“It’s definitely a dude,” I say. “Chicks don’t fuck around like this. Spreading a meme is some cocky little shit’s way of thinking he’s being clever and sneaky. Chicks aren’t sneaky like that.”
Meeka snorts and says, “Oh, Gray, don’t ever change.”
I’m not totally sure what she means by that, but I shrug it off. Meeka’s always saying stuff that can either be taken as an insult or a compliment. Best to take it as neither.
“Think about it, though,” she tells me. “This . . . guy . . . has a reason to fear us. Let’s make him fear us. Or fear you. You’re the scary one in the bunch.”
Again, I don’t say shit.
“That’s a good thing, by the way,” she says, and she grabs my wrist and holds it up so my arm is in a flexing position. “You’re friggin’ tough, Gray. No one at school would ever think of messing with you.”
“Yeah, but this guy doesn’t go to school with us,” I say, pulling my arm back.
“Are you sure about that?” she asks.
“Why would he? Memes are, like, a national thing. International.”
“Yeah, maybe, but even though memes spread quickly, it’s been what, eight days? If the meme started somewhere else, it got to Plainview High around Thursday. So maybe it took five days to reach our shores. At the most. Probably less than that. Especially fast for a picture that’s nothing special.”
“Maybe someone who knows us was dicking around on Reddit or whatever and found it. It’s possible.”
“Possible is far different from likely. So what’s the likely scenario?”
“That . . . ?”
“The meme wasn’t found by someone in our school. It was created by someone in our school. Someone Cole knew, and probably knew well.”
This makes some sense. No one needed to hack Cole. “So what you’re saying is that Cole gave some dude all the stuff that’s on the Heart?”
“Not necessarily,” Meeka says. “Maybe the Heart has nothing to do with it. Red herring, as they say. Maybe this other guy has controlled access to GOTCHYA all along. And Cole was nothing but a salesman for his phony cloud service. Cole convinces Logan to use GOTCHYA, the other guy pays Cole a commission, and now the other guy can sell Logan’s identity. Or steal money from Logan’s Heroes.”
“But the other guy saw the video,” I say. “Why not turn us in? Why fuck with us like this?”
Meeka shrugs. “Because people are jealous and want to embarrass us?”
“I don’t know . . .”
“Really? Think it through. I hate to say it, but we’re simply better than most. Smarter. Cuter. More talented. Since we merged with Foxbury, there are now what . . . two hundred kids in our class alone? That includes plenty of people who know us even though we don’t know them.”
“I know a shit ton of people,” I say, because I do.
“Yeah, but not everyone. That’s the problem with popularity. The faceless, nameless kids who walk the halls or sit in the back of classrooms are the ones you have to watch out for. They lust and they plot. The dumb among them are usually harmless. But the smart ones? Better be careful.”
Sounds like she’s talking about kids just like . . .
“Like Cole,” I say.
“Like Cole.”
Makes a lot of sense, actually. In mysteries—real mysteries—it’s never the complicated answer. It’s always the obvious one.
“So Cole sells Logan out to another kid at school, right?” I say.
“Why not?”
“And that guy goes into the cloud, sees the video, makes that meme, and spreads it?”
“Got another explanation?”
“No. But I’m not buying that he did it because he was jealous of us.”
“Fine. Then why?”
The answer is right in front of me: Meeka’s BMW.
“Blackmail,” I say.
My family does all right—at least we have been since we upgraded our site and started shipping orders nationally about five years ago. Logan’s folks do okay too. But Meeka? Holly? Their parents have real cash. Christmas at their houses is insane. New skis every winter. Cashmere everything. Checks in amounts more than I earn in a year. So when it comes to blackmailing, they’re definitely the targets. If it were only me who did this, my ass would already be in jail.
“Okay,” Meeka says. “I guess I can see that.”
“But I can’t figure out what he’s waiting for,” I say. “Why isn’t he reaching out and asking us to pay up?”
And Meeka says, “Hard thing to know when we don’t know who he is. But I have a pretty good guess.”
Suddenly I do too. It’s better than a pretty good guess. There’s only one person it can possibly be. The same little dude who tried to throw down with me at Becca’s party. Who called me a “stupid duck.” The one who told me I’d be “sorry.”
“Gus Drummond?” I say.
That’s right. Gus Fucking Drummond. Of all the people. It seems nuts to say it, but then I think about it. Really think. It makes sense. More sense than anyone else. I mean, he and Cole were boys for a while, before I became friends with Cole. Always gaming or talking DC vs. Marvel or whatever. Nerd shit. That’s not saying it was bad shit. