Social Suicide (7 page)

THE NEXT MORNING, I WOKE UP WITH ONE THING ON MY
mind: how to get one hundred dollars and fast.

Unfortunately, the only job I’d ever had was babysitting neighborhood kids, and even if I scared up a couple little guys to watch on short notice, no way could I make one hundred dollars in one sitting. Ditto Sam. Her parents didn’t allow her to have an after-school job, thinking it would interfere too much with her studies.

That left us with precious few options to earn money in time for the drop. We would either have to (A) steal it or (B) borrow it. Since neither of us were the larceny type, Sunday morning found us standing in front of Sam’s brother, Kevin, pleading our case for a short-term loan.

“I promise we won’t even spend it. We just need to use it as bait for a couple hours, then we’ll bring it right back,” Sam told him.

Kevin blinked, giving her a blank stare. Though come to think of it, Kevin always had kind of a blank stare on his face. He was dressed in jeans and a faded Green Day T-shirt, laid out on the sofa with one foot hooked over the end in a sprawling pose. The TV was showing some nature channel with a bunch of ocean scenes, and the coffee table in front of him was littered with an empty Cap’n Crunch box and half a pepperoni pizza.

“Dude, a hundred bucks is a lot of money,” Kevin said. “You know how many boobies I could save with a hundred bucks?”

I almost hated to ask. . . . “Boobies?”

Kevin nodded. “There are only like a dozen Abbott’s Boobies left in the world. The whole world, dude! That’s, like, really not a lot.”

“Birds?”

Kevin nodded solemnly. “Endangered birds, dude. They’re being killed off by Yellow Crazy Ants.”

Clearly someone had been watching way too much Nature Channel.

“Look, we’ll do anything, Kev. Please? We really need the money,” Sam pleaded.

Kevin raised one eyebrow. “Anything?”

Uh-oh. “Um, well, maybe not anything—” I broke in.

“Okay, how about this?” Kevin proposed. “There’s this job I’m supposed to do this afternoon. It pays a hundred and fifty dollars, and if you two wanna do it for me, you can keep the cash.”

“What kind of job?” I asked. As far as I knew, Kevin’s only real job since graduating from high school two years ago had been keeping the Kramers’ sofa from floating away.

“Just a quick one.”

I narrowed my eyes. “This job is legal, right?”

Kevin did a short laugh-slash-cough thing. “Totally, dude. Look, all you have to do is stand in front of Chuck’s Chicken on Main Street and hand out chicken bucket coupons for a couple hours. Easy, right?”

I had to admit, it did sound easy.

“I don’t know,” Sam hedged. “Main Street is like three miles away.”

“You can take the Green Machine,” he offered, sweetening the deal.

I bit my lip. The Green Machine was Kevin’s puke-green-colored Volvo sedan that was, in fact, an environmentally friendly “green” machine by virtue of the fact that it ran purely on clean-burning vegetable oil instead of fossil fuels. Though the term
clean
was relative. The only places that had the volume of veggie oil needed to run a car were fast-food joints that threw out drums of used cooking oil. Which meant the Green Machine perpetually smelled like French fries and fish sticks.

But, while I had a moment of pause over being seen driving around town in Kevin’s car, the truth was if we wanted to catch our cheat seller and figure out who killed Sydney, we had little choice.

“Okay,” I finally said. “We’ll do it.”

Kevin grinned, showing off a piece of pepperoni stuck in his back teeth. “Sweet, dude. The gig starts in an hour, and the suit’s in the Green Machine’s backseat.”

I paused. “Wait—suit? What suit?”

Kevin blinked at me. “The chicken suit, dude. You didn’t think you could hand out coupons looking like that, did you?”

I closed my eyes and did a mental two count while I yoga-breathed, telling myself that this was all for a good cause.

Forty minutes later, Sam and I were parking the Green Machine at Chuck’s Chicken in a haze of fried food–flavored smoke. Sam cut the engine, and we got out and stared into the backseat. Laid out across the cracked vinyl bench was a huge mass of yellow feathers.

I bit my lip. “So . . .”

“Yeah, no way,” Sam said, reading my mind. “I’m so not being a giant chicken, Hartley.”

“It’s just for a couple hours.”

“N. O.”

“I think the feathers match your hair color better than mine.”

“Nice try. We have the same color hair, Hartley.”

“I’m allergic to feathers?”

“Liar.”

“I’m allergic to looking like a dork?”

Sam grinned. “Ditto. Besides, I’m already putting my academic reputation on the line to buy these cheats.”

