Full Ride

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  I am so tempted.

  The computer knowledge itself didn’t make Daddy a criminal, I remind myself. It was how he used it.

  I sit down at the table and open my laptop.

  “I’m not breaking any laws,” I say out loud as I turn it on. “I’m not doing anything an ordinary person couldn’t do, if they knew how.”

  The computer fires up, and I type in the words “social security death records.” This takes me to a genealogy website that promises access to eighty-nine million records, from all fifty states.

  How old was I when I first saw Daddy playing around with this site? I wonder. Eight? Nine? Ten?

  I can remember sneaking up on him in his office as a prank; I was young enough to be amused by the panic that raced across his face. I thought that meant my prank was a good one, not that he was afraid I’d be smart enough to figure out he was doing something wrong.

  I wasn’t that smart. Not then. And he covered quickly.

  “Oh, here I am acting like such an old man, looking up relatives who have been dead for years,” he said with a rueful laugh.

  I knew to look respectfully sad. All of Daddy’s closest relatives were dead. Or at least that’s what he’d told us.

  “Let’s turn this into a game an old man can play with his daughter,” Daddy said, teasingly ruffling my hair. Now I’m suspicious: Was he just doing that so his arm would block my view of the screen while he closed down whatever else he had open? Was it something I might have asked questions about?

  Regardless, we began competing to come up with the most boring names we could think of. We got points for both dullness and the number of people who had died in the United States bearing that name. I won with “Joe Gray,” which had been carried by more than eight thousand dead people.

  “And it’s boring and colorless, almost by definition!” Daddy said. “Gray—perfect! I could never beat that!”

  Later, after Daddy was arrested, I found out that “Joe Gray” was one of the most common fake identities he used in his scams. He used it for years.

  Was I supposed to feel honored that Daddy valued my suggestion that much? As he looked at the death records that day, was he thinking, Wow, Becca is really good at this. I’ll definitely have to bring her into the family business when she gets a little older?

  Did anybody besides Daddy and me ever know that “Joe Gray” was my idea?

  I realize I am pressing down on the keyboard so hard that it hurts. I’m making an incoherent row of k’s and d’s and f’s.

  I take my hands off the keys and clench them together.

  “You’re not doing anything wrong,” I tell myself once again.

  I erase my mistakes and type in the name “Whitney Elaine Court”—I know her middle name from the yearbooks. I don’t know her exact birthdate, but I know she turned eighteen in May of her senior year—they had a birthday cake for her during the cast party for the musical. So I can put in the month and the year.

  No death records come up. Does that mean Mrs. Congreves was right and Whitney is still alive?

  Maybe Whitney got married, I tell myself. Maybe that’s why nothing’s showing up, because she had a different name when she died.

  The same genealogy website brags about having marriage records from all fifty states, so I try Whitney’s name and birth month and year on that search form instead.

  Nothing.

  I sit back, staring at the screen.

  Maybe she died overseas? I wonder. Maybe she studied abroad during college and something awful happened to her? Maybe she was on some sort of volunteer trip to some dangerous part of the world?

  I’m pretty sure that would still show up in the social security records. But maybe there was some mistake.

  Wouldn’t there be newspaper articles about that? I think. Wouldn’t I have found an obituary, if nothing else?

  Not on the regular Web. Not from thirteen, fourteen, fifteen years ago.

  That’s why you go to the deep Web if you really want an answer. . . . On the deep Web, pretty much anything that’s ever been on the Internet is still there . . .

  I can hear Daddy saying that. It’s like he’s infested my mind tonight. Reinfested. Whatever.

  But he gave that advice when I was a fifth grader doing homework, I think. He wouldn’t have told me to do anything illegal when I was just a little kid!

  How else am I supposed to find out anything about Whitney? She’s not dead, not married, not on Facebook, not on LinkedIn, not employed in any job that shows up online . . .

  If I didn’t know better, I’d think Whitney didn’t even exist!

  I start the deep Web searches.

