Social Suicide (13 page)

I did a deep breath and took one tentative step down the carpeted stairs, then paused, listening for any sounds of protest from Mom. Nothing. I took another and another. I was now completely exposed. If Mom turned around, I was going to have to do some fancy explaining about why I was dressed in all black just to sneak downstairs for a bedtime snack. I quickly stepped down the last of the stairs, and ducked to my knees, falling to the floor behind the back of the sofa.

Mom was just on the other side. I could hear her breathing over the sounds of her keyboard clacking. I made my own breath as shallow as I could, slowly moving one leg then the other, making a snail’s pace as I crawled across the room. I could see the front door. I was just a few feet away. If I could cross to it without making a sound, I had a fighting chance of getting out.

Slowly, painstakingly, I crawled the length of the sofa. At one point, Mom stretched, and I swear I almost had a heart attack. But she didn’t turn around, instead laughing out loud at something her cyber guy said.

So age inappropriate.

I slowly continued my trek until I hit the end of the sofa. Then, I crawled low to the ground toward the door, ducking behind a pillar as I reached up for the front knob.

I turned, one half inch at a time, slowly, waiting for just the right moment, when the TV switched to a noisy commercial for OxiClean, to turn the knob all the way to the right until the telltale click sounded. I pulled the door open an inch, then another, cringing as it squeaked.

But by some miracle of miracles, Mom was so engrossed in her conversation that she didn’t turn around. I took the opportunity and quickly slipped outside, shutting the door with a soft click behind me.

Then I dashed across the front lawn at sprinter speeds, half expecting Mom to come rushing after me. I didn’t stop running until I hit the end of the block.

Phase One: down. Operation Escape Mom was a success.

I slowed to a walk, letting my breathing return to normal as I quickly headed toward school.

Now, on to Phase Two.

I only hoped that breaking into the high school went as smoothly as breaking out of Mom’s.

OUR SCHOOL WAS BUILT IN THE 1920S, DECORATED WITH
huge stone columns and a neoclassical design that made it look like a cross between the White House and a Roman palace during the day. At night, however, it was lit from below, cast with an eerie glow that made it look like a giant white mausoleum squatting in the middle of downtown.

A pair of ancient oak trees flanked the stone building, and as I made my way across the front lawn, I saw Sam, Kyle, and Chase standing under one, Sam dancing nervously from foot to foot.

“What took you so long?” she asked as I approached their group. I noticed they’d each gone with the same wardrobe theme I had: all black. Sam and Kyle were in matching hoodies. Chase? Honestly, he didn’t look a whole lot different than any other day, in black jeans and a black long-sleeved T.

“Sorry,” I told them. “Had to sneak past Mom.”

“Tell me about it,” Sam said, rolling her eyes. “I had to promise Kevin two tubes of cookie dough to distract my parents while I slipped out the back door.”

“Are we ready to do this?” Chase cut in, all business.

Sam bit her lip, did some more dancing around on the damp grass. “Sorta. Kinda.”

“Sam, you okay?” I asked.

“Well, it’s just that . . . if I get caught, this is going on my permanent record. Plus, I’m pretty sure my dad will kill me.”

“We’re not going to get caught,” Chase reassured her.

“How can you be so sure?”

“I’ll tell you what,” I said. “How about you stay here as lookout, okay? That way, if anything goes down, you can bolt. No permanent-record blemish.” Not that I was counting on anything going down. I was pretty sure Mom would kill me, too, if she found out what I was up to.

Sam looked from Chase to me. “Okay, I’ll be lookout. But I’m not bolting. I wouldn’t do that to you.”

I gave her a quick hug. “Thanks.”

“Maybe I should stay here, too,” Kyle said, eyeing the school building.

I shot Kyle a look.

“Dude, I don’t think it’s safe to leave Sam here alone in the dark. Not after what happened to Nicky.”

While I had a feeling that Nicky had been specifically targeted and since Sam had no idea who was selling the cheats, she was pretty safe, what he said made a certain sense. And, honestly, it was kinda cute that he was worried about her.

“I guess that leaves you and me, Hart,” Chase said. “Ready to break and enter?”

I gulped down a small amount of fear, said good-bye to my own stain-free permanent record, and nodded. “Ready.”

Step one was simple: get inside the school. Chase and I tried the obvious route first, but as we’d expected, the front doors to the school were firmly locked in place. Lucky for us, there were about a billion other entrances. We circled the main building, coming to the back quad, where the ancient Roman part of our school met up with the modern math and science wings. Unfortunately, the first couple of doors I tried in the math wing were locked, too.

