SECRETS, SECRETS EVERYWHERE 1 страница

Secret Sabotage

Copyright, 2010, by Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Someone in River Heights does not like Lexi Claremont. So much so, they’ve created a public burn book blog to tarnish her name — and the names of all her friends — right before this year’s River Heights Mahoney Celebration! The celebration is a huge carnival, complete with rides, fireworks, and a big parade, with Lexi starring as the makeshift star of it all, a.k.a. the Daughter of River Heights.

When Lexi seeks out my help, I have no choice but to go undercover as her close friend to see through her eyes and try to guess who her enemies might be. But as the celebration begins, Lexi receives threatening notes that are much scarier than any mean blog. When things start going wrong at the carnival, it seems like it’s all part of an elaborate scheme to humiliate Lexi.

Will I be able to find the culprit before more than just Lexi’s reputation is threatened?

THE PERFECT DRESS

“It has to be perfect,” my friend Bess reiterated, twirling around in the three-sided mirror outside the dressing room. “This year is supposed to be the biggest River Heights Celebration yet!”

I glanced over at the cobalt blue sundress she wore. It complemented her shoulder-length blond hair and blazing blue eyes. “Well,” I said, “if you’re looking for perfect, I think you found it.”

George joined us, several strange-looking gadgets clutched in her hands. “I left you guys for the antiques section an hour ago. Bess, you’ve probably found fifteen perfects since then!”

I stifled a laugh. Bess and George were both my closest friends in the world, and they got along fine — but they were cousins and couldn’t be more polar opposites, both in fashion sense and personality. While Bess was ultrafeminine, friendly, and took pride in having the nicest clothes (while spending the least amount of money possible on them), George was more of a tech-head and didn’t care how much her hobbies cost.

Bess bit her lip and turned to the side once again, surveying the outfit. “Nancy?” she asked me.

“Perfect,” I repeated.

George plopped down beside me on the bench in front of the dressing room and surveyed her cousin. “I don’t get why this year is so important,” she said. “There’s a River Heights Celebration every year. Why would this one be any different?”

Bess cocked her hip and turned from the mirror to face me and George. “I can’t believe you guys haven’t heard anything about this one. People have been talking about it for months.”

I raised an eyebrow. Usually I was pretty up on what was going on around town. But lately I’d been so busy solving mysteries, I’d obviously missed something good.

Mrs. Myrtle, an older woman who owned the vintage clothing store we were in, Boom Babies, sniffed at us and passed by with a glint of suspicion in her wrinkle-edged eyes.

I groaned inwardly, and Bess gave me an empathetic, knowing look. As an amateur detective in a town as small as River Heights, every time people saw me, they had a tendency to assume I was investigating them for some reason or another. But I couldn’t blame them — oftentimes they were right.

“This year is the eightieth Celebration,” Bess explained. “And Mrs. Mahoney is donating a ton of money to make it the best and most exciting Celebration yet. This is no ordinary town picnic. They’re setting up an entire carnival at River Heights High — rides, fireworks, and everything.”

George suddenly looked up from fussing with her pile of gadgets. “Rides?”

“Wow,” I said. “That’s an awful lot compared to past years. What do you think made Mrs. Mahoney decide to put so much money into it?”

Bess shrugged, just as George asked, “What kind of rides? Are we talking carousels or roller coasters?”

“I heard that there’s going to be a huge roller coaster going up today — but no one will be able to ride until Friday night, when the carnival opens. And fireworks will be set off at nine o’clock, so it will be dark.”

“Yes!” George exclaimed, looking at me expectantly.

“Oh, don’t look at me,” I warned. “I’ll stick to the carousels with Bess.” Sure, I enjoyed the occasional criminal investigation. But even one of my best friends in the world wouldn’t be able to convince me to step foot on a roller coaster.

“So we’re agreed, this is the dress?” Bess asked.

“Yes,” I said with certainty. “But I have to admit, my judgment might have become clouded by my desperate need for caffeine. Do you guys mind if I run over and grab a caramel macchiato from Club Coffee? It’s just a couple of stores away.”

“Ooh, count me in!” said Bess, giving the sundress one final twirl in front of the mirror.

