Wickedpedia Page 2

  Cole examined the evidence: tears, and a vow to keep something secret from him. Together the pieces could form only one picture.

  Andrea was secretly in love with him.

  Gross.

  And absurd. Andrea hated Cole, and the feeling was mutual. This was not Hollywood hate, the obvious kind that meant they were fated to fall for each other. It was the real deal. Besides, among the few assumptions Cole felt reasonably confident making about girls was the hunch that one would never, ever express interest in her best friend’s ex.

  Cole sidled closer to the stack, squelching the misgiving that there was anything wrong with soaking up a private conversation. If they didn’t want to be overheard, they’d text.

  Suddenly a voice broke open the vacuum-sealed library air behind him. “Magst du Goethe?” Cole fell forward, startled, groping at the books before him for balance, only to shove them flapping through the stack right at Andrea’s and Winnie’s feet. They locked eyes on him through the gap. Cole caught sight of himself in their expressions and cringed: a perv in training. Andrea hurtled off, wailing. Winnie picked up a fallen book, glanced at the title and back at Cole, eyebrows in attack formation.

  “German poetry, Cole? Really?”

  Cole scrambled in vain for a response but the answer came from elsewhere. “Ja, danke,” said the owner of the voice that sent him sprawling in the first place. A dark-haired girl was reaching through the gap to pluck the book from Winnie’s grasp. “Deutsch Poesie ist mein Favorit. Und Sie?” Winnie merely puffed out a breath and walked away.

  Cole blinked. The girl before him wore red-and-white-striped knee-high socks, a black skirt, and a yellow cardigan over a shirt that ruffled limply at the neck. Her face was winged with dark eye shadow and her was hair pulled into two uneven rubber-banded pigtails. The overall effect was positively Dr. Seussian. On whether this particular instance was heartwarming Seussian or creepy Seussian, he was undecided. Then she spoke again.

  “Ich mag Faust. Eine Legende über Satan.”

  Creepy Seussian. Definitely.

  “Sorry,” Cole said, backing away slowly. “All I caught was ‘Satan.’ ”

  He pivoted and took off, leaving Cindy Lou Who-the-Heck-Is-She to gesundheit by herself.

  Winnie had vanished. The bell rang and Cole returned to the study carrel for his things only to find Josh and Scott waiting for him. Cole took care to avoid eye contact, remembering a nature program in which a field biologist urged the audience to never, ever look a primate in the peepers.

  “Something I can do for you guys?” Cole asked in what he hoped was a casual, carefree tone.

  “Did I or did I not tell you to stay away from Winnie?” asked Josh.

  Cole remembered advising Gavin not to provoke Josh. He also remembered Gavin saying he had to, because Cole didn’t have the nerve to do it himself. Cole suited up. “You did not. You told me to keep my hands off your stuff. Is that what Winnie is to you? Stuff?”

  Josh’s nostrils flared and he swung tentatively at Cole’s books, as though to send them spilling to the floor. But he lacked commitment; the pile only moved a couple of inches toward the lip of the table. He was miscast in the role of Bully.

  “Do you want to give it a second try?” Cole offered.

  Josh may have still been learning how to throw his weight around, but Scott was a master, and eager to set an example. “You know that jerky little kid in everybody’s family?” Scott asked. “The loud cousin who comes over to your house on holidays and gets his cruddy fingerprints on your comics and breaks your PS3 before he’s even walked in the door?”

  Cole could feel a fight-or-flight decision swiftly approaching. He looked for the door.

  “Then he sees your dog. And all the pooch wants to do is sleep. But this kid won’t let him, chases him all over the house. And your dog knows he’s just a kid. But there’s only so much crap he can take from a snot-nosed brat who wants to ride him like he’s a horse. So you warn him. You tell him to leave the dog alone. How would he like it if you pulled his tail? But this kid doesn’t listen. So when the dog finally sinks his teeth into the little bugger’s apple cheeks, part of you feels sorry for him ’cause he’s gonna have that scar for the rest of his life. But the rest of you is glad. He deserved what he got.” Scott swept the table clean. “You’re that little kid, Cole. Only nobody’s gonna feel sorry for you when you get your face bit off.”

  This was the moment to back down. But could Cole live with himself if he did? And, perhaps more importantly, would Winnie ever fall for an invertebrate? “I’m confused. In this scenario is Josh the mutt? Or Winnie?”

  Josh leaned in close. “Don’t talk about her like that. Don’t even think about her. She doesn’t think about you.”

  “The bell rang, guys.” The gentle reminder came from Mr. Chetley, the assistant soccer coach and rookie Web design teacher. No one moved. “Is there a problem?”

  “No problem, Mr. Chetley,” said Josh, secure that Cole had received the message.

