Wickedpedia Page 17

  “Well my failure would be in letting my deep and abiding love for my best friend blind me from seeing that he’d gone on a killing spree. I tell the story of how I became increasingly concerned about your mental well-being after Winnie dumped you for Josh. I describe your behavior becoming more and more erratic, but that I chalk it up to stress over grades and applying to college. I mention stumbling onto a strange Wikipedia page on your computer one day. It was an entry for a classmate of ours, Scott Dare, and it recounted his gruesome death — only he wasn’t dead … yet. That would soon change. I delve into my investigation, tracking down other Wikipedia pages, matching them to still more suspicious deaths, and realizing all the pages were written before the deaths even occurred, and all of them written by the same person — my best friend, Cole Redeker! I recount the pain and horror of making this discovery, the tears I shed trying to get him to turn himself in … and the awful day when he turned on me.”

  Gavin held the knife up.

  “I describe in painstaking detail fighting desperately for my life against a guy who killed a classmate, a teacher, his own girlfriend, her new boyfriend — oh, did I forget to mention I put Josh out of his misery before the party? I put Josh out of his misery before the party. Plus one other … the fetching student reporter who had begun her own independent investigation of the run of blood.”

  “If you touch Lila, I swear to God, I’ll kill you,” Cole promised.

  “How very chilling, Cole. But I’m the one with the knife.”

  Cole pulled out the recorder. “True. But I’m the one with the confession.”

  Cole played back the last few moments of Gavin’s monologue and silently prayed to God for salvation — yes, he believed in God now and would continue to do so if only he got out of this alive, amen. Even in the limited light, Cole could see the color drain from Gavin’s face as his digitized voice came to a halt. “Wow.”

  “Yeah,” said Cole, edging backward toward the stairs, “wow. Pretty damning, don’t you think?”

  Gavin suddenly seemed unfazed. “No, I meant, ‘Wow, is that what I really sound like?’ I thought I had a deeper voice.”

  “I think you have other things to worry about rather than which part you’ll play in the prison choir.” Cole wasn’t going to let Gavin have all the good lines.

  “I’m not going to prison,” Gavin insisted, entertained by Cole’s silly certainty. “I’m going to college. A good college. Someplace where they reward independence and freewheelers! Oberlin, or Bard, or Sarah Lawrence! You, on the other hand, are going to die.”

  Gavin turned off his cell phone flashlight.

  The basement was swamped in black. Cole instinctively dropped to a crouch and balled himself tight, just as Gavin’s shins slammed into him. Cole felt Gavin somersault over and hit the concrete floor with a thwack. A skidding, clattering sound announced that the knife was up for grabs somewhere, but Cole opted not to linger and grope for it. Gavin was groaning very close by, and might regroup soon.

  Cole scrabbled backward until he bumped into the staircase, turned, and took the stairs on his stomach, crabbing up to the top.

  Below, Gavin chimed, “Wait! I didn’t get my Rice Krispies Treat!”

  Cole could not fathom why Gavin sounded so unconcerned about the prospect of imminent arrest, but he could not bring himself to care. He sprang out of the basement and into the party, which had only grown louder and more crowded in his absence. He turned around and threw the hatch back down, looking for a lock or a chair or a box, anything he could use to secure Gavin inside, but there were only dancers. Suddenly the hatch pressed up from within and Cole saw Gavin’s head begin to emerge. Holding the knife, he reached his hand out through the crack and stabbed at Cole’s foot. But Cole was faster.

  He raised his leg and stamped his foot down, flattening the hatch against the floor. Gavin’s arm was momentarily crushed between the hatch and the floor, and he pulled it back inside. Cole grabbed the nearest pair of students, yanked them over and stood them on the hatch, then jumped on top of the bar.

  The revelers nearest to him on the dance floor lifted their arms up and beckoned and bopped.

  Behind him, the dancers pitched as Gavin pushed on the hatch with all his might. Cole looked out onto the dance floor.

  There, in the center of the room, amidst the breeding ball of dancers and uplifted arms, was a girl in a plaid peacoat and train conductor’s cap. She was headed away from him in the direction of the exit. Cole cupped his mouth and screamed.

  “LILA!”

  She kept going, unable to hear him over the din.

  He risked a glance behind him. The hatch dancers were on their butts, knocked over. Gavin rose from the depths, knife at the ready.

