To Catch a Cheat

by Varian Johnson

  “And you let him do it anyway?”

  Jackson stopped walking. “He knew the risks.”

  “He only did it because he’s trying to compete with you,” she said. “I don’t know what’s going on between you two, but stroking your ego isn’t worth putting him in danger.”

  “Gaby …” Jackson’s voice trailed off as the others approached.

  Bradley pulled his scarf down from his mouth. “Something wrong?”

  “We’re fine,” Jackson mumbled, looking at the ground. “Go on ahead. We’ll be there in a second.”

  Even though it was windy, Gaby swore someone — probably Megan — said, “Sounds like trouble in paradise.”

  “Be honest,” she said. “Why did you make him do the run?”

  “I didn’t make him do anything,” Jackson said, shaking his head. “Why are we talking about this? I don’t see what the problem —”

  “You should have let me do it!” she said. “You know I could have made it in fourteen seconds without a problem. I could have made it in eight seconds.” She crossed her arms. “I’m not some helpless, defenseless girl, just tagging along to be with her boyfriend.”

  Jackson’s mouth dropped open, and Gaby realized what she’d said. What she’d called him.

  He tilted his head a little to the left. “I’m … your boyfriend?”

  “No. I mean, yeah. I mean …” She tugged her hat lower over her ears. “Don’t you want to be?”

  Jackson quickly nodded. “Yes. Of course. I just thought … You never called me that —”

  “You could have called me that too —”

  “And then you never gave me a chance to kiss you.”

  “What?” She rolled her eyes. “What are you even talking about?”

  “You’ve never given me an opening — an opportunity — to kiss you. I wasn’t sure if you wanted me to or not.”

  Gaby took a deep breath. She was glad it was dark outside. It made it easier to talk. “Jackson Greene, we see each other every day. We email every night. Of course I want to kiss you.”

  “Well, the rules say that the girl is supposed to give the guy the signal —”

  “Rules?”

  “Yeah.” Jackson’s face looked red, and she wasn’t sure if it was from the cold or from embarrassment. “Samuel’s Rules of Romance.”

  “Jackson! The last time you took your brother’s advice about girls, we didn’t speak for four months!”

  “But the rules say —”

  “Jackson, trust me.” She took a step forward. “Forget the rules.”

  Then Gaby closed her eyes and waited.

  And waited. And waited.

  Finally, she opened her eyes again. “Jackson. Seriously?”

  Jackson wasn’t looking at her. Instead, he was focused on the school. “I think we’re being watched.”

  Gaby turned around. While Charlie helped Megan climb into Mrs. Cooper’s room, Hashemi and Bradley stood against the wall, staring at her and Jackson. Hashemi might even have been recording them with the MATE. “Your crew …”

  “Hey, they’re your crew now too,” Jackson said. He tugged on her ponytail, and she turned back around. “See, this is why you should always plan things out.”

  She laughed, because that was about all she could do. “To be honest, my lips are really chapped. They hurt a lot. And they’re kind of gross.” She sighed. “But still consider me open for a kiss. Anytime. Just not when we have an audience….”

  “Or when it’s freezing outside….”

  “Or when we’re trying to disable the security system and sneak into the school,” she said. “Even though I still think I should have been the one inside.”

  Before Gaby realized it, Jackson had taken her hand. Even through the gloves, she swore she could feel his pulse. “Come on,” he said. “Let me show you something.”

  The rest of the crew had already made it into Mrs. Cooper’s room by the time Jackson and Gaby reached the open window. Everyone inside was smiling and laughing. Even Megan grinned as she punched Charlie’s shoulder, then patted him on the back.

  “Allowing Charlie to make the run didn’t have anything to do with protecting you,” Jackson said. “It was his way of saying he was sorry.”

  Once inside, the crew returned to the security room. Hashemi pointed to a mass of unplugged Ethernet cables, then followed them with his finger as they disappeared behind a bookshelf. He nudged the bookshelf out of the way, exposing a large white plastic cover at the base of the wall. The sixteen Ethernet cables, each affixed with a small tag, snaked through a large hole molded into the plastic.

