"Wow," Sam said, shaking her head. "Chris Fret. I never would have figured him for a cheater. He always seemed so…normal."

  "Yeah, well, apparently normal also means too busy to study for a quiz."

  "You know," Sam said, scrunching up her face, "it's unfair to those of us who are struggling to get those good grades. I mean, take this American Government midterm we have coming up. How many people do you think already have the answers to that? Mr. Bleaker grades on a curve, you know. Those cheaters are ruining the curve for the rest of us."

  I had to agree with her there.

  "Not only that," Sam went on, "but we have to compete against these cheaters to get into good colleges. Chris is my Stanford competition. How can I compete with someone who's buying all the freaking answers?"

  I shrugged. "I honestly don't think Chris is much competition for you, stolen answers or no," I said, recalling our encounter.

  "So, what do we do now?" Sam asked.

  "Well…" I hedged. "Chase had an idea last night."

  "What?" Sam asked.

  "He thought we should set up a sting. Try to catch the guy in action again."

  Sam nodded. "Sounds like a reasonable plan."

  "Only, we're going to need someone to contact him about getting test answers."

  "Right."

  "And it can't be Chase or me because everyone already knows we're working the story for the paper."

  "True."

  "So, we're going to need a third person to make the contact with the guy selling cheats."

  "Good point. But it could be hard to find someone willing to do that."

  I stared pointedly at Sam.

  She blinked back at me. "What?"

  I bit my lip and stared some more.

  Realization slowly dawned behind her brown eyes. "Oh, no. Oh, no way, Hartley, I am not going to be your bait!"

  "Please, Sam," I pleaded. "You're perfect. Everyone knows how grade-driven you are, and you said yourself that we're in trouble with the midterm coming up in American Government."

  Sam shook her head so violently that her blonde hair whipped at her cheeks. "No way. Big capital N-O. What if I get caught? Teachers are totally looking for cheaters now with the whole Sydney thing. I cannot get caught cheating!"

  "You won't get caught," I assured her. "You're not actually going to cheat. We're just buying the answers. Heck, you won't even see the answers. If all goes well, we'll catch this guy in the act of grabbing the money before he even has a chance to text them to you."

  Sam bit her lip. "This feels like a really bad idea, Hartley."

  My turn to shake my head. "No. It feels like a really good idea. If whoever is selling cheats also killed Sydney, don't you think we need to find out who that is?" I said.

  Sam shook her head. "I'm sure the police will find them."

  "The police think Sydney killed herself. They're not even looking. Her killer's going to go free to commit Twittercide again," I pointed out, trying to butter her up with her own phrase. "Please, Sam. For Sydney?"

  Sam clenched her jaw. Then she finally threw her hands up. "Okay, fine. I'll be your bait."

  "Thank you!" I squealed, coming in for a hug.

  "But," she said quickly, "if I get caught, I'm so pulling a Sydney and ratting you out to save my own GPA."

  I nodded. "Deal. Fine. You rock, Sam."

  "Yeah," she said, grabbing her cell phone. "Let's just hope I don't rock it all the way to spelunking suspension. What's the guy's number?"

  I pulled up my phone, sending her the number, then watched as Sam punched it in on her end.

  "Okay, what should I say?" Sam asked, turning to me.

  "Hmm." I thought a second. "Say that you got his number from a friend."

  Sam nodded, texting as I dictated.

  "And that you have too many honors classes to keep up right now. You need the answers to Bleaker's American Government midterm."

  I watched as Sam's thumbs flew across her screen and the words appeared. I reread it over her shoulder. Then she hit Send.

  "How long do you think it will take to hear back?" Sam asked.

  I shrugged. "Let's hope not long."

  We settled in to do our American Government homework together (if we weren't really going to cheat, we did really need to study), and waited, Sam checking her phone every couple of minutes to make sure we hadn't missed him.

  About twenty minutes later, just as we were going over the checks and balances system, a buzzing sounded from Sam's phone. We both jumped off the bed and dove for it. The message was from the seller.

  $50. drop under rock by mascot room friday b4 game. I'll text u answers

  I shook my head. "We can't wait that long. The midterm's Friday. Tell him you need the answers today in order to have time to memorize them for the test."

  Sam complied, texting back. She hit Send and we both waited, staring at the blank screen. Three minutes later a response buzzed in. Sam punched it open, and we leaned forward to read the message.

  2 soon. need more time

  I pursed my lips together. "Tell him you'll pay double for a rush job."

  Sam raised her eyebrows at me. "And where are we going to get a hundred bucks?"

  "Don't worry about that. Just type it."

  She shrugged, then did.

  will pay $100 for answers 2day

  A minute later our response came in:

  2morrow. oakridge mall. 1pm. $100 under the kangaroo's paw at the kids playland

  Yes!

  Commence Operation Stakeout: The Sequel.

  * * *

  By the time Sam and I finished studying, and I walked the mile and a half from her place to my house, it was starting to get dark. I found Mom at the kitchen table once again, laptop open, eyes glued to the screen.

  "Hey, Hartley," she said, still not looking up. "That you?"

  "Yeah." I dropped my book bag on the floor and followed the scents of dinner into the kitchen. "What's cooking?" I pulled the top off a pot on the back stove burner, leaning in to smell.

  "Lentil and quinoa stew," Mom answered.

  I wrinkled my nose, wondering what the chances were I could sneak a pizza upstairs instead.

  "Hey, come look at this guy and tell me what you think."

  Oh boy. I could tell her what I thought without looking—nothing good could come of Mom online dating.

  "Uh, wow, you know I have a lot of studying to do…"

  "I thought you were studying at Sam's."

  "I have a lot more studying to do."

  "This will only take a sec," Mom said, hailing me over. "Come look at this guy's profile."

  Clearly I was not getting out of this, so I did, glancing at the screen. In the upper left-hand corner was a picture of a guy with graying hair and kind of a crooked smile. He was standing on the beach with a yellow dog next to him.

  "What do you think?" Mom asked.

  I shrugged. "He seems kinda old, doesn't he? I mean, gray hair?"

  "He's not that old," Mom said, cocking her head to the side. "He's just a little salt and pepper. And his profile sounds very nice," she said, indicating the paragraph of description under the "about me" section.

  I scrolled down. "He says he likes long walks on the beach," I read, rolling my eyes. "Cheesy."

  "What's wrong with the beach? I like the beach," Mom said.

  I frowned at her. "And 'holding hands at sunset' and 'candlelit dinners.'"

  "So?"

  "Mom! How cliché is that?"

  "It's not cliché," she argued. "It's romantic."

  I made a fake gagging motion.

  "All right, enough. Don't you have studying to do?" Mom said, making a shooing motion at me.

  Thank goodness for midterms.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The next morning I woke up with one thing on my mind—how to get $100 and fast.

  Unfortunately, the only job I'd ever had was babysitting neighborhood kids, and even if I scared up a couple little guys to watch on short notice, no way could I make $100 in one sitting. Ditto Sam. Her parents didn't allow her to have an after school job, thinking it would interfere too much with her studies.

  That left us with precious few options to get money in time for the drop. We would either have to steal it or borrow it. Since neither of us were the larceny type, Sunday morning found us standing in front of Sam's brother, Kevin, pleading our case for a short-term loan.

  "I promise we won't even spend it. We just need to use it as bait for a couple hours. Then we'll bring it right back," Sam told him.

  Kevin blinked, giving her a blank stare. Though come to think of it, Kevin always had kind of a blank stare on his face. He was dressed in jeans and a vintage Green Day T-shirt, laid out on the sofa with one foot hooked over the end in a sprawling pose. The TV was showing some nature channel with a bunch of ocean scenes, and the coffee table in front of him was littered with an empty box of Captain Crunch and half a tray of brownies.

  "Dude, a hundred bucks is a lot of money," Kevin said. "You know how many boobies I could save with a hundred bucks?"

  I blinked at him. "Boobies?"

  Kevin nodded. "There are only, like, a dozen Abbot's Boobies left in the world. The whole world, dude! That's like, really not a lot."