“I could go for a green tea,” George put in.

I focused all my energy on one single image while Mrs. Myrtle rang up my friends’ finds on the register: an extra-large, extra-carameled, and extra whipped-creamed caramel macchiato.

“You’d think this was the only place in all of River Heights that serves coffee,” George remarked as we walked into a bustling Club Coffee.

“True,” said Bess. “But there’s only one Club Coffee — in River Heights, anyway. I think they’ve invented more coffee drinks than anyone else in the world.”

I scanned the room. Every single table was filled — people were sitting alone at their laptops, others were hanging with their friends, and clusters of people dotted the room, waiting for the chance empty table. The baristas were running around at a crazy pace, making me wonder if they’d been sampling some of their own products.

I pulled my PDA from my purse and checked the time on the upper left-hand corner of the screen: 2:35 p.m.

“School must have just gotten out,” I said.

“Another mystery solved.” Bess giggled.

We placed our orders and stood by the pickup counter. I surveyed the room to see if anyone looked as if they were about ready to leave. My feet were aching from searching for Bess’s “perfect dress” all day, and all I wanted to do was sit down and rest.

My eyes drifted over to a corner table that looked vacant, except for a small pile of papers in the center.

“Hey, you guys —,” I started, but then saw that the occupant of the table had been underneath it, searching for an outlet for her laptop.

When the girl sat back up, I saw that she had midnight black hair, short and cut at a dramatic angle, with blunt-cut bangs. A single barrette, black with a plastic, sparkly red heart at the clasp, held back a small portion of her hair. She had heavy, dramatic cat’s-eye eyeliner and wore all black — something I might wear prowling around, following suspects at night. It was a stark contrast against her ruby red lipstick and powder-pale skin. A bracelet adorned her wrist — a simple black string with a single ceramic red heart dangling from it.

“Nancy Drew!”

I blew out a breath, grateful to finally hear the barista call my name. But when I looked up, there was no drink on the counter.

That’s when I felt a sort of sharp poke in my shoulder. I turned abruptly.

“Nancy Drew?” she asked again.

“Yes?” I said, searching the stranger’s face for some hint as to how I might know her.

She had gorgeous platinum blond hair done in the kind of beachy curls that looked effortless, but you knew took a ton of time to achieve. She wore natural-looking but flawless makeup, including the perfect shade of pink, shimmery gloss — recently reapplied.

The girl thrust her hand toward me, and I reached out to shake it. She had a surprisingly strong grip for someone so slim and with such… pink clothes.

“I’m Lexi?” she asked. “Lexi Claremont?” I felt my face growing warm. Was I supposed to know this girl?

“Um,” I started. “I —”

“I go to high school at River Heights High?” she continued. “And I saw your picture in the newspaper, in that article about how you recently helped solve that cyberbullying case at the middle school?”

Ohhh. Finally I realized… Lexi wasn’t asking me questions. She was just one of those people who made every sentence sound like it ended with a question mark.

“Oh, okay,” I said out loud. “Nice to meet you, Lexi.” I smiled, waiting for her to say something else. But she only looked around the coffee shop, as though she was looking for someone else. Okay. Well, maybe she’d simply wanted to tell me that she’d seen the article in the paper. Sweet of her.

“Nancy Drew!” This time it was my coffee, and Bess grabbed it and handed it to me over the crowd of people waiting at the counter.

“Thanks, Bess!”

At long last, the sweet, foamy, caffeine-infused drink was all mine. I bent my head to take a tentative sip of the hot beverage when I felt my arm being yanked away from my mouth.

“Omigosh!” Lexi squeaked. “I didn’t mean to do that,” she said, looking at the tiny puddle of caramel macchiato that had soaked into my white cardigan sleeve.

“That’s okay,” I said slowly. “Lexi, is there —?”

“Nancy,” she whispered, leaning into me. “I need your help.”

I glanced at my friends, both of whom were used to this sort of thing randomly happening to me.

“We’ll be outside, Nance,” George said. “We’ll wait for you to finish up and then you can meet us out there?”

I nodded gratefully while Lexi snagged a table that had just opened up by the front door. I sat down and took my first sip of the caramel macchiato… mmm-mmm. Totally worth the wait.

