Social Suicide (12 page)

After about four wrong turns, we found it. It was upstairs in the pediatric wing, at the end of a long hallway. Right in front of the nurses’ station.

Sam and I casually walked past, peeking in the door. As I’d anticipated, standing vigil not only over the phone but over Nicky as well was a large woman with salt and pepper hair. I’d bet anything she was Nicky’s mom.

“Okay, Sam, this is where you come in,” I said. “I need a really good distraction.”

She bit her lip. “Fine. But you so owe me one after this.”

I nodded. “Tell you what—I’ll forgive you for dressing me in those hecka-blisters heels.”

She contemplated this for a moment. “Just be quick. I don’t know how long I can keep Mom away.”

With that, Sam turned away and strode purposefully toward the nurses’ station. I watched her take a deep breath . . . then let it out on a sigh as she collapsed onto the floor.

Immediately the nurse behind the desk dove toward her, calling out to another nurse, the two of them quickly surrounding her.

As I’d hoped, Nicky’s mom came out of the room to see what the commotion was.

It was now or never.

I quickly slipped down the hallway and into Nicky’s room.

He was propped up in bed, a tray of Jell-O in front of him and a TV in the corner playing a SpongeBob episode. There was a bandage wrapped around his head, and I could see that his long hair had been shaved off on one side.

He looked up as I entered, blinking at me, confusion clear on his face as his concussed brain tried to figure out what I was doing there.

“Hartley?” he asked.

“Hey,” I said, quickly going to his side, one eye on the door, where I expected his mom to bust back in at any second. “We need to talk, and I don’t have much time.”

“How did you get in here?” he asked, looking past me.

I shook my head. “Not important. What is important is that you tell me what you were going to tell me at the park.”

Nicky bit the inside of his cheek. He looked down at his hands. “I don’t remember.”

He was the worst liar ever.

“What do you mean, you don’t remember?” I asked, desperation kicking in.

He looked up at me again. “I got hit on the head. I don’t remember.”

“You’re totally lying.”

“Prove it,” he said jutting his chin forward.

Since I couldn’t, I changed tactics. “Who attacked you?”

He shrugged. “I got hit from behind. I didn’t see anyone.”

“But I saw you arguing with the person first! You must have seen his face then?”

He paused, something flitting across his eyes. If I’d had to guess, I’d say it was fear. “Sorry,” he said. “I don’t remember that.”

“Look, if you’re scared of this guy, the police can protect you. Just tell me what you know. Once it’s out in the open, you’ll be safe.”

“Right.” He snorted. “Last time I decided to tell you something I got my head bashed in and ended up here,” he said, gesturing to the hospital room around him. “The only way I’m going to be safe is by keeping my big mouth shut.”

“Nicky, please,” I pleaded. Sam could only play sick for so long. Any second now, his mom would be back.

“I’ve said all I have to say.” He clamped his mouth shut for emphasis.

“Nicky—”

But that’s as far as I got, as Mom pushed through the doorway. Her eyes narrowed, clearly surprised to see me.

“Who are you?” she asked, her voice holding a sharp edge that said a call to security was about half a second away.

“Uh . . . I’m . . .”—I quickly grabbed a pillow from behind Nicky and fluffed it—“I’m a candy striper. Yeah, I volunteer here at the hospital. Just came in to make sure our patient is comfortable.” I gave Mom a big toothy smile as I replaced Nick’s fluffed pillow.

Nicky opened his mouth to speak, but I shot him a death look.

He clamped it shut again.

“Oh,” Mom said, her posture relaxing. “In that case, do you have any magazines? I’d really love something to read in here.”

“Absolutely,” I lied. “No prob. One magazine coming up!” I ducked my head to avoid Mom reading the lie plainly written there.

Which was my fatal mistake.

I would have totally gotten away without anyone being the wiser if I’d just watched where I was going instead of plowing headfirst into someone else.

“Ohmigosh, I’m so sorry,” I said, whipping my eyes up.

Straight to Detective Raley’s.

“HARTLEY,” RALEY SAID
.

I cleared my throat. “Uh, hi. We meet again, huh?” I commented, doing a poor attempt at humor.