She had a point. “Fine.” I sighed. “I’ll be the chicken.” So not words I’d ever wanted to say in my life.

Reluctantly, I picked up the suit and held it up. Yellow feathers covered the torso, wings sticking out the sides with little arm holes for my hands. A pair of orange stockings attached to huge webbed feet covered the bottom half, and a hat with a mass of yellow fuzz sticking into the air capped off the outfit.

I gave Sam one last pleading look.

“You sure you don’t want to wear the suit?”

“I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life.”

“Sigh,” I said out loud.

“Tell you what,” she offered, taking pity on me, “you can keep the extra fifty bucks.”

“Swell.”

I took the suit into the bathroom of Chuck’s Chicken, and after maneuvering uncomfortably in the tiny metal stall (and almost dunking my tail feathers into the toilet), I finally had the thing on. I purposely did not look in the mirror on my way out, sucking up the odd looks and snickers from the patrons enjoying their fried poultry and biscuits as I walked back out through the restaurant to find the manager.

He turned out to be a short Indian guy with a pinched nose and a unibrow hunkering down over his eyes in a frown.

“You’re not Kevin,” he observed, squinting past the costume to look at my face.

I shook my head, molting a few yellow feathers onto the floor in the process. “He couldn’t make it. He sent me instead.”

The manager paused, gave my suit a scrutinizing stare, then shrugged. “Whatever. Here, just hand these out to people on the street.”

He handed me a stack of coupons.

“And try to dance around a little,” he added. “You know, attract attention.”

Trust me, there was no way I wouldn’t attract attention. An older couple in the corner was laughing behind their palms, two junior high kids were openly staring, and one toddler was asking Mom if she could go hug Big Bird.

I grabbed the coupons and trudged outside to find Sam already sitting on the curb outside the restaurant. She took one look at me and grinned. Then pulled out her phone.

“You wouldn’t.”

“Just one little picture. Just to send to Kyle.”

I rolled my eyes. Sending “one little picture” to Kyle was like cc’ing the entire world. If you Wikipedia-ed
gossip
, I’m pretty sure Kyle’s face popped up. “If this ends up on YouTube, I’m totally disowning you as my best friend,” I warned.

Sam just grinned wider. “Say ‘feathers,’” she said, snapping a photo.

An hour later, my stack of coupons was gone, taking my dignity with it. I stripped off the molting suit and put my street clothes back on before collecting our payment from the manager. Then we jumped back into the Green Machine and headed for the mall, where we were supposed to drop the money in half an hour.

After circling only ten minutes for a parking spot (and stalking a woman with a Macy’s shopping bag all the way from the door to her red sedan), we made our way inside and toward the back corner of the mall.

The kid’s playland was an enclosed area full of slides, climbing equipment, toy cars, and little puzzles all made out of foam where the under-four-foot set could run wild between Mom’s shopping sprees. Everything was rounded and owie-free, including the giant six-foot-tall foam kangaroo guarding the entrance.

Sam acted as lookout as I slipped the hundred bucks I’d made playing chicken under the back left paw of the kangaroo, then we both took a seat on a bench across the walkway to wait.

And wait.

And wait.

Fifteen minutes later, no one had touched the paw.

Sam squirmed in the seat beside me.

“Hey, how long do you think this is gonna take?” she asked.

I shook my head. “I don’t know.” Honestly, I’d hoped the guy would have been there by then. “Why?” I asked.

Sam pulled her cell from her pocket, checking the time. “I have a tutoring appointment in an hour and a half.”

“I didn’t know you had a tutor.”

She nodded. “She’s helping me study for the SATs.”

I turned to her. “Sam, SATs aren’t until May.”

“My dad believes in being prepared.”

Clearly.

I glanced at the kangaroo, still standing by his lonely self. “Go,” I said.

She raised an eyebrow at me.

“Just go. I’ll wait and watch for our cheat seller. I don’t want you to miss tutoring,” I said, even though the fact that our cheat seller was also likely a killer made me kinda shudder at the idea of facing him alone.

Sam looked at her cell readout again. She pursed her lips. I could see a serious mental debate waging in the crease between her eyebrows. But finally, she put her phone away and shook her head.

“No. I’m not leaving you alone. What if he tries to run, like Chris? You’re gonna need backup.”

I gave her a quick hug. “Thanks.” As much as I didn’t want her to get in trouble for missing tutoring, I was definitely glad she was staying. Truth? I had no idea what I was doing. I totally needed backup.