“What kind of help do you mean?” I asked Lexi, feeling less hostile toward her for spilling my drink now that I’d tasted it.

“Okay.” Lexi leaned forward, her necklace — a thin silver chain with a heart locket at the end — dangling over her pale pink cashmere cardigan. “So, two weeks ago I get this e-mail from someone named CandyApple88? At first I thought it was an e-mail from my favorite online makeup store — CandyApple.”

I nodded, trying not very gracefully to suck all the rest of the whipped cream from off the top of my drink through Club Coffee’s trademark red straw. “But it wasn’t?” I asked.

Lexi let out a breath, her eyes darting around the room. “No,” she said. “It wasn’t.”

For a moment I saw her gaze settle on something in the back of the room, and her wide-eyed, sweet, pep-squad look went away for a few seconds. She narrowed her eyes, and her mouth went into a straight line. I turned to see what she was looking at, but just as I did, she began to talk again.

“It was… this link?”

“To a website,” I added.

“Right.” Lexi chewed on her bottom lip for a minute, her eyes on my drink.

“Lexi?” I asked.

Her eyes met mine, and her bright blue eyes were now a stunning, practically aquamarine color from the tears she was trying to keep from spilling out.

“What was the website?” I leaned forward, concerned. Suddenly I felt my heart thumping, and that adrenaline feeling that kicks in right when I know I’m about to be on the trail of a huge mystery warmed my arms and legs.

“It was awful,” Lexi said softly. “I don’t even know why I clicked on it. It was called hatethesegirls.com.”

“That’s an awful name for a website,” I said, taking another sip of my drink. “What was it, some sort of celebrity gossip site?”

“It was a gossip site all right,” she said. “All about me and my friends.”

That did sound mean… but after what I’d learned when I’d helped Bess’s younger sister and her friend with her cyberbullying problem, I wasn’t surprised. There were all kinds of scary people in the world, and a lot of them seemed to find computers an easy conduit for targeting and hurting people.

I took in Lexi’s appearance again. Pretty, blond, I’d imagine popular… and wealthy, if her designer handbag and cashmere sweater matched the rest of her wardrobe. It didn’t surprise me that she’d be a target of some sort of mean blog.

It was unfortunate, but high school girls could be really vicious. I could only imagine how intimidating an entire group of Lexis would be. Whoever created the blog could have been extremely jealous of all or even just one of those girls, and decided to try to make them feel a little less special by creating something that made them feel bad about themselves.

“What did the blog say?” I asked Lexi.

“Personal things,” she said. “Have you ever heard of a burn book?”

I shook my head, curious.

“Well, basically, it’s a book where people put pictures of people they know and write horrible things about them. Some are total lies, and some things are... well, sometimes there are things that are true. But always mean. Hatethesegirls.com is like an online burn book. It’s awful.”

“That really is terrible,” I admitted. “Have you told anyone? Your parents, or anyone at school?”

“Are you kidding?” Lexi asked me. “Why would I draw attention to something like that?”

“Well —,” I began.

“It’s bad enough that it’s out there to begin with? But now the blog posts are getting super personal, and they’re really focusing on me.”

“In what way?” I asked.

“Well, like me being chosen to be the Daughter of River Heights.”

“Daughter of River Heights?” I asked, confused.

“Didn’t you, like, go to River Heights High?” she asked.

Ignore the snark and take a sip of caramel-caffeine deliciousness, I commanded myself. “Lexi,” I said after a nice, long drink. “If you want my help — which I haven’t agreed to yet — I have to ask as many questions as possible… and get as many answers as possible.”

Lexi sighed. “The Daughter of River Heights is like a mini Daughter of the American Revolution type of thing. Every year, one girl from the senior class is selected by the faculty and her fellow students to be that year’s Daughter. It’s supposed to be, like, someone with really good grades who exhibits exemplary leadership skills.”

“Okay,” I said, taking this in. “That sounds competitive. Had you been competing with someone who might have been jealous that you won over her?”

Lexi shook her head, her blond curls bouncing. “There isn’t a list of nominees or anything, so no one even knows who their competition is… or at least, not officially. Everyone just votes, and then the winner is announced.”