Which, judging from the scowl on his face, was totally lost on him. He made a sound somewhere between a grunt and a snort and answered with a “What are you doing here?”

“I’m . . . uh . . .” I quickly looked around the nurses’ station for any sign of Sam, but thankfully, my accomplice was long gone. “I’m . . . volunteering,” I said, going with the same story I’d told Nicky’s mom. It was almost the truth. I mean, I had offered to get Nicky’s mom a magazine, right?

Raley narrowed his eyes. “Really?”

“Really.”

“Since when do you volunteer at the hospital?”

“Since today,” I squeaked out.

“Interesting timing.”

I bit my lip, but since he hadn’t phrased it in the form of a question, I didn’t feel compelled to answer.

Raley looked from me to the doorway to Nicky’s room. “You just came from that room?”

I nodded. Slowly.

“Nicky Williams’s room?”

“Is it?” I asked, all mock innocence.

Raley’s eyes narrowed into fine slits. “Listen, Hartley. Nicky has a severe concussion. He was attacked by someone who meant to put him out of commission.”

I swallowed hard. “I know. I saw.”

“Then you know this is not some game. Until we find out what happened to Nicky, I don’t want to see you anywhere near him.”

“But I’m this close to finding out who killed Sydney,” I said, stretching the truth just a little.

Raley cocked his head to one side. He took a step forward. Then in his most fatherly voice said, “Hartley, I’m sorry, kid, but Sydney killed herself.”

I shook my head, feeling my hair whip my cheeks. “You’re wrong. It was Twittercide.”

His eyebrows headed north. “It was what?”

“Never mind. Look, she was killed. I’m sure of it. Nicky being hit practically proves it!”

“Nicky being hit means he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. You kids shouldn’t be in the park after dark.”

“Seriously? You’re calling this a coincidence?”

Raley crossed his arms over his chest. “Well, as far as I can tell, the only thing Nicky and Sydney have in common is you.” He shot me a pointed look.

“Me?” I squeaked out. “You can’t possibly think I had anything to do with this.”

“What I think is that you have a serious problem minding your own business.” And with that, he grabbed my upper arm and steered me toward the elevator.

“Where are we going?”

“Home.”

“But—” I started.

But Raley shut me up with one look, his evil eye staring down at me.

I clamped my lips together. Fine. The joke was on him. I needed a ride home anyway.

I sat in silence in the front seat of Raley’s beige sedan, trying hard not to inhale the stale scent of a hundred stakeouts lingering in the cheap fabric seats. The smell was somewhere between the locker room at the gym and the cafeteria when they forgot to take the garbage cans out after Meat(ish)loaf Monday. Luckily, it was a short drive, and I took in deep breaths of fresh air as soon as Raley opened the passenger-side door and propelled me up the walk to my front door.

Mom had it open before I even hit it, a sure sign that Raley had called ahead.

“Oh, Hartley, what have you done this time?” she asked, coming in for a hug.

“Geez, Mom, you make it sound like the police are always bringing me home.” Which was hardly fair considering it had been at least a good fifteen hours since it had last happened.

“She’s fine,” Raley assured her. “But I’d suggest keeping a close eye on her over the next few days. At least until we find out who attacked that boy in the park last night.”

Oh, that was a low blow. Calling in the SMother? As if I needed more parental supervision.

“Oh, don’t worry. I will!” Mom said. With just a little too much gusto if you’d asked me. I had a bad feeling Quinn’s grounding was going to look like a picnic next to my life.

“And thank you for bringing her home,” Mom continued.

“No problem.” Raley shot me a look. “I’m confident it will be the last time.”

I’m glad someone was.

“Can I thank you with a plate of cookies?” Mom asked. “They just came out of the oven.”

I was about to warn Raley that if they were Mom’s cookies, they were likely gluten-free, fat-free, dairy-free, and loaded with flaxseed, but considering the way he’d just sealed my fate with Warden Mom, I decided to let him fend for himself.

“Thanks, actually a cookie sounds great,” he said, following Mom into the kitchen.

On the downside, Raley was in my house. On the upside, it was the first time in days I’d seen Mom apart from her computer.

Not surprisingly, Mom put me on lockdown until the “park attacker” was caught. Which sucked because, with Raley barking up the wrong tree, I was pretty much the only one looking for the real attacker. Which I couldn’t do from my bedroom. I hate irony.