We settled in to silence again as we watched kids filter in and out of the playland, tired parents in tow. No one stopped at the kangaroo. Well, once a curly-haired little blond boy shouted at it and tried to bite its tail, but that was about it.

I was just about to give up and concede that he wasn’t coming when a girl in a hot pink tank made her way to the entrance to playland.

Without a kid.

She had her back to us, so I couldn’t see her face, but from where we sat, I could tell she was about our age. Her hair was stick straight blond shot through with pale pink highlights, and she had on black skinny jeans, black slouching boots, and about a dozen silver bracelets on each wrist.

She walked into the playland, then did a quick look over both shoulders before crouching down (with difficulty, due to the tight jeans), next to Mr. Kangaroo’s back left paw.

Bingo.

SAM AND I POPPED UP FROM THE BENCH AND CONVERGED
on the girl. She stood and turned to go, and I recognized her face immediately. Drea Barlow.

Drea was a cheerleader at our school, which meant she was constantly walking that fine line between sophisticated and slutty. Tight clothes, thick eyeliner, and padded bras were the uniform of all cheerleaders at our school, both on and off the field. Half the squad had tattoos, 90 percent had eating disorders, and every year they lost at least two of their ranks to unplanned pregnancies where serious calculations were needed just to figure paternity.

While Drea was the last person I expected to be clever enough to be selling the cheats, her moral standards were just about right.

“Busted,” I said as Sam and I approached her.

Drea blinked at me. “Hartley? What are you doing here?”

“Catching you in the act,” Sam answered for me.

“In the act of what?” she asked, playing dumb. Or, honestly, maybe not acting all that much.

“In the act of selling Sam the answers to next week’s history test.”

“No way.” Drea shook her head. “I’m not selling anything. You’re totally wrong.”

“Then what are you doing with my hundred bucks?” I asked, pointing to the cash in her hand.

She looked down at it, then quickly shoved it into the back pocket of her jeans. Or it would have been quickly if they hadn’t been painted on. These were beyond skinny jeans. They were like a denim wet suit. She wiggled a little, struggling to hide the evidence as she continued shaking her head. “I found that money.”

“We watched you walk right to it,” Sam pointed out.

Drea bit her lip. “So? I can walk wherever I want. It’s a free country.”

I gave her a “get real” look.

“Get real,” Sam said, not content to stick with just a look. “Drea, you knew the money would be there because you’re the one who told us to put it there.”

She shrugged. “Prove it.”

Sam narrowed her eyes at her. “Fine.” Then she pulled her cell from her pocket and dialed the number we’d texted our request to yesterday. I heard it ring three times on Sam’s end, but the phone I could clearly see outlined in Drea’s right front pocket remained conspicuously silent.

“See?” Drea said with a smirk. “I’m innocent. Now, if you don’t mind, I have things to do.” Then she brushed past us, making a beeline down the mall.

Sam moved to stop her, but I put a hand on her arm.

“Wait,” I whispered as we watched Drea’s boots clomp away. “Let’s follow her.”

Sam raised an eyebrow. “Why?”

“Clearly Drea is not the sharpest crayon in the box.”

“Clearly.”

“Which means she’s probably picking up the cash for whoever is really behind selling the cheats.”

“Like a mastermind?”

I shot her a look. “Are we in an Austin Powers movie?”

Sam shrugged. “What? It’s a very accurate description.”

I had to admit, it kinda was.

I nodded as Drea turned the corner at the Orange Julius. “Fine. A mastermind. Now come on. Let’s see where she goes.”

Sam and I jogged past the Orange Julius, then peeked around a potted palm tree. Drea was paused in front of the Forever 21, three stores down. We watched as she checked out the window display, then walked inside.

Sam and I quickly ran to the front of the store, then slipped inside and ducked behind a rack of “flirty cap-sleeve” Ts.

“What’s she doing?” I asked as Sam peeked around the side shelf.

“She’s looking at the earrings,” Sam whispered back. “Now she’s checking out a belt . . . and a matching cuff bracelet.”

Fabulous. Drea was on a shopping detour.

“Is she meeting anyone? Talking to anyone?”

Sam craned her neck around a pile of clothes. “She just said something to the salesperson, but I think it was about the bracelet’s price tag.” She paused. “I think it might be on sale.”

I rolled my eyes. “What’s she doing now?”

“Checking out a sweater. . . . Oh, it’s really cute. I wonder if that’s on sale.”

“Focus, Sam,” I said, but I couldn’t help peeking around the display. She was right. It was a cute sweater. I made a mental note to come back later.

