Hacked

by Linda Gerber

  Meanwhile, in the van, Daniel made Logan and me sit in turn while he primped and sprayed and powdered us to his satisfaction. I hardly noticed what he was doing; I was too busy watching the seconds tick away on my phone’s digital stopwatch. The longer it took for Claudia and Liz to get the waivers they needed, the less time I was going to have to get my blog straightened out.

  “Cassidy,” Daniel scolded, “stop biting your nails!”

  I looked at the jagged edge of my thumbnail. “Oh, sorry.” I hadn’t even realized I was gnawing on it. “Do you, um, have a nail file?”

  “I do.” Victoria dug one from her purse. I took it and watched out the window some more as I sawed at my thumbnail.

  Logan, done with his makeup session, slid into the seat next to me. He yanked the wire from his lav mic out of the receiver and reached behind me to do the same to mine. “What’s with you?” he asked in a low voice.

  “Huh?” I pulled my gaze from the window.

  He grabbed the file to stop it. “You’re going to draw blood.”

  I looked down at my thumb. “Oh.”

  “What’s going on?” he asked again.

  I liked the feel of his warm hand on mine. I liked it a lot. And I liked the way he was looking at me, so concerned, so sincere. Which is why I felt bad about lying. “It’s Zoe,” I told him. “She said she needed to talk, but I can’t text when nothing is working, so I wanted Bayani to bring me to this place so I could get online and IM her or something, but then Liz was like, Let’s all go! And now I don’t know how I’m going to message her with everyone hovering so I can’t even let her know I’m here when she needs a—”

  He held up his hand like a traffic cop. “Wait. Slow down. You cooked all this up just so you could send Zoe a message?”

  I dropped my eyes to my lap and toyed with the nail file. “Yes,” I said in a small voice.

  “Why didn’t you just tell me?” he asked. “I can distract them long enough for you to do your thing. Nothing to worry about. Just type fast.”

  I wished he was right about there being nothing to worry about, but I knew better. If my mom and dad and Cavin ever found out that someone had hacked into my blog—not once, but twice—and that I hadn’t told them about it, heads were going to roll. I didn’t want Logan’s to be one of those heads. And it would be if they thought he had been running interference for me. But maybe, if he didn’t know anything about the blog, he’d be in the clear. That’s how the theory worked anyway.

  When Liz signaled, Daniel and Estefan held umbrellas high above our heads as they ushered Logan and me from the van to the bus.

  “They’re staring,” Logan half whispered. I tried not to smile at the way he spoke out of one side of his mouth without moving his lips on the other side.

  “They’ll lose interest,” I assured him. “Bayani and I were in here the other day, and no one paid any attention to us.” Of course, we didn’t have an entourage with us that day, and there were no cameras. You add those little accessories, and people are bound to be curious.

  Turns out I was wrong about the people in the bus losing interest. When we passed through the converted bus’s accordion doors, the handful of customers and the guy in a staff shirt were carefully not watching us, but they were most definitely interested. I could almost feel their furtive glances as we took our place at the two vacant computer carrels. They were probably wondering who the heck we were.

  I didn’t know whether to say hi to them or to pretend not to notice the ripple of curiosity our being there had caused. It wasn’t a question of what I thought was polite or cool; with the cameras rolling, I had to consider what would play better on television. Of course, the producers could edit anything to make it look like what they wanted, regardless of how it really was, but I would rather give them something they could work with so they could keep it real. Well, as real as a reality show can be.

  I set my spiral notebook on the desktop and carefully laid the pen next to it, still debating whether to play the scholar or the socialite. And then I heard the whisper.

  The words were Spanish, but I had heard them before: Aqui esta. There she is. La chica moda.

  Great. Just what I needed. I guess it wasn’t a big secret or anything, but the extra attention kind of spoiled the plan to stealth-check my blog.

