Homecoming Masquerade, The (6 page)

Jill sat up.

“I don’t know how to help her,
Dad,” she said. “She’s been working on that software for years. It would take
me all night just to read the code.”

“Jill, we are going to miss our
deadline and the shit is going to hit the fan!” Walter shouted. “Do you know
how many hotshot young startups want this contract? Do you know how quick the
immortals would cast us aside if they thought there was someone better out
there than your mother? Do you know what will happen to us when that day comes?
The minute your mother and I stop being useful to Daciana, we become a problem
for her because we know too much. We cannot miss this deadline.”

“Well you should have thought
about that before you got us all into this mess,” Jill said. “Mom’s been
working by herself for all these years. You should have hired some help for her
while there was still time.”

“We can’t hire help, Jill. The
immortals don’t want a bunch of people knowing how Clean Street works. Every
person who has access to the source code is a person who can help the rebels beat
it. That’s why we got the contract in the first place. One person. Your mother.
One loyal, dedicated, talented person, who gets it right every time. That’s who
your mother is. They must not know that she is struggling. We have to give
Daciana a working piece of software by Tuesday, and it has to look like your
mother did it alone.”

Jill sat for a moment, pondering
those words.

“Fine,” she said. “I’ll see what
I can do.”

She found her mother crashed out
on the couch in front of her computer, snoring. The poor woman had been pushed
farther than her body could go.

On the screen was
Clean
Street 2.0
, in all its glory. Jill sat down, her father’s voice ringing in
her ears.
Every person who has access to the source code is a person who can
help the rebels beat it
.

Looking at the code, Jill felt a
kinship to her mother for the first time ever. This woman, who had been so
distant from Jill for so long, who had left her daughter to be raised by hired
help, who ignored that little girl who used to sit in her office, gazing at the
hawks outside—this woman was an amazing programmer. Reading the lines of code,
watching how the command structure came together, Jill felt like she wasn’t
looking at a piece of software, but at a work of art.

All night long Jill looked at
the code. She printed it out and made notes on the paper. She used her mother’s
white board to draw diagrams of what the routines were trying to accomplish.
And as she came to understand the nature of the problem, the reason why version
2.0 wasn’t finished, she felt like she and her mother were communicating. She
felt like her mother had come to her for advice, and she was able to offer it.

The problem was with the way the
software taught itself to learn and grow. Jill’s mother had written routines in
the program that helped it understand when hackers were trying to beat it, and
taught it to learn and grow on its own based on what the hackers were trying to
do. Hackers were human, and
Clean Street
was not, but Carolyn Wentworth
had written the software to learn the way a human does, and it simply wasn’t
able.

It turned out to be an easy fix.
Jill simplified the learning algorithms, so rather than trying to comprehend
what humans were up to, the software simply observed and reacted, the success
or failure of those reactions informing the software’s next steps, making it
learn. By sunrise, Jill had completed
Clean Street 2.0
.

But in the completed version,
hidden deep inside the code, was a loophole. It was a loophole Jill put there
to spite her father, who had taken Carolyn Wentworth’s miraculous mind and
aimed it at the most hideous outcome imaginable. Here was a woman whose
brilliance could be changing the world for the better. Instead, because of
Walter, Carolyn’s genius belonged to the immortals.

The loophole was named The Marsh
Hawk Protocol. Whenever
Clean Street 2.0
encountered a certain
encryption signature, the same signature Jill had been using all this time to
hide her own tracks on the Internet, the loophole kicked in. The loophole would
allow Jill, and anyone else who knew the encryption, to roam free in the
digital universe, with
Clean Street
purposely looking the other way. It
would allow the Network to hide from the software specifically designed to find
them.

Jill went to the couch and
kissed her sleeping mother on the cheek.

“It’s done, Mom,” she said.
“Your program works now.”

Then she went to the laptop in
her bedroom, got into the chatroom, and asked if anyone there could point her
to an operative from the Network.