  "Birds?" I clarified.

  Kevin nodded solemnly. "Endangered birds, dude. They're being killed off by Yellow Crazy Ants."

  "Crazy Ants?" I glanced at the brownies, wondering if maybe they hadn't contained just sugar and chocolate.

  "Look, we'll do anything, Kev," Sam jumped in. "Please? We really need the money," she pleaded.

  Kevin raised one eyebrow. "Anything?"

  Uh-oh. "Um, well, maybe not anything—" I broke in.

  "Okay, how about this?" Kevin proposed. "There's this job I'm supposed to do this afternoon. It pays a hundred and fifty dollars, and if you two wanna do it for me, you can keep the cash."

  "What kind of job?" I hedged. As far as I knew, Kevin's only job since graduating from high school two years ago had been keeping the Kramers' sofa from floating away.

  "Just a quick one."

  I narrowed my eyes. "This job is legal, right?"

  Kevin did a short laugh slash cough thing. "Totally, dude. Look, all you have to do is stand in front of Chuck's Chicken on Main Street and hand out chicken bucket coupons for a couple hours. Easy, right?"

  I had to admit, it did sound easy.

  "I don't know," Sam said. "Main Street is like three miles away."

  "You can take the Green Machine," he offered, sweetening the deal.

  The Green Machine was Kevin's puke green–colored Volvo sedan that was, in fact, an environmentally friendly "green" machine by the virtue of the fact that it ran purely on clean-burning vegetable oil instead of fossil fuels. Though, the term clean was relative. The only places that had the volume of veggie oil needed to run a car were fast food joints that threw out drums of used cooking oil. Which meant the Green Machine perpetually smelled like french fries and fish sticks.

  But, while I had a moment of pause over being seen driving around town in Kevin's car, the truth was if we wanted to catch our cheat seller and figure out who killed Sydney, we had little choice.

  "Okay," I finally said. "We'll do it."

  Kevin grinned. "Sweet, dude. The gig starts in an hour, and the suit's in the Green Machine's back seat."

  I passed. "Wait—suit? What suit?"

  Kevin blinked at me. "The chicken suit. You didn't think you could hand out coupons looking like that, did you?"

  I closed my eyes and did a mental two count while I yoga-breathed, telling myself that this was all for a good cause.

  * * *

  Forty minutes later, Sam and I were parking the Green Machine at Chuck's Chicken in a haze of fried food flavored smoke. Sam cut the engine, and we got out and stared into the back seat. Laid out across the cracked vinyl bench was a huge mass of yellow feathers.

  I bit my lip. "So…"

  "Yeah, no way," Sam said, reading my mind. "I'm not being a giant chicken, Hartley."

  "It's just for a couple hours."

  "N. O."

  "I think the feathers match your hair color better than mine."

  "Nice try. We have the same color hair, Hartley."

  "I'm allergic to feathers?"

  "Liar."

  "I'm allergic to looking like a dork?"

  Sam grinned. "Ditto. Besides, I'm already putting my academic reputation on the line to buy these cheats."

  She had a point. "Fine," I sighed. "I'll be the chicken."

  Reluctantly, I picked up the suit and held it up. Yellow feathers covered the torso. Wings stuck out from the sides with little arm holes for my hands. A pair of orange stockings attached to huge webbed feet covered the bottom half, and a hat with a mass of yellow fuzz sticking into the air capped off the outfit.

  I gave Sam one last pleading look. "You sure you don't want to wear the suit?"

  "I've never been so sure of anything in my life."

  "Sigh," I said out loud.

  "Tell you what," she offered, taking pity on me. "You can keep the extra fifty bucks."

  "Swell."

  I took the suit into the bathroom of Chuck's Chicken, and after maneuvering uncomfortably in the tiny metal stall (and almost dunking my tail feathers into the toilet), I finally had the thing on. I purposely did not look in the mirror on my way out, sucking up the odd looks and snickers from the other patrons enjoying their fried poultry and biscuits as I walked back out through the restaurant to find the manager.

  He turned out to be a short guy with a pinched nose and a unibrow hunkering down over his eyes in a frown.

