Hmm. Not good.
I put the sign-in tablet back where I found it just as Jonesy returns with the notebook and an industrial-sized bottle of Tylenol, explaining, “For my pounding headache. A little too much game-day celebration last night.”
“I know you only stock these notebooks for teachers. I can pay you for it,” I say, handing him a five-dollar bill, but for the second time in the past ten minutes, my money is rejected.
“Don’t worry about it. Just don’t tell anyone or I’ll have fifty kids up in here asking for stuff. And watch it with the Jonesy. Only my friends call me that, and the Carlisle Official Handbook says you can’t be my friend. I’m still in my new-hire probationary period; gotta keep up appearances, Mr. Smith.”
“Right, Mr. Jones.”
I thank him for the notebook just as the bell rings. I head for my locker, thinking about what I saw in the visitor’s log. Or what I didn’t see. I don’t like the fact that we’ve had no visitors since fifth period—some doctor to meet with his kid’s teacher—and yet the door has been propped open for nearly an hour. It was probably a student who went out front to sneak a contraband smoke break, but why didn’t the alarm go off after thirty seconds? The folded paper kept the door from latching closed, but maybe not open enough to trigger the alarm. And about that paper—I have this nagging feeling that I’ve seen the design before. Not sure why the image should make me feel uneasy, but it does. It’s probably the hacker in me—I can’t stand an unsolved puzzle.
After I fight with my always-stuck locker door and grab my backup glasses from the shelf, I see Bunker passing by and nod at him. Katie also goes by but I do nothing, mostly because she hasn’t even looked in my direction. She knows exactly where my locker is, so she has to be working hard not to notice me. Again, not that I blame her.
Then, I see the scary blond freshman coming down the hall and there’s no question whether she notices me. She slows her pace as she nears my locker. If she comes over, I’m going out of nerd-boy character long enough to tell her I’m not interested and to back the hell off. In fact, I’ll tell her exactly what I think about her whole Twitter game. But she continues past me, calling out, “Hey there, prettyboy,” as she lowers her eyeglasses a little, winking at me over them. “Your picture in the student directory didn’t do you justice, so I did.”
Wait—aren’t those my glasses?
I’m about to chase her down when Mr. Velasquez, my chem teacher, ushers me into his classroom, saying, “Don’t want to be late, do we, Mr. Smith?” forcing me to deal with my number-one fan later.
When I walk into the room, I see Carlisle’s resident douche—and my fifth possible suspect—at the lab table in back of the class. I always sit in the last row, and I always sit at that table.
“Excuse me, but would you mind going to your own table now?” I ask him as pleasantly as possible. “Class is about to start.”
“As a matter of fact, I do mind. Think I’ll sit here today.”
Being able to seriously jack up a dude doesn’t quite go with the nerdy persona I’ve created, but if anyone ever makes me go out of character in the name of a justified ass-kicking, it will be Duke Duncan. Nice gets you nowhere with this guy.
“Outta my seat,” I tell him, hoping a stern voice will be enough.
Duncan looks incredulous, as though I’ve asked him to do something impossible, like be a decent human being. “Make me.”
Oh, don’t tempt me. But I make like Gandhi and try the peaceful approach. “Will this do it?” I hand him the bill Jonesy just refused.
“That’ll do just fine,” he says, grabbing the fiver. Finally, someone who doesn’t turn down my money, even mad-rich Duncan. “But I would have done it for free. Watching your expression when you see this would have been payment enough, considering your hate of any and all social interaction.”
Duncan’s a douche in English Lit and German, too, where I’m also his favorite target despite my efforts to avoid him. He’s right about me keeping a low profile, but in his case, my aversion is to him specifically.
“See what?” I ask, not able to help myself.
Duncan gets out of my seat as he hands me his phone, where I see the same photo Bunker showed me this morning.
“Yeah, I already know about that,” I say, handing it back to him.
“No, take a closer look,” Duncan instructs. “Scroll down some.”
I do, and see that the photo is now tagged #Prettyboy. I scroll down some more and see a bunch of comments like:
Oooh, he really is a #Prettyboy. Grabby hands!
Yum, #Prettyboy. Want.
Does anyone have #Prettyboy’s number?
Forget his number. I need #Prettyboy’s address.
But wait, there’s more. There are now 5,083 retweets. How is that even possible since first period? I scroll up the page, terrified to look but knowing I have to. And yes, it gets worse. Much worse.
“Now that’s the look I would have given up your seat for, no charge,” Duncan says, grabbing his phone before I can drop it as I nearly go into shock. Maybe I should have reported this to Rogers after all. Maybe now it’s time to panic.
#Prettyboy is trending in Denver.
CHAPTER 6
No matter how trivial his boss thinks the mission, or how exclusive the boarding school he’s enrolled in, or how bucolic the campus, having his cover blown is the absolute worst thing that can happen to a covert operative.
The only thing keeping me from a complete and total meltdown right now is the fact that the hacker doesn’t know who I am, what I look like, or that I’m at Carlisle. I’m hoping whoever he works for doesn’t either, and that if they do, they’re too busy selling weapons to terrorists or laundering cyber-stolen money through the Cayman Islands to check their Twitter timelines, even if I can’t stop checking the rapidly rising number of #Prettyboy tweets.
Unless the hacker really is Duncan, and he’s known all along who I am, and he got that girl to take the photo and he’s behind my picture going viral so quickly and … Okay, time to slow my roll. None of that makes sense. Even if Duncan is the hacker, he obviously knows who I am, and doesn’t need to out me or start a Twitter campaign to reveal my identity to his employers. I’m just getting way paranoid, even for a spy.
Still, I need to get rid of that photo ASAP. I won’t be able to do that while sitting in a chem lab for the next fifty minutes, pretending I care about the properties of matter while each retweet further compromises my search, not to mention my safety. I decide to skip out before the second bell rings and head for the door, but Mr. Velasquez closes off my escape route.
“Going somewhere, Mr. Smith?”
“No, sir,” I say, slipping my phone into my pocket. Don’t need to give him a reason to take it from me. I’ll need it during class to clandestinely hack Twitter and take down Blondie’s tweet and the thousands of retweets it has generated. It won’t fix the problem, but it’ll buy me time while I come up with a better solution. That’s one of many reasons I prefer a back-row seat. Stealth operations.
But Mr. Velasquez has other plans.
“Good, because you won’t want to miss the spectacular treat I have in store today, and you’re going to be my assistant since you’re already up here.”
“Um, but Mr. Velasquez, I really need—”
“—to find out what you get when you combine red phosphorus, sulfur, and potassium chlorate? Unless you already know the answer, Mr. Smith, you’ll remain right here with me.”
“You get fire, sir. Those are the three main elements that make up the head on a matchstick,” I say, before heading to my lab table.
“Not so fast, Mr. Smith.”
“But I knew the answer. You said—”