Top 8 (16 page)

misswatson logged off 9:48
P.M.

madmac logged off 9:49
P.M.

 

“Hey,” I whispered into the phone as soon as Ruth answered her cell. I glanced at the clock; it was 3:30
A.M
.

I'd technically gone to bed half an hour before, having written an incredibly bad paper I planned to get up early and fix. But even though it was super late, I'd just been lying awake, staring at the glow-in-the-dark stars Ruth and I had applied to my ceiling when we were in seventh grade. Unable to sleep, I'd logged on to Friendverse and seen that Ruth had just updated her status to
RueRue is ready for her physics test!
so I had hoped she'd still be awake. “Did I wake you up?”

She laughed. “Of course not.” Ruth was a semi-insomniac; she'd go through long phases of barely sleeping at all. It was due to this that she knew more than just
about anyone else. Whenever she couldn't sleep, she'd stay up for hours, watching the Discovery and History channels.

“Can't sleep?”

“It's been pretty bad lately.”

“Well, what are they doing on the History Channel these days?”

“The Spanish-American War. Not that exciting,” she said, and I could hear the sound of her flipping channels. The fact that Ruth had a TV in her bedroom was one of the things I was most jealous of. My parents refused to let me have one, and watching DVDs on my laptop just wasn't the same thing. “Why are you up? The paper?”

“No,” I said. “That's done. Well,
done
might be too strong a word.” I sat up and pulled my quilt over my knees. “Just thinking, I guess.”

Her voice was sympathetic. “About the hacking thing?”

I sighed. “Yeah. I'm acting like an idiot, accusing all these people who had nothing to do with it. I just want to know who it was.”

“I know,” she said. “But if it's any consolation, I think people at school really are beginning to forget about it.”

“Jimmy and Liz haven't.”

“Well, aside from them.”

“But
I'm
not going to forget about it! And I'm seriously out of suspects, so I don't know what to do at this point.”

“Move on?” she asked. I could hear a smile in her voice as she added, “Get Dell to install some extra security on your computer?”

“Right,” I said. “I'll try.”

“Good.”

“So are you going to talk about it?” I asked.

“About what?”

“About your mystery crush! The one you mentioned in PE…”

“Oh, that.” Ruth sighed. “There's really nobody. I was mostly just tormenting Lisa.”

“Really?” I was disappointed. “I thought that you were telling the truth.”

“Well,” Ruth said after a moment. “There's…someone…I've been thinking about for a while. But I'm not ready to talk about it yet. But as soon as I am, I'll tell you, okay?”

“Well, of course,” I said. “We tell each other everything.” The sound of the channel flipping stopped, and I could hear dialogue that sounded familiar. “What are you watching?”

“
Beaches
,” Ruth said, sounding sheepish.

“
Beaches
!” I cried. “Oh my God, I haven't seen it in years. What part?” Ruth and I had gone through a big
Beaches
phase in sixth grade, when we had watched it whenever we'd had a sleepover (which was pretty much every Friday night). I used to be able to quote most of it by heart.

“They're fighting about the fact that Barbara Hershey slept with the cute director.”

“Who wasn't even that cute.”

“In your, mistaken, opinion.”

“And it was completely wrong to fight about,” I said, pulling my quilt up to my shoulders, picturing the movie in my head. “Because, I mean, Bette Midler never told Barbara Hershey that she liked him. They weren't dating. It wasn't like he was off limits or anything.”

“But a real friend would have known, don't you think?” Ruth asked. I heard the remote click again, and the volume on the TV got louder.

“I don't know,” I said with a yawn. “I guess.”

“You sound tired.”

“Yeah. Getting there.”

“Well, it is almost four.”

“I know.”

“They're at the bra song,” she said. “Want to hear it?”

“Please,” I said. I'd always loved the bra song. Ruth turned up the volume and held the phone closer to the TV,
and we listened to Bette belting it out. “Thanks,” I said, when it was over. I yawned again, the fact that it was almost four
A.M
. beginning to hit me. “I'm going to turn in.”

“Good idea,” she said. “Talk to you later.”

“Talk to you soon,” I replied, and hung up. And after that, I got to sleep. For a whole two hours.

 

When I arrived at my locker the next morning, my friends were all there waiting for me. I was chugging a Stubbs latte for all it was worth, to try and make up for my sleep deprivation. When I'd looked at my essay in the cold light of morning, it was slightly worrisome. I'd done it in 14-point Courier, with two-and-a-half-inch margins, finally concluding that Queen Victoria (I'd used my father's laptop so that I could type that essential phrase) had run into problems with the populace because her ideas were too Victorian.

