Digital Disaster! (7 page)

“See, you have to go into ‘cells' first and then ‘insert
text,' I said. “Then, if you click here, it will let you type in or drop in
whatever you want.” I typed in,
Hi, Mr. Trigg
, as an
example and showed him.

“You're a brilliant genius!” he said.

“Glad I could be of service.” I smiled. Then I reached into my
pocket and pulled out my letter. “So, um, here's my latest Know-It-All
letter. Can you take a look? I think it's pretty good.”

“Well, if you think so, I'm sure it is,” said Mr. Trigg,
pushing his reading glasses up on his nose. He took the letter and started reading.

“Hmmmm,” he said after a minute.

“What?” I asked. My heart started beating a little faster.
Maybe it wasn't as good as I thought it was.

Mr. Trigg lightly drummed his fingers on the desktop. He sat back.
“I think you're being a little harsh here. Too opinionated. You need to be a
bit friendlier.”

My heart dropped to my stomach. Wow. How could I have misjudged things
like that?

“But isn't that what I'm supposed to be as
Know-It-All?” I asked. “Opinionated?”

“There's a difference between sharing an opinion and being
opinionated,” Mr. Trigg said, holding up my letter. “I agree with everything
you said, but just tone it down a bit.”

I took the letter back from Mr. Trigg. “It's hard for me to
tone it down. The letter makes me angry. It's one thing to make your own mistakes,
but to not even care how it affects other people? I just don't get it. It's
the same way I feel about the person who hacked into the math exam. What are people
thinking?” I said, my voice getting higher, my hands waving around.

“Whoa! Slow down, Ms. Martone. I see this has tapped into something
for you,” Mr. Trigg said. “Maybe you need a little distance. Put it down for
a while; then give it another whirl.”

“I just work hard to do well and be honest. Aren't you upset
by it?” I asked. He was a teacher, for crying out loud.

“Of course. But since Dear Know-It-All is anonymous, there's
nothing I can do about it. These kinds of decisions catch up with you. If Rock Star
isn't caught now, he or she will have to suffer the consequences at some point.
That I'm sure of. But your job is to offer some sound, levelheaded advice, and I
know you can do that.”

“I hope so,” I said, folding up the letter and putting it in
my pocket. But I was worried that it might not be possible for me to be
“friendly” to Rock Star.

Chapter 7

Workaholic Middle Schooler Turns to Nail Polish for Comfort

At home after dinner I went straight to my room to write another version
of the letter. I tore the first draft up into little pieces, wrapped it in a tissue, and
threw it out in the bathroom garbage can. I couldn't be too careful. I've
caught Allie before snooping around in my room. At times I've really thought she
was on to me, but then again, Allie just likes snooping, so it's hard to tell.

I opened up my password-protected file and started again.

Dear Rock Star,

I understand that you may think writing isn't a useful skill because
of your interests, but didn't you need to know something about writing to write
this letter? Do you think this is the last letter you'll ever have to write? And
what if you don't become a rock star? Then where will you be?

I stopped typing and read it back. Ugh. I knew it sounded too
opinionated. Delete. Start over.

Dear Rock Star,

I took a deep breath and stretched my arms up in the air before
continuing.

It's one thing to cheat. It's another thing to ask your friend
to cheat for you. I'm surprised she or he agreed.

I read it back. Ahhhhh! This just wasn't working. What I really
wanted to say was
Dear Rock Star, what are you thinking????
Everything else felt like a lie. I needed a break or at least another
perspective. I heard the thumping of Allie's music in her room, and usually the
louder the music was, the worse a mood she was in. I decided to take my chances and
knocked on her door. She didn't answer. I knocked harder.

“What?” she yelled back. Hmmm, maybe it wasn't the best
time to bug her.

“It's me,” I called over the music.

“Come in!” she yelled.

I opened the door. She was sitting on her bed painting her toenails a
sparkly blue color. She had one foot propped up on top of a newspaper. I sat down.

“Careful. You're shaking the bed,” she said, holding up
her nail polish brush.

“Sorry.” I gingerly lay down on my stomach, my chin on my
hands, and watched her paint her pinkie toe. She was really good at doing her own nails.
They always looked professionally done. Whenever I tried, I went through a bag of cotton
balls and lots of nail polish remover, correcting the mistakes. Then the smell made me
sick and I wondered why I even bothered. Luckily, nothing made Allie happier than doing
people's nails.

“Can you do mine?” I asked, cheerfully wiggling my fingers at
her.

“Is that why you came in here? What's up, really?” she
said, focused intently on her toes.

“Can't I just come and say hi to my sister?” I asked in
a dramatic tone.

“Hi. Now what's going on?” She looked up. “You
seem kind of mopey and confused about something. Boy trouble?”

Allie knew me so well. I usually came into her room for three things:
friend advice, boy advice, or fashion advice. This reason, though, didn't quite
fit into any of those categories, but I couldn't actually tell her why I was
asking. “Not boy trouble. Actually I was just working on my article about the test
scandal. Wanted your opinion.” It was kind of true.

“Yeah, did they catch the guy?”

