Little White Lies (20 page)

Of course, that wasn’t their original plan. They’d intended for Coretta to host for a while. They’d hoped to brainwash her. But the emails Mike had hacked also made plain that Coretta’s confession—about her, about me, about AllYou™—provided the perfect excuse to fast-track
Takin’ U to Skool …
 whatever the hell
that
show was going to be.

“You’re disgusted with the Skools, aren’t you, Karl?” Esther Cornelius said, reading my ISS expression. “I share your disgust at how they plan to subvert our very educational system with school vouchers. It offends me, too.”

Oh. Right. That.

I nodded.

“Let me fill you in on some of the particulars, Karl.” Douglas glanced down at Mike. “Do you mind, son? Or would you rather tell him?”

“Go ahead, Dad.” Mike barely paused from his furious keystroking on the little laptop. “I need to concentrate on this right now. I think I’m onto something here.”

I noticed Coretta staring at Mike with gooey eyes. I tried to remember my own adolescence, if I’d ever looked at a girl that way. Nope. I’d never even looked at Alex that way.

“The Skools have been developing a cyber-school program,” Douglas explained. “Your cyber-bullying post was prescient, Karl. They’re very close to being certified as an alternative, quote-unquote ‘charter school’ in a number of states. As such, the Skools will be eligible to receive state-issued education vouchers to the tune of thousands of dollars per child for providing an alternative to public education. And to drive their enrollment up, they’re offering kickbacks of up to fifty percent of the voucher value to the parents—or administrators—who enroll their kids in the school.”

“Administrators?” He’d fully captured my interest. The plan sounded diabolical.

“They’re targeting incarcerated youth.” Esther looked at me, her expression dark. “As well as children in foster homes.”

I began to feel queasier.

“That way they can rack up multiple vouchers at one time,” Coretta added.

“Oh, wow.” In spite of their lax email security, the Skools were starting to seem smarter and more purely evil than I’d ever imagined.

“And check out these crazy lesson plans they’re teaching in their crazy cyber school!” Rachel blurted out. “Mike, show him. It’s completely insane! They’ve got this entire unit for world history on Leopold the Second, ‘Builder King.’ Do you know who Leopold the Second is?”

“Yeah, he’s that crazy Belgian king who started the Free Congo State so he could chop everyone’s hands off,” I heard myself say.

Not bad, Karl
, I thought. Even Douglas and Esther seemed impressed. I didn’t admit that I’d learned of Leopold II of Belgium from the teachings of Star (of Star and Buc Wild*) aka
Troi Torain, the infamous hip-hop shock jock who coined the philosophy Objective Hate. That wasn’t my Harvard education talking.

“Exactly!” Rachel seemed happy to make an intellectual connection with me, and I was glad to oblige. “He took his own private army into Africa and enslaved, mutilated, and murdered an entire indigenous population. And these sick weirdos are presenting him to children as some great man who beautified Belgium. A shining example of European beneficence.”

“Why would they be teaching that?!” I demanded. “What are they, his grandkids or something?”

“Did you say Free Congo State?” Mike looked up from his key-tapping with what seemed like a delayed reaction. “One of the Skools’ subsidiaries in Africa is called Free Congo …”

In spite of my hangover—or maybe because of it—a thought occurred to me. I texted Kris and Sarah:

PLEASE FIND OUT IF SKOOLS ARE DESCENDENTS OF KING LEOPOLD II OF BELGIUM

“Babe, remember that cyber-bullying post you wrote?” Mike said. “Kinda hard-core. You were pretty freaked out about it when it stirred up so much controversy. I remember you saying that you weren’t yourself when you wrote it.”

“She was actually me when she wrote that one,” I said.

“Right, Karl. I got that.” Mike’s voice was flat, but I noticed his father shoot him a stern side-eye, which softened his delivery. “Anyway, there was that thing at the end about SKOOLS 4 ALL. I thought there was something really weird
about distributing satellite-connected laptops to children in rural Africa. So I started looking into—” Mike paused and looked down at the laptop. “Hold on a sec. This script is almost finished.”

Oh, yeah, now I remembered the bit about SKOOLS 4 ALL. But I still didn’t remember being put to bed in the Cornelius guest room …

“Oh,
shit
!”