  I logged onto the computer anyway, staring at the screen as it loaded in an attempt to shut everything else out. It didn’t work. I was hyper-aware of the whispering around me, of the camera at the end of the row pointed straight at me, and of Victoria standing patiently nearby to oversee Logan’s and my research. This was going to be even harder than I thought.

  True to his word, Logan distracted Victoria, asking for help to look up his monkey facts—as if he’d never googled anything before. For someone who just two days earlier had been complaining about having to be fake, he sure was good at putting on an act.

  I waited until she was actually bending over his keyboard, helping him type in the words for his search, and then switched screens on my computer to look up my blog. Just as it had been the last time I was there, the computer was maddeningly slow. I switched screens back to my report search while the network page loaded. After writing down a random fact or two, I checked back to see if the prompt screen for my blog was ready. Another quick peek at Victoria, who was trying to be patient as she explained to Logan how to navigate an encyclopedia page with links, and I quickly signed into my blog. Switching screens once again, I waited, chewing on my overfiled thumbnail again.

  When I switched back to my blog screen, I shouldn’t have been surprised to see the entry there, but I was. Not exactly because there was an entry, but because of how long it was. The whole post couldn’t even fit on the screen; I had to scroll down to see it all. Apparently, whoever was messing with my blog had a lot to say.

  I skimmed through the post, and my eyes got wider and wider as I read.

  “Monteverde is way boring. There’s nothing but mud and potholes and losers swinging in the trees like monkeys.”

  My breath caught at the words “swinging in the trees.” That sounded like it could be referring to the zip lines from the day before, right? If I didn’t know better, I would have thought that whoever wrote that entry knew me as more than just some face in a tabloid. They knew what I was doing. Suddenly, the back of my neck went cold. I felt like a huge bull’s-eye had been painted between my shoulder blades.

  Turning slowly, I snuck a peek directly behind me. Of course there was no one there. But there were two guys by the old driver’s seat staring at me. And a lady watching from the end carrel. And a man at one of the tables, who glanced up from his magazine just in time for his dark eyes to meet mine. Any one of them could be a paparazzo. Or all of them. Or none of them. How could anyone have known I was going to stop by the Internet café this morning? I was being paranoid. Or not. I read on.

  My tutor is a Gorgon, always watching, waiting for me to trip up so she can pounce on me and rip me to shreds.

  Why would someone write that? A chill, colder than the rain outside, swept over me. My hacker wasn’t just some random person having fun showing what a computer genius he or she was. These posts were mean. They were personal.

  The question was, what was I going to do about it? I chewed on my thumbnail some more (sorry, Daniel) and stared at the screen. The first thing, of course, was to delete the entry. Which, with the horrible Internet connection, was going to take a while. I initiated the delete, and switched screens as the computer slowly executed the command.

  Even as the post dissolved, my stomach twisted into sailor knots. I knew exactly what my mom and dad would do if they saw that post; they would completely freak. And then I wouldn’t be able to continue doing the shows with Logan, because my parents would probably lock me away in protective custody somewhere. I was dead.

  I’d deleted the post, sure, and the one before it. But Mom always says what goes online stays online. You can never tell if something has been copied or c
ached, so even if you remove it, you can never be sure that a thing is truly gone.

  Given those facts, it would have been smart for me to come clean, but I figured I was already in too deep. The problem was, by keeping the secret, I was about to get deeper. I may have been a little distracted as we drove to the cheese factory. Victoria asked me three times if I was feeling “quite all right.” Claudia had to tell me twice to fix the mic on my lapel because it kept coming loose. Even Logan noticed that I wasn’t acting like myself.

  “Did you…take care of what you needed to?” he asked.

  I pulled at my newly adjusted lapel mic, wishing I could take the thing off and talk to him. I mean, really talk to him. About the blog. About what was going on. I knew without question he would understand what my mom and dad couldn’t. Maybe he could even help me figure out what to do.