Six months later she was sitting
in the safe house with Gia Rossi and Nicky Bloom. Shannon’s tragic death in a
boating accident had opened a spot in the school, and Jill’s ability to break
into the admissions database had given the Network an in. With Jill’s help, the
Network created a fictional teenager who was exactly what Thorndike was looking
for. They gave this teenager so many advantages over her peers she was sure to
get the invite for the open spot.

“And once you’re in,” Jill said
to Nicky, “we’ll have to work quickly to get people excited about you.”

“Nicky’s goal will be to get
into the popular cliques right away,” said Gia.

“No,” said Jill. “That’s exactly
what we don’t want her to do. Nicky must be bland to the point of invisible
until the night of Homecoming. Anything more might put her on the radar of the
Renwicks, and if they start attacking her before Homecoming they’ll ruin
everything. I will lay the groundwork for Nicky. I am working on Annika Fleming
as we speak.”

“Annika Fleming?” Gia asked with
skepticism. “The governor’s daughter?”

“Yes, the governor of Oklahoma
is her father, and she isn’t one of the richest kids in school,” said Jill.
“But she will be the one to bring a big crowd to the after party. With Annika,
if you get her, you get a bunch of other people too. Mattie, Jenny, Jake, Vince
– probably ten more – Annika has this whole crew of people who follow her
wherever she goes, and I don’t think she likes Kim Renwick at all.”

“That all sounds great, Jill,”
said Nicky. “But there must be something I can do before Homecoming.”

“There is,” said Jill. “We need
a big money donor, someone with potential to swing the whole contest. Even with
me, Annika, and her group, you won’t be able to beat Kim if she has all the
wealthiest families. We need to hook a big fish. And I know just the one to
approach. I’d do it myself, but he and I have a history. It would be better if
he was talking to you.”

A history. He and I have a
history. Get off it, Jill. What you and Ryan had was hardly enough to call a
history.

In the wealth classification of
the Thorndike senior class, there was one more tier even above billionaires
like Jill. Two families, and two families only, occupied this tier. These
families were more than normal billionaires. They were billionaires whose wealth
was so astronomical they had the potential to swing the entire Coronation
contest by themselves. In a world of the super rich, these were the top 1 per
cent.

One of these rich upon rich kids
was Art Tremblay, who was so firmly in the Renwick camp the Network hadn’t even
considered him. Even now, as the Viennese Waltz was nearing its finale, Art was
glaring at Nicky. He had been watching her the entire dance, and he had a
shifty, nervous look in his eyes.

The other member of the top tier
was Ryan Jenson, the beautiful loner of the senior class, the one and only boy
with whom Jill had been more than friends. She and Ryan never talked anymore,
but she knew enough from their time together to know how he would respond when
Nicky arrived in a black dress. Ryan had no love at all for Kim Renwick.

If Nicky was to have any chance
of winning, she needed Ryan’s support.

Now, as the Viennese Waltz hit
its final bars, and it was time for a partner change, Jill watched as Nicky
stepped right into the perfect spot. Ryan had no choice but to dance with her.

Jill shook her head, amazed at
how good Nicky was.

“Are you rejecting me?”

“What’s that?” Jill said.

She was standing in front of
Brian Kingsbury, a six-foot behemoth, who apparently wanted to be her next
dance partner.

“You were shaking your head,”
Brian said.

“Oh...no. Sorry. Of course I want
to dance with you. I was just thinking about something.”

“Something interesting?” Brian
asked.

Jill stepped forward and let
Brian take her hand.

“I was thinking about Kim,” Jill
said, “and how happy I am that she’s not such a sure thing anymore.”

“A
re you serious?” Brian asked.
“You really think this new girl has a chance?”

Brian Kingsbury was the biggest
guy in school, and the best athlete. He was a black belt in karate and
taekwondo. He studied mat wrestling with an Olympic gold medalist. In the
summers, he went to Thailand to train with a kickboxing guru. As such, Brian
was the favorite to win at the Brawl in the Fall fundraiser in two weeks.