An image of Will Hutchins popped into my head. “How do you know
it's a guy?” I asked.

“I don't, but I just can't imagine a girl doing
that,” she said.

“You never know,” I said. “What if you knew the person
who did it? Or if you knew that they had asked a friend to help them actually,
and
they asked you if they should do it all over again. What
would you tell them?” I asked, hoping I wouldn't give anything away.

“Whoa,” Allie said, and sat straight up and lowered her voice.
“Holy cow! You know who did it?”

“Oh no! Definitely not.” Darn. I should have known that was
what my question would sound like. Now I was going to get myself in another mess.

“Are you telling me the truth? Swear on our mother's
life?” She gave me one of her super-intense stares.

“Chill out, Allie. Of course I don't know who it is. I
wouldn't keep that to myself. I'm just asking because I think I know someone
who might know who did it, but I'm not even sure about that. It's all very
hypothetical,” I said, but I was starting to confuse myself. I was trying to
re-create the situation with Rock Star and apply it to the hacker incident since that
was public knowledge. Now I wasn't sure if I was asking about Rock Star or Will
Hutchins.

“Well,” Allie said, then paused to blow on her toes.
“I'd tell them that they were a royal idiot. Nice friend, too,” she
said, and blinked at me. “I mean seriously, who would be so stupid?”

I laughed. I should have known that the only person who was going to be
more opinionated about this issue than me would be Allie.

“What's so funny?” she asked.

“Nothing. I just like your answer. Have you ever cheated on
anything?” I asked her. Even though Allie was opinionated, I had always wondered
this about her. She was a pretty good student, but hated math and science and was
usually more into her friends and dance classes than her schoolwork. Could she ever have
been tempted?

She was quiet for a moment. “Why do you want to know?” she
asked, very interested in her toenails again. She had finished one foot and was starting
on the next.

“No particular reason. I've just been thinking about the
subject a lot since all this happened.” I tried to sound casual, but I could tell
Allie had something on her mind.

She stopped painting and put the brush back in its bottle, screwing the
cap on slowly. Then she looked at me and sighed. “I probably shouldn't tell
you this, but I cheated once, in eighth grade. It was algebra. I wrote some stuff on my
hand for the test and my teacher caught me. I got an automatic F for the test. It was
awful. He called Mom and watched me like a hawk for the rest of the year. It was so
embarrassing, and the most ridiculous part about it was I would have gotten a much
better grade if I had never cheated. Lesson learned!” She lowered her eyes at me.
“Don't ever do it.”

“I wasn't planning to,” I said. “Why didn't
I know about this?”

“Mom promised to keep it between me and her. I think she
didn't want to put any bad ideas in your head. As if,” she said, and started
blowing on her feet again.

I sat up, shocked that I'd never known Allie had actually done
something like that. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“Well, you're so into school, you know? It seems so easy for
you. I just got really overwhelmed and felt like I had to do really well all the time.
Now I can handle things better and ask for help when I need it.”

I stared at Allie. She thought school was easy for me? Ha! I felt like I
never stopped working. In fact, sometimes I felt like I was way too stressed for someone
in middle school. I thought of Hailey saying how we hadn't had a sleepover in a
while. It's true that doing well in school and with the paper was important to me,
but had it become too important?

“School is anything but easy to me,” I said. “I just get
really wrapped up in whatever I'm doing and don't do anything else. But
I'm always stressed. That's my problem.”

Allie finished her toes and started clearing up the newspaper. “I
guess things are never exactly what you think they are.”

I nodded. That was true. “Okay, so I'm going to try to have
more fun. Can you paint my nails?”
Workaholic Middle Schooler
Turns to Nail Polish for Comfort.

“I think a little Aqua Fantasy is in order,” she said, taking
out a bottle of a bright greenish blue and shaking it. “You won't be able to
not have a good time with these nails!” Maybe she'd be right.

After my nails dried, I wrote another draft of the Know-It-All letter and
e-mailed it to Mr. Trigg. He'd had a secret e-mail account set up just for me.
Sometimes I liked to e-mail him and sometimes I went by, like I had the other day, just
to get an immediate reaction. As I was writing, I kept staring down at my nails for
inspiration and pretended I felt as friendly and fancy-free as my nails looked. It had
to work this time.

Chapter 8

Writing Partners Flirt Through Entire Meeting. Miss Everything.

Finally Tuesday evening came around. Michael and I sat in the auditorium
waiting for the meeting about the test scandal to begin. We had both gotten there early
and sat in the front row in order to hear and see everything. I'd wondered if we
would go together, but Michael had to meet me there after his baseball game and dinner
with his team. My mother drove me, but she sat with some of the other mothers she knew
and let me have my own space with Michael. I didn't even have to ask her.
She's just a cool mom like that. Hailey was there as well, but she sat with her
mom. She told me to work hard so we'd have extra fun this weekend. I looked over
at Michael, who was tapping his pencil on his notebook. I couldn't help admiring
his strong hands for a moment. The old me would think that I was distracting myself from
my work, but the Aqua-Fantasy-nail-polished me thought it was just fine. I might be
working, but it didn't mean I couldn't crush on him a little bit.