  “Josh B’Gosh, my dad is Mr. Chetley,” said the teacher in his bouncing Southern California accent. “Call me ‘Chetley.’ Or even ‘Chet.’ It’s all good! What happened with the books, Cola?”

  “Cole’s just clumsy,” said Josh. He and Scott left, Chetley hounding them as they retrieved their things from the computer they’d been using and all the way out the door with an invitation to join his Protest Club. Gavin was president and so far the organization had yet to protest anything save the administration’s rules against protest.

  Cole gathered his littered books, aware that he’d pay for getting little work done this afternoon by staying up late and losing sleep tonight. He didn’t care. He was thinking about Winnie. She had to think about him sometimes. There had to be a way to remind her that she cared about him the way he cared about her. Maybe the key was to make her think less about Josh, or to think less of him. What would it take to open her eyes?

  Cole was on his way out when he caught sight of the computer over which Josh and Scott had roosted. An idea took shape.

  Cole launched the computer’s search engine and examined its recent history. Josh hadn’t emptied the cache. The most recent page was a Wikipedia entry. The subject: American serial killers. It took him just a moment to find what he was looking for.

  Perhaps most striking is that when selecting victims, Americans tend to adhere to far more rigid criteria than their worldwide counterparts. An American serial killer knows his victim; an international serial killer discovers his victim.

  Gavin was right. There in black-and-white pixels was proof of Josh’s cheating. Cole Control-P’d the page, as well as a dozen of the most recent websites Josh and Scott had visited. With every hot, laser-printed sheet of paper, Cole’s heart beat a little faster and his grin burned a little brighter. This was the way to get Winnie back where she belonged — with him. He left with the swagger of a private citizen carrying a concealed firearm. He had the gun and the bullet to put an end to Josh and Winnie’s relationship. All he had to do now was aim and pull the trigger.

  PainAuChoCOLEat: You there?

  ShesGottaGavIt: regrettably

  PainAuChoCOLEat: We need to talk.

  PainAuChoCOLEat: Come over.

  ShesGottaGavIt: cant

  ShesGottaGavIt: busy

  PainAuChoCOLEat: Too busy to punctuate?

  ShesGottaGavIt: punctuation is for sheep

  ShesGottaGavIt: in my world the semicolon has slaughtered the commas and periods which is why this sentence might be hard to read

  PainAuChoCOLEat: Never mind.

  ShesGottaGavIt: sup

  PainAuChoCOLEat: Remember in middle school when Lauren Schoenmaker was always whispering to her friends and pointing at you and giggling?

  PainAuChoCOLEat: And how we thought she was making fun of you?

  ShesGottaGavIt: and i retaliated by spiking her hand lotion with numbing cream

  ShesGottaGavIt: haha

  ShesGottaGavIt: she coul
dnt feel her fingers all day

  ShesGottaGavIt: she walked around like an old timey mummy

  ShesGottaGavIt: and had to be hand fed

  PainAuChoCOLEat: Is that something you’re proud of?

  ShesGottaGavIt: it was my finest hour

  PainAuChoCOLEat: So you don’t regret getting revenge on her?

  PainAuChoCOLEat: Even after we found out she was acting that way because she liked you?

  ShesGottaGavIt: girls come and go

  PainAuChoCOLEat: Uhhh.

  PainAuChoCOLEat: Regarding girls —

  PainAuChoCOLEat: Specifically, my girl —

  PainAuChoCOLEat: And the tool with whom she’s run off —

  PainAuChoCOLEat: Could be you were right about Josh.

  PainAuChoCOLEat: I think he lifted his essay from Wikipedia.

  PainAuChoCOLEat: So the question is …

  PainAuChoCOLEat: Do I pull a Gavin?

  ShesGottaGavIt: the answer is

  ShesGottaGavIt: duh

  WinWin: Hi

  PainAuChoCOLEat: No way!

  ShesGottaGavIt: yes way

  PainAuChoCOLEat: That’s not what I meant.

  PainAuChoCOLEat: Winnie is IMing.

  WinWin: Hello?

  ShesGottaGavIt: STEP AWAY FROM THE KEYBOARD

  WinWin: Are you ignoring me now?

  ShesGottaGavIt: sit tight

  ShesGottaGavIt: im coming over

  ShesGottaGavIt: ill save you

  ShesGottaGavIt: BLOCK HER

  ShesGottaGavIt: better idea

  ShesGottaGavIt: SIGN OFF

  PainAuChoCOLEat: Hi.

 

  PainAuChoCOLEat: Sorry.

  PainAuChoCOLEat: Wasn’t at my desk.

  WinWin: Let me guess

  WinWin: You were baking up a storm

  PainAuChoCOLEat: Ha.

  PainAuChoCOLEat: No.

