Wildgirl345: Hey, that's neat. I'm 22 too!

See? Shark and I loved to go on this Web site and tell lies. Of course, Wildgirl345 was lying too. She was probably fourteen. She said she lived in a penthouse in New York City and she was a fashion model.

Yeah. For sure.

That's when I signed off. Shark signed on. His screen name is Shark. Clever, huh? He started talking up three girls at once. It was starting to get pretty hot, when Shark was interrupted:

Hey, Big Lips—it's pay up time.

The message came from Candylishus.

Shark groaned. “It's Candy.”

He didn't type anything back. Just scowled at the screen.

But Candy had more to say:

Pretty Mouth, I told my dad the car got busted when I went shopping at the mall. But you have to pay for the window. It cost $320.

Shark groaned again. He turned to me. “She thinks I broke her window. Believe it?”

“Guess she didn't see me,” I said.

Shark typed back to her:

Pay for what? I don't know what you're talking about.

A few seconds later, Candy replied:

Read my lips, Big Mouth. You pay for the window. You bring me the $320 by Friday. Or I'll have no choice. Ever hear the expression “The truth hurts”? I'll tell my dad the truth. I'll tell him about the Night People.

Shark was sitting in my desk chair. I was leaning over his shoulder. We both stared at the screen.

I could see Shark's whole body tighten. His jaw clenched. He got really tense.

I suddenly felt cold all over. Was she serious?

No way you can do that. You'll ruin it for everyone.

Candy wrote back:

Duh. That's kinda the point, Brain. I'm totally serious here. Pay up, or you'll ALL be busted.

Shark slammed his hand on the desk. He typed:

You'll be busted too.

Candy's reply:

Think my dad cares what I do? That's a joke. He only cares about the window on the BMW.

Shark swept his hand back over his spiky hair. His jaw was still clenched tight. He stared at the screen. “I don't believe it,” he whispered.

Your parents will be thrilled when they find out. And how about our good school principal? Wow. You could all be suspended. What a shame that would be, huh? All those seniors suspended.

Shark turned to me, his face red with anger. “I'm going to kill her,” he said.

“That's way too good for her,” I said. I started pacing back and forth. I realized I was clenching and unclenching my fists.

I wanted to kill Candy too. I mean, if my mom found out I've been sneaking out to a bar with my buddies every night at two in the
morning, she . . . she . . . I don't know what she'd do. She'd be so hurt and disappointed.

I never thought about my mom finding out. Honest. I never thought about it till Candy's threat.

Shark hadn't moved. He sat there, staring at the screen as a final message popped up from Candy:

Bring the $$$ to school. c u then. Have a lovely day! :)

Shark let out an angry cry. He jumped to his feet and turned to me. “What am I going to do about her, Nate? I mean, what am I going to
do
?”

We paid Candy. We had
no choice. We couldn't let her rat us out and ruin our lives. So Shark and I scraped up the money. We each paid half.

Shark handed it to her in homeroom. She didn't say a word to him. Just grinned as if she'd won some kind of big victory.

Shark's face turned bright red with anger when Candy grinned at him like that. I suddenly had a heavy feeling in my stomach. I knew he wasn't finished with her.

A few days later he came over to my house again. We went up to my room and started messing around on the computer.

Shark double-clicked the Photoshop icon and started clicking and typing furiously. The doorbell rang, and I ran downstairs to answer it.

It was just a package for my mom from UPS. When I returned to my room, Shark was still hunched over the keyboard, working intently.

I gazed at the monitor. “Hey, what is that?”

A grin spread over his face. “Check this out, dude.”

I leaned closer to the screen. It took me a few seconds to recognize it—the senior class Web site. It's the site where they post homework assignments, news and announcements, special dates to remember—junk like that.

“It's the class Web site,” I said. “So?”

Shark's grin grew wider. “I found a way to hack into it.”

“You mean . . . ?”

“Watch,” he said. He typed some more, then clicked a few things with his mouse.

A color photo appeared in the
Class News Bulletin
section. A photo of a humungous hog.

“What's up with the hog?” I asked.

Shark had his eyes on the screen. “It won a prize at the Shadyside Fair last month.”

“Big whoop,” I said, rolling my eyes. “I didn't know you were into hogs, Shark.”

“Just shut up and watch,” he said. He
clicked some more, sliding the mouse rapidly, concentrating hard.

He changed the photo. Candy's face replaced the hog's face. It was Candy's yearbook photo.

I stared at it for a few seconds. Candy's face on the huge, gross hog. And then I burst out laughing.

It was totally perfect. Awesome!

“I'm not finished,” Shark said. He typed in a caption. He changed one letter in Candy's last name. He changed her name from Shutt to Slutt.

And then he wrote a short paragraph under the photo:

NEWS BULLETIN

Candy Slutt may miss second semester because she's expecting a litter of baby hogs.

He moved the photo and caption over to the news section of the Web site. It really looked like part of the senior news page.

Shark and I both laughed. It was a riot.

“You're not going to send it, are you?” I asked. “I mean, no one else will see it?”

He narrowed his eyes at me. “You're kidding,
right?
Everyone
will see it, Nate. I told you. I hacked into the Web site.”

“But . . . you could get in major trouble,” I said. “Change it back, man. I mean, really. Change it back. If Mr. Gonzalez finds out. Or what's-his-name, that new vice-principal—”

“They won't know who did it,” Shark said.

“But Candy will know who did it,” I said. “Candy will know, and—”

“So what?” Shark replied. He shrugged. “So
what
if Candy knows? What could happen?”

Shark's little hog joke worked
better than he ever imagined.

I was at my locker on Monday morning when Candy arrived at school. I heard the kids oinking behind her back. She pretended not to hear it, but I saw her face turn bright red and her mouth tighten in a tense scowl.

“Oink. Oink.”

“Runnnnk runnnk.”

Guys made hog sounds when Candy walked past. People giggled. And I heard some girls whispering about “Candy
Slutt
” and laughing. Of course, they stopped when Candy came close to them.

But I knew that Candy heard them. You just had to look at Candy's face. I mean, she was ready to explode.

She stopped me in the hall as I was walking into homeroom. She pushed me hard by the shoulders, backing me against the tile wall.

“Shark did it—didn't he?” she asked through gritted teeth. Her breath smelled like bacon. No kidding. I almost burst out laughing. I guess she had bacon and eggs or something for breakfast.

But I pictured that gross hog photo, so totally fat with Candy's round, smiling face on it. And there she was, smelling like bacon. And I almost totally lost it.

She shoved me against the wall again. “Tell the truth, Nate,” she growled. “It was Shark, right? He's the computer whiz around here. I know it.”

I shrugged and tried to keep a straight face. “I don't know,” I said. “Really.”

Some kid down the hall oinked. I heard some other guys laughing.

Candy let out an angry cry. She had me backed against the wall. I couldn't get away. “I . . . don't get it,” she said. Her voice broke. “Why does he hate me so much? I . . . I . . .”

“Maybe because you dumped him,” I said. I had to say something. I didn't want her to go
ballistic. I couldn't forget the night she nearly bit Shark's lips off!

“Maybe you really hurt him,” I said.

Her tiny, dark eyes narrowed to slits. “He's just a vicious jerk,” she whispered.

“Oink. Oinnnnk.” Someone inside the classroom.

Candy spun away from me. I slid away from the wall. The bell rang, loud, right over our heads.

I hurried into the room. I didn't see where she went. She didn't show up in homeroom.