“I think Nicky Bloom has more
than a chance. I think she’s going to win,” said Jill. “Everyone’s talking
about her. You should think about getting to know her. If you win the brawl,
you’ll have to donate your prize money to one of the girls wearing black.”

“Not if I win,” he said.

“Oh, silly me,” Jill said with a
giggle. “
When
you win. Of course you’re going to win.”

Brian didn’t smile or otherwise
acknowledge Jill’s vote of confidence. To him, her prediction wasn’t a
compliment, just a statement of truth.

He was a cocky bastard.

“Everyone keeps asking me about the
prize money,” Brian said. “And I tell them all the same thing. Just wait and
see. I’m not in anyone’s pocket. I’ll give the money to whichever girl has the
most to offer me.”

Clearly, Brian loved all the
attention he got as favorite to win the brawl. He really wanted to believe that
he was a free agent, that once he had the prize money in his pocket, he would
contribute it to the campaign of whatever girl was best to him. He didn’t like
to think of himself as being just another lackey for Kim Renwick.

But he was. The Network knew it,
Kim knew it, and most of the school knew it. Brian’s mother was a White House
attorney who was as corrupt as anyone in town. She had sold her son’s pending
victory to the Renwicks many years ago. The prize money for Brawl in the Fall
would be seven figures large, and it might as well be in Kim’s ledger already.

Such a shame too. Jill had
watched the boys play rugby on the north lawn after school last spring, and saw
firsthand what a beast Brian was. He was bigger, stronger, and more agile than
any of the other boys, including Nicky’s pick to win the brawl, a quiet kid
from New Hampshire named Marshall Beaumont.

“People are infatuated with
Brian’s size,” Nicky had said to Jill in a meeting over the summer. “But size
and strength only get you so far. Brian doesn’t have any fire in his eyes. He’s
been groomed since birth to win the brawl, and that’s exactly the problem.
Fancy weight rooms and afterschool wrestling practice do not make a fighter. All
it will take is one good punch to the gut, one bit of real pain, and Brian will
go timid.”

Nicky had put Marshall Beaumont
on her list of targets tonight, which was wasted effort as far as Jill was
concerned. Fortunately, Nicky wasn’t dancing with Marshall right now. She was
dancing with Ryan, and looked to be having a great time.

Despite the borderline dreary
getup Nicky had put together for herself those first two weeks of school, she
had managed to strike up a relationship with Ryan right away, as was the plan.
Those weeks were harder for Jill than she thought they would be. She didn’t
enjoy watching from afar as Nicky flirted with her ex. She didn’t like hearing
the briefing report about Nicky’s successful lunch dates with Ryan. And even
though Jill knew that Nicky was only doing her job (doing it well, in fact) she
couldn’t help but feel a little ill whenever she saw them together.

Jill and Ryan were together for
thirty-eight days during freshman year. They were the thirty-eight craziest,
most blissful days of her life. Then Ryan dumped her for no good reason and had
given her the cold shoulder ever since.

Ryan said they had to break up
because he had some personal things to work out and he was sorry. When Jill
pressed him on this, she got nothing. Whatever it was he had to work out was a
total mystery, which of course drove Jill batty wanting to know.

And that’s when things got ugly.
Her attempts to get him to talk just made him more distant. He started pissing
her off. The last time Jill spoke with Ryan was in the freshman parking lot at
school. That conversation had ended with Jill calling Ryan an asshole and
walking away.

Jill hadn’t had a boyfriend
since. Ryan too became a total loner, which was odd, considering that he was
the best-looking guy in the class. Jill had lost track of the number of girls
who tried to make a play for him. His long wavy hair, his deep, dark eyes, his
strong chin, broad chest, and killer smile – when you combined this with his
mysterious and brooding manner, Ryan was too good to resist.

But he always turned them away,
and over time, they all came to hate Ryan.
Too-good-for-us Jenson
was
what they called him.
Be glad that asshole dumped you
, is what they said
to Jill.
What a jerk
.