  There’s nothing about anyone named Whitney Court dying overseas. But I unearth two old articles from a newspaper in tiny Gambier, Ohio. One is just a listing of police reports. After accounts of stolen wallets and a gym bag taken from an unlocked car, there’s this:

  A 20-year-old female was reported to the Gambier police for erratic behavior and suspected drug use. Subject was identified as Kenyon student Whitney Court. She was taken to the police station and then released.

  The other article is also brief, only two paragraphs. But it’s notable enough to have its own headline: KENYON STUDENT ARRESTED FOR DUI, REFUSES BREATHALYZER.

  So, three paragraphs total, and I think that gives me Whitney’s entire story. She must have become a drug addict, an alcoholic. That’s why there’s nothing about her online after these articles. For all her golden-girl promise in high school, she’s probably spent the last fifteen years in and out of rehab. The pressure of living up to all her high school success was too much for her. Or maybe she was already abusing drugs and alcohol in high school, and all those glowing yearbook photos were cover-ups and lies.

  And now her parents think she deserves a scholarship in her honor?

  I shove the computer away from me. It slides across the table, the top part wobbling dangerously. It’s fragile, on the verge of falling apart. It skids to a stop at the other edge of the table, perilously close to falling over. If I’d shoved just a little bit harder, it would have crashed to the floor. It would have shattered.

  There’s a part of me that wishes it had. I want to destroy something.

  I jerk back from the table, knocking over my chair. I stalk away and kick a pillow that has fallen from the couch to the floor. It flops over, landing a mere foot away. I kick it again, harder.

  I am so, so mad.

  You had everything! I want to scream at Whitney Court.

  I have all those golden-girl images of yearbook-Whitney swirling in my mind. Whatever she was doing in the background then, she was still so smart, so talented, so beloved. . . . And she had two parents who were so successful and so eager to pay for college that they’ll pay tuition for total strangers.

  Why’d you have to throw it all away? I imagine asking Whitney. Why, when there are people like me who have nothing, who would give almost anything to have what you had?

  Maybe I say that out loud. Maybe I scream it.

  I am as judgmental as a DARE officer: That first swallow of beer, that first puff of marijuana, you are just pouring your life down the drain. You are just asking for your life to go up in smoke.

  Kids always make fun of DARE, but the DARE people were right about Whitney Court. She did throw her life away.

  It’s like Daddy, I think. He was so smart, so talented, so handsome. If he’d just stuck to the right side of the law, maybe he wouldn’t have made quite so much money, but he could have stayed out of prison. He could have been successful without everyone hating him, without everyone hating me and Mom. . . .

  I sink into the couch. I didn’t mean to uncage that beast, my fury with my own father. Now it’s like an animal pinning me in place, threatening to devour me.

  I dodge it. I think about Whitney’s parents instead. I pound my fists against the couch: I’m mad at them, too.

  And you two! So magnanimous, so praiseworthy, giving money to poor kids l
ike me. . . . All we have to do is ‘honor’ your daughter, who’s really some loser who threw away the kind of life most of us can only dream about. It’s ridiculous! It’s hypocritical!

  I stop in the middle of my mental screed. I back up and sort through the same thoughts at a snail’s pace this time around.

  The Whitney Court Scholarship is ridiculous and hypocritical. More than that, it’s . . .

  Unlikely, I think.

  I freeze on that word. I’m completely still now. I’m done shoving and kicking and pounding things. I furrow my brow, thinking harder: I’m as deliberate as someone inching along the edge of a cliff.

  Isn’t it unlikely? If the Courts really want to hold up their daughter as some saintly creature everyone should revere, why set up scholarship requirements that send kids digging into the past? I wonder.

  Sure, none of my friends picked Whitney to focus on, but I bet every year there’s at least one person like me who goes looking for Whitney’s story. I’m not such a research genius that I’m the only one who could ever dig up the truth about Whitney.

  What if that’s part of the point?

  I examine this theory.