  "You're not Kevin," he observed, squinting past the costume to look at my face.

  I shook my head, molting a few yellow feathers onto the floor in the process. "He couldn't make it. He sent me instead."

  The manager paused, gave my suit a scrutinizing stare, and then shrugged. "Whatever. Here, just hand these out to people on the street."

  He handed me a stack of coupons.

  "And try to dance around a little," he added. "You know, attract attention."

  Trust me, there was no way I wouldn't attract attention. An older couple in the corner were laughing behind their palms, two junior high kids were openly staring, and one toddler was asking her mom if she could go hug Big Bird.

  I grabbed the coupons and trudged outside to find Sam already sitting on the curb in front of the restaurant. She took one look at me and grinned. Then pulled out her phone.

  "You wouldn't."

  "Just one little picture. Just to send to Kyle."

  I rolled my eyes. Sending "one little picture" to Kyle was like cc'ing the entire world. "If this ends up on YouTube, I'm totally disowning you as my best friend," I warned.

  Sam just grinned wider. "Say 'feathers,'" she said, snapping a photo.

  * * *

  Two hours later, my stack of coupons was gone, taking my dignity with it. I stripped off the molting suit and put my street clothes back on before collecting our payment from the manager. Then we jumped back into the Green Machine and headed for the mall, where we were supposed to drop the money in half an hour.

  After circling only ten minutes for a parking spot (and stalking a woman with a Macy's shopping bag all the way from the door to her red sedan), we made our way inside and toward the back corner of the mall.

  The kids' playland was an enclosed area full of slides, climbing equipment, toy cars, and little puzzles all made out of foam where the under-four-foot set could run wild between moms' shopping sprees. Everything was rounded and owie-free, including the giant, six-foot-tall foam kangaroo guarding the entrance.

  Sam acted as lookout as I slipped the hundred bucks I'd made playing chicken under the back left paw of the kangaroo. Then we both took a seat on a bench across the walkway to wait.

  And wait.

  And wait.

  Fifteen minutes later, no one had touched the paw.

  Sam squirmed in the seat beside me. "Hey, how long do you think this is gonna take?" she asked.

  I shook my head. "I don't know." Honestly, I'd hoped the guy would have been there by now. "Why?" I asked.

  Sam pulled her cell from her pocket, checking the time. "I have a tutoring appointment in an hour."

  "I didn't know you had a tutor."

  She nodded. "She's helping me study for the SATs."

  I turned to her. "Sam, SATs aren't until May."

  "My dad believes in being prepared."

  Clearly. It was only October.

  I glanced at the kangaroo, still standing by his lonely self. "Go," I said.

  She raised an eyebrow at me.

  "Just go. I'll wait and watch for our seller. I don't want you to miss tutoring," I said.

  "You sure? I mean, I don't want to leave you alone with a possible killer."

  While I appreciated that sentiment, I had a hard time seeing any danger in my immediate surroundings. "I'm fine. What's he going to do to me here?" I gestured to the playland, where half a dozen kids and moms sat just a few feet away.

  Sam looked at her phone again. She pursed her lips. I could see a serious mental debate waging in the crease between her eyebrows. But finally, she put her phone away and shook her head.

  "No. I'm not leaving you alone. What if he tries to run like Chris? You're gonna need backup."

  I gave her a quick hug. "Thanks." As much as I didn't want her to get in trouble for missing tutoring, I was definitely glad she was staying. Truth? I had no idea what I was doing. I totally needed backup.

  We settled into silence again as we watched kids filter in and out of the playland, tired parents in tow. No one stopped at the kangaroo. Well, once a curly haired little blond boy shouted at it and tried to bite its tail, but that was about it.

  I was just about to give up and concede that our guy wasn't coming when a girl in a hot pink tank made her way to the entrance to the playland.

  Without a kid.

  She had her back to us, so I couldn't see her face, but from where we sat I could tell she was about our age. Her hair was a stick-straight blonde, shot through with pale pink highlights, and she had on black skinny jeans, black slouching boots, and about a dozen silver bracelets on each wrist.