  Hashemi knelt in front of the wall and began unfastening the first of eight screws. “They labeled each cable,” he said. “That should speed things up.”

  “Are you sure your circuit breaker is going to work?” Charlie asked.

  “Please call it the Pikachu,” Hashemi said. “It deserves to be respected.”

  “Did you actually say that with a straight face?” Charlie asked.

  “What?” Megan nudged him. “Not as catchy as ‘The Great Greene Heist’?”

  Bradley raised his hand. “I thought we were calling it the Election Job again.”

  Charlie pulled Bradley’s hand back down, then looked at Hashemi. “All I’m saying is, that’s a pretty fancy name for a device held together by duct tape.”

  “Gorilla Tape,” Hashemi replied. “And that’s only because I didn’t have time to solder the unit closed.”

  “I just hope it’s small enough to fit back there, and that the wireless radio will transmit through the wall.” Megan pulled the small, piecemeal device from her bag. She and Hashemi had had to abandon work on the RhinoBot for a few days, but with specs they found online and a bit of creative engineering, they had been able to quickly construct the Pikachu, a crude circuit breaker. If it worked, they’d be able to power the cameras on and off remotely.

  Hashemi loosened the last screw, then removed the wall plate, exposing a large, ragged square hole. He pressed a few buttons on his watch, turning on a wide neon-blue beam of light on the side of the case. He pointed the light toward the hole. “We should have plenty of room.”

  “Isn’t that light a little too strong?” Gaby asked. “I thought the plan was to get Rob and Thom to use those watches during the test, so we could trick them into using Bradley’s disappearing ink.”

  “That is the plan.” Jackson sighed. “Hash, try to cut back on the wattage, okay? It’s not a Bat-Signal. It needs to leak light.” Jackson glanced at his watch, recently retrieved from Charlie’s sweaty arm. “Are you guys sure we’ll be able to monitor whether the cameras are drawing power?”

  Megan opened her laptop. “We’ll do a run-through after we get it installed.”

  “Good.” Jackson picked two rings of keys from the pegboard on the wall. “These should be the master keys,” he said. “Bradley and I will check out Mrs. Clark’s file cabinet while Charlie and Gaby take the measurements for the two cameras in the social studies wing.”

  “We don’t need the measurements anymore,” Hashemi said. “We have the Pikachu.”

  Jackson picked up the device and smoothed a piece of tape back into place. “Um … Let’s go ahead and map out the locations and viewing angles of the cameras anyway. Just to be on the safe side.”

  “I don’t understand what you guys are talking about,” Charlie said. “Why do you need to map the cameras?”

  “Can you fill Charlie in?” Jackson asked Gaby. “I need to get started. There’s no telling how long it’ll take to find the right keys to Mrs. Clark’s door and file cabinet.”

  Gaby nodded, then Jackson and Bradley exited the room. “Maybe I should go with Gaby,” Bradley said as they walked toward the atrium. “It might take a while for her to explain the plan to Charlie.”

  Jackson shook his head. “I need you with me. I’ve got a special assignment just for you.”

  “Sure. No problem.” They continued in silence,
though Jackson could tell that Bradley wanted to say something. Finally, the younger boy blurted out, “I have to ask — what happened out there? Why didn’t you kiss her?”

  “Um, maybe because I didn’t want an audience?”

  “I knew you could see me and Hashemi,” he said. “Now I owe Charlie ten bucks.”

  “You guys were betting on me? And Charlie bet against me?”

  “He says that you’re too much of a perfectionist to just kiss her. You have to plan it out. Make it perfect. But I was sure it was going to happen, especially when I saw her with all that lipstick today….”

  “Apparently, she has chapped lips. She says they hurt.”

  “That makes sense,” Bradley said. “I’ve kissed a girl when my lips were really chapped. It does kind of hurt. And no one wants their first kiss to be in front of a bunch of people.”

  Jackson stopped walking. “You’ve kissed a girl before?”