  Cole chucked himself off the bar and sailed.

  And landed in a net of palms.

  The dancers cheered and conducted him away from the center of the room.

  Cole turned his head as he was wormed away and spied Gavin scaling the bar.

  As soon as Cole was within scrambling range of the door, he swept his legs out from behind him, kicking faces as he went.

  “Sorry!” he called back as he got his feet under him and bounced for the door.

  Outside, the early winter wind lashed at Cole’s face as he swept his eyes across the property. He caught a glimpse of the conductor’s cap as Lila rounded a corner, disappearing behind Benito’s.

  “Lila, wait!”

  Cole streaked through the clusters of students and swung around behind Benito’s, catching up to Lila just as she put her hand on the back door’s knob. Out of the corner of his eye Cole noticed that one of the glass windowpanes on the top half of the door was broken. Benito’s going to have a fit about that, he thought.

  Cole took Lila by the shoulder and turned her around.

  “Lila, we have to get out of —”

  The girl before him was dressed in Lila’s coat and cap, but she was not wearing Lila’s red coveralls. She did, however, wear a black eye patch over one eye.

  “My name isn’t Lila, Cole,” purred Andrea.

  A sharp pain glanced across the back of Cole’s head.

  Not again was his last thought before the nothingness took him.

  Cole came to amidst a screaming match.

  Whatever knocked him out this time could not have been as strong as either of the first two blows that concussed him. His bell still rung, but this time he had no trouble identifying the voices of those speaking.

  “I still don’t understand why you brought her here!” yelled Gavin.

  “What was I supposed to do with her?” Andrea shrieked. “Drag her unconscious through the party to your little lair in the basement? Don’t you think that might have been a little conspicuous?”

  A third voice made itself known in the form of a hitched sob.

  “Please let me go. Please.”

  Lila.

  Cole opened his eyes. His gaze landed first on a white piece of paper on a wall. Written on it in black marker were the words IF YOUR NAME ISN’T COLE YOU DON’T SIT HERE.

  Benito’s.

  “Could you not have put her in the trunk of your car? We have now officially broken into and entered Benito’s. Our fingerprints are everywhere. How are we going to explain this?”

  Something was very, very wrong with Cole.

  “I’m sure you’ll think of something,” prickled Andrea. “After all, you are the mad genius.”

  He was on his knees at the end of his booth, facing the table. His mouth was open and his chin jammed against the table’s lip. He could not move his head and his mind required one moment of clear thought to process why.

  “Now can we please get this over with?” harped Andrea. “Before someone catches on?”

  Cole’s tongue had been stretched from his mouth and laid flat on the table. A metal vise clamped down on the tip, immobilizing it against the table.

  Cole tried to scream. The sound was garbled and choked.

  “Lo
ok who’s decided to join us,” said Gavin.

  Lila cried out from the counter. “Cole, he has a knife!”

  Cole could just barely grab a glimpse of Lila in his peripheral vision. She was up on the counter, flat on her back, her hair fed into the gears of Benito’s manual pasta roller. It was bolted to the table. She clawed at her hair and tugged, trying to free herself.

  She was going nowhere, and neither was he.

  Gavin sidled up to Cole. “You know what my first order of business is going to be when you are dead and buried? I’m going to rip down that sign that I am forced to look at every time I sit down here. And a new sign is going up. IF YOUR NAME ISN’T GAVIN YOU DON’T SIT HERE.”

  “Any day now,” badgered Andrea. “I really want to go home and wash my hair and clean out my socket. My glass eye is coming tomorrow and I want to look good.”

  “We’ll be done in two shakes of a lamb’s tail,” said Gavin, turning to Cole. “Isn’t she great?” He rested the knife at Cole’s throat. “Now I know I said this wasn’t going to hurt….”

  Cole had two seconds to save his life, and two weapons at his disposal. Next to him, on the booth seat, was his bag of Rice Krispies Treats. He grabbed them and held them up to Gavin.

  “What’s this, dude?” asked Gavin. “A peace offering?”

  Cole found that he could manage some vowels without the use of his tongue. “Uh-huh.”

  Gavin twinkled. “Don’t mind if I do.” He reached in and pulled out a big, honking treat. “But I still gotta kill ya.”

  He opened his mouth and took a big bite.

