Social Suicide (5 page)

IT WASN’T UNTIL LAST PERIOD WAS OVER THAT I GOT A
chance to fill Sam in on what Quinn had said. She was on the west field again, at lacrosse practice. Only today, I noticed as I made my way toward the bleachers, the team had a whole different vibe. While Sydney and Quinn being suspended might have dampened their hopes of making nationals this year, Sydney’s death had put a virtual black cloud over the team, seeming to cause the girls to run just a little slower, the coach to yell just a little softer, and the energy level to fall several enthusiasm notches down the spirit scale. On the upside, Sam was only two yards behind all the other players today instead of three.

I waited until the coach blew her whistle, signaling a water break, before hailing Sam over.

“Hey,” she said, panting as she jogged toward me. “I think I’m getting the hang of this.” She leaned on her stick, taking in deep breaths. “I almost touched the ball once today.”

“Awesome!” I had to hand it to her—she was optimistic if nothing else. Quickly I filled her in on Chase’s and my interview with Quinn.

“So do you think she did it?” Sam asked when I was finished.

I shook my head. “Not sure. Her alibi seems solid enough, but I still like her on motive. Being ratted out to the vice P is a pretty big thing to forgive.”

Sam nodded. “True.”

“But,” I hedged, “Chase has a point about the test answers. It’s just as likely Sydney knew something about who was selling them and the guy killed her to avoid exposure.”

“So you’re going to the football game tonight to find him?”

I nodded, then replayed the plan Chase and I had concocted in the car as we’d driven back from Quinn’s house. It was pretty simple, really. We’d wait until the game started, then hide out where we could watch the mascot room. As soon as the cheat seller showed up to collect his cash and drop off that week’s answers, we’d catch him.

“Wait,” Sam said when I’d finished. “You and Chase are going?”

“Yeah.”

“As in together?”

“Well, kinda . . .”

“As in you’re going to the football game together?”

“I’m not really sure if—”

“Ohmigod. Did Chase ask you out?”

“No!” I made a “pft” sound through my teeth. “God no. We’re going to the game to catch the cheater. It’s a stakeout. That’s it.”

“But he did ask you to go with him, right?”

I pursed my lips together, trying to remember what he’d said. “Well, yeah. But I’m sure he didn’t mean
with him
with him.”

“Tell me the exact words he used,” Sam ordered, leaning forward on her stick.

“He said, ‘Want to go to the football game with me?’”

Sam threw her hands up. “That’s it. He asked you out. On a date.”

I shook my head. “I really don’t think he meant it like that.”

“Are you sure?” Sam narrowed her eyes at me.

“Yes. No. I . . . I don’t know! He said it, and he winked at me.”

“Whoa!” Sam dropped her stick, putting both hands up. “You didn’t mention a wink. You never said anything about a wink!”

“Why? What’s the wink mean?” I asked, starting to get a little nervous.

“Ohmigod, Hartley. He totally fluffin’ asked you out.”

“No.” I shook my head. “Absolutely not.” I paused. “I mean, I don’t think he did.”

“As soon as practice is over, we’re getting you home and dressed to kill just in case.”

I rolled my eyes. “This is so not like that, Sam.”

“Yeah, well, better safe than sorry.”

An hour later, the entire contents of my closet were strewn out on my bed, and I was beginning to feel sorry I’d ever agreed to let Sam help me play it safe.

She held up a pair of jeans and a tank top with a sparkly butterfly on the front.

“The jeans say casual, but the top says flirty.”

“I’m not sure about flirty—” I started, but Sam ran right over me. She was in her element, in the zone.

And I was in serious trouble.

“But see, this skirt,” she said, holding up a white denim mini, “says flirty, and if you pair it with this pink Henley,” she added, holding up the button-top shirt, “it says casual, yet feminine, too.”

“I like casual,” I said, hanging on that word.

“On the other hand,” Sam said, dropping the outfit in a heap on my floor as she grabbed another pair of hangers. “This tube dress totally says sophisticated, and if you pair it with this denim jacket and cowboy boots, it says chic with an edge.”

I rolled my eyes. My clothes were going to be doing a lot of talking tonight.

“Sam, the game starts in half an hour. Can we please just pick something?”

