by Ariel Kaplan
“Fine,” I said.
“I’m glad we understand each other,” she said, and hung up.
I weighed the possibility of making off with my mother’s car—which was prone to dropping key parts at inopportune moments—and asking Nate for help yet again. I called Nate.
“I have a summons,” I explained. “From Emily.”
“I see,” he said. “If I give you a ride, can I come along?”
“Not up to me,” I said.
“No,” he agreed. “It’s probably not. I’ll pick you up and drive you over there, if you want.”
“Thanks, Nate,” I said.
“Don’t mention it. Well, it’s okay if you want to mention it sometime. Mentioning it is probably fine.”
“Nate.”
“Mischa.”
“I’ll see you at eleven.”
* * *
—
Nate and I arrived at 11:28 at Emily’s house, which is about a mile away from Blanchard. It’s one of those big square houses with all-glass walls that you see on design shows. Emily and Shira were in the basement, her parents presumably asleep, both girls wearing black leggings and T-shirts with their hair tied back.
“Uh,” I said. “Are we breaking in someplace?”
“In fact, we are!” Shira said jovially. “Isn’t it wonderful?”
“What?” I said. “Where are we breaking in?”
“Hello? Blanchard?” Shira said. “Where else would we go?”
“To look at the transcripts? I thought you were going to hack into those remotely.”
“Well, yes, that was the idea,” said Emily. “But that didn’t happen quite the way I’d hoped.”
“Didn’t happen?”
“I was hoping those files would be stored on Blanchard’s cloud. But they aren’t backed up there. I couldn’t find them.”
“Isn’t that strange?”
“It is strange,” Emily said. “But they must be on Mrs. Hadley’s hard drive, so we’re going to access them the old-fashioned way.”
“And how are we getting into the building?”
“Also the old-fashioned way.” Emily glanced at Nate. “Are you coming? You’re not really dressed for it.”
“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t realize this was a costume event.”
“You can wait in the car,” she said, and we followed her out the front door.
“Isn’t this an awful lot of people to break into the school with?” I asked. “We’re kind of conspicuous.”
Emily got in the car, with Shira riding next to her. Nate and I squashed ourselves into the backseat. “We’re not all going inside,” she said. “We need contingencies. And contingencies for the contingencies.”
Emily alternated driving with tying her hair up in a bun and shoving it into a beanie. A few minutes later we pulled into Blanchard’s driveway, where the guard who manned the entry booth had long since gone home. The gate across the entrance lane was up, and after we’d driven by it, Emily shut off the headlights. Then she picked up her phone and dialed. “Bebe,” she said. “Darling.”
“Where’s Bebe?” I asked.
“Hopefully in the vicinity of an exterior door.” She cocked her head toward the phone. “Auditorium, she says.” She put the phone down and pulled the car into a spot behind a dumpster.
“We’re kind of far from the building, aren’t we?” asked Nate.
“You can see the booth from here. You”—she indicated Nate—“are going to stay here and keep watch. If you see headlights coming down that road, you call us. Whatever happens, don’t let anyone see you.”
“She’s really getting into this,” Shira said.
“Look, we are all aware that what we are doing could get us arrested and expelled, right? Like, that’s a real thing that could happen if we aren’t careful?” Emily reached back to switch off the dome light so it wouldn’t turn on when we opened the doors, and the three of us got out, leaving Nate to wait.
“How long do you think this’ll take?” he asked.
“If we can’t get what we want in half an hour, we’re leaving. It’s just too risky otherwise.” She leveled a finger at him. “Don’t do anything that turns on any light.”
“What?”
“It’ll draw attention to the car! Honestly, people.”
“So I’m just going to be sitting here. In the dark. By myself. Doing nothing.”
“Not doing nothing,” Emily said in a tone of strained forbearance. “You’re going to be watching for other cars.”
“Yay,” he said. “How fun that will be.”
Emily shut the car door, and the three of us made our way quietly toward the side of the school, where there was a locked fire door leading out of the auditorium. When we got there, Shira knocked two times on the door, and it opened. On the other side, Bebe was holding the door open with one hand and a box of take-out lo mein noodles with the other, a pair of chopsticks sticking out of the top.
“Took you long enough,” she said. “It’s massively boring in here. Like, you’d think there’d be more to do, but Mrs. White’s emails really aren’t that interesting.”
“You were reading her emails?” I asked.
“I was joking.”
“You know she’s having an affair with Mr. Bender, right?” I asked.
They turned toward me and stared for a few seconds. “Her, too? Now how did you figure that one out?”
“They both go out for lunch twice a week. Separately. And then they come back and eat a sandwich during third period.”
Emily looked impressed. “Nate put that one together, actually,” I admitted.
“Why didn’t you mention this before?”
“I—I don’t know. I guess I didn’t think it was important.”
“From now on,” Emily said, “everything is important.” She checked the time on her phone and nodded at Bebe. “Did you check the building?”