  Cole reached into his pocket and slipped out the recorder, dialed it back a few minutes.

  “Man, this is delicious,” raved Gavin. “What is the world going to do without your stove-top sorcery?” He swallowed and took another bite as Cole hit PLAY.

  Cole’s voice drifted out of the recorder, and then Gavin’s. Andrea perked up.

  Cole: That was no bad batch of chronic dry eye medication. And she didn’t do it to herself on purpose. You spiked it, didn’t you?

  “What is that?” Andrea asked. Gavin froze.

  Gavin: She doesn’t need to know that.

  Gavin coughed as he reached for the recorder. Cole tossed it deeper into the booth.

  “Did YOU say that?” Andrea demanded.

  Cole: How could you blind your own girlfriend?

  Gavin crawled into the booth but Andrea leapt on top of him, beating his back.

  “I WANT TO HEAR IT! I WANT TO HEAR WHAT YOU DID TO ME!”

  “Fine,” Gavin wheezed, relinquishing the recorder. “Listen to all you want.”

  Andrea prized the recorder as Gavin’s confession unrolled.

  Gavin: Let’s be clear. She can still see out of one eye, and she’s not technically blind in the other eye because she doesn’t even have that eye anymore. The acid melted it clean away. Nothing but socket left there. So we’re not even approaching a Helen Keller situation. And I didn’t mean for her to lose her whole eye. I swiped the wrong kind of acid from chemistry. It was Diet-Coke-and-Mentos Day in class and I got a little distracted. Sue me.

  Andrea faced Gavin, crying from her one eye.

  “How could you?”

  “Easily,” Gavin cackled. “Just like this.” In one simple, casual gesture, he flicked his knife into her belly and drew it up to her sternum. Lila screamed and Andrea gurgled, toppling over. Organs flopped out from the wound, red-brown and steamy as she splatted on the floor. Her knife fell from her grasp and spun within Cole’s reach. Gavin coughed harder.

  “Cole, is this a new recipe?”

  “Uh-huh,” came Cole’s distorted response as he retrieved Andrea’s knife. “Kee hireen ith heeutt uhuh.”

  Gavin played the translation in his head, then squealed. “Peanut butter?”

  Cole lifted the knife to his tongue and cleared his mind’s eye, focusing on the technique he’d learned at a summer intensive cooking course. With one firm flick, he sliced the blade across the end of his tongue, severing just the very tip.

  Lila was struck silent as Cole rose to his feet as if on choppy seas. Blood cascaded down his chin as he pocketed his tongue and moved to cut Lila free of her tangled hair.

  Gavin blubbered on the floor. Peanut allergens paraded through his body, laying waste. One swollen hand scraped at his inflated throat, as if to tear a new airway. The other hand dug at his pocket, where Cole knew he kept an EpiPen. But his hand had become the size and shape of a foot. It would not fit.

  Cole freed Lila. “Your mouth,” she said. “Hospital? Hospital.” They turned to face Gavin. A whistle escaped his lips. Cole walked over and shoved his hand in Gavin’s pocket and held up the EpiPen. Gavin looked up at him, suffocated by his own throat. Cole broke the pen in half and dropped it on Gavin, then walked out with Lila, into the night.

  Cole Redeker

  From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

  * * *

  Cole Redeker is an American college student whose attempt to get even with a high school rival set off a chain reaction that resulted in a murder spree dubbed “The Wickedpedia Killings.”1 Redeker uncovered the identity of the Wickedpedia killer but nearly died, losing the tip of his tongue in the process. He declined acceptance to Harvard and Yale to purse a degree from the Culinary Institute of America, where he is thought to be the first prospective graduate to lack the ability to taste sweetness.

  1 See article on Gavin Peters.

  In his spare time, Redeker studies the German language.

  He drives a Kia.

  Chris Van Etten is a writer for the beloved television show General Hospital. He is also one third of David Van Etten, the writing team behind the Likely Story series.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available

  Copyright © 2014 by Chris Van Etten

  All rights reserved. Published by Point, an imprint of Scholastic Inc. SCHOLASTIC, POINT, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

  First edition, July 2014

  Front photo © fabbfoto / Flickr / Getty Images

  Death photo © sellingpix under license from Shutterstock.com

  e-ISBN 978-0-545-46953-1

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