The Only Thing Worse Than Me Is You (27 page)

“I guess not,” she murmured. “What a waste. You looked so pretty, Trix. And I didn't even get to see your dress, Meg. Did you take pictures?”

“We'll show them to you later,” Meg said. “First, we need to talk about what we're going to do now.”

“Do?” Harper echoed. “I can't even leave the house. My dad took my car keys and I don't own a bike anymore.”

“We aren't going anywhere,” I said. “We need to figure out who put your IP address into that code.”

The dry glare she gave me was magnified through her lenses. “You know that you guys have finals next week, right?”

“We're aware,” Meg said. She waved her spoon over her head with a flourish. “But first, we have a case to crack!”

Harper put her face in her hands. “I love you both, but you are completely insane.”

 

[1:47 PM]

Ben

Study Room C.

 

23

Meg and I parted ways at one of the major intersections. Neither of us had liked leaving Harper, but she'd shooed us out to make sure that her dad didn't come home and find us. She also made us promise not to ditch more school.

My body ached from pedaling and the weight of my messenger bag as I chained up my bike in front of the public library. There was no avoiding my sweaty, windblown reflection in the many opaque windows that broke up the building's brick face. I tried to smooth my ponytail as I made my way through the doors and into the familiar aisles that smelled like dust jackets and book glue and worn paper. It smelled like answers. Every knowable thing in the Western world was here.

Ben sat alone at the long conference table in the farthest study room, half-hidden behind a copy of
Lady Audley's Secret
. The woman's face on the cover was turned away, as though she was examining Ben as his eyes scanned the pages.

“Well,” I said, tossing my messenger bag down on the chair across from him, “at least one of us got some studying done today. Unless you just had a hankering for a Victorian potboiler.”

He smiled up at me and set the book down on the table, its pages splayed. “It's for Gender Roles. This is the study room. I figured I'd give it its due. I've got today's notes for Meg, too.” He drummed his fingertips against the edge of the table. “How's Harper?”

“She's Harper. She lectured us about finals for a while and looked through the pictures we had from the dance,” I said, gripping the back of the nearest chair. “But she's not actually okay. She's locked up in the house all day, studying for an interview at the Catholic school. Her dad's so convinced that she did this that he threw out their Wi-Fi router. He didn't change the password or unplug it. He literally threw it in the trash.”

Saying it all out loud swayed me a little. It was too much. It was an unsolvable problem. I held onto the chair harder and bit the inside of my cheek. I didn't have time to panic now.

Ben got to his feet, sweeping around the table in two long strides. He didn't wait for my permission before he wrapped his arms around my shoulders. I pressed my face to his cheek and closed my eyes. As much as I felt silly accepting a hug when Harper was the one in trouble, I could almost block that out by focusing on the Fuji apple smell of him. It had to be part of the potion that made his hair stand up. Or pheromones.

“Did you guys make the list?” he asked in my ear.

I nodded. “I don't know if it'll help.”

“That's why we're here,” he said, tilting his head to look me in the eye. The little cut above his upper lip was almost completely gone. There was a shadow of a scar there now, a shade off from the rest of the curve of his cupid's bow. It wiggled as he spoke. “The list?”

I took a deep breath and pulled the list we'd made at Harper's out of my back pocket. I set it on the table and sat down. Ben hesitated before sitting next to me. His leg bounced idly next to mine as I smoothed the lined paper against the table.

Meg's neatly rounded letters covered the page, which she'd succinctly titled:
SUSPECTS.

“There are about three hundred and seventy students currently enrolled at the Mess,” I stated, matter-of-factly. “First, we divided the school into groups. Student council, drama club, cricket, basketball, et cetera. Whoever framed Harper didn't do it by accident. It wasn't a random outlier picking her name off the list. They went to the trouble of accessing her IP address and—” His leg brushed against mine and paused there before his foot snaked around my ankle and drew my leg under his chair. “Ben, this is important.”

“I'm a genius. I can multitask. Can't you?”