With lockdown mode firmly in place, Mom insisted on not only driving me to school but actually walking me to my first class. I kept my head down and prayed no one would notice.

It wasn’t until lunch that I had a chance to tell Sam and Kyle what had happened at the hospital. I caught up to the two of them in the cafeteria. Only, as I approached their table with my tray, I realized they weren’t alone. Chase was sitting next to Kyle, laughing about something on Kyle’s phone.

I bit my lip. I hadn’t seen Chase since the awkward non-date at Pizza My Heart. While I thought I’d played off the I’m-totally-not-overdressed-and-date-ready-for-you thing then, I still felt a blush hit my cheeks as I remembered my foray into Idiotville thinking he had possibly been interested in me. I took a deep breath, trying to diffuse the heat in my face, and walked toward the table as confidently as I could.

Chase spotted me first, but if he had any inkling of the awkward controlling my every movement, he didn’t betray it. “Hey,” he said, scooting his tray over to make room for me.

I set mine down, doing my best to eradicate the awkward from my voice as I returned his “Hey.”

“Hart, check out the shirts I had made!” Sam said, gesturing to her chest.

I looked down. Today Sam and Kyle were wearing matching red ones with big gold half hearts on each.

“Cute.”

“Oh, wait for the full effect. . . .” She nudged Kyle in the ribs and he moved in close, putting his arm around her shoulders. Sam put her arm around his back, and with the two of them close together, the two heart halves on their shirts came together to make a whole.

“Okay, that is actually kinda clever,” I admitted.

Sam beamed. “Ashley Stannic took our picture after second period and said she was putting us in her column as the Herbert Hoover High Honeys of the week. How cool is that?”

Chase smirked and shook his head at Kyle. “I can’t believe you let her dress you, dude.”

Sam stuck her tongue out at him before turning to me and doing an artful subject change. “So, what did Nicky say yesterday?”

I quickly filled them in while I dug into my platter of chicken nuggets (our lunch lady’s version of “Wings Wednesday”).

“So, Nicky’s too scared to talk?” Chase asked when I’d finished.

I nodded. “Yep.”

“But clearly someone is after him.”

I nodded again. “Clearly.”

“And chances are it’s the same someone who went after Sydney,” Sam added.

“Be quite a coincidence if it wasn’t,” Chase said, mirroring my own words to Raley yesterday.

“I guess that means that Sydney’s Twittercide does have to do with the cheats after all,” Sam said.

“Which puts both Quinn and Connor in the clear,” Kyle observed.

I thought about this, chewing on a nugget. “Not necessarily.”

“What do you mean?” Chase asked, grabbing a nugget from my plate.

I moved my tray out of his reach. “I mean, what if Quinn was the person stealing the cheats in the first place?”

Sam raised an eyebrow at me. “Could that be?”

“Why not? Sydney gave up that Quinn was in on the cheating scandal, but what if what she didn’t say was that Quinn was the one behind the whole thing? Maybe Sydney found out that Quinn was the one supplying the answers to Nicky in the first place. Maybe that’s what Nicky was going to tell me that night, only Quinn whacked him from behind before he could.”

“Brilliant!” Sam said. “Let’s go bust Quinn.”

“Hold on there, Sherlock,” Chase said, putting a hand on Sam’s arm. “How would Quinn get the answers?”

I chewed the inside of my cheek. “I dunn—” I stopped myself just in time from saying the forbidden word in his presence. “We’d have to find that out,” I hedged instead.

I thought I saw the corner of Chase’s lip quirk up ever so slightly, but it might have been my imagination.

“Well then, what about Connor?” Kyle suggested.

“What about him?” I asked.

“Couldn’t he be the guy with the answers?”

I shrugged. “I guess. But then why would Sydney go through all the trouble of buying them from Nicky if her boyfriend had them all along?”

“Maybe she didn’t know,” Sam said, jumping on the theory. “Maybe it wasn’t until she bought them from Nicky that she figured out where they came from. And once Connor dumped her, maybe she wanted a little revenge. Maybe she was going to blow the whistle on him, and he killed her before she could.”

