Social Suicide Read Free Page A

tell her this whole lovey-dovey thing was getting out of control.
    Sam looked up, saw me contemplating my seating options, and waved me over.
    Then turned to Kyle and gave him an Eskimo kiss with her nose.
    Oh boy.
    I made my way to their table and plopped my tray down, trying not to look as Kyle Eskimo kissed her right back.
    “Look what I made us,” Sam said right away, shoving her wrist toward me. On it was a pink friendship bracelet made of braided thread. In the middle was a pattern of a red heart.
    “Very cute,” I said.
    “I made Kyle one, too,” she told me, pulling his wrist out for inspection along with hers. “See? We match.”
    “Very . . . matchy.”
    She grinned. “Thanks.”
    I loved her enough that I didn’t tell her it wasn’t exactly a compliment.
    “So, did you get ahold of Sydney last night?” Sam asked.
    I nodded, digging into my pizza sticks. “Yeah. I’m meeting her after school.”
    “Meeting who?”
    Chase suddenly appeared at my side, dropped a tray on the table, and straddled the bench next to me.
    “What?” I asked innocently.
    “Who are you meeting?”
    I paused. Truth was I didn’t really want to spill who I was meeting with until I knew if she had anything useful to tell me. Even worse than not getting a unique story out of Sydney would be the look on Chase’s face if he knew I didn’t get a unique story.
    But before I could weigh my options, Kyle blurted out, “She’s got an exclusive with Sydney Sanders.”
    I shot him a death look.
    “Really?” Chase gave me a quizzical face, one eyebrow raised.
    Since the cat was out of the bag, I nodded. “Yeah. I’m meeting her after school.”
    “But she’s grounded.”
    “I have my ways.” I winked at him, doing my best secretive-reporter-type all-knowing smile.
    I’m not sure I pulled it off as his other eyebrow headed north.
    “You think you can get Sydney to spill how she got the cheats?” Sam asked.
    I shrugged. “I dun—” I stopped myself just in time from saying the forbidden word. “I’m going to try,” I amended.
    “What about Tipkins?” Chase asked.
    I gave him a blank look.
    “Mr. Tipkins? Your interview today?”
    I did a mental face palm. In my excitement over the exclusive with Sydney, I’d totally forgotten about my appointment with Mr. Tipkins. I looked up at the clock on the wall. I had only fifteen minutes before the end of lunch.
    “Shoot. I gotta go,” I said, shoving a pizza stick in my mouth and grabbing my book bag.
    I could have sworn I heard Chase call something like “good luck,” behind me as I jogged toward the precalculus room.
    Mr. Tipkins was sitting at his desk, a red pen hovering over a stack of papers. He was an older guy with thinning hair that was going gray at the temples. What was left of said hair was slicked back from his forehead in a way that said he stopped paying attention to current fashion decades ago. He had a bushy mustache that matched the salt and pepper up top and twitched intermittently like a nervous tic. His eyes were stuck behind thick glasses, and his clothes looked like they’d come from the Goodwill bargain bins. Brown corduroy pants, black tennis shoes, powder blue, short-sleeved dress shirt. A perpetual smear of ink stained the heel of his right hand from smudging words on the whiteboard.
    Even before the cheating bust, Mr. Tipkins had garnered a reputation for being one of the toughest teachers on campus. Sam had taken his summer school precalculus class and swore it took ten years off her life.
    “Mr. Tipkins?” I asked, approaching his desk.
    He looked up, blinking at me from behind his bifocals. “Yes?”
    “Hartley Featherstone?” I said. “From the Herbert Hoover High Homepage ?”
    He nodded. “I know who you are. You’re late. I usually leave at lunch.”
    Due to budget cuts, our school could afford only a set number of full-time teachers who received benefits. The rest had to make do with part-time status, taking only four