  If the Courts wanted to use Whitney as a cautionary tale, they would have made her story public from the very beginning, I think.

  Her descent into drug and alcohol abuse would have been right there in the scholarship info; the message would have been, “Don’t do what our daughter did. Use our money to fulfill your glorious potential.” And the essays required for the scholarship would have been like DARE sermons: “Why Not to Do Drugs.” “Why Drinking Is Bad.”

  Why didn’t the Courts set up the scholarship that way?

  The answer comes to me in a flash. It’s an answer I am uniquely capable of seeing:

  The Whitney Court Scholarship is ridiculous and unlikely because it actually isn’t real. What it really is, is a scam worthy of my own father.

  And I’m pretty sure Daddy was the one who set it up.

  Now—

  stunned, stunned, stunned

  I’m gasping with the force of my suspicions, my revelation. I’m so flabbergasted that for a moment, my mind goes blank. I realize I’ve started whimpering, “No, please no, not this . . .”

  I try to force myself to be cold and analytical, to sort through my evidence.

  Fact: There is something odd at the heart of the Whitney Court Scholarship. Even odder than scholarships that celebrate fire sprinklers or duct-tape prom clothes.

  I remember Stuart complaining that the whole thing seemed like a setup. I remember not just Mrs. Congreves dodging questions, but the teachers and Whitney’s classmates, too. I remember something Ms. Stela said about the scholarship: “It’s totally weird, but, hey, if someone wants to donate money to DHS students, they can set it up practically any way they want.”

  This is money being given away, not stolen. Of course no one’s going to look too closely at a few oddities.

  When Ms. Stela called the scholarship weird, she was talking about the deadlines and announcement dates being earlier than for any other local scholarship. And those deadlines are terribly inconvenient for most high school seniors, since this is when we’re supposed to be visiting college campuses and writing essays for our college applications and keeping our grades up because they still count. Stuart has complained about the overlapping deadlines all along.

  But the deadline and announcement dates are perfect for someone like me, who wants to know about scholarship money before she has to decide about filling out financial aid forms. I remember how I felt standing in Ms. Stela’s office when she told me about the Court scholarship—it seemed like a gift, almost as if it were designed especially for me.

  Maybe it was, I think.

  I dig my hands into the cracks between the couch cushions and squeeze. I’m not sure if I am just trying to hold on or if I am trying to destroy the couch. This could be one of those crazy folk sayings: You can’t get blood from a turnip; you can’t make a purse from a sow’s ear; you can’t squeeze truth from foam rubber and ancient upholstery.

  Don’t jump to conclusions, I tell myself.

  Still, I bring out more evidence: the thought I’d had only moments ago, before my deep Web search. If I didn’t know better, I’d think Whitney didn’t even exist!

  My head spins trying to think of how much someone—Daddy?—would have had to invent and plant to make it seem as though a girl named Whitney Court graduated from Deskins High School fifteen years ago if there was no such person.

  Two small-town newspaper articles that could be accessed only on the deep Web? That would be nothing for Daddy or someone like him to make up and hide online.

  But yearbooks that purport to be from fifteen years ago? Teachers who would lie and talk about a student they never had? A former neighbor who would make up stories at length? An entire graduating class of kids/now grown-ups so united that, at the very least, none of them would step forward and proclaim, “The emperor has no clothes! There never was a Whitney!” This would require bribe upon bribe upon bribe.

  Even with bribes, no graduating class could be that united, I think.

  And, anyhow, even though of course Mom has told Daddy that we’re in Deskins and I’m going to graduate from Deskins High, no one knew to expect that fifteen years ago. A hoax like what I’m imagining would have required years of prep work.

  So scratch that theory, I tell myself. Whitney really did exist. Whitney, the high school golden girl who evidently became the college druggie. . . .

  I remember something the federal prosecutor told the jury about Daddy’s scams: The hoaxes Roger Jones carried off were full of misrepresentations, yes, but they were utterly believable to their victims. Because every single one of them was wrapped in a solid veneer of truth.

