But how was I sup­posed to do that with­out any­one know­ing why I was do­ing it?

This was the ques­tion bounc­ing around in my brain as I walked in­to the li­brary one rainy af­ter­noon. I had a plan, but I had very lit­tle con­fi­dence that it would work. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, it was all I had. I knew that the ju­nior class had a huge his­to­ry ex­am com­ing up and half of Billings and Ket­lar would be there study­ing. I made a bee­line for the very back of the stacks, where I knew the girls from my dorm nor­mal­ly set up camp.

Bin­go. At one ta­ble I had found Ki­ran, Tay­lor, Rose, Lon­don, Vi­en­na, Josh, and Gage. They were all bent over their books, some tak­ing notes, oth­ers whis­per­ing to each oth­er in low tones. There was a sin­gle emp­ty chair at the end of the ta­ble.

146

I took a deep breath. Here went noth­ing.

I walked over and sat down with a frus­trat­ed huff, plac­ing my books on the ta­ble. Ev­ery­one looked up, hap­py for a dis­trac­tion.

“What's the mat­ter, Reed?” Tay­lor asked.

“Noth­ing. It's just this cur­rent events pa­per for mod­ern civ,” I said. “I have to write eight pages on that whole hack­ing scan­dal.”

Ki­ran and Tay­lor ex­changed a look. They weren't buy­ing it. There was no way they were buy­ing it. And why would they? It was a com­plete fab­ri­ca­tion.

“You mean that thing at that high school in New York?” Josh said.

“I heard about that!” Lon­don put in, ex­cit­ed. “Some­one hacked in­to all the stu­dents' com­put­ers and post­ed a list of all the il­lic­it Web sites they were look­ing at. So scan­dalous.”

“Those poor bas­tards had all their porn delet­ed,” Gage said. “That's not scan­dal. It's a cry­ing shame.”

“Well, there are about a mil­lion ar­ti­cles on it and it's ridicu­lous try­ing to sift through it all,” I said, lift­ing out a Xe­rox­ed page. “Plus it's scary. Did you guys know that nine­ty per­cent of high school stu­dents use some­thing ob­vi­ous for their pass­word? Like a boyfriend's name or a birth­day?”

Ev­ery­one just stared at me. Was I the worst ac­tress ev­er, or what?

“I would nev­er use some­thing that lame,” Gage said.

“Yeah. You just spell curse words back­ward,” Josh said with a laugh.

“Dude!” Gage com­plained, whack­ing him with the back of his hand.

147

“I would nev­er use any­thing that ob­vi­ous,” Rose said, turn­ing the page in her his­to­ry book. “I just use ran­dom char­ac­ters.”

So not what I want­ed to hear. If Ar­iana was us­ing ran­dom char­ac­ters, I was screwed.

“How do you re­mem­ber them?” Vi­en­na asked.

“I just force my­self,” Rose said. “I re­peat it over and over un­til it's in there. Four, dash, dol­lar sign, eight, /, star. Four, dash, dol­lar sign, eight,/, star.”

“Nice one! Now we all know your pass­word!” Gage said.

Rose turned beet red. “Well, that's not my pass­word now.”

'Yes, it is! Yes, it is!“ Lon­don trilled, bounc­ing up and down in her chair, her long ear­rings slap­ping her in the face. ”We know your pass­word! We know your pass­word!"

“Oh, yeah? Re­peat it back to me,” Rose said flat­ly.

Lon­don cleared her throat and looked at the ceil­ing. “Four, dash, dol­lop of. . . A. .. J ...” Ev­ery­one laughed and Lon­don lost steam, slump­ing. “Crap.”

“It's okay,” Vi­en­na said, pat­ting her back. “It's not like Rose has any­thing good on her com­put­er.”

Rose shot Vi­en­na a bite me look and got back to study­ing.

“Per­son­al­ly, I al­ways use song ti­tles,” Ki­ran said, lift­ing a shoul­der. “I think a lot of peo­ple do that. Like book ti­tles or movie ti­tles or po­ems .. . CDs--”

Tags: Kate Brian Private
Source: readsnovelonline.net