Her eyes ping-ponged between the casual-flirty and the flirty-casual outfits before she finally shoved the tube dress at me. “We’re going edgy chic. And I think I can glam your makeup just enough to pull this off.”

“Wait—makeup?” I wore a little mascara on a daily basis and had a tube of pink lip gloss conveniently tucked in my book bag, but that was about it.

Sam must have read my mind as she waved me off. “Don’t worry. I have an emergency touch-up kit in my backpack. We’ll have you looking date ready in no time.”

Somehow that did little to relieve my worry.

Worry that was well-founded as, by the time Sam was done with me, I was casual-chic-flirty, my makeup was edgy-sophisticated-glam, and my nerves were stretched-to-their-limit raw.

Not to mention that my heels (I’d drawn the line at cowboy boots) were Mom-will-never-approve high.

I slowly walked downstairs, Sam a step behind me. Mom was at the kitchen table, directly in the line of sight of the front door. She had her laptop out again, her eyes intent on the screen as she scrolled with her right hand.

“Too tall,” she muttered to herself. Some more scrolling. “Too skinny.” Scrolling again. Then Mom made a disgusted face. “Uh, too . . . hairy.”

Mental face palm. Mom was on Match again.

I took a tentative step forward.

She didn’t look up.

I tiptoed down the rest of the stairs, one eye on Mom, one eye on the door.

If she heard me, she didn’t register it.

Two feet from the front door, I took a deep breath and made a break for it.

“ByeMomgoingtothefootballgameseeyalater,” I quickly said as I thrust the front door open.

“Have fun,” she called. Her gaze never left the computer screen.

I had a bad feeling a Match intervention was going to be needed at some point.

Herbert Hoover High home games are total community events. Our school is set smack in the middle of San Jose, one of the largest cities in California and quickly filling with enough people to rival both Los Angeles and San Diego in population. Which means that San Jose tends to divide itself into smaller communities within the larger city, each section retaining its own small-town feel: Willow Glen in the north, Cambrian just south of that, Almaden Valley farther south, and our little section, Blossom Grove, nestled up against the Santa Cruz Mountains—where Friday nights you were either tucked in at home watching a Netflix or at the football game.

Honestly, most of the time I was more of a Netflix girl. School was a place I spent six hours a day, five days a week, usually under duress. I wasn’t really that into spending extra time there. But, I realized as I navigated the sea of people crowding the parking lot pre-game, I was in the minority.

Guys in HHH Windbreakers and girls in hoodies and Uggs gathered in groups, giggling, yelling, hailing friends, all converging on the stadium, which was lit up like daylight against the growing dusk outside. Just beyond the entrance gate were hot dog and nacho carts, a long line trailing behind them that spanned the length of the fence. The smell was intoxicating, reminding me that in Sam’s flurry of clothes, I hadn’t taken time to eat dinner. I could hear cheers from inside the stadium signaling that cheerleaders were on the field throwing their high kicks and oozing school spirit. The game that night was against Saratoga High, a longtime rival of HHH, which meant the administration was on high prank alert and the student body was on high party alert.

“Hartley?” I heard someone call my name. “Over here.”

I looked up to see Chase hailing me from the other side of the nacho cart. He was in the same clothes he’d worn to school earlier—jeans and black boots, though he’d covered up his T-shirt with a black hoodie that had a surfer on the front. He already had a cardboard container of nachos in his hands, steam rising from the gooey cheese. I quickly jogged over to him.

“Hey. Sorry I’m late. I had to walk,” I said by way of greeting.

He paused, then cocked his head at me. “You look different.”

Immediately I felt myself blushing. “Nope, I’m the same.”

Chase shook his head. “No. Something’s different.” He squinted through the dusk. “Are you wearing eye shadow?”

“No!” I ducked my head again, this time rubbing at my upper lids to get some of the gunk off. “I’m just . . . it’s the lighting. It’s dark out here.”

Chase grinned. “Well, I like it. You look good in the dark.”

My cheeks heated even further, and I wasn’t even sure if that was a compliment or not. “Thanks,” I mumbled, then grabbed a nacho and shoved it into my mouth to cover my embarrassment.

