Front Page Face-Off (15 page)

Before she could babble on with a list of ingredients, I interrupted. “Actually, I wanted to tell you that I caught Katie in another lie. This time, it's about her old school.”

Paige was silent for a moment. “This girl gets stranger and stranger. Her secret must be
stellar
!”

“Listen, I have to call someone else. Do you have the school directory?”

“Somewhere.” I heard her rummaging around. “Who are you looking for?”

“Marcus Taylor.”

Paige made a cooing sound into the phone. “You already miss your new boyfriend?”

My cheeks warmed. “He's not my boyfriend, but he
did
go to the same school as Katie last year.”

Paige gasped. “Brilliant!” She recited the number and I wrote it on my spiral notepad. “Now, when you call him, don't act like you
want
to talk to him,” she advised.

I frowned. “But I
do
want to talk to him.”

“No, you
don't.
Act like you dialed his number by mistake.”

She was rapidly slipping into the void of insanity. “But he knows I don't know his number,” I said. “How could I accidentally call it by mistake?”

“Tell him you were dialing some other number and missed it by a digit. Let's see. What place has a phone num
ber almost like his? Let me get my other phone book.”

I flipped my phone shut while she was still talking and looked at Marcus's number. Even though I had a legitimate reason to call him, my palms were damp with sweat. After one deep breath I took the plunge and punched in his digits.

“Hello?” Marcus answered.

At that moment, my throat chose to fill with phlegm, so that I gurgled “Hey” in a voice that sounded like I'd been gargling Jell-O.

“Who is this?” I could hear mild annoyance in his voice and tried to think of a clever explanation. I must have been quiet longer than I thought, because Marcus hung up.

“Argh!” I snapped the phone shut, and a minute later, it rang back with Marcus's phone number. I cleared my throat and tried again. “Hey, Marcus.”

“Hey, Delilah.” This time he didn't sound grossed out. I might have been imagining it, but he even sounded kind
of … pleased. “I
thought
it was you.”

“Oh, you speak Phlegm?”

“My caller ID does.” He laughed. “I was wondering how you were doing, but it sounds like you're back to your old self.”

I dug my foot into the sand and blushed. “Is that a bad thing?”

“Sometimes,” he said. “Not always.”

I wanted to ask him what he meant by “not always,” but I had something else to take care of first. “I was actually calling about Katie Glenn.”

“Oookay. Why?”

“There's something strange about her, and I know you went to her old school, so I have a feeling you know what it is. I want you to tell me.”

“Oh.” Marcus quieted for a beat. “In that case, no. Next subject.”

My jaw dropped, and I just sat there, stupefied.

“Hello?”

“Why … why won't you tell me?” I managed.

“Because.”

I was getting
really
tired of everyone being so vague. “‘Because' is not an answer. Why not, Marcus?”

“Because I know whatever I tell you, you'll use it against her, and I also know what it feels like to have someone call you out and make you feel stupid,
Delilah.
”

Pleasant Marcus had apparently handed the phone over to Bitter Marcus. Still, he had made a good point, and I recovered nicely with a fail-proof argument of my own.

“So?”

Marcus seemed baffled by this. “So … I'm not going to help you hurt her.”

I flopped back on my towel. “Why do you care what happens to Katie, anyway? Was she your girlfriend or something?”

The thought hadn't occurred to me before, but it made me sit up straight. “That's it, isn't it? She was your girlfriend. Your partner in some crime you
both
committed at Sheldon.”

“No!” Marcus groaned. “I've never had a girlfriend, and I'm starting to think I don't really ever want one.”

“But you're not saying the two of you
didn't
commit a crime.”

“I didn't commit any crime!” he practically yelled.

My heart started beating faster, and I shifted on my towel with nervous energy. “You're still not saying
she
didn't commit a crime, Marcus. She did, didn't she? She committed a crime, and that's why she changed schools!”

Marcus made a few grunting noises and said, “Just call me back when you're done playing reporter.” And he hung up.

But he never denied that Katie had committed a crime.

I grinned.

And
he wanted me to call him back.

I grinned a little wider.

Jenner plopped down beside me. “Those jelly beans did the trick, huh?”

***

An hour later, Jenner and I were wandering through the archives section of the public library.

“Why are we looking at old newspapers and
not
searching the Internet?” asked Jenner.

“Because whatever Katie did was big, but it wasn't big enough to make front page news. If it wasn't big news, it won't pop up on the Internet, and the county daily doesn't archive on their website beyond the current season.”

I opened one of the cabinets of microfilm and pulled out six canisters labeled “September–December” of the previous year. “Katie's crime had to have happened during her fall semester of sixth grade, because she transferred to Brighton this past spring, so if we look through the local news on each of these, we should find
something
.”

I loaded the earliest-dated microfiche into the reader and advanced through the images until I reached the local news, giving each page a quick scan for mention of Sheldon Academy.

Jenner grabbed another reel and eyed it suspiciously. “How many newspapers are on each of these?”

“I think the librarian said twenty.”

“Which means we have to go through”—she noted the number of canisters on the table—“a
hundred and twenty
papers?”

“Um …” I looked up at her and smiled. “I love you? You're pretty and smart and have nice hair?”

She sighed and sat at a microfiche reader beside me. “Save it for Paige.”

