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  This is Andrea’s mom

  16 minutes ago Favorite Retweet Reply

  Winnie Hoffman @WinWin100

  @hendersdaughter I texted you. Where r u?

  18 hours ago Favorite Retweet Reply

  Andrea Henderson @hendersdaughter

  @ABrindleDocent Blocked

  20 hours ago Favorite Retweet Reply

  Rabid Doc Lenten @ABrindleDocent

  @hendersdaughter we will see about that

  21 hours ago Favorite Retweet Reply

  Andrea Henderson @hendersdaughter

  @ABrindleDocent I don’t cry that much lol

  21 hours ago Favorite Retweet Reply

  Andrea Henderson @hendersdaughter

  @ABrindleDocent Do I know you?

  20 hours ago Favorite Retweet Reply

  Rabid Doc Lenten @ABrindleDocent

  @hendersdaughter you cry a lot

  21 hours ago Favorite Retweet Reply

  Andrea Henderson

  From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

  * * *

  Andrea Henderson is an American high school student best known for being the daughter of Cal Henderson, a fat, crazy, crazy-fat weatherman who died live on camera. Andrea is also noted for her inability to go a single day without crying over something.

  She died crying her eyes out.

  Gavin and Cole sat astride their bicycles. A chalky sky idled over Andrea’s house.

  “This is a mistake,” gloomed Gavin. “Being here is the act of a guilty person.”

  Cole dismounted. “Then I’m in the right place.” He took a package out of his backpack, looked up at the house, and hesitated.

  “I don’t have a note.”

  “So?”

  “I can’t leave this without a note, can I?”

  “Yeah, you don’t want to be impolite to the half-blind girl,” Gavin replied. “Let’s draft something. ‘Dear Cyclops, I mean, Andrea. Sorry about your eye. But did you know? The pirate look is back! For a preppy twist, try an eye patch with a tartan print.’ Can we go now?”

  Cole crept to the porch, noteless. The lights were off inside. He stared up at the door. The door stared back. Was it inviting him to come closer, or daring him?

  Gavin pee-danced on the sidewalk. “What are you waiting for? Do it before someone sees.”

  Cole climbed the steps and saw he wasn’t the first to arrive. The porch was piled high with casseroles, wedges of lasagna, and pulpy potato salads. No pastries, though. Cole gave his tin of compost cookies a place of prominence, balancing it on top of the food tower, which promptly tipped over. A light clicked on inside the house.

  “Book it!” cried Gavin, already pedaling.

  Cole had one leg cast over his bike when he heard the front door bang open. Wheeling off around the corner, he risked a backward glance in time to see a man in a suit emerge and scan the street. Bending over to rearrange the food, his blazer shifted. Something gold glinted from his belt.

  “I bet it was a shield,” he said to his Coke, blocks later at Benito’s. Between Cole and Gavin lay the day’s special — a smelt guanciale and fennel pie — barely nibbled. Benito watched anxiously from the register for their appetites to make an appearance. “I think that guy was a cop.”

  Gavin minced a paper napkin. “What would a cop be doing at Andrea’s house?”

  “Looking for evidence?”

  “Evidence of what? Of Andrea’s stupidity? Of her breathtakingly vulgar need for attention? Of her illicit stash of spray tanner?”

  “Of the person who spiked her eye medicine with sulfuric acid,” said Cole.

  Gavin released his confettied napkin and sat back. “Would this be the same copycat who turned Scott into an air mattress? Or a different one?”

  “We marked people for death! We put it on the Internet for everyone to see! We said Andrea would die crying her eyes out, then she goes and coincidentally loses an eye?! How many people have to die by our predictions for you to take it seriously?”

  “Only one person is dead,” Gavin bit. “Andrea is alive.”

  Barely. Cole had watched on TV as Spring Showers delivered that scoop from outside the hospital.

  “The victim was treated at Springfield General, where she clings to life. Loved ones have been trickling into the hospital all day.”