It was the loudest exclamation of the morning—from mild-mannered Mike.

“What is it, son?” Douglas and Esther harmonized.

I looked down at the screen to see if I could see what Mike saw. But all I could discern was a jumble of zeroes and ones.

“Just what I thought: the research tools on these laptops direct students
only
to the educational content portals designed and/or approved by the Skools.”

“To lessons like that ‘Builder King’ bullshit,” I felt compelled to throw in.

“Right,” Mike acknowledged. “But you’ll recall that I also determined that their proprietary Internet browsers are gated in a far more permissive configuration, so that these laptops also function as a massive data collection network.”

Rachel nodded. “So when the kids aren’t doing ‘Skoolwork,’ they get to surf the web at will. And the Skools can sell their individual and aggregate data to whoever has the euros.”

“Right,” Mike remained even-keeled in spite of his exhilaration. “I knew about the Skools’ data collection conglomerate, but I didn’t realize that SKOOLS 4 ALL was part of it. And I never really questioned why all these laptops had such souped-up satellite Wi-Fi capabilities. The encryption was totally post-futurist, but I knew I could get through.”

I glanced at Coretta, who appeared to regard Mike as if he were some kind of intergalactic god. Rachel had a similar look, though without any presumption that she would be allowed to touch him.

F$$P vibrated in my hand. I checked the new text from Kris:

YES. A & K R GRANDCHILDREN OF LUCIEN PHILIPPE MARIE ANTOINE (1906–1984), DUKE OF TERVUREN—ILLEGITIMATE SON OF LEO 2

“Eureka!” I yelled. “The Skool twins are the grandchildren of Leopold II’s illegitimate son!”

Nobody seemed particularly interested in this revelation.

It made sense at the moment; in the grand scheme of evil revelations, this was fairly minor. (But at least my flunkies were finally getting around to their opposition research.) No, everyone was much more interested in Mike, who clapped his hands together. “The reason these laptops need such burly networking capabilities is because each one of these machines is a tiny cog in a huge, massive, global money-laundering scheme—and it’s all run by the Skools and their family members in Belgium and Africa.”

Mrs. Cornelius gasped. “That’s horrible!”

“It is horrible, Mom,” Mike answered matter-of-factly. “Dark pools.”

“What do you know about dark pools?” Mr. Cornelius whispered.

“What are dark pools?” Coretta asked Mike dreamily. “And who
are
you?”

Mike smiled at Coretta but regained his game face.
“Alternative economies we aren’t supposed to know about. Kind of like Bitcoins, before everyone knew about them. Do you know what Bitcoins are, Rachel?”

Rachel looked down at the floor. “I think so. How do they work again?”

Mike struggled to remain patient. “You know how BitTorrent works?”

Rachel blushed. “Yes, I know how BitTorrent works.”

“Bitcoins are like BitTorrent for money. Transactions are divided among thousands of individual computers, each one processing a fraction of the transaction. So that the movement of money is virtually untraceable. Or so people think.”

Rachel processed out loud for the whole group. “So the Skools are going to use all these little blue laptops to break up their money into tiny little bits, and then move it around and hide it in secret banks?”

“Pretty much,” Mike answered with a satisfied grin.

“And we can prove this?” Douglas asked.

“Pretty much,” Mike repeated, turning back to the laptop. “I just need a few more hours.”

“My God.” Mr. Cornelius yanked his son out of his seat and pulled him into a hug. “You done good, son. You done good.”

Karl and I sat in a dressing room together at Pulse TV.

I say “a” dressing room, but really it was
my
dressing room a month ago. I had only used it once, and I didn’t have any dressing to do in it, but it felt strange to be back. Perhaps because this time, every security guard in the building was watching our every move. And yes, I mean
every
move. Luckily I didn’t have to use the bathroom. I’d seen hidden camera shows, and I wasn’t going to be a statistic! (At least not that kind of statistic.)

You see, dear reader, Karl and I had asked the Skools if we could make a public apology. We’d told them that we wanted to do it together and that we thought it would be best to do it before the debut of their new TV show, the one that was taking the
Little White Lies
time slot.