“So, your plan is to try every door on campus on the off chance someone forgot to lock one?” Chase asked.

I paused, hand on doorknob number five (locked). He had a point. Our whole purpose here was to prove that it was so easy to break into the school and steal the answers that anyone could do it. Most likely our cheat stealer hadn’t checked every door, hoping that one was open. Most likely he or she had a more foolproof way in.

Like picking a lock.

Luckily, contrary to what Chase might think, I was prepared for that.

I slipped my hand into my sweatshirt pocket, coming out with a hairpin I’d plucked from Mom’s room. I stuck the end in my mouth, biting off the rubber tip, then did my best to straighten it out into one long piece of metal.

“What’s that?”

“Hairpin.”

Chase raised an eyebrow as I stuck it into the keyhole at the front of the handle. “You done this before?” he asked.

“Nope.”

“You know what you’re doing?”

“I watched a YouTube video this afternoon.”

I thought I heard Chase snort behind me, but I was too intent on the keyhole to turn around. Instead, I wiggled the piece of metal up and down, side to side, slowly moving it in any direction I could just like the guy on the video. Too bad I had no idea what I was feeling for. And, unlike the guy on the video, five minutes later the door was still locked.

“Got a plan B?” Chase asked.

I blew a big breath of air up toward my hair, straightening and looking around the campus.

Truth was I did not. I spent most of my life trying to get out of school. Breaking in had never been high on my list of priorities.

I looked up at the main building. This part of the school was two stories high, though the east and west wings, which had been added on later, were only one story. Behind us sat rows of portables. In all, there were over a hundred classrooms, most dark at this hour.

Most.

As I squinted across the quad, I noticed a light in one of the windows of the science wing.

“There,” I said pointing. “Someone’s inside.”

Chase spun around. “I hate to break it to you, but it’s probably just the custodian.”

I bit my lip, watching as a figure moved in the room. Right. The custodian. Who was in there mopping experiments gone wrong off the floors, wiping notes off the whiteboards, and taking out the trash. And who probably had a set of keys to get in . . .

“That’s it! I know how the cheat thief got in!”

Chase raised another eyebrow at me. “Don’t tell me you think the custodian is stealing the answers?”

I shook my head. “No. But he has to get in and out of the building, right? To take out the trash and stuff?”

Chase nodded. “I guess.”

“So when he goes in and out, you think he pauses to lock the door behind him each time?”

A tiny grin played at the corners of Chase’s mouth. “I doubt it. He probably just locks everything up when he’s done.”

“Which means some of the doors must be unlocked while he’s working.”

“Let’s go check it out.”

We quickly crossed the quad, staying out of the line of any outdoor lighting, then moved close to the building as we approached the science wing. I ducked under the window with the light on, peeking just my eyes and nose above.

As we’d guessed, a custodian was in the room. Big guy with buzz-cut hair and a pair of coveralls on. He had earbuds in, his mouth moving to the music as he dipped a gray mop into a bucket and swished it along the floor.

Chase tapped me on the shoulder, then pointed to the left. Two windows down there was a door. I nodded, following him as he crouch-walked toward it.

He stuck a finger to his lips in a silencing motion as he slowly tried turning the knob.

What do you know? It opened easily in his hand.

I did a silent
yes
and a fist pump as we slipped inside.

The hallways were eerily quiet, the only sound a rhythmic ticking of a clock encased in a protective metal cage on the wall. I blinked, letting my eyes adjust to the dark as I got my bearings. The good news was that we were inside the school. The bad news was that Mr. Tipkins’s room was in the math wing, on the opposite side of the building.

Chase led the way as we slowly walked the length of the corridor and turned right at the end of the hall to enter the main building.

It was even darker here, the ancient architecture not affording much natural light as all the windows were high and tiny. I squinted through the darkness, doing my best to make out familiar shapes. A water fountain outside Spanish. A bank of lockers at the end of the hall. A poster about the upcoming homecoming dance on the wall next to the trophy case.

I put my hands out in front of me, feeling my way through the building as I followed Chase.

Ten dark, stumbling minutes later (I know because I pulled my cell out to light the way as we rounded the corner to the math wing), we finally hit the door to Mr. Tipkins’s classroom.

Where we encountered another lock.

“Still got that hairpin?” Chase asked.

I nodded, pulling it from my pocket and sticking it into the keyhole.

But fifteen minutes later, I was still wiggling the hairpin to no avail. And I was beginning to seriously rethink our theory about how the cheats had gotten out. Okay, it was possible that the thief was a lot better at picking locks than I was. It was possible he had better tools than a bent hairclip from his mom. But it was growing less likely by the second.