“Fine,” I grumbled, turning back to the list. “As I was saying, we dismissed anyone who Harper hadn't had a class with and, cross-referencing the list of probation students—”

“Say ‘cross-referencing' again.”

“Hush it, you.”

“You could make me.”

Heat spread across my cheeks and my brain spluttered to a stop. Sitting down, we were almost the same height, but the playing field didn't feel quite even. I checked over my shoulder at the open door. “We can't start necking in a study room.”

He gestured around at the bare walls. “I don't see a ‘no necking' sign, do you? I'm sure if we pulled up the official rules of our reservation, we could argue that we were not informed. I don't know if I'm going to be able to focus now that necking is on the table. We've made out, but there weren't necks involved before.”

I reached out tentatively and patted his arm. “You're right.”

He brightened, his eyes wide and sparkly. “I am? I mean, I am, but you know that I am?”

“We were never going to be able to focus if there was the prospect of…” I faltered as my brain filled with images of Ben kissing me in the park and the vertigo-inducing excitement that went along with it. “Being alone. I arranged for a hormonal bulwark.”

The light went out of his eyes. “What kind of bulwark?”

*   *   *

B. Calistero seemed very perplexed to be sitting between us, but he flipped open his laptop anyway. Ben shot me a disgruntled look.

“Sorry I'm so late,” B said for the third time, his hands shaking slightly as he connected to the library's Wi-Fi. “I forgot to pack my laptop, so my dad had to drive me home first. I told him that I shouldn't be more than an hour. Is that okay?”

“That's perfectly fine,” I said, setting my school binder on the table. With B in the study room, there seemed to be more air to breathe. “So, what did you find out at lunch today?”

“Well,” B said, smoothing the hair out of his face. It fell back into his eyes like two black curtains. “I don't think the basketball team is involved—”

“Wait a minute,” Ben interrupted, holding up a hand. He leaned forward to look at me from around B's open computer. “You had my frosh spy for you?”

“He's a free agent,” I said, making a check mark next to the names under the
BASKETBALL
header on Meg's list. “It's not like I had him doing sneaky treasurer stuff. That's your special thing together. I'd never infringe.”

Ben narrowed his eyes at B. “So, you didn't actually lose your calculator?”

B shifted in his seat, avoiding eye contact with either of us. “She told me not to tell anyone what I was doing. I was supposed to tell people that Harper had borrowed my calculator and then see what they said.”

“If you'd been involved,” I added, with a conciliatory smile at Ben, “everyone would have known that B knew she'd been expelled.”

Ben folded his arms and sat back in his chair, his mouth twisted downward. “Go ahead, Double-Oh Seven.”

B drew my list closer to his computer, scanning it carefully. “The drama club seemed like they were actually upset about Harper. The girl with the blue wig did a monologue about it.”

“Which one?” Ben asked.

“
Winter's Tale
?”

“Patricia.” I laughed as Ben opened his mouth to clarify. I made a check next to her name on the list. “Good, I was hoping it wasn't any of them. Harper helped make their props last year.”

“I have a question,” B said. “You're both presupposing that the motive for framing Harper was personal, right? You made the list of suspects from the perspective of her friend.” He planted a finger on the top of the
SUSPECTS
page. “But that means that the data is emotionally skewed. Statistically, Harper is well liked. But most people I talked to today also knew that she was highly ranked. When I was studying the effect of the academic probations on the profit margins of winter ball, rank was the biggest influence. Kenneth had the support of more people—”

“Even though he's a douchebag,” Ben said.

B went on. “But Ishaan Singh affected more decisions. More people were staying home to study because there was an open slot in the top ten.”

He minimized the list on his screen and pulled open a folder, double-clicking on an image. A photo of the senior ranking list filled the screen, today's date printed across the top. The quality was grainy, but the top ten was discernable.