Chase grinned even wider. “Gee, help yourself.”

I did, grabbing another nacho and totally ignoring his sarcasm.

“The game’s about to start,” Chase said, nodding toward the stadium, where the cheers were rising to an emotional high. “We should get in place before the cheat guy shows up.”

I nodded, grabbing one more nacho before following him around the back out of the stadium and to the right, where a line of portable classrooms sat.

While every politician that ever runs for office in California uses improving schools as a platform, the truth is that our schools are perpetually broke. Meaning that classrooms are busting at the seams, and the overflow is usually housed in portable units parked in rows on any available space of land near the school. Though the word
portable
is a bit of a lie because they never actually move. In fact, my mom took geometry class in the very same “temporary” portable that I had it in with Mrs. Britton sophomore year.

The row of portables outside the stadium housed the extracurricular programs that lacked funding for real classrooms, including the pottery room, the shared room for glee club and choir, and the room that housed the extra football uniforms and the mascot’s costume.

It wasn’t at every school that mascots got their own changing rooms, but in our case he did. Mostly because our mascot was the Herbert Hoover High donkey, who everyone in the area fondly referred to as the HHH jackass. Last year, our football team thought it would be fun to sneak into the jackass’s locker and switch out the contents of his water bottle for vodka right before the last home game. And it might actually have been funny if the guy in the jackass suit hadn’t downed the beverage and vomited all over the field. Then, in a drunken stupor that left the administration red-faced and the fans cheering harder than on any other night of the year, he’d ended up braying at the cheerleaders and knocking the tuba player in the marching band over on his butt.

After that, the HHH donkey always changed in his own room.

Outside of which was a towering palm tree with a large gray rock sitting at its base.

I elbowed Chase in the ribs and pointed. “That must be where he does the drop.”

Chase nodded, then quickly looked around. To our right was the choir portable, to the left a line of bushes separating us from the condo complex next door. “We’ll hide behind the bushes,” he decreed.

Before I could protest that my heels weren’t all that practical for stomping through foliage, he’d already slipped between two hedges and disappeared.

Fab. Left with little choice, I followed, ducking as the brush grabbed at my hair, leaving little wet deposits on my denim jacket. Behind the bush, I found Chase squatting in the dirt. I bent my knees, lowering myself beside him while trying not to let my tube dress ride too far up my thighs.

Chase glanced over. “Nice dress,” he whispered, his gaze lingering on the rising hem just a little too long.

I tugged it down over my knees, stretching it in a way that I’m sure would have had Sam cringing. “Thanks,” I mumbled.

We sat in silence a few more minutes, crouching in the dirt. I felt my feet starting to fall asleep as the strap of my heels cut into my ankles.

Then Chase leaned in close. “Hey.”

“What?” I whispered back.

“Are you wearing perfume?”

I swallowed hard. “No,” I lied. “Why would I be wearing perfume?”

Chase shrugged. “Maybe you’re going out later?”

I gritted my teeth together. Sam was so going to hear about this.

Chase sniffed the air. “You sure you’re not wearing anything? It smells like jasmine.”

“Must be the bushes,” I said.

Chase shifted. “I don’t think there are any jasmine bushes around here. Don’t they have flowers?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Yeah, little white ones, right? There are definitely no little white flowers on these bushes.”

“Shhh!” I said. “Someone’s coming.”

Which, thankfully, was true.

Through the shadows, I saw a guy walking toward the mascot room, head down, hands in pockets, the hood of his sweatshirt pulled up, obscuring his face. Nothing about his clothes stood out as distinguishable from any of the other hundreds of students at the game tonight.

“He’s early,” Chase whispered. “It’s not halftime yet.”

“Maybe he needs the cash now. Maybe he wants nachos,” I guessed, feeling my own stomach growl.

Chase and I watched as the figure paused outside the mascot room. He looked over both shoulders, then quickly leaned down in front of the rock by the palm tree.

“He’s picking up the cash!” I whispered. “Let’s go!”

Chase popped up from the ground, crashing through the bushes toward the figure. I followed a step behind, feeling my heels sink into the dirt as I tried not to step on anything too squishy or gross. Mud spattered up onto my legs as I emerged from the brush, tripping over a root on the ground.