So that only narrowed it down to most girls in Lexi’s class. Suddenly I noticed that Lexi was looking more and more nervous. Bouncing her feet under the table, playing with her necklace — sliding the heart pendant up and down the delicate silver chain so roughly I worried it might break.

“And it’s not even that big a deal,” she continued. “I mean, my biggest responsibilities are that I ride a parade float on the second day of the River Heights Celebration, and then I present the Mahoney Scholarship Award on the last day of the Celebration. But other than that…”

I nodded, though I was sure there were plenty of other girls who would have killed for such a distinction — for their college applications alone. “But what does the Daughter of River Heights have to do with hatethesegirls.com?” I asked.

Lexi stopped moving completely, her already pale skin turning a paler shade of white. “Well, that’s the thing,” she said. “The author of the blog found out I was the winner even before it was announced.”

And that’s when I felt the click. Like trying a hundred keys to one lock, and landing on the hundred and first to find that it actually opens the door.

We had a mystery on our hands.

“Lexi,” I said, “I’ll work with you to find out who is creating this blog on one condition.”

“Anything,” said Lexi, leaning forward.

“Any question I ask, no matter how weird it may sound, you have to answer me honestly.”

Lexi looked at me, perplexed. And then, perhaps, a little critically. “Okay? But —”

But this time it was my turn to do the interrupting. “It’s a deal breaker,” I said. “I need you to tell no one about coming and speaking to me about this… and I need you to make me a promise that you’ll tell me the truth about everything that’s going on.” I’d worked on too many cases where the person I was trying to help had held back information vital to the mystery for so long that it took me twice the amount of time to solve it.

“Okay, then,” she said. “I agree.”

“For now I have only one more question.” I took a huge gulp of my macchiato. “Is there anyone you can think of who would deliberately want to hurt you? Anyone at all?”

Something flashed in Lexi’s eyes — nervousness? Regret?

“Well,” she said, “I just broke it off with my boyfriend, Scott Sears? He, like, didn’t take it too well.”

“In what way?” I asked.

“Oh, just — you know…”

I could tell there was something off about the way Lexi was talking about Scott. What I couldn’t figure out was, what was the source? Lexi or Scott?

“It was a bad breakup?” I prompted.

“Yes,” Lexi said definitively — and too quickly, I thought.

“Why did you break things off?” I asked.

Lexi paused. “It was just… we’ll graduate soon, go off to college. He’s going to go to Penn State and I’m going to UCLA. We’ll be across the country, and I guess I just wanted to be… free?”

I nodded my head, secretly thinking how happy I was that my boyfriend, Ned, and I had both wound up staying in River Heights. But I doubted that if we’d traveled far away from each other to go to different colleges things would have been any different. Sure, we wouldn’t see each other as often. But I felt one hundred percent confident in our relationship. There was nothing that could come between us — not even an entire country.

I rustled around in my purse for paper and a pen and handed them to her to write down her contact info, as well as the website address.

She looked at me, pen in hand, hand hovering above the page. And then she started scribbling.

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” I told her, taking the pen and paper back. At the bottom of the page, I wrote Scott Sears and then headed outside to meet my friends… and get to work.

BURN BOOK BLOG

Here it is,” George said from behind her brand-new netbook. “Hatethesegirls.com, right?” I nodded, putting my soda down on Bess’s bedside table and leaning closer to George. “That’s the one.”

The background of the website was covered in pinprick-small pink polka dots over a white background. The title of the blog was written in sparkly pink bubble letters — ironic, I thought, considering the content.

Hate these girls? So do we.

Under the headline was a picture of Lexi looking particularly gorgeous in a River Heights cheerleader outfit and her trademark blond waves, surrounded by two other girls in cheerleading outfits whom I didn’t recognize. According to the caption at the bottom of the picture, their names were Heather Harris and Aly Stanfield, or “Lexis-in-training,” according to the blog’s author.

Heather had long, layered strawberry blond hair and the most delicate features I’d ever seen, including a gorgeous spray of freckles dotting her porcelain cheeks. Aly was Asian, with silky black hair to the middle of her back and a killer instinct when it came to makeup and accessories, judging from the picture alone. All three had their arms draped over one another’s shoulders. They had huge, sincere-looking smiles spread across their faces.