  Not that I deserved his help. I hadn’t exactly been honest with him when we went to the Internet café. “About that,” I began. “It wasn’t Zoe I was—”

  “Oh, look at that,” Victoria cut in. She pointed out the window to where an old wooden oxcart with brightly painted wheels rolled and swayed at the side of the road. Two gigantic black oxen with wide, curved horns plodded along pulling the cart, guided by a man in gray coveralls and black rubber boots. In the back of the cart, a half dozen shiny silver cylinders clanked against each other.

  “Esta leche,” Estefan called from the driver’s seat. “The milk. This farmer is delivering to the cheese factory.”

  “Logan,” I said, “about the café…”

  Liz nudged Claudia and pointed out the window. “Get a shot of that.”

  “Way ahead of you.” Claudia adjusted the angle of her camera to capture the farmer and his wagon of milk.

  Usually, I would pull out my phone to take pictures for my blog as well, but I didn’t touch it. Just thinking about the blog did unpleasant things to my stomach.

  “Logan…”

  “Please tell me the poor man lives nearby.” Daniel tsked. “Imagine making your deliveries on foot.”

  “The cheese factory milk is local,” Estefan said. “I do not know if this means nearby.”

  I tugged on Logan’s sleeve. “Hey, I need to tell—”

  Logan gave me one of those just-a-minute looks and talked to Estefan’s image in the rearview mirror. “So all the local farmers drive carts like that? With the painted wheels?”

  “¿Las carretas?” Estefan asked. “No, not many. From the small farm, perhaps, but many drive the truck.”

  “And everyone in the area sells to the factory?” Logan asked.

  Estefan nodded. “Most do.”

  “Ah, yes,” Victoria chimed in. “Mama Tica mentioned that Finca Calderón delivers their milk to the factory as well.”

  “That’s a lot of milk,” Logan said. “How much cheese do these guys make?”

  “Oh, quite a lot,” Victoria said. “They export it all over Central America. And other dairy products as well.”

  I shook my head and checked out of the conversation. Any other time, you couldn’t pay Logan to sit still for a conversation about milk deliveries and painted carts, but now, when I needed to talk to him, he was the one keeping the stupid thing going.

  Ironic, I thought sourly.

  And the worst part was, I probably deserved it.

  Six or seven people—civilians, Liz called them—were already gathered in the factory lobby when we got there, waiting for the tour to begin. They huddled together, whispering and trying not to stare as Daniel herded Logan and me into a corner to be powdered and sprayed some more while Estefan and Claudia walked around the room taking readings with their light meter. Then the regular When in Rome group arrived and pretty much took over the lobby. The civilians went from a group of curious onlookers to outright gawkers as Bayani and Britt helped Claudia and Estefan set up the cameras and sound equipment to follow the tour. Liz and Cavin strolled around the room with a representative of the factory, gesturing and pointing and talking (in not very soft voices, I might add) about where they would like to set up shots.

  “Kinda creepy being watched like that,” Logan whispered.

  My breath caught for an instant until I realized he was talking about our civilian audience and not the faceless hacker I now suspected was spying on me.

  Daniel stopped brushing my hair and pushed down on my shoulders. “Quit hunching. You want your posture to stay that way?”

  I laughed—mostly to make myself relax. “What are you saying? Shoulders stick? Like crossed eyes?” My gramma hated it if I went cross-eyed. She swore one day my eyes would get stuck turning inward.

  “Crossed eyes are nothing,” Logan said. “Check this out.” He folded his eyelids up so that they looked like they were turned inside out.

  “Ew!” I turned away. “That’s so gross!”

  “You like that?” he teased. “Then you should see—”

  “Logan! Cassidy!” Liz hissed. “Remember yourselves. You never know who could be watching.”

  Despite Daniel, my shoulders hitched up again. I hugged my arms and slid a quick glance around the lobby. That was exactly what I was afraid of.

  I can’t say that I remember much of the cheese factory tour. Not that it wasn’t cool to see how eco-friendly the Quakers who established the factory were, right down to the wastewater disposal, but my mind wasn’t with the tour. It was stuck on whoever was hacking my blog posts, and what I was going to do to stop it.