Unfortunately, I watched as Drea took the sweater and headed back toward the dressing rooms.

“This is pointless,” I decided. “Let’s go.” I nodded toward the door, and we slunk out of the store.

“Now what?” Sam asked.

I shrugged. “I guess we wait for her to finish shopping.”

Sam nodded, her gaze slowly surveying the mall. “I’m gonna get a Julius. Want one?”

I shook my head. “I’ll keep watch,” I offered, gesturing to Forever 21.

Five minutes later, Sam came back with a smoothie, a pretzel, and a carton of chili cheese fries.

“Dude.”

Sam blinked at me. “What? I haven’t had lunch.”

“Didn’t I see you down a chicken platter at Chuck’s?”

She shrugged. “That was a mid-morning snack. Besides,” she said, shoving a fry in her mouth. “I have a lacrosse game later. I need my strength.”

I would have argued that chili cheese fries were hardly the lunch of champions, but out of the corner of my eye I saw Drea leaving Forever 21 with a plastic shopping bag in hand.

I elbowed Sam in the ribs. “Let’s go.”

We did, following her at a pace of three stores back as she walked toward the center of the mall. She paused again outside Hot Topic, slipping inside. I followed (leaving Sam outside the store to down her feast), ducking around displays as I watched Drea grab a micromini and head for a dressing room.

Four outfits later, she finally made a purchase and headed back out again.

I let her get ahead, lingering near the wall of T-shirts with cartoon characters spouting inappropriate slogans (at least that’s how my mom would characterize them—I actually thought a couple were kinda funny), then slipped back outside to find Sam hot on Drea’s tail four stores down.

Unfortunately, we only got a few feet before Drea ducked into Pacific Sun and started eyeing bikinis.

Half an hour later, Sam’s meal was a thing of the past, she’d sucked the last of her smoothie, and Drea had taken us on a tour of pretty much the entire mall.

“Maybe she’s not meeting the seller today,” Sam suggested.

“Maybe he’s just late.”

“Maybe she really did just find the cash. Or maybe she saw us put it there and decided to take it.”

I pursed my lips together, really not liking that theory. “Five more minutes. If she doesn’t lead us anywhere by then, we’ll call it a bust.”

Sam nodded, eyeing the Cold Stone Creamery to our right as we followed Drea toward the food court. “Maybe I should get some dessert. . . .” She trailed off.

“There!” I said, pointing to Drea and grabbing Sam by the arm.

I felt my heart leap into my throat as I watched Drea sit down at a table near the Panda Express, where a guy in a black wool beanie cap was eating chow mein. She leaned in and gave him a quick kiss on the lips before pulling something from her back pocket and sliding it across the table.

I sucked in a breath. Our cash.

“Holy fudge, that’s the guy!” Sam whispered in my ear.

“Let’s go get him.”

We quickly converged on the table, and as we approached, I saw Drea look up, first shock, then anger registering on her face.

“What are you two doing here?” she asked, narrowing heavily lined eyes until there was nothing but mascara showing.

“Catching you red-handed,” Sam said, pointing at the guy with her.

He looked up, and I recognized him from school. I didn’t know his name, but I’d seen him in the halls. He had dark eyes, dark longish hair, and a perpetual summer tan. He was wearing a green T-shirt and jeans, his long legs stretched out in front of him under the table to end in a pair of black skate shoes that looked well worn in. He looked from me to Sam.

“Caught who doing what?” he asked, blinking innocently.

“Caught Drea bringing you the cash for the cheats we purchased. From you,” Sam said, still pointing a finger at the guy.

He looked from Sam to me. “I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, come off it, Nicky,” Sam said, plopping herself into an empty seat across from the guy. Apparently she did recognize him.

“Nicky?” I asked, sitting down, too.

Sam turned to me. “This is Nicky Williams. He’s in my AP English class. And,” she said, giving him a pointed look, “he was in Mr. Tipkins’s precalculus class last year, too.”

Nicky shrugged. “A lot of people have had Tipkins.”

“A lot of people didn’t just send their flunkey to pick up cash from the kids’ playland.”

“Hey!” Drea protested. “I’ll have you know I’m not flunking any subjects this semester.”

I rolled my eyes.

Nicky, on the other hand, ignored his girlfriend’s lack of IQ. His eyes went from Sam to me again. “You’re the girl who found Sydney, right?”

“Yes. I’m doing a story for the school paper on her death.”

He nodded slowly. “Yeah. That really sucked.”

“Sucks losing
customers
, huh?” Sam said.