“Nobody home,” she said. “I did a round at seven and another one half an hour ago. Ms. Erickson was the last one here.”
“Where were you hiding?”
“Boys’ locker room.” She shuddered. “I was going to do the girls’, but the lacrosse team was here until six.”
“So where’d you get the takeout?” I asked, pointing at the lo mein.
“Faculty fridge,” she said, turning the box so I could see the other side, where Lisa White was written in black marker. She teaches AP English, but not my section.
“You took her lunch?”
She gave me a dark look. “She docked me ten points on a quiz for writing in purple ink.” She slurped the noodles into her mouth. “Time to pay the piper.”
We made our way to the front office, which was closed for the night. Before she tried the door, Emily opened the bag slung over her arm, saying, “This is the part where we put gloves on.”
“Is that really necessary?”
“No,” said Shira. “It’s stupid.”
“It’s a precaution. We’re about to get intimate with Mrs. Hadley’s keyboard.” When nobody moved, she said, “Just put on your damn gloves.”
We did. Emily put her hand on the door.
It was locked.
“Hmm,” she said. She glanced at Bebe. “You didn’t happen to find a stash of keys somewhere, did you?” Bebe shook her head.
“Ah well,” Emily said, pulling her wallet out of her purse and extracting her Starbucks card. “The old-fashioned way, right?” She slid the credit card into the crack in the door, then gave it an extra push when she met the locking mechanism. The door popped open.
“You’ve got such great life skills, Emily,” said Shira.
“Thank you, love.”
“Can we turn on the lights?” Bebe asked.
“No,” said Emily.
“There’s no one here!”
“Not worth it,” said Emily. “Let’s go.” Guided by the beams of Emily’s and Bebe’s flashlights, we made our way to Mrs. Hadley’s desk. Emily sat down in her chair. Bebe, who was behind me, smacked into the giant box next to the desk and swore loudly.
“Would you be quiet?” Emily hissed.
“It’s fine,” Bebe said, limping around to the other side of the desk. “I didn’t really need all ten of those toes anyway.”
Emily turned on Mrs. Hadley’s computer, and we watched the screen flicker to life. “Mischa, check in with Nate while this starts up, would you?”
“Fine,” I said. I texted Nate, We found a dead body.
Really?
No. Everything OK there?
Fine, but I am SO BORED.
I put my phone away. “Nate’s fine.”
By then the computer was on, and Emily was typing a password from a piece of paper Shira had extracted from her pocket. “How do you have Mrs. Hadley’s password?”
“I emailed her a keylogger yesterday attached to a Word file,” Shira said.
“A keylogger?”
“It’s like a virus,” she explained as Emily typed. “You put it on someone’s system, and it records everything they type and then sends it to you.”
“What if they find it?”
“I spoofed the admissions office at George Mason. It’ll look like it came from there.”
“Should I be scared of you guys?”
“Probably. We’re in,” Emily said. “Okay.” She pulled up Windows Explorer and started scrolling. “This looks promising.” She clicked on something called “IGradeBook.”
A message popped up on the screen. “Oh, come on,” she said.
“What is that?” I said. “They want a second password?”
“They’re using two-factor authentication on this,” she said.
“Can you—I don’t know—override it?”
“Not easily.”
“So what does that mean?”
“It means,” she said, “that we can’t get the transcript files. Not tonight, anyway.”
Bebe said, “What do we have access to?”
Emily backed out of the IGradeBook screen and went back to the list of folders.
“Memos. Lots of memos.” She clicked some more. “Databases of college addresses. Databases of alumni donors.”
“Why would Mrs. Hadley be looking at those?”
“They’re shared files,” Emily said. “She’s probably not.” She kept scanning. But then my phone rang in my pocket.
“It’s Nate,” I said, answering it.
“There’s a car coming,” he whispered. “It just came through the gate—wait, now it’s going toward the building.”
“Cops?” I asked.
“Don’t think so.”
I looked up at the girls. “Someone’s coming.”
“Wait—here are the letters of recommendation,” Emily said, still reading from the list of files.
“We have to leave!”
“Wait,” she said again. “Now, where are yours?”
“Emily,” Shira said.
“Which side of the building?” I asked Nate as Shira pressed her face against mine to hear both sides of the conversation.
“Front entrance,” he said. “I still can’t see who, but if they’re going in the front door, they’re probably heading for the main office.”
“Shoot,” Shira said. “Hang on, ladies.” And then she slipped out the door.
“Where is she going?”
“She’s going to make some noise somewhere else in the building. Emily,” Bebe said. “We have to go.”
“They’re listed by student ID number,” Emily said.
“I don’t know my ID number,” I said.
“Well, then, I’m going to have to go through all of them.”
“There’s no time!”
Just then I heard the front door of the building open and close with a bang. Bebe and I crouched behind the desk. “Emily,” Bebe hissed.
“If the numbers were assigned alphabetically, she’d be toward the top of the list.”
“Emily,” I said.
“That’s it!” she whispered. “I’m printing them out.” She clicked something and then closed the files.