  I had changed my password, but that was going to accomplish only so much. This person had gotten past the password—plus all the network’s firewalls—once; he or she could do it again. Maybe I should talk to Britt. Of anyone on the crew, she was the expert on computers and security and that kind of thing. She’d know what to do.

  But I didn’t know Britt. If I confided in her, would she tell Mom and Dad? They would circle the wagons for sure. I had to test Britt out somehow. Maybe if I—

  “Cassidy!” Liz’s voice slammed into my thoughts. “This is supposed to be interesting. You look as if you’re comatose. Could you liven it up a bit?”

  “Yeah,” Logan agreed. “You’re not very gouda at this acting thing.”

  It took me a full ten seconds to realize what he had said. I laughed and shot back, “You cheddar stop being mean to me.”

  “What? You a feta a little humor?”

  “Not if it’s funny, you muenster!”

  “Ha-ha.” Liz said drily. “Now be serious. But don’t forget to make it interesting.”

  Travel tip: In Costa Rica, criticism is rare. People would rather solve problems “à la tica,” bargaining to avoid conflict.

  I never did get a chance to talk to Britt or anyone else about my blog because the network beat me to it. They called Liz early the next morning. I knew I was in trouble when Cavin blocked my mom and dad and me on our way down the stairs for breakfast.

  “A word, please,” he said, and gestured for us to follow him. Mom and Dad looked at each other with a mutual shrug and fell into step behind Cavin. I stood on the bottom stair and wished I could freeze time long enough to think of some way to disappear.

  Cavin paused and shot me a withering look over his shoulder. “You, too, Cassidy,” he growled.

  I nodded obediently and forced myself to follow behind my mom and dad. I wished I could pull them aside to warn them. To explain. Neither of them had any clue what was coming, but I was pretty sure I did, and it wasn’t going to play well for me.

  We walked past the dining room in a slow-motion procession. At least that’s how it felt to me. Every step, every breath, every tick of the clock in the hallway drummed in my head like the downbeat of a funeral dirge. I was so dead.

  Logan was sitting at the table with Bayani, and he glanced up just in time to catch my eye before I passed the doorway. I looked away before he could read the mix of guilt and fear on my face.

  Cavin held the door to the sitting room for us to file inside. I wasn’t surprised to find Liz
pacing on the other side of the conference table, where a single file folder lay close to the edge. She stopped when she saw us and drew herself up, puffing out her chest and planting her hands on her hips. She was doing a perfect imitation of a cobra, making herself look bigger and more intimidating. Was that a defensive gesture or a warning that she was about to strike?

  “Please,” she said in a calm-but-strained voice, “have a seat.”

  Mom and Dad exchanged one of those looks again and each sat down stiffly—just now realizing, I think, that this meeting wasn’t going to be pleasant. I preferred to remain standing. If Liz was a snake, I’d be more prepared for flight by staying on my feet.

  But then Cavin pulled out a chair for me and ordered me to sit. What else could I do but obey? I folded myself onto the chair, where I felt vulnerable and small. Especially when my mom and dad threw questioning looks at me and I could see the understanding light their faces as they realized we were meeting because of something I’d done.

  Liz didn’t even try to be pleasant or ease into the conversation. She planted both hands on the table and leaned forward like she was going to lunge at us. Without thinking, I sank farther back into my chair. “Who,” Liz asked, “do you think called me early this morning?”

  My mom and dad looked to me expectantly.

  I mumbled that I didn’t know.

  “The network, Cassidy. Now why do you suppose they woke me up at five in the morning with a phone call?”

  “Tone,” Cavin reminded her.

  She drew back from the table and took a deep breath before trying again in a sticky-sweet voice. “I’m sorry, Cassidy. Can you think of any reason why the network would be calling me?”

  I would have liked to divert the question, but what good would it do? Even though I didn’t like the way Liz was talking to me, I knew why she was angry, so it wouldn’t do any good to pretend I didn’t. “They saw my blog,” I said matter-of-factly.