Nicky grinned and crossed his arms over his chest. “Customers? Gosh, I’m sorry. I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The mock innocence thing was getting old. I grabbed Sam’s phone from her pocket and dialed the number of our seller.

Immediately, the Black Eyed Peas starting singing from Nicky’s pocket.

Nicky bit the inside of his cheek, not bothering to pull his phone out as I shot him a pointed look.

“Okay, fine,” he conceded. “Look, you wanna know about Sydney? I’ll talk. Off the record,” he added.

As much as I didn’t like the sound of that, I nodded. Better than no talk at all.

“Fine. Off the record.”

“What do you want to know?”

“You are the guy we texted last night?” Sam asked.

He nodded. “Yeah.”

“And you’re selling cheats to people at school?”

Again with the nod.

“Did you sell the cheats to Sydney Sanders?”

He paused this time before answering. “She was in a jam. I helped her out.”

“For a fee.”

“A guy’s gotta eat, ya know?” he said, gesturing to the pile of chow mein in front of him.

“Where did you get the answers?”

“I have a source.”

“What kind of source?” Sam asked.

“The kind I’m not gonna talk about. Next question,” he said, nodding my way.

“Fine,” I said, switching gears. “How many people at Herbert Hoover High are involved in this?” I asked.

“How many have I sold to?” he asked. “Maybe a dozen this semester.”

Sam whistled low. “That’s it. I’m never getting into Stanford now.”

“And none of those people know who you are? It’s all been anonymous?” I asked, ignoring her.

“Yep.”

“Did Sydney know who you were?”

Nicky shook his head. “No. No one did.”

“Is it possible she found out about your ‘source’?” I asked.

Nicky narrowed his eyes at me. “Why do you ask?”

Unlike Drea, I could tell he was no dummy. So, with little left to lose, I leveled with him.

“Sydney was going to tell me something important the day she died.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. She died before she could tell me. But I assume it had something to do with where she got the cheats.”

Nicky shook his head. “Look, if it did, it had nothing to do with me. Sydney dropped the cash. I dropped the drive with the answers. That’s it. She was clueless. Trust me.”

Despite his suggestion, that wasn’t something I was totally prepared to do yet.

“Where were you the afternoon that Sydney died?” I asked instead.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, do you have an alibi?”

“Whoa!” Nicky put both hands out in a defensive gesture. “Sydney committed suicide, right? What do I need an alibi for?”

“We don’t think it was suicide. We think it was homicide.”

Sam nodded in agreement beside me. “Twittercide, to be exact.”

“Well, it wasn’t me,” Nicky said defiantly.

“Then where were you?”

“Home.”

“On a school day?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at him.

“I was sick. I had a cold.”

“Can anyone vouch for that?” I asked.

“Drea can,” Nicky said, nodding across the table at the girl who’d been conspicuously silent during our exchange. “She stopped by before school to check on me.”

“Before school,” I said, honing in on the word. “So, when Sydney died after school you were alone.”

Nicky bit his lip. “I guess. So what?”

“So maybe you thought Sydney knew too much and needed to be shut up before she blew the whistle on your whole operation,” Sam offered.

He shook his head. “No way. Like I said, Sydney didn’t know who she was buying the cheats from.”

“Are you sure about that?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at him. “Because it wasn’t all that hard for us to find out.”

He paused, looking from me to Sam, letting the truth of that sink in. “Anyway, even if she did know, she wouldn’t tell.”

“She ratted out her best friend,” Sam pointed out.

“Look, I told you I was sick. I had a fever. I couldn’t have killed Sydney that day even if I wanted to.”

“Then where was Drea at three thirty?” I asked, turning on the cheerleader.

“Me?” she squeaked out. “Why would I want to hurt Sydney?”

“Why did you pick up the cash for Nicky today?” I countered. “Maybe he told you to do another little favor for him and silence Sydney.”

Drea paled beneath her layers of makeup. “Nicky would never ask me to do that. He’s a sweetheart.”

“A sweetheart who sells illegal cheats.”

“But he doesn’t hurt anyone!” Drea protested.

“Ha!” Sam countered. “You think messing with a grading curve is a victimless crime? I’m pulling an A-minus average this semester. A-minus!”

“Dude,” Nicky said, putting his hands out in front of him again. “Enough. I didn’t kill Sydney and neither did Drea, okay? Period. End of story.”

Only it did not feel like end of story to me. “Look, you can either tell us where you were,” I warned, “or we can turn you in to the police and you can talk to them.”