  Dropped among the shots of assorted Hendersons plodding bravely into the hospital was a snippet of a familiar concave be-cardiganed chest. Cole wasn’t sure what surprised him more: that Chetley knew Andrea well enough to visit her bedside or that he didn’t stop to opine on her calamity for the camera. Then Winnie appeared, darting through the shot.

  Josh was nowhere to be seen as Spring shadowed her to the door, dangling a microphone for comment. Winnie kept her head down and her mouth shut as she hurried by. Cole found himself pausing the playback. Grief and a plasma screen seemed to bring her beauty into even sharper focus.

  “In addition to losing her eye, Henderson is said to have sustained third-degree chemical burns over thirty percent of her face. Authorities are stymied as to whether her eye medication was contaminated — or laced — with acid. The accident marks the second tragedy to befall the Springfield High School community following the recent gruesome death of Scott Dare.”

  Losing her eye.

  Chemical burns.

  Second tragedy.

  “Andrea was lucky her mom found her before her face melted clean off. But if that hadn’t happened, she’d have died,” Cole said, “just the way we said she would.” Gavin stood up. “Where are you going?”

  “Home. Gonna whip up my own profile. If I’m not in school tomorrow, it’s because I’m de-virginizing myself on a bed of a hundred million dollars I won in the lottery. You know, because of our magical ability to Wiki things into happening.” Gavin left Cole with the uneaten pizza and unanswered questions.

  Was he even a little bit to blame for Scott’s death and Andrea’s disfigurement? Or were their grisly fates just a Final Destination rip-off? Why did the knot in his gut tell him it was something worse? Could it get any worse than those movies?

  Cole did not want to find out. He went home, where distractions were plenty. He had work to do. Work to win valedictorian, work to achieve the bright future his parents envisioned for him, a future that would shape up to a perfectly respectable Wikipedia profile of his own. An array of assignments loomed, neglected since Scott’s death. Stacked neatly on his desk were his college essays, freshly edited by the wannabe professor hired by his parents. They would expect revised drafts in a day’s time. A new issue of Cook’s Illustrated flirted from his nightstand. There was plenty to occupy his thoughts. He popped a Red Bull and awoke his laptop. Open on his screen were Wikipedia and Twitter. His timeline was all Andrea.

  Andrea Henderson @hendersdaughter

  @Springfield And for your cookies.

  44 minutes ago Favorite Retweet Reply

  Andrea Henderson @hendersdaughter

  @Springfield Thank you for all your support.

  45 minutes Favorite Retweet Reply

  Andrea Henderson @hendersdaughter

  @Springfield But we’re in good spirits.

  56 minutes ago Favorite Retweet Reply

  Andrea Henderson @hendersdaughter

  @Springfield Not to mention a prosthetic eye.

  57 minutes ago Favorite Retweet Reply

  Andrea Henderson @hendersdaughter

  @Springfield Next up is facial reconstruction.

  57 minutes ago Favorite Retweet Reply

  Andrea Henderson @hendersdaughter

  @Springfield There is still a ways to go.

  58 minutes ago Favorite Retweet Reply

  Andrea Henderson @hendersdaughter

  @Springfield In fact she’s already itching to get on Facebook!

  59 minutes ago Favorite Retweet Reply

  Andrea Henderson @hendersdaughter

  @Springfield Andrea is awake and doing well.

  59 minutes ago Favorite Retweet
Reply

  Andrea Henderson @hendersdaughter

  @Springfield I have good news.

  1 hour ago Favorite Retweet Reply

  Rabid Doc Lenten @ABrindleDocent

  @hendersdaughter pulling for andrea

  2 hours ago Favorite Retweet Reply

  Winnie Hoffman @WinWin100

  @hendersdaughter If we can help in any way please just say so

  8 hours ago Favorite Retweet Reply

  So.

  Andrea would be okay.

  Except for the horrible burns and disfiguring scars and glass eye and psychic pain.

  But still!

  So why didn’t Cole feel much better?