  “Girls,” Bradley said, stressing the s. “First time was at my cousin’s Bat Mitzvah last year. She was older too. Fourteen. Practically a woman.”

  “But … How did you know she wanted you to kiss her? Did she give you a sign or something?”

  “She said, ‘Bradley, kiss me.’ Does that count?”

  “I should know better than to talk to a sixth grader about romance.” Jackson walked a few more steps, then asked, “So which way do you turn your head when you do it?”

  Once at Mrs. Clark’s classroom, Jackson quickly found the master key that opened the door. “You’re lucky,” he said as they slipped inside. “The rumor is that she’s retiring next year. You’ll get to escape the wrath of Clark.” He pulled the second set of keys from his bag. “Hopefully one of these will work on the file cabinet.”

  The lock popped open on the tenth key.

  “Here’s where you come in,” Jackson said, walking away from the file cabinet. “I need you to look through each drawer and see where she keeps her tests.”

  “Why me?”

  He sighed. “Sixth graders. So many questions.”

  “At least I’ve kissed a girl.”

  Jackson grinned. “Score one for Bradley. Now go ahead. I’ll make molds of the keys while you’re looking.”

  Bradley began flipping through the files, but it wasn’t long before he found what he was looking for. “Jackson …” He pulled out a green folder. “I think this is the test.”

  Jackson placed the key mold on a desk as Bradley crossed the room. Bradley started to open the folder, but Jackson turned away and snapped his eyes shut. “Don’t open it. At least, not where I can see inside.” He took a step away. “Does the test have next Friday’s date on it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Fifty questions? And it’s multiple choice?” Jackson continued.

  “Yes and yes,” Bradley said. “Did you know she’d already have the final exam done?”

  “I suspected it. That’s one of the reasons I was glad Rob and Thom decided not to come with us.”

  “Are we going to make copies for them?”

  Jackson shook his head. “First, it wouldn’t do any good. They wouldn’t trust anything we gave them — they’ll want to see the exam in the file cabinet with their own eyes. And second, even if they somehow believed us, I don’t want to give them the answers this early. Rob and Thom may be idiots, but even they can memorize fifty answers by next week.” He picked up the key mold and pressed the room key into the clay. “But if we give them the answers the night before the exam …”

  “They won’t have time to memorize it. They’ll be forced to use the disappearing ink.”

  “Hopefully,” Jackson said. “There are still a lot of unknown variables.”

  Bradley returned the folder to the file cabinet. “That’s why you wanted me to come with you. So you wouldn’t accidentally see the test.”

  “Other than Megan, you’re the only one of us not taking Mrs. Clark’s class.” Jackson removed the key from the clay and then inspected the imprint. “We may be thieves, but we’re not cheats.”

  Back in the security room, Megan had almost finished updating the monitoring software on her laptop when it started beeping. She brought up the diagnostics tab. The sixteen icons representing the cameras were slowly fading from gray to red. “Hashemi! Unplug the Pikachu! The cameras are powering up.”

  “But it’s not plugged in,” he said. He put down his screwdriver and held up the plug. “See?”

  “Then we’ve got a problem,” she mumbled as she wiggled the long black USB cord connecting her laptop to the Pikachu.

  “Maybe your program has a glitch.”

  She snorted. “Next option.” She glanced at the device. All sixteen cameras were attached. “Are you sure that thing has to be plugged into an electrical socket to work? You didn’t try to stick the RhinoBot battery in there, did you?”

  “Of course I didn’t — though I considered it briefly. But anyway, no, there’s no way those cameras should be drawing power from the Pikachu….” Hashemi’s voice trailed off as he and Megan looked at each other. “But that doesn’t mean the power isn’t coming from somewhere else.”

  She turned on her microphone. “Jackson and Charlie — where are you?”

  “Bradley and I are still in Mrs. Clark’s room,” Jackson replied.

  “And Gaby and I are still taking measurements,” Charlie said. “Why?”

  “You need to get out of the hallway.” She gulped in a breath of air. “The cameras are powering on.”

