WinWin: Her dad died PainAuChoCOLEat: Oh man.
WinWin: You didn't know? It was all over the news.
PainAuChoCOLEat: I had no idea. What happened?
WinWin: Some kind of freak accident WinWin: It sucks PainAuChoCOLEat: I'm sure you're helping a lot.
WinWin: I'm trying to WinWin: But it would be easier to be there for her if I didn't have to worry about you and Gavin ha.s.sling Greg WinWin: Maybe you two can lay off him PainAuChoCOLEat: I didn't realize we were laying on Greg in the first place.
WinWin: You know what I mean PainAuChoCOLEat: Actually I don't. He's the one who got up in Gavin's face after Drick's cla.s.s. And then again when he and Scott threatened me in the library.
WinWin: He told me you threatened him PainAuChoCOLEat: If you believe that, then you were wrong and I really have changed.
PainAuChoCOLEat: And you might want to rethink Harvard/Yale/Princeton/all Ivies/wannabe Ivies/college in general.
PainAuChoCOLEat: Because Greg has dumbed you down.
WinWin: I don't know what to say.
PainAuChoCOLEat: You might start with "sorry."
Gavin arrived and looked over Cole's shoulder as he gave the conversation a thorough autopsy, wondering whether a breakthrough with Winnie had been possible in the first place or it had been DOA.
"Seems pretty clear to me," Gavin said as he flopped onto the bed, "and last week my Lit teacher asked me if English is my second language. Winnie is over you."
"But it's obvious Greg lied to her. She's totally going to body check him on that. And look right here. Where she talks about my baking? Doesn't that mean she's interested and she still thinks about me?"
Gavin was examining the Wikipedia pages Cole had brought home from the library. "It's sleight of hand. She's like a pediatrician distracting a kid with a hand puppet before she stabs him full of MMR. All she cares about is getting you to leave her crybaby boyfriend alone. Which you should not do," he added, waving the trove, "because you can use this stuff to bury him. It proves he lifted half his essay right out of Wikipedia."
Cole bit his fingernail. "Drick will figure it out eventually. Won't he?"
Gavin scoffed. "Drick grades by taper light and calculates his bills with an abacus. Do you really think he can operate plagiarism-checking software? Greg would never try this with another teacher because another teacher would catch on, but not Drick. You have to bring it to his attention, and you have to do it with sirens and strobe lights."
"If you think I'm going to rat on him, forget it. The soccer boosters would bury me in b.a.l.l.s."
Gavin was offended. "I would never advise you to tattle! I'm your best friend. You think I'd allow you to defile yourself? And me by a.s.sociation? You don't need to clue in Drick face-to-face. This is the twenty-first century. You can do your whistle-blowing all anonymous-source-like."
So deeply ingrained was Cole's sense of decorum that it hadn't even occurred to him that he could simply provide Mr. Drick with the evidence unsigned.
"But that way is for wusses," added Gavin. "Besides, a bunker buster like this deserves to be dropped with flair. There's a way to trigger maximum carnage for Greg with minimum repercussions for us. I just haven't figured it out yet."
Cole braced himself. He knew that if he spoke his mind now, he could never unspeak it. Gavin wouldn't let him. "Maybe I already have."
Gavin was intrigued. "Let's hear it."
"Look at this page I printed out. It lists all the Wikipedia RSS feeds Greg subscribes to."
"So?"
"So he's a thorough little copycat. He wants his work to be up-to-date with all the latest information on crazy killers. With this setup, he gets an e-mail every time somebody uploads a change to the entry. Well, in two days he'll be giving his oral report. Why not make sure he delivers the most current information?"
"You want to set a trap?"
"It'd be a trap of his own making. All we have to do is supply him with some fool's-gold facts to copy and paste into his report and let him hang himself."
Gavin had to give Cole his due. It was a tidy plan. "The scheme is strong with this one."
Cole hesitated. "It isn't too drastic?" he hemmed. "I keep thinking I should just let it go," he hawed. Gavin rolled his eyes. "Besides, Winnie asked me to keep the peace for Andrea's sake." Cole began to deliver the news about her father's death, but Gavin cut him off.
"Have you been living under a cookie sheet? The guy's been dead a month. He got flamed on Wikipedia and had a nervous breakdown on live TV. Then out of nowhere he got his head caved in by a falling light or something. Andrea will get over it. Look, she's already tweeting about going to the winter formal."
"Since when do you follow Andrea?"
"Not follow. Hate follow. It got juicy when her dad did a striptease on the local news. Here, look at this." Gavin displayed her tweet on his phone.
AndreaHenderson.
@WinWin @TruffleShuffle: Got my ticket to the formal!!! Cant wait 2 go w u guyz!!
"Sounds pretty grief-stricken to me," said Gavin. "Though I could see her being moved to tears if she were forced to share a table with Winnie's former ex-turned-soon-to-be-current boyfriend one Mr. Cole Redeker. Think about it." Cole did. "How long will it take Winnie to drop Greg and come running back to you once she finds out she's linked to a cheater?" Now he had Cole's attention. "Quicker than I can finish this sente-"
ABOUT THE AUTHOR.
Anna Davies is a writer and editor whose work has been featured in The New York Times, Cosmo, Elle, Glamour, and others. She spends far too much time on Facebook.
Copyright 2013 by Anna Davies.
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