It was dark. Everyone would be waiting for me. I had to get out.
I peeked around the corner of the stairwell.
Mom was tucked under an afghan on the sofa, her laptop perched on her knees, fingers flying. Then they paused. Mom giggled. Then she began typing again. Paused. Giggled.
I rolled my eyes. Mom was IM’ing with Mr. Cyber Wonderful again.
On the one hand, this was so wrong. I mean, Mom was way too old to be giggling. It wasn’t good for her. Who was this guy she was chatting with, anyway? He could be anyone-some pervert, a stalker, a serial killer. While we had regular lectures at our school about cyber safety, I was afraid Mom’s generation knew next to nothing.
On the other hand, the distraction was just what I needed.
At the base of the stairs sat the kitchen on one side and the living room on the other. At the far end of the living room was the front door. I’d have to somehow cross the entire room and open the door without Mom seeing me.
I did a deep breath and took one tentative step down the carpeted stairs, then paused, listening for any sounds of protest from Mom. Nothing. I took another and another. I was now completely exposed. If Mom turned around, I was going to have to do some fancy explaining about why I was dressed in all black just to sneak downstairs for a bedtime snack. I quickly stepped down the last of the stairs, and ducked to my knees, falling to the floor behind the back of the sofa.
Mom was just on the other side. I could hear her breathing over the sounds of her keyboard clacking. I made my own breath as shallow as I could, slowly moving one leg then the other, making a snail’s pace as I crawled across the room. I could see the front door. I was just a few feet away. If I could cross to it without making a sound, I had a fighting chance of getting out.
Slowly, painstakingly, I crawled the length of the sofa. At one point, Mom stretched, and I swear I almost had a heart attack. But she didn’t turn around, instead laughing out loud at something her cyber guy said.
So age inappropriate.
I slowly continued my trek until I hit the end of the sofa. Then, I crawled low to the ground toward the door, ducking behind a pillar as I reached up for the front knob.
I turned, one half inch at a time, slowly, waiting for just the right moment, when the TV switched to a noisy commercial for OxiClean, to turn the knob all the way to the right until the telltale click sounded. I pulled the door open an inch, then another, cringing as it squeaked.
But by some miracle of miracles, Mom was so engrossed in her conversation that she didn’t turn around. I took the opportunity and quickly slipped outside, shutting the door with a soft click behind me.
Then I dashed across the front lawn at sprinter speeds, half expecting Mom to come rushing after me. I didn’t stop running until I hit the end of the block.
Phase One: down. Operation Escape Mom was a success.
I slowed to a walk, letting my breathing return to normal as I quickly headed toward school.
Now, on to Phase Two.
I only hoped that breaking into the high school went as smoothly as breaking out of Mom’s.
Chapter Fifteen
OUR SCHOOL WAS BUILT IN THE 1920S, DECORATED WITH huge stone columns and a neoclassical design that made it look like a cross between the White House and a Roman palace during the day. At night, however, it was lit from below, cast with an eerie glow that made it look like a giant white mausoleum squatting in the middle of downtown.
A pair of ancient oak trees flanked the stone building, and as I made my way across the front lawn, I saw Sam, Kyle, and Chase standing under one, Sam dancing nervously from foot to foot.
“What took you so long?” she asked as I approached their group. I noticed they’d each gone with the same wardrobe theme I had: all black. Sam and Kyle were in matching hoodies. Chase? Honestly, he didn’t look a whole lot different than any other day, in black jeans and a black long-sleeved T.
“Sorry,” I told them. “Had to sneak past Mom.”
“Tell me about it,” Sam said, rolling her eyes. “I had to promise Kevin two tubes of cookie dough to distract my parents while I slipped out the back door.”
“Are we ready to do this?” Chase cut in, all business.
Sam bit her lip, did some more dancing around on the damp grass. “Sorta. Kinda.”
“Sam, you okay?” I asked.
“Well, it’s just that… if I get caught, this is going on my permanent record. Plus, I’m pretty sure my dad will kill me.”
“We’re not going to get caught,” Chase reassured her.
“How can you be so sure?”
“I’ll tell you what,” I said. “How about you stay here as lookout, okay? That way, if anything goes down, you can bolt. No permanent-record blemish.” Not that I was counting on anything going down. I was pretty sure Mom would kill me, too, if she found out what I was up to.
Sam looked from Chase to me. “Okay, I’ll be lookout. But I’m not bolting. I wouldn’t do that to you.”
I gave her a quick hug. “Thanks.”
“Maybe I should stay here, too,” Kyle said, eyeing the school building.
I shot Kyle a look.
“Dude, I don’t think it’s safe to leave Sam here alone in the dark. Not after what happened to Nicky.”
While I had a feeling that Nicky had been specifically targeted and since Sam had no idea who was selling the cheats, she was pretty safe, what he said made a certain sense. And, honestly, it was kinda cute that he was worried about her.
“I guess that leaves you and me, Hart,” Chase said. “Ready to break and enter?”
I gulped down a small amount of fear, said good-bye to my own stain-free permanent record, and nodded. “Ready.”
Step one was simple: get inside the school. Chase and I tried the obvious route first, but as we’d expected, the front doors to the school were firmly locked in place. Lucky for us, there were about a billion other entrances. We circled the main building, coming to the back quad, where the ancient Roman part of our school met up with the modern math and science wings. Unfortunately, the first couple of doors I tried in the math wing were locked, too.
“So, your plan is to try every door on campus on the off chance someone forgot to lock one?” Chase asked.
I paused, hand on doorknob number five (locked). He had a point. Our whole purpose here was to prove that it was so easy to break into the school and steal the answers that anyone could do it. Most likely our cheat stealer hadn’t checked every door, hoping that one was open. Most likely he or she had a more foolproof way in.
Like picking a lock.
Luckily, contrary to what Chase might think, I was prepared for that.
I slipped my hand into my sweatshirt pocket, coming out with a hairpin I’d plucked from Mom’s room. I stuck the end in my mouth, biting off the rubber tip, then did my best to straighten it out into one long piece of metal.
“What’s that?”
“Hairpin.”
Chase raised an eyebrow as I stuck it into the keyhole at the front of the handle. “You done this before?” he asked.
“Nope.”
“You know what you’re doing?”
“I watched a YouTube video this afternoon.”
I thought I heard Chase snort behind me, but I was too intent on the keyhole to turn around. Instead, I wiggled the piece of metal up and down, side to side, slowly moving it in any direction I could just like the guy on the video. Too bad I had no idea what I was feeling for. And, unlike the guy on the video, five minutes later the door was still locked.
“Got a plan B?” Chase asked.
I blew a big breath of air up toward my hair, straightening and looking around the campus.
Truth was I did not. I spent most of my life trying to get out of school. Breaking in had never been high on my list of priorities.