My heart ac­tu­al­ly re­spond­ed to that plea. He sound­ed so sin­cere, how could I not? So there I was. I could say no and crush this sweet guy and al­so oblit­er­ate any chance of be­ing asked to the Lega­cy and see­ing Thomas, or I could say yes, go to some fan­cy restau­rant in Boston, and keep the hope of see­ing Thomas alive.

In the end, it was no con­test, re­al­ly. My con­science took a dive.

“Okay,” I said fi­nal­ly, near­ly chok­ing on my dry throat. “I'd love to.”

142

PRES­SURE

My en­tire life I had al­ways found brush­ing my teeth to be a sooth­ing ac­tiv­ity. It was the per­fect time to pon­der the events of the day in pri­va­cy. To go over the things I might have said or done dif­fer­ent­ly. To pat my­self on the back for the things that had gone well. Un­like the par­ents of ev­ery oth­er kid on the plan­et, my par­ents had of­ten been forced to yell at me to stop brush­ing my teeth. Fif­teen min­utes would pass while I zoned out. Half an hour. It was amaz­ing I had any enam­el left.

That night I was some­where in­to my sec­ond quar­ter of an hour, my mouth full of foam, when the bath­room door banged open be­h

ind me. I near­ly choked on my own spit.

“How's it go­ing?” Natasha asked, fold­ing her arms over her siz­able chest and lean­ing against the door­jamb. She glared over my shoul­der at my re­flec­tion in the mir­ror.

I leaned over the basin and emp­tied my mouth in­to the drain, then slow­ly filled the cup with wa­ter and tipped it in­to my mouth. Af­ter slosh­ing it around for a half a minute, I spit again. Let her wait. She was on­ly wait­ing for noth­ing.

143

“Fine,” I said fi­nal­ly, wip­ing my face with a hand tow­el. “I had a great day, how about you?”

“You know that's not what I'm ask­ing,” Natasha said. “What have you found?”

Let's see: a re­fin­ery's worth of sug­ar, ev­idence of se­ri­ous psy­cho­log­ical self-?abuse, and some Ski­na­max-?wor­thy pho­tos. Oh, and a se­cret, hid­den com­put­er with a pass­word-?pro­tect pro­gram.

I fold­ed the tow­el, hung it on the tow­el ring next to the sink, and turned around, heav­ing an ex­as­per­at­ed sigh. “Noth­ing,” I said. “I've found noth­ing.”

I might have told her about the com­put­er if I had thought that the in­for­ma­tion would get her off my back, even for a mo­ment, but I had a feel­ing it would have the ex­act op­po­site ef­fect. I had a feel­ing it would on­ly make her turn the screws tighter. And they were plen­ty tight al­ready, thank you.

'You can't be se­ri­ous,“ she said as I brushed by her in­to the room. 'You re­al­ly ex­pect me to be­lieve that af­ter a week and a half you've found noth­ing?”

'You can be­lieve what­ev­er you want to be­lieve,“ I told her, sit­ting blithe­ly on my bed. ”This coun­try was found­ed on that prin­ci­ple."

Natasha clucked her tongue and rolled her eyes. She pressed the heels of her hands in­to her fore­head like I was giv­ing her a mi­graine. Good. She de­served mind-?split­ting pain. That'd teach her to black­mail me.

“What's the prob­lem here, Reed?” she asked me. “Was I not ex­plic­it enough when I told you ex­act­ly what I would do if you didn't help me?”

144

“No. You were plen­ty ex­plic­it, thanks. Star mag­azine ex­plic­it,” I told her. “The prob­lem is that if they are hid­ing any­thing, they're hid­ing it very well. This is Noelle we're deal­ing with here, re­mem­ber? You re­al­ly think she's go­ing to leave in­crim­inat­ing ev­idence out on her bul­letin board?”

Natasha un­clenched a bit at this. Not even she could ar­gue with that log­ic.

“Just ... be pa­tient,” I said, won­der­ing how long, ex­act­ly, it would take a per­son with ze­ro com­put­er ex­pe­ri­ence to crack some­one else's pass­word. I picked up my copy of Be­owulf, which we were read­ing for En­glish class--at least, ev­ery­one else was, while I had yet to have time to crack it--and leaned back on my den­im hus­band. “I'm do­ing ev­ery­thing I can.”

I set­tled in and opened to page one.

“Well, do it faster,” Natasha said.

Then she flicked off the light be­fore I could get past the first word.

145

THE PASS­WORD IS

Af­ter two full morn­ings of typ­ing in ev­ery­thing I knew about Ar­iana in­to her pass­word screen and get­ting nowhere, I was at a com­plete loss. I need­ed help. I need­ed some­place to start. I need­ed to pick some­one else's brain and get some ideas.

Tags: Kate Brian Private
Source: readsnovelonline.net