  PainAuChoCOLEat: (later)

  WinWin: Do you make those special Rice Krispies Treats anymore? The kind with the toffee and the cinnamon?

  PainAuChoCOLEat: You remember them?

  WinWin: They were/are my favorite

  PainAuChoCOLEat: I do have some marshmallows lying around.

  PainAuChoCOLEat: Maybe I’ll break out the breakfast cereal.

  WinWin: You’ll never change

  PainAuChoCOLEat: I guess that makes one of us.

  PainAuChoCOLEat: So …

  WinWin: So

  WinWin: German

  PainAuChoCOLEat: Huh?

  WinWin: You’re piling on the language credits

  WinWin: Not a bad idea

  WinWin: But you should take something else

  WinWin: Only malcontents and medievalists take German

  WinWin: Like that weird girl

  WinWin: You should take Mandarin

  WinWin: Or Arabic

  WinWin: Like me

  WinWin: Still there?

  PainAuChoCOLEat: Thank you for the advice.

  PainAuChoCOLEat: I think I’ll stick with my plan.

  PainAuChoCOLEat: Did you just want to give me an update?

  WinWin: I wanted to talk to you about what happened today

  WinWin: I didn’t mean to be weird

  PainAuChoCOLEat: How were you weird?

  WinWin: When I saw you at the library

  WinWin: Andrea’s going through a lot right now

  PainAuChoCOLEat: Bad hair day?

  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: It would be easier to be there for her if I didn’t have to worry about you and Gavin hassling Josh

  WinWin: Maybe you two can lay off him

  PainAuChoCOLEat: I didn’t realize we were laying on Josh 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 class. 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 Josh has dumbed you down.

  WinWin: I don’t know what to say.

  PainAuChoCOLEat: You might start with “sorry.”

 

  A door slammed somewhere below, followed immediately by his parents’ shouts and the rumble of footsteps on stairs. Gavin crashed in, red in the face and sucking wind.

  “I am here … to save you … from humil … iating … yourself….”

  “Too late,” said Cole. He pointed Gavin to the IM on his computer. Gavin looked over Cole’s shoulder as he skimmed the conversation.

  “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 Josh lied to her about what happened in the library after she and Andrea took off. She’s totally going to check him on that. Plus, what if she finds out he’s a cheater! She couldn’t afford to be associated with him, because what if people start wondering if she’s a cheater, too, like you said?”

  “And then what?” Gavin asked. “She comes crawling back to you, begging your forgiveness?”

  “I think part of her already wants to come back to me,” Cole said with mounting excitement. “See 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. “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 off of Wikipedia. And we both know how Drick feels about shortcuts.”

  Lore had it their history teacher had led an unsuccessful attempt to reinstate corporal punishment to the array of faculty powers. It was said he kept a paddle in his office.

  Cole bit his fingernail. The thought was tantalizing, for sure. But he didn’t think he was the man for the job. “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? Josh 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 balls. And Winnie would never forgive me. As long as they’re together, an embarrassment to Josh is an embarrassment to her.” Cole braced himself. He knew that if he spoke his mind now, he could never unspeak it. Gavin wouldn’t let him. “But I might know another way.”

  Gavin was intrigued. “Let’s hear it.”

  “Look at this page I printed out. It lists all the Wikipedia RSS feeds Josh subscribes to. 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’s a tidy plan.”

  Cole h
esitated. “It isn’t too drastic? I keep thinking I should just let it go.” 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? Her dad the weatherman died a month ago. 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. She’s already Tweeting about going to the winter formal.”

  “You follow Andrea?”

  “Hate follow. Look at this.” Gavin displayed her Tweet on his phone.

  Andrea Henderson @hendersdaughter

  @WinWin100 @OTruffleShuffle: Got my ticket to the formal! Cant wait 2 go w u!

  “Sounds pretty grief-stricken to me,” said Gavin. “Though I could see her being moved to tears if she was 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 Josh 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 —”

  The day of oral reports rolled around. Cole and Gavin arrived ready to score mucho class-participation points with tons of questions designed solely for Josh.

  Cole prepared a little something extra, too.

  Class trickled in to receive his signature tomb-sized, toffee-and-cinnamon Rice Krispies Treat. Normally Cole got a buzz from the licking of fingers and the unfolding of wet naps. But today he only cared what Winnie thought.

  “What’s this?” she asked when he offered one up. As if she didn’t know. The treat before her was a yellow Lab puppy, and her eyes screamed, Please can I pet it? Cole thrilled to her dawning smile.

  “Just a little something to nibble on. Threw together a batch last night.”

  “Wow.”

  “It’s nothing, really.” Poker face, don’t fail me now, Cole prayed. It wouldn’t do to let her see how just how much power she still had over him. Not yet, at least.

  “I mean, wow, you’re talking to me.”