I heard the sound of shoes in the hallway outside just as the printer started to whir.
The footsteps stopped. Bebe killed her flashlight, and we huddled under the desk, but I realized with a sinking horror that the monitor was still glowing. I lunged toward the outlet and unplugged the computer’s power strip right as the door opened.
The three of us were piled on top of each other under the desk; Emily had my letters balled up in her hand, having already grabbed them off the printer. Bebe’s knee was mashed into my nose, and my body was sandwiched between Emily’s legs, her chin digging into my boob. We held our collective breath.
Then we heard the sound of a car alarm going off.
Whoever was in the room—a man, I realized—swore. And then went back out, shutting the door behind him.
I climbed off Emily. “Let’s go,” she said. “Let’s go now.”
We peeked through the doorway, long enough to see the front door fly open as whoever it was went out to attend to his car, and we slipped out the other way, back toward the auditorium.
I called Nate as we ran down the hallway. “Things just got less boring,” I said.
“I gathered that.”
“Meet us at the auditorium door,” I said. “We’re almost there.”
“I’ve got Shira,” he said. “And—oh crap. That’s Pelletier.”
As the assistant head of the school, Mr. Pelletier was in charge of maintaining order and doling out punishments while Dr. Marlowe shook hands and kissed babies (metaphorically speaking). If you got caught smoking by the dumpster, you saw Mr. Pelletier. If you got caught cheating, you saw Mr. Pelletier. Except nobody really called him Mr. Pelletier except to his face. To each other, we mostly just called him Bad Cop.
“How can you see that far?” I asked.
“Because he’s driving this way, and he’s the only one on campus who drives a silver Lexus convertible. Crap. Crap. He’s doing a circle around the building—don’t come out yet.”
“We’re already at the door!”
“If you come out,” Nate said, “he’ll see you.”
“If we don’t come out, he’ll see you!”
“Oops,” he said. “I think he just saw us.”
Through the phone I heard Shira saying, “Why are you taking your shirt off?” and then the line died.
“What just happened?” Emily asked.
“It’s Pelletier,” I said. “And he’s seen them.”
“Great,” Bebe said. “We’re all screwed.”
A text came through from Shira. Emily flashed it at me. It said, Come out now, but go toward the guard booth.
We exchanged glances before carefully opening the door and making our way out. About 150 feet away, Nate and Shira were being pulled out of the backseat of the car. I could see the dim light of the streetlamps reflecting off their bare skin. They were both shirtless, muttering things to Pelletier I couldn’t hear while Shira put her shirt back on and Nate made some joke that made her put her head in her hands in a way that was both shameful and rather un-Shira-like. Emily had to grab my arm and pull me away from the scene.
We ran past the guard booth and waited, crouching on the ground on the other side.
“Do you think he’ll call the police?” I asked.
“For Nate and Shira? Probably not. They weren’t in the building. I don’t think they’d bother with the cops for two people making out in their car.”
Five mi
nutes later Emily’s car rolled by, and we jumped in. Nate was still shirtless.
“Any reason that’s still off?” I asked.
“I was in the moment,” he said. Shira, who was in the front seat, laughed. “You were right,” she said, nudging Emily’s knee with her fist. “He does know how to kiss.”
Nate, throwing me a nervous look, said, “Please. Your saliva’s all over the car. Were you trying to eat my face?”
I chewed on my lip.
“What did he say to you?” Emily asked.
“Threw us off campus. Gave us a warning. Lectured us about condoms.”
Emily turned on the dome light and uncrumpled the papers in her hands.
“Did you get them?” I asked.
“Most of them,” she said. “Some of it got cut off when you unplugged everything.” She handed the pages to me.
I read out loud:
“ ‘To Whom It May Concern: It is only with grave reservations that I write this letter. On the one hand, Mischa is a very bright student, as her test scores attest. She has strong natural abilities in reading and writing, which can be seen when she applies herself.’ ” I swallowed. “ ‘However…’ ”
“However?”
“ ‘However, she has demonstrated an alarming tendency toward academic dishonesty. Many of her papers are liberally cribbed from Internet sources, and, after some interrogating, she admitted that her term paper had been purchased online—’ What the hell?”
Everyone in the car was silent while I finished reading the rest of the letter inside my head. “It doesn’t get better,” I said.
“Wow,” Nate said. “Ms. Augerman loved you.”
“Yeah,” I said. “She did.”
“What about the other one?” Emily said. “There were two.”
I glanced at the letter from Mr. Jensen, which I only had half of because the printer had been cut off in the middle. “More of the same,” I said. “I cheat on my papers and knock over liquor stores in my spare time.”
“Well,” Emily said. “I guess we know why you didn’t get into Revere.”
“What do you think happened to the real letters?” Nate asked. “Are they still in there somewhere?”
“I didn’t see anything else,” Emily said. “But then I didn’t really have a ton of time to poke around. However,” she went on, “we could replace these with our own. Just write some ourselves.”