  His knee was bouncing. The Red Bull had begun to work its syrupy voodoo. A thought thwapped around in his head, a bat trapped in an attic. The Tweets in support of Andrea numbered in the thousands, but something about Rabid Doc Lenten/ABrindleDocent stood out. Cole called up an anagram server and entered the Twitter handle. The results topped sixty-five thousand, but he was only looking for one, one in particular, and he found it before scrolling through the first thousand: Rabid Doc Lenten. Neither phrase meant much of anything, and he didn’t know anyone by the last name Lenten. There was something about it, something familiar, something he couldn’t put a finger on.

  He put his fingers to use elsewhere, on the keyboard, and let fly. Soon he had laid out whole bricks of text.

  His assignments remained untouched; Wikipedia did not. Cole stayed up through the night, deleting, researching, rewriting all the profiles he and Gavin had unleashed. As night gave way to morning, each offensive passage and demise was stripped and replaced with just-the-facts-ma’am truth about his targets. It was only a small, cookie-sized token of remorse, but it felt good. Like he’d done something, however negligible, to right a wrong … and take himself off the hook for the violence he feared he was responsible for. He got his first wink of sleep on the bus. Everything would be okay.

  Cole was an ace of a lot of things. Fooling himself was one of them.

  Cole lost himself in the stacks of the SHS library before class and tried to catch up on sleep. Someone else had other plans for his day.

  A pleasing aroma brought him around. It did not belong amidst the scents of remnant carpet and neglected volumes. Chocolate chip. Oatmeal. Brown sugar, butter, Raisinets, and pretzels, all mixed together — no, not pretzels. Stupid Cole. Something saltier. A potato chip.

  He knew this scent.

  Cole opened his eyes. Sitting on the floor next to him was Lila, wearing a faux-Victorian dress with black lace-up boots, thick-soled and suctioned to her calves like leeches. Her fingers and wrists and earlobes and neck were riddled with a collection of metallic accessories, all buckles and gears, as though she’d thrown herself on a Steampunk nail bomb. On another girl the display might be a costume, or armor, or bait. But Lila wore it casually, like a bathrobe. A fresh notepad was nearby, but in her hand she held the two remaining bites of a cookie.

  “Potato chip in a cookie,” she munched. “Who knew?”

  “What period is it?” he asked.

  Lila took a bite of cookie and shrugged. “I considered waking you up. But it looked like you needed the rest. Long night?”

  “Who wants to know? Lila? Or Walda?”

  “As if either one of us would waste our time on a story about sleep-deprived students.”

  “Then why watch me sleep?” He regretted the question as soon as he asked it.

  Lila tongued a gunk of cookie from the reaches of her mouth and swallowed. “Why do people watch the ocean? Or a monkey with a gun?” she said, leading with her chin. “Sooner or later you know it’s going to do something interesting.”

  Cole felt the stack looming behind him, high, like his rising temperature. Lila seemed to have a knack for showing up at vulnerable moments, almost as if she was watching him. He wondered how much she knew about the Wikipedia pages.

  “Besides,” said Lila, “I saw you here and thought you were waiting for me. After all, it is our place.” Cole caught sight of a collection of Goethe and only just realized which deserted section he’d plopped down in. “Richtig,” said Lila, her voice lilting. “Poesie.”

  “I — I was tired,” he stammered. “I wanted some quiet.”

  Lila did nothing to hide her disappointment. “Then you could use an energy boost. Cookie?” she offered.

  The cookie.

  “I know what it tastes like. I conceived of the recipe. I bought the ingredients. I mixed them together. I baked it. For myself.”

  “Funny,” said Lila, “when I saw you leave them on Andrea’s porch yesterday I just assumed you baked them for her mom.” That answered the question of whether or not she was watching him. “Of course, I had to wait for the police to leave before finding out exactly what you’d put there. Do you have any idea how hard it was to wait that long? Harder than waiting for the next installment of Game of Thrones. But it was that or get caught staking the place out. Like you and Gavin did.”

  “You were there?!” Of lesser importance: Lila was into Game of Thrones?!

  She didn’t even bother to nod. “I spent my time hiding in the bushes pondering another question.”

  “What is the sentence for cookie-theft?”