“Or,” I said, getting into the swing of things, “what if it was Jenni? What if she got the answers, then sold them to Sydney to set her up so she could get Connor!” I’ll admit it, I really wanted the twit with the big hair to be the bad guy.

“There’s just one small problem with all these harebrained theories,” Chase said.

“And what would that be?” Kyle asked.

“How did they get the answers to the test in the first place?”

I bit my lip. Good point. “Mr. Tipkins said he keeps his answers in a locked cabinet in his classroom,” I pointed out. “I’d guess most of the other teachers do the same. And if their cabinets look anything like Tipkins’s ancient thing, they’re not exactly vaults, you know? Anyone could have broken in and stolen them.”

“But wouldn’t the teachers notice? I mean, if the locks were broken on their file cabinets?” Sam said.

“Maybe whoever was stealing the answers didn’t break the locks. Maybe they just picked them.”

Chase paused, then nodded. “I suppose it’s possible. But wouldn’t someone have seen them?”

“Not if they went in at night,” Kyle offered. “No one’s around then. They could have broken into the school, slipped into the classroom, picked the lock, and copied the test answers with no problem.”

“This is a lot of ‘could have’ and ‘maybe,’” Chase pointed out. “It’s easy to say someone broke into the school, but how easy would it really be to do?”

I had a bad feeling I was going to regret this but . . . “I think we need to find out.”

Three pairs of eyes turned my way.

“What do you mean?” Sam asked slowly, even though I could tell by the way her eyes were narrowing at me that she had a pretty good idea what I meant.

“Well,” I said, clearing my throat with a bravado that I most certainly did not feel, “I think we need to find out how easy it is to break into the school at night. By breaking in ourselves.”

“Dude!” Kyle said.

Chase just grinned. “You are a baaaaaad girl, Hartley Grace Featherstone,” he said.

Coming from him that sounded like a compliment.

Even worse . . . I kinda liked it.

We all agreed to meet up in front of the school beneath the shaded oak tree after dark.

Which, I realized, was easier said than done.

As soon as school got out, Mom was parked at the curb, windows open, her stereo blasting Aerosmith. I made for the car at a dead run, then slumped down in my seat, shooing her away from the curb before every single person in San Jose heard her screeching power ballad.

Once home, Mom made me do my homework in the kitchen, where she could “keep an eye on my safety.” One macroburger and edamame fries dinner later, I was still trying to figure out how to slip away from the SMother.

I had snuck out of my room after dark once or twice before but only in emergencies. There was the one time that I’d hopped out of my bedroom window and the other time I’d gone up into the attic, out that window, and then slid down the roof until I hit the top of Mom’s minivan. But Mom had found out about both routes, first installing an alarm on my window, then boarding up the one in the attic. Which left precious few ways out of the house.

There was one window in Mom’s room, but I realized as I snuck down the hallway to check it out while Mom was in the bathroom, the two-story drop was a no-go. A large oak tree grew just a few feet away, but I’d have to be either a spider monkey or Spider-Man to reach it from her room.

Which left just one alternative: the front door.

I waited an agonizing eternity while she cleaned up dinner and tidied the kitchen, then sent me upstairs to my room and settled herself in the living room to watch the cooking channel with her laptop. I paced my carpeted floor, listening to the muted sounds of the TV, and watching the sun sink lower and lower in the sky, until our backyard was bathed in deep, inky blues.

It was dark. Everyone would be waiting for me. I had to get out.

I peeked around the corner of the stairwell.

Mom was tucked under an afghan on the sofa, her laptop perched on her knees, fingers flying. Then they paused. Mom giggled. Then she began typing again. Paused. Giggled.

I rolled my eyes. Mom was IM’ing with Mr. Cyber Wonderful again.

On the one hand, this was so wrong. I mean, Mom was way too old to be giggling. It wasn’t good for her. Who was this guy she was chatting with, anyway? He could be anyone—some pervert, a stalker, a serial killer. While we had regular lectures at our school about cyber safety, I was afraid Mom’s generation knew next to nothing.

On the other hand, the distraction was just what I needed.

At the base of the stairs sat the kitchen on one side and the living room on the other. At the far end of the living room was the front door. I’d have to somehow cross the entire room and open the door without Mom seeing me.