Unfortunately, the blogger was not only a writer, he or she was apparently an artist, too. All of the girls had drawn-on mustaches and devil horns. I squinted my eyes at the small screen.

“Did you pull it up?” Bess called from inside her never-ending closet, out of sight. “What’s it say?”

“It’s just how Lexi described — pretty much an online burn book,” I said. “Someone is really out to destroy her.”

Bess stepped out of her closet. “Um, Lexi? As in Lexi Claremont?”

I nodded. “Does that ring a bell with you?”

Bess giggled, going back into her closet. “If you’re looking for someone who hates Lexi, you have a long investigation ahead of you,” she called out.

“Why?” I asked. “Do a lot of people have a low opinion of her?”

“Try everyone,” came Bess’s muffled response.

George leaned toward the image on the computer screen. “Lexi Claremont,” she said under her breath. “Why does that name sound so familiar?”

“George, how do you zoom on this thing?” I asked, pointing to the picture that had caught my attention.

George pushed a few buttons and touched the keypad lightly, and right away the picture got bigger. It was a little fuzzy — “Low-res,” George grumbled.

“Wait a minute,” George said, pointing to Lexi. “This is the girl you’re talking about?”

I nodded.

“No wonder everyone hates her,” she blurted out. “She was Deirdre’s Little Sister all throughout high school.”

“Lexi is related to Deirdre Shannon?” I asked.

Bess appeared in the doorway. “Nancy, you were just too busy solving mysteries — even when we were freshmen — to remember the Big Sister/Big Brother program at school. As incoming freshmen, we were all assigned a ‘Big Sister’ in the sophomore class. Mostly it’s just a way to have someone introduce you to the school, sort of like a tour guide. Usually people are in touch with their Big Sisters for about a week, and then they go back to their own group of friends.”

“But,” George interjected, “Lexi and Deirdre became really close. They hung out all through high school. Oh no. Does this mean we have to talk to Deirdre?” she asked, not at all trying to mask the horrified expression on her face.

I laughed. “I don’t know yet. But your objection is noted.”

George seemed satisfied enough.

I looked closer at the photograph and noticed there was definitely something — or someone — who’d been cropped out. Then I read the caption beneath the photo.

Tired of being taken over by the self-proclaimed hottest clique in school?

Tired of missing out on the chance to date that guy you’ve had your eye on because you know he only has eyes for blond bombshell (slash airhead) Lexi Claremont?

Thought you had a chance at becoming Daughter of River Heights? Dream on.

This girl and her carbon-copy friends rule the school, and we shouldn’t have to take it anymore!

The blog went on to suggest that people post their own grievances against Lexi and her entourage — which, indeed, they had done. For eighty-plus pages.

“What do you think about these shoes?” Bess said, flouncing back from her closet in the sundress she’d bought earlier that day and a pair of silver gladiator sandals. She turned to the side and bent one leg at a time at several different angles so that we could get the full effect.

George raised her eyebrows quizzically. “Why are those shoes in style? I don’t get it. It’s just a bunch of swatches of leather crisscrossing into a huge, tangled mess.”

“You haven’t been reading the InStyles I’ve been giving you at all, have you?” Bess frowned.

I cleared my throat. “It’s perfect, Bess. But…”

“Too much metallic?” she said, touching her silver hoop earrings.

“No,” I said, shaking my head. My eyes locked back on that picture of Lexi, Aly, and Heather. “Do you guys notice anything fishy about this picture?”

Bess plopped down on her bed and joined George and me, looking closely at the webpage. “You mean besides the hideous drawn-on mustaches?” she asked.

“No — there, on the left. It looks like someone was cut out of the picture.”

George nodded. “Someone who maybe used to be part of Lexi’s clique?”

“And who would do anything to take them down?” Bess finished for her.

“It’s a possibility —,” I began.

“Wait!” Bess interrupted. “I didn’t see it before because I was looking at the picture — but did anyone else check out the time clock on the top right corner of the page?”

“It’s a countdown,” I murmured. “But to what?”