  “Wait — you mean they’re recording?” Jackson yelped. “Can you turn them back off?”

  “I don’t know,” Megan said. “They aren’t supposed to be on in the first place.”

  She glanced at her laptop screen. One of the cameras — the one outside of the football field — had just turned green. It was recording.

  “Charlie! Get inside Mrs. Clark’s room!” she yelled. “Now.”

  She immediately heard loud, hurried steps through her earpiece. A few seconds later, a door slammed shut. “Charlie and Gaby just got here,” Jackson said. “Did they get caught on camera?”

  Megan stared at the screen as the first interior camera powered on. “I think they made it.”

  On the other side of the school, Jackson stood in front of Mrs. Clark’s smudged chalkboard, his hand pressed against the earpiece shoved into his ear. Bradley stood beside him, furiously waving both sets of key molds to speed up their drying. Gaby and Charlie leaned against the wall and tried to catch their breaths.

  “Any idea what’s going on?” Jackson asked. “Are you sure the Pikachu didn’t trigger the cameras?”

  “Positive,” Hashemi said. “We think there’s another device that can turn on the cameras. Maybe it’s a backup system of some kind.”

  “I just ran an advanced network scan,” Megan said. “There’s definitely another switch physically attached to the cameras. The connection is too strong and stable.”

  Jackson rapped the top of Mrs. Clark’s desk. “A backup system? Are you sure? None of our intelligence even remotely pointed to something like this existing, let alone being installed here.” He turned to Gaby. “Kelsey hasn’t had any work done on the security system this week, has he?”

  “Not that I’m aware of,” she said. “The way I understand it, the superintendent didn’t want the KRX Supreme system installed in the first place, and isn’t about to pay for any additional upgrades or service.”

  Jackson checked his watch. “Okay, forget the other system for a second. Is there any way to wipe the camera video remotely using the Pikachu?”

  “Negative,” Hashemi said. “It’s only made to monitor power levels and to turn on and off any devices attached to it.”

  “Does the Pikachu even still work with that other mystery device attached to the cameras?” Gaby asked. “And will the backup system — if that’s what it really is — power the cameras on as soon as you try to turn them off?”

  Jackson repeated the questions to Megan. After
a few seconds, she said, “The cameras were off for twenty-three minutes before they switched back on. My gut feeling is that, if it’s an automated backup system, it’s got some built-in lapse time. If not, it would have turned on immediately when Charlie unplugged the cameras.” She sighed. “But that’s a guess. There’s only one real way to find out.”

  “Maybe we should get out of here before something else goes wrong.” Gaby placed her hand on Jackson’s arm. “It’s not like we have another choice.”

  Instead of replying, Jackson stared at the smudged chalkboard. “Where did you guys find those plans for the Pikachu again?”

  “On an online forum we belong to,” Hashemi said.

  “And you didn’t have to modify it?” Jackson asked.

  “Just minor tweaks,” Megan said. “We already had most of the parts.”

  Jackson rubbed his face. “This is too much of a coincidence.”

  “Maybe Gaby’s right,” Bradley said, the key molds still in his hand. “Maybe we should sort all this out once we’re outside.”

  “We’re almost finished on our end,” Megan said. “We can switch off the cameras whenever you’re ready.”

  Jackson continued to stare at the board. Too many coincidences….

  “Jackson?” Megan’s voice was loud and sharp in his earpiece. “Did you copy that?”

  “Hold up on turning off those cameras,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “What if it’s not some automated system?” Jackson began pacing the room. “What if it’s someone sitting at a computer — with a monitoring system just like yours — who’s waiting to turn those cameras back on as soon as you turn them off?”

  “But if that was the case, they should have powered them back on as soon as we turned them off the first time,” Megan said.

  “Perhaps,” Jackson said. “Another question: What’s the lag time from the cameras powering on to being fully functional?”

  “Pulling up the diagnostics…. It took about thirty to forty-five seconds last time. Sooner for the ones outside — they’re more powerful because of the need for night vision. The ones inside have older processors and take longer to boot up.”