I almost jumped out of my skin when my phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out to see a text from Sam.

whats taking so long?

locked door, I responded.

hurry. cold out here.

I slipped my phone back in my pocket and found Chase leaning over to scrutinize the lock.

“You know, maybe we don’t have to pick it,” he said.

I raised an eyebrow his way. “What do you mean?”

“Well, the locks aren’t state of the art. In theory, all we have to do is slip something between the latch in the handle and doorframe plate, and it should slide open.”

I blinked at him.

“I watched a couple YouTube videos, too,” he confessed. “Got a credit card?”

I shook my head. “My allowance is twenty bucks a month. I’m not exactly on Visa’s list of high rollers.”

Chase shrugged, then reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. He slipped his driver’s license from its slot and turned to the lock.

“Here goes nothing,” he said under his breath as he slipped just the edge of the card into the doorjamb. It went in easily enough, so he slipped the rest of its length in, holding on to a small edge. Then he slowly slid the card lower, angling it in toward the door. He turned the handle and pushed.

Only nothing happened.

“Admit it,” I said, blowing out a breath of frustration. “We have lock pick fail.”

“Patience, grasshopper.” He tried again, sliding the card up and down, trying to finesse the latch from its housing.

Grasshopper was just about to give up and go back to her cold friends outside when I heard a click and Chase’s license slid lower than before. He froze, then slowly pushed on the door.

And it opened.

He turned to me, and in the dark I could see his teeth gleaming brilliant white as a grin spread across his face.

I should never have doubted him.

“Ladies first,” he said, holding the door open for me.

“Gracias.”
I stepped into the room and pulled out my cell phone to provide some illumination. Maybe it was the dim lighting making my other senses stronger, but the room smelled different in the empty darkness. Like pungent dry-erase markers and mildewing books. I took in shallow breaths, quickly going to the file cabinet Mr. Tipkins had told me held all his test copies.

I pulled at the cabinet door. Locked.

I was getting really tired of all the locks.

Chase pulled out our trusty hairpin again and went to work, jiggling it into the hole.

I wandered over to Mr. Tipkins’s desk, feeling like I was in forbidden territory. The top was littered with papers, some marked with grades at the top in red pen, others still waiting to be given sentencing. I couldn’t help peeking a little. I shifted the papers, looking at the graded ones. It looked like Chris Fret was failing this class, too (poor guy!), but amazingly, Connor had gotten an A on the last test. Which immediately put him higher on my list of suspects. He hadn’t struck me as the brainiac type.

I moved on to Mr. Tipkins’s desk drawers, trying the top one first. It opened easily (no way, something in this school was actually unlocked?), revealing a stash of pens (mostly red), paper clips, some gum, and a couple pieces of hard candy that looked like they might have been there since the school was built. I moved on to the next drawer down, finding a stapler, hole punch, and a couple more boxes of pens. The third drawer held a paper bag that, if the stench was any indication, contained a long-forgotten lunch. I quickly shut it, trying not to breathe too deeply, and pulled open the bottom drawer. Inside were more student papers, crinkled and unorganized. I shuffled a couple (wondering who else in the class might be getting grades that were
too
good) and saw a flash of metal at the bottom of the drawer.

A key.

“Chase?”

“Just a minute. I’ve almost got it open.”

“Think this would help?”

“What?” Chase spun around.

I held the key out to him on one finger, unable to help the grin I could feel spreading across my face.

“Where did you find that?”

“Desk drawer.”

He grunted like he wished he’d thought of looking there himself, then grabbed the key. Which, I was happy to see, slipped easily into the lock.

Chase turned it, and the file drawer slid open, revealing every test that Mr. Tipkins had ever given.

“Bingo,” I said. “Anyone could have broken in here.”

Chase nodded, handing the key back to me. “Anyone with YouTube and a credit card.”

“Or a driver’s license,” I pointed out, putting the key back in Tipkins’s drawer.

My phone buzzed in my pocket again.

“Geez, hold your horses, Sam,” I muttered as I pulled it out.

Only this text wasn’t complaining about the cold weather.

someone coming!

Uh-oh.

“Uh, Chase? Sam says someone is—”

But I didn’t get to finish as Chase grabbed me by the arm, pulling me to the floor. “Someone’s coming,” he whispered.

Sure enough, the light in the hallway outside flipped on, and I heard the click of footsteps echoing through the corridor.

And stopping just outside Mr. Tipkins’s classroom.