1.   Aaron, Cornell

2.   Watson, Beatrice

3.   West, Benedict

4.   Donnelly, John

5.   Donnelly, Peter

6.   France, Mary-Anne

7.   Royama, Margaret

8.   Hertz, Bradley

9.   Conrad, Nicholas

10. Singh, Ishaan

“Mathematically speaking,” B said. “If I were looking for a motive, I'd start here. Cornell maintained his position, not gaining or losing anything numerically. But the rest of the list…”

Goose bumps trailed down my arms. “The rest of the list are our friends.”

“But if they weren't,” Ben said quietly. “They'd be people who leapt up in rank. Wasn't Meg stuck in the three point nine slump before?”

Harper and Cornell were my control group
.

No, I thought. That wasn't reasonable. Meg would never risk Harper's future for the sake of the Great Thought Experiment.

Would she?

What had she said about adding sneakiness to her list of risks?

“Jack gained the most,” B said. “He went from the brink of expulsion to fourth place.”

“He got extra credit in Programming Languages for finding the IP address,” Ben said. “Peter mentioned it at lunch.”

I nodded dazedly, trying to push Meg out of my head. “He's been avoiding the cafeteria for weeks. It just seems so obvious.”

“That doesn't mean it isn't true,” Ben said. “He is a ‘watch the world burn' kind of guy. He could have done it just to enjoy the chaos.”

I rubbed my eyes. I didn't have the constitution for private detecting. The idea of anyone framing Harper made me feel sick. Putting faces to the villainy made it worse. But someone had gone out of their way to do this and letting them get away with it wouldn't get Harper back. I tried to focus on the end result. Harper with her computer and cell phone returned, going with us to Busby on Wednesday, drinking a hot cocoa as she drove. Harper smiling again and having it reach all the way to her glasses.

I needed it to not be Meg.

“There's also Mary-Anne. She's been pretty vocal about how this was destined to happen. She disappeared for a while after her meltdown. She could have been breaking into the system.” I expelled a long breath. “We'll start with her and Jack. B, email me the whole list at my regular address, not through the school. I'll have Meg and Peter talk to the rest of the suspects.”

I need it to not be Peter either.

Our belongings were shoved into backpacks and messenger bags. Coats were put on. I thanked B for his superior espionage skills before he dashed out to meet his dad in the parking lot, his computer hugged to his chest.

“It's going to be okay, right?” I asked Ben, wringing my hands as B disappeared into the stacks.

He sat on the edge of the table. “Sure.”

I looked at him over my shoulder. “That didn't sound very convincing.”

“Sorry.” He smiled, opening his arms wide to embrace the emptiness of the room. “Distracted again.”

As it turned out, there was a “no necking” policy at the public library. We were hustled out of the room by an appalled librarian. It was worth it, although it would be difficult to explain to Meg and Harper that I was banned from reserving study rooms. That, I decided, was a problem for another day.

 

Missed call from: Dad, Work

Missed call from: Mom, Cell

Missed call from: Dad, Cell

Missed call from: Home

Missed call from: Home

Missed call from: Home

 

24

Even with the
curtains open, it was dark in the living room with the TV off. Both of my parents were sitting on the couch. Their cell phones were side by side on the coffee table next to a half-eaten bowl of dry cereal. Mom always started snacking when dinner was running behind schedule. She must have ruined whatever was in the crockpot again. I hoped that we weren't waiting for another delivery from the vegan pizzeria. I would have preferred continuing to inch toward starvation rather than muscle through faux cheese and nutritional yeast. Meat was murder but nutritional yeast was torture.

My muscles burned in protest as I unwound the strap of my messenger bag from my shoulders and let it fall to the ground next to the front door. When I'd left the house that morning, I hadn't expected to come home feeling worse. Ben had ridden with me as far as the coffee shop, but even our long-winded and wordless goodbye hadn't been able to stop the day from catching up with me. The inside of my head went muggy as I'd tugged my school uniform back on in the espresso-scented bathroom.

I had to get the review notes for Econ and Programming Languages. I had to study for finals.