It was all so strange, and
despite her best efforts to move on, Jill spent most of freshman year wondering
what happened, and most of sophomore year dealing with the anger that came from
the fact that she’d never know.

Was it another girl? Probably
not. Despite months of online and real life stalking, Jill had seen no evidence
that Ryan was with another girl. Was it something Jill had said or done? Maybe.
If Ryan would just talk to her, she might have known. Was he gay? He did say he
had some personal stuff to work out. If he was gay that would be a comfort to
Jill, to know it was nothing to do with her. She kind of wished this was the
answer.

But she knew it wasn’t. The way
she and Ryan were with each other during those thirty-eight days – he most
certainly was not gay.

And if there was any doubt left
at all as to Ryan’s sexuality, his response to Nicky’s advances these first two
weeks of school had squashed it.

Not that Jill cared about any of
that now. She and Ryan were ancient, irrelevant history, so old it was
practically from a former life. Hell, she should be thanking Ryan. It was his
betrayal, the frozen tone of his voice when she tried to get him to talk to
her, the complete lack of personal decency and simple human kindness on his
part that convinced Jill the world was broken and needed to be changed.
Already, Jill had been feeling like there was no one at Thorndike who
understood her. When Ryan pushed her away, he sent her right out of polite DC
society and into the Network.

Now Ryan was dancing with Nicky,
and they were laughing like best buddies. What an ass. For years, a part of
Jill thought, or maybe hoped, that the real Ryan was hiding underneath that
mysterious outer shell, that he would come back around again and open up to her
one day, and she could help him sort out whatever was troubling him.

But the way he took to Nicky was
proof that he had no need for Jill. Sweet, seductive Nicky Bloom, who could
just ooze sexy whenever she wanted, walked right up to Ryan on the first day of
school and made him smile. Barely a week went by and they were little besties,
going to lunch together every day, and now giggling as they danced around the
ballroom at Homecoming.

Pathetic. Ryan Jenson was
totally pathetic, and Jill was glad for the opportunity to play him. Ryan would
give enormous sums of his family’s money to Nicky, she would win Coronation,
the Network would kill Sergio, and Jill and Nicky would disappear in the night.
Good riddance to Ryan Jenson and everybody else at Thorndike Academy. Jill
couldn’t wait.

There was, however, some worry in
the Network about how Ryan would react upon Nicky’s surprise entrance in a
black dress. Would he still be interested in Nicky even after she entered
herself in the Coronation contest?

Watching the two of them dance,
their foreheads together, their beautiful white teeth gleaming in the soft
light of the ballroom, Jill could answer that question.

Nicky looked up for just a
second and caught Jill staring. Jill turned her gaze back to her own dance
partner.

“Are you even listening to me?”
said Brian.

“Yes,” said Jill, a total lie.
Brian had been talking for awhile now, and Jill hadn’t heard a word of what he
had said.

“Everyone’s all high on the new
girl tonight, as if she even had a chance,” Brian said. “Seriously, how does
that girl think she can possibly raise enough money to come out of this alive?
Is she even having an after-party?”

Maybe not
, Jill thought.
Nicky might be over there with Ryan, making him laugh, continuing her perfect
night, but it all was for naught if Jill didn’t figure out how to get this
after-party cooking. Annika, Jenny, Mattie, Vince – had Jill done enough to get
them to bite the bullet? Would they really be brave enough to betray Kim
Renwick?

Jill had done everything she
knew how to do. She had become friends with Annika and her gang. She had
started the rumor about the secret consortium behind Nicky Bloom. She had made
it known that Nicky’s after-party was at the Hamilton and that Jada Razor would
be there. Now, according to the plan, Jill just needed to dance and let the
rumor mill do the work for her.

She felt like she should be
doing more. Watching Nicky Bloom work, seeing the ease with which Nicky
manipulated Ryan, got him to smile and talk to her and be interested in her –
Jill wondered if she was good enough to hold up her end of the deal. If the
Network had two undercover agents in this ballroom who were as skilled at
manipulating people as Nicky was, the whole class would be theirs already.