  It would be entirely like Daddy to pick someone like Whitney for his veneer of truth. He often looked for someone who had a secret shame, an unknown vice. Whitney threw her life away on drugs and drinking; her parents apparently slunk out of town in shame a decade ago. They probably cut off ties with everyone in Deskins as thoroughly as Mom and I cut off ties with everyone outside it. They’d never know if someone else gave away money in Whitney’s name.

  Whitney Court and her family were ripe for this kind of scam. Deskins was too—Deskins, where most of my classmates were new within the past three or four years; Deskins, where fifteen years ago might as well be ancient history.

  And Daddy would have loved setting this whole thing up—tricking the prison officials somehow into giving him computer access, erasing all traces of his searches and communications afterward, fooling not just a single victim but an entire school. An entire community, really.

  This isn’t that different from scams I know Daddy did, I think. It’s like his old scams flipped inside out—giving away money instead of stealing it, sure, but still tricking people to send money where it’s not supposed to go.

  I am strangling the couch cushion beneath me. I let go. The cushion refuses to reinflate. I slide over onto the next one, a fresh victim.

  Fact: Even after Daddy got caught, even after they confiscated his business records and his personal records and his computers, everyone was always convinced he’d gotten away with huge sums of money. The media was full of speculation about how he had to have set up an escape fund in the Cayman Islands or some other offshore haven where the American legal system couldn’t reach it.

  I remember hearing Alice Gladstone, one of our neighbors back in Georgia, ask Mom about this supposed Cayman fund.

  It was in the early days after Daddy was arrested, when we were still answering our door to people we knew. Mrs. Gladstone had come over with a fresh-baked peach pie. I could smell it from upstairs, and I’d tiptoed over to the top of the stairs where I could hear without being seen.

  I’d already learned that the best way to find out anything was to stay out of sight.

  “Oh, you poor thing,” Mrs. Gladstone declared loudly, as if she want
ed everyone on our street to witness her charity and kindness to the new neighborhood outcasts. Or maybe it was for the sake of TV cameras.

  There was a pause, probably while Mrs. Gladstone gathered Mom into one of her overly perfumed hugs. I heard the door being shut.

  I noticed that Mom did not invite Mrs. Gladstone out of the entryway into the living room to sit down. Mom did not say anything.

  Maybe she was crying.

  “How much?” Mrs. Gladstone stage-whispered. Her voice was softer than usual, but still loud enough that I could hear her from upstairs. “I’m sure he put aside something for you and the girl—do you have to wait until after the trial or the plea agreement before you go to the Caymans to claim it? How many millions is it? You’ll still be perfectly comfortable, won’t you?”

  “Get out,” Mom said, her voice as hard as steel.

  The door opened. I heard Mrs. Gladstone gasp—evidently Mom was pushing her back outside. Mrs. Gladstone was starve-yourself-thin and prone to wearing teetery high heels; I’m sure Mom overpowered her easily. Next, I heard a shattering sound that might have been a pie-filled baking dish smashing against our brick porch. I wanted to know: Had Mrs. Gladstone dropped the pie, or had Mom thrown it after her?

  I didn’t ask. I didn’t ask anyone about the Cayman Islands fund, either. But in the early days after Daddy was arrested—before I heard his victims testify, before I knew everything he’d done—I liked thinking about it. I’d tell myself, Just get through this. Get through this, and then you’ll be on the beach in the Cayman Islands, not a care in the world . . .

  Instead, I ended up poor and friendless and studious in Deskins, Ohio. I stopped believing in the Cayman Islands fund.

  But maybe, I think. Maybe, maybe, maybe . . .

  I lean over onto the third couch cushion, too overcome to keep sitting up. I’m stretched across the whole couch now.

  Fact: Daddy really did love me. He really does.

  I sniff. I am a high school senior with good grades. I do well in subjects requiring logic. So I know I can’t classify that as a fact. It’s only an opinion, a theory, a belief. A belief that was sorely tested three and a half years ago.