“Well?” Schuyler asked excitedly. “Did you bring your laptop?”

I tapped my big Pilgrim Bank canvas bag. “It's in here.”

Lisa rolled her eyes. “Calm down, Shy,” she said. “It's just a laptop. Mad, hurry up.”

Ruth just shook her head at all of us and continued to peruse her AP Physics notes.

“I'd rather hear about Shy's date,” I said.

Schuyler shook her head and pointed at my bag. “Laptop!”

I was happy that they were all so interested in Nate, but a little bit nervous about showing them his profile. What if they only thought he was
kind
-of cute, as I once foolishly had? Then I wondered why I suddenly cared so much. I mean, he was just a friend.

“Let's see!” Schuyler said, reaching for my bag. I pulled out the pink laptop and was just about to open it when the first bell rang.

“
Bof
!” Lisa cried. “
C'est dommage, non? Mais c'est la vie
.” She gave a one-armed shrug. “
Maintenant, je vais à la classe d'anglais. À tout à l'heure
!” With that, she gave a wave and headed down the hall.

I stared after her. “You know, I think she's getting worse.”

Schuyler looked crestfallen. “Mad, I wanted to see his profile! I was totally looking forward to it!”

“At lunch,” I promised her. “And when are we going to talk about Connor?”

Ruth was still flipping through her physics notes. “Maddie, do you have any opens before lunch? We could check it out then.”

I thought about telling Ruth not to call me Maddie, but I decided I just didn't have the energy. Not all of us, after all, had her insomniac's stamina. “No opens this
morning,” I said, yawning. “Which is too bad, because I really could have used a nap.”

If you had an open, and went to the school nurse and told her you were having “female problems,” she totally let you sleep on one of the curtained cots for an hour. And she didn't even keep track, so you could go multiple times over the course of the month without her catching on. This made me a little more nervous about her ability to actually, you know, diagnose something, but in the meantime it was super helpful.

The bell rang, and Schuyler and Ruth headed to their classes. I looked sorrowfully at my incomprehensible essay, noticing as I did so three spelling mistakes that spell-check hadn't caught, because they were actual words, just used in the wrong context.

I sighed and locked my laptop in my locker. As I was giving the lock one last spin, Liz rushed up and began twirling her combination. She seemed to be in a hurry — as I probably should have been, too, but I wasn't yet awake enough to move quickly—so I didn't want to bother her with more pleas for a restored friendship.

But when she looked over at me, I gave her a small smile, and after a moment, she gave me a tiny one back, so I hoped that maybe we were on our way to becoming friends again. When the final, Seriously-Why-Aren't-You-In-Class-Yet?! bell rang, I chugged the rest of my coffee and headed to Marine Biology.

Luckily, Brian didn't seem to mind that I kept staring into space, falling half-asleep when I was supposed to be figuring out the chemical properties of seawater. And Marilee was texting madly under the lab table about some drama I was sure I'd hear about in a few days, after she verified her sources.

When I heard Brian say the word “party,” however, I woke up a little. “What?” I asked, snapping my head up and quickly checking the corners of my mouth to make sure I hadn't drooled. “What did you say, Brian?”

Brian frowned down at my tilting beaker. “Careful with that,” he said. He glanced over at Marilee, whose thumbs were still flying over her keypad, and lowered his voice. “I was just telling you that I'm having a small —
small
— get-together tomorrow night.”

“Really?” I placed the beaker in the beaker tube holder. “I thought you were grounded until the next millennium.”

“I was,” he said. “Technically, I still am. But my parents are at Canyon Ranch's Slim Down and Shape Up Weekend, and I have the place to myself.”

I was beginning to think that Brian was not the fastest learner. Although I probably should have guessed this from the first three C-lab reports I let him write. “Um, Brian,” I said just as Dr. Daniels walked by. I picked up the beaker and started stirring vigorously, holding it up to the light, the way I'd seen scientists (well, actors
playing scientists) do on commercials. Brian and Marilee leaned forward intently, both frowning slightly. I guess we must have convinced Dr. Daniels, because she continued on to investigate the burning smell that had suddenly started emanating from the other side of the classroom. As soon as she was out of earshot, I put the beaker down again and Marilee went back to her texting.