But they only had one Nicky
Bloom. One Nicky Bloom, and one Jill Wentworth.

It angered her to think about
it. At one time not too long ago, the entire Network was enamored with Jill and
the work she was doing. She was the superstar operative at Thorndike Academy,
who not only could spy on the other students, but could hack into their computers.
The world was going to be saved, and Jill was the one who was going to do it.

Then Nicky came along.

“We’ve got this operative,
she’s going to blow your mind,”
was what Gia had said to Jill about Nicky.
“You
have laid the groundwork for something huge, Jill. With your work, we might be
able to put our new operative in the school with you, and hit the immortals
where it hurts them most.”

It bugged Jill that her great
achievements were merely “groundwork” for Nicky Bloom, superspy extraordinaire.
It bugged her that she had become another supporting cast member whose only
purpose was to set things up for Nicky Bloom to come in and save the world.

It bugged her because it was
true.

Nicky was everything Gia had
promised, and more. Nicky’s assignment was to create such an incredible first
impression that the senior class was willing to accept her as a viable
candidate within two hours of seeing her in a black dress. It was an absurdly
difficult assignment, and she was nailing it.

Jill’s job, in contrast, was
simply to riff off Nicky’s success, to get the word out about the after-party
in such a way that everyone wanted to ditch Kim’s and go to Nicky’s.

She felt like she was doing a
lousy job. She felt like she belonged in front of a computer screen, and should
leave the real work, the work that landed you in the arms of Ryan Jenson, for
Nicky Bloom to do by herself.

“She is,” said Jill.

“She is what?” said Brian.

“You were asking about an
after-party,” Jill said. “Nicky is having one. At least, that’s what I’ve
heard.”

“Where did you hear about her
after-party?” said Brian. “I was just asking someone and they said they didn’t
know.”

“Then you weren’t asking the
right person. Believe me, it’s everywhere. After that little confrontation
where Nicky told off Kim, everyone wants to know where her party is. I was
standing over next to Isabella and Chelsea earlier tonight, and they couldn’t
stop talking about it.”

“Really? Isabella and Chelsea?”

“That’s right,” Jill lied. She
hadn’t been anywhere near Isabella or Chelsea at any time since the masquerade
began.

“Where is the party?” asked
Brian.

“At the Hamilton. She’s rented
out the whole nightclub on the top floor.”

“The whole club? She’s not going
to have enough people to fill up the whole club.”

“But she is,” said Jill. “That’s
what I’m trying to tell you. We’re all ditching Kim’s party, but obviously
we’re not telling her.”

“You’re being serious, aren’t
you? You’re really going to Nicky Bloom’s party rather than Kim’s.”

Jill nodded. “The new girl is
where it’s at. No one else is going to tell you though, because they think
you’ll rat us all out. We know your family’s already committed whatever money
you have to Kim, including any prize money from the brawl.”

“How does everyone know that?”
Brian said, anger in his voice.

“Listen, I’m just telling you
this as a friend. I don’t want you to be stuck in Kim’s corner after everyone
else has left. There’s a big movement going on here tonight. We’re all ditching
Kim and we’re going with Nicky. Only you and Kim’s other really devoted
supporters are being left out. It starts with the after-party. By the way, I
heard that Jada Razor is going to be there. She’s giving a private concert at
midnight.”

“Fuck me.” said Brian. “Jada
Razor? Well, this is just...this is just crazy. People should tell me the truth.
Yes, my mom and Kim’s dad have been talking, but I get to choose where the
prize money goes, not them. If there’s some mass movement going on, my mom
would want me supporting the girl who’s gonna win.”

“Let’s dance over towards
Christine so you can partner with her next,” said Jill. “She’s going to pretend
like she doesn’t know about the party, but keep trying her. Tell her you’re
ready to ditch Kim. Tell her you know everyone is going to Nicky’s party and
you want in.”