We skimmed through newspaper pages for two hours, our necks starting to cramp and our eyes blurring from watching the words whiz by. Finally, when I was beginning to feel as if my body had frozen into a hunched shell, Jenner bumped my arm.

“Check this out.”

I leaned over to her screen and smiled at what I saw:

investigators still baffled by sheldon fire

“Bingo.” I printed out the article and read it while Jenner went in search of a vending machine.

According to the article, the fire at Sheldon Academy had happened over the weekend of November 15 in the science lab. There were no signs of forced entry into the school and no indication as to what had caused the fire. The entire lab had been damaged
except
for a special tank containing a
juvenile green sea turtle
brought in by the local marine center for students to discuss that week. The tank had been found on the front lawn of the school with the turtle still safely housed inside.

I read the article several times until Jenner reappeared with a package of Skittles for both of us.

“So, does Katie have pyrokinetic powers like in
Firestarter
? Should I start wearing flame-retardant clothes to school?”

I shook my head and filled her in on the article. “I know who, what, when, and where. But I don't know why.”

“As in, why would she torch her school?”

“Exactly. And how did she never get caught?”

I advanced through the microfiche in search of a follow-up article but found only a brief snippet saying that the police had decided to rule the fire an unsolved case, most likely the result of a prank gone wrong. Two months later, after the buzz had died down, Katie had transferred to Brighton.

She named her clique Hot Stuff, I assumed, in honor of her brief career as an arsonist, but that didn't explain the fire extinguisher in her locker or her motives. But I knew the answers to these questions would be found at her old school.

I fished my cell phone out of my bag and dialed Marcus. Jenner didn't know that I'd sort of started liking him, so I did my best to act professional.

“Delilah?” He made no effort to hide his surprise. “I didn't think you'd ever call back.” His voice lowered a bit. “It's cool that you did, though.”

I blushed and winced, already feeling guilty for what I was about to say. “I was … actually calling because I need a favor.”

His simple reply spoke volumes of disappointment. “Oh.”

“But later I can—”

“Don't worry about it. What did you want?” His tone changed to the Marcus I'd run into last week, the one who couldn't have cared less if Renee Mercer pummeled me into the ground. I tried not to seem flustered.

“I … uh … I … need to borrow part of your uniform from Sheldon. The sweater … if you still have it. Please.”

“Okay. Is that it? I have to go.”

My shoulders sagged and I bit my lip. He wasn't even remotely curious why I wanted the sweater. He just wanted to stop talking to me. “Yeah. Thanks.” I snapped the phone shut and Jenner prodded my shoulder.

“What, may I ask, do you want Marcus's old uniform for?”

I took a deep breath and swallowed any emotion before turning to look up at her.

“Tomorrow after lunch I'm going to be a Sheldon Sea Turtle.”

On Monday I awoke to a bugle playing reveille in my ear. It was the military's morning wake-up call, which meant only one person could be pacing the floor beside my bed.

“I'm up, I'm up.” I swatted at the CD player blasting the music, but Major held it just out of my reach.

“Do you have any idea what time it is?”

I checked my alarm clock, which read 6:53. “I still have an hour until school starts. Don't worry. I'll be on time.”

Major finally turned off the CD
player. “Your mother tells me that on mornings when the school paper comes out, you're already in class by now to help with the final layout.”

Ordinarily, this was true, but ordinarily, I wouldn't have spent the weekend before kissing my editor and assaulting my co-reporter with turbo-strength apple pie spice.

“I turned my articles in last night. Ben doesn't need my help to put the
Bugle
together.” I shrugged and added a yawn for good measure.

Major scrutinized me. “You're a creature of habit, Delilah, and I know this paper is important to you. I refuse to believe you've suddenly taken less of an interest.” He narrowed his eyes. “Which means something's changed.”

“Everything's the same.” I burrowed under the blankets. “I just don't want to share the front page with the French girl.” It wasn't a complete lie, but it would be enough to keep Major from getting suspicious.

“And sleeping in will get you what you want?”

“No, but I can
dream
that it will.” My words were muffled by several inches of blanket, which Major pulled down until he could see my face.

“You have to
fight
for what you believe in, Delilah.”

As much as I hated to admit it, his sappy made-for-TV moral was true. My weekend drama might have been more than enough reason to avoid school until everyone graduated,
but I needed to be there to keep an eye on Ava. If people started to think I didn't care about the paper, I could kiss the front page good-bye.

Thirty minutes later, I walked through the front doors of the school to find Paige and Jenner waiting for me. Jenner looked pained, as if she'd been listening to one of Paige's beauty rants, and the first thing she did was tackle me with a hug.

“She's trying to convince me that blue eye shadow will make me a better surfer. Make her stop!”

Paige didn't respond, but I could sense her hovering around me. “What?” I finally turned, only to catch her staring aghast at my outfit.

“Your debut edition comes out today, you're the hot topic of the school, and you dress like
that
?”

Jenner rolled her eyes, but this time I couldn't disagree with Paige. My outfit was designed to help me blend in with the uniformed crowd at Sheldon, not win any beauty contests. I'd borrowed one of my mom's navy blue business skirts, which was one of Sheldon's colors, and paired it with a plain white button-up shirt and black Mary Janes.

“You look like a flight attendant!” Paige reached into her bag. “But I can fix that with scissors and a little glitter glue.”