Bess bit her lip.

“What’s up?” I asked her. I’d known Bess long enough to tell when she had a hunch. And her hunches were always something to bet on.

She shook her head. “It could be totally unrelated. But this is the exact countdown to the River Heights Celebration parade.”

“That makes sense,” I said. “Lexi did mention that it was her biggest role as Daughter of River Heights — to participate in the parade.”

“Did you say Daughter of River Heights?” asked Bess, standing up and nonchalantly taking her earrings out of her ears.

I nodded. “You’ve heard of it?”

“Oh jeez,” George moaned, and fell back on Bess’s bed, eyes squeezed shut as though preparing for an intense migraine.

Bess sighed. “Stop being so dramatic,” she admonished. “I’m completely fine.”

“What did I miss?” I asked, looking back and forth from cousin to cousin.

George flopped over on her side. “Don’t you remember, Nancy? Senior year, all Bess wanted was to be chosen as our class’s DRH. But…” She glanced at Bess as if asking permission to finish the sentence.

“But someone beat me,” Bess took over.

“Someone beat you?” I asked. “But who else…?” I racked my brain for someone who would be a better DRH than Bess. She was smart, sweet, and gracious.

“Deirdre,” said Bess, rolling her eyes.

My mouth fell open. Deirdre Shannon had been in our class at River Heights High. I gave most people the benefit of the doubt, even some of the criminals I caught, but Deirdre was one person I knew did not have one redeemable bone in her body. “I don’t remember this at all,” I told my friends.

“Bess didn’t like to talk about it,” George said tentatively, rolling over on her side.

Bess dismissed us with a wave of her hand. “It’s totally fine.”

“But Deirdre doesn’t possess any of the qualities you’d think they’d want for the class DRH,” I argued. “How do you suppose she pulled that one off?”

Bess disappeared back into her closet, and all we heard was a disembodied voice. “Well,” she called out, “I hate to break it to you, but Lexi doesn’t seem like she’s too different from Deirdre, after reading some of the comments on that blog.”

I turned my attention back to George’s netbook and scanned some of the comments.

“I’m so over this girl. One time she spilled a cherry slushie all over my brand-new white dress just because she was wearing the same one.”

“Lexi and her friends are like popularity robots. All they do is wear designer clothes, regloss every fifteen seconds, and glare at other people. Pathetic.”

“All I can say is, keep your eye on your boyfriend if Lexi sets her sights on him.”

“Lexi Claremont is pure evil.”

“Great choice, DRH. The perfect person to represent our student body. HELLO!”

“When is this stupid competition going to nominate someone worthy of the virtues it loves to boast about?? Axe Lexi Claremont from DRH!”

And the comments went on and on from there.

“How could Deirdre and Lexi get chosen for the DRH if any of these comments are true?”

“Easy,” said George, fiddling with one of her new gadgets, which looked vaguely like an old model of a Polaroid camera. “It’s nothing but a popularity contest. My mother knows the woman who heads the DRH committee — she’s a grown-up version of Deirdre. They don’t care about leadership, grades, or whatever else they claim to care about. It’s all about achieving the perfect curl, or wearing the hottest new designer duds.”

I looked at Bess to see if she would chime in with an agreement — after all, she’d once coveted the position. But she only shrugged.

“Well,” I said, “I don’t know how I’m going to find out who the blogger is with so many people openly hating this girl and her friends. George, can you find out anything online about who the blogger might be, or where they’re blogging from?”

George tucked a lock of her short, dark hair behind her ear and grabbed the netbook. “I’m on it,” she said.

George was a whiz on the computer. She’d helped me in some way or another with virtually every mystery I’d ever solved, thanks to her tech savvy. But an hour and a half later, Bess and I had resorted to watching reality mystery shows on the television when a frazzled-looking George shut the netbook angrily on the bed.

“Anything good?” I asked.

“Nothing.” George scowled.

“Nothing?” asked Bess. “How is that possible? You know more about computers than anyone else I know!”

“Whoever did this is pretty good with computers,” George said reluctantly. “He or she blocked the IP — which is not an easy thing to do. I can’t even hack through the block. It was tricky — whoever did it definitely knew what they were doing.”