  “I only took a few. Wish I’d taken the whole batch. Pastries are wasted on the grieving.” Lila read from her notepad. “ ‘What did Gavin mean when he told Cole that being at Andrea’s house was the act of a guilty man? And what did Cole mean when he said: “Then I’m in the right place?” ’ ”

  This was the moment in those crime procedurals in which the suspect requests a lawyer.

  “At first I wrote it off as garden-variety remorse. Whether you like her or not, everybody feels bad about what happened to Andrea, and there’s nothing sinister about homemade cookies.”

  Could she know?

  “But something was nagging, and it wasn’t until I woke up this morning that I knew what that something was.”

  She couldn’t know.

  “It was the tip you gave me about Scott Dare’s Wikipedia page. There was something in it I hadn’t mentioned in my article.”

  Please don’t let her know.

  “The profile predicted the manner of Scott’s death.”

  She knew. Maybe not everything, but plenty. Enough to put her on his trail. Cole’s insides electrified. He needed to get away. He needed to put as much distance between him and Lila as possible.

  But another part, a part that was growing louder and more insistent every day, needed to confess. That part of him needed to be unburdened, no matter what the consequences. That part of him needed to stop lying. He didn’t know which part would win out.

  “That made me curious,” said Lila. “So when I got here this morning I went online and found Andrea’s profile.” She leaned in, confidential. “Nasty piece of work. Whoever is chronicling her life sure has an ax to grind. But I was wondering if losing her eye was predicted as well. Sure enough, it was in there. Except there was no way of knowing whether it existed before or after the incident. According to the history of changes, the Wikipedia profile was last edited as recently as first period.”

  Cole blinked. “First period yesterday, you mean?”

  “No. First period today. This morning.”

  Cole hadn’t touched the profile since last night.

  He dashed down the aisle and made for the exit.

  “Where are you going?” called Andrea.

  Cole bypassed the library’s computers and shot top-speed for the computer lab, hoping Lila wouldn’t be caught dead running, like every other girl he knew (though, to be fair, he didn’t know many). By the time he arrived there was no sign of her, nor anyone else. Cole knew Chetley’s classroom would be empty. He had lunch-monitor duty, floating from table to table in search of an invitation to sit down. Cole would have the space to himself until next period.

  It was dark inside, except for the dim glow of a single monitor, its screensav
er emitting the only light. Cole swiped at the mouse, ready to call up Wikipedia —

  But it was already done for him. Someone else had been reading SHS Wikipedia profiles and left them open on the desktop.

  Scott’s profile, Andrea’s profile, and the rest.

  And just like Lila said, each had been restored to its original, pre-sanitized version. Every glib remark, every vicious story, every sick rumor.

  Every gruesome death.

  Winnie had once coaxed Cole into joining her for a yoga class, but he hadn’t gone back a second time. He couldn’t maintain focus during the poky exercise, and he didn’t like the moistness of the mats or the way he looked in caterpillar pose. Serenity hadn’t been for him. But sitting there in Chetley’s classroom, staring at the monitor full of his make-believe slaughter come back to haunt him, he felt different.

  He tried to remember the yoga breathing and regain his composure.

  Be calm.

  Don’t panic.

  You are trained in the Socratic method.

  You are no stranger to deductive reasoning.

  You are the valedictorian.

  Well, you will be.

  (Hopefully)

  You can figure this out.

  Cole sat back from the computer, a thousand questions jigging in his head.

  Jiggiest among them:

  What on earth is going on?

  Someone had killed Scott and tried to kill Andrea. That someone was following the innocent revenge scenarios he’d laid out on their Wikipedia profiles. That someone wasn’t going to let him forget it, and wasn’t going to let his work disappear from the Internet. And that someone might not be satisfied with just Scott and Andrea. That someone might go after the others. Drick. Josh.

  Winnie.

  So who was it?

  Cole knew the answer was right in front of him. In Wikipedia. He clenched his abs, settled himself, and took a closer look at the top profile: Andrea’s. The cursor blinked in an open field.