Seeing as the Skools were going to be hosting a teen talk show of their own, they thought that our mea culpa and blessing—”the blessing of the fallen,” as Karin put it—could be beneficial.

A couple of days earlier, Rachel and I met once again in my bedroom.

Then, as before, I didn’t feel like I had the strength to look her in the eye just yet. She was my best friend. I knew she was there for me, but I still felt so much shame—for where I was at in my life and where our friendship was at. It didn’t help that she felt ashamed, too; it only made things worse.

I looked at the walls of my room and remembered when this was only a den of teenage dreams for us both. What our next thrift store outing would bring, what boy we would text and laugh about, what juicy school gossip we would share. Nothing of any weight, just laughs about the present.

But that was gone, and shit got real. I’d made this bed, so I might as well lie in it and recognize it for what it was. I told Rachel that I needed to make a public apology with Karl. Not to use a church term, but I needed to cleanse myself. He felt the same. It was a tall order—especially given how Mike could have gone public at any time with what we now knew about the Skool twins—not to mention that it was hard to predict the end result. But I guess that’s life.

“Are you sure that this is what you want to do, Coretta? That this is what is best?”

I could tell by the way Rachel had asked that she knew that it was the best thing to do. Even as much as it might hurt, and as scary as it was to think about. “Yeah, Rach, I’m sure. If you’re with me, I can do it. Please tell me you’ll go with me.”

“If we can get the twins of the Illuminati to give me clearance, I’m there a thousand times over.”

Of course she was.

We would have exactly two minutes to read our agreed-upon mea culpa.

Karl and I had written it together, and the Skools had
approved it. We used fewer jokes and way fewer Beyoncé references than in our previous collaborations. We’d agreed to be escorted out of the building after our last word. Forever.

As I sat next to Karl on the stiff white IKEA couch, I looked straight ahead into the dressing room mirror. I locked eyes with his reflection.

A melancholy haze lingered over both of our faces.

Okay, I was feeling dramatic. It
was
dramatic. I silently compared our moment to rebellious soldiers in hiding together just before battle: we were armed with spears, facing an enemy armed with guns. Granted, I’d been studying such warfare a lot in the wake of learning about King Leopold II and his battle for the Belgian Congo.

I’m not sure what Karl was thinking, but I was for sure wondering (as I had a thousand times) how I’d gotten myself into this. How I found myself sitting next to Karl Ristoff, backstage in a TV studio, sweating so hard that my armpits smelled like onions and chicken noodle soup.

Our preapproved mea culpa, or “agreement to fault,” began with a painful apology from me. It ended with a short but equally painful apology from Karl.

Then he was supposed to hand over the stage to the Skool Twins and their new show,
Takin’ U to Skool
.

Then we were both supposed to disappear forever.

My parents thought it best to have a caucus at the Cornelius home to discuss what exactly was going to take place on air—before, well, it happened
on air
. They’ve always let me make my own decisions, and be my own person, but I’ve since learned that they actually do possess the wisdom that comes with being thirty or so years older than I am.

The gang was back together, minus Karl and Alex.

My parents, the Corneliuses, Mike, and Rachel gathered in the entirely too-formal living room. All strategies were welcome. My dad began.

“Now, Coretta, you can’t just go up there and think that being cute and whatever is going to make people listen to you.”

“Thanks for that, Dad.”

“I’m just saying that you’re going to have this Karl Ristoff guy next to you, who, and I’m just going to say it, looks like a questionable character. We have to acknowledge that this is a weird optic. A beautiful African-American teen girl side by side with a white man who looks like he builds computers and owns stock in Nabisco. How do we know that he isn’t going to throw you under the bus once the lights come up? What do we even know about this guy?”

“Now let’s not get into what Karl looks like,” my mother, the great equalizer, chimed in. “I’ve spoken with Alex Melrose. I believe he’s on the level. Let’s just try to keep everyone on the same page and have a game plan.”

I told my dad what he needed to know. That Karl, as sour and road-haggard as he looked, did have a good heart. That he’d honestly got as caught up in all of this nonsense as I had. And he
was
quite skilled at what he did and had a reputation to reclaim, far more than I did. If we told Karl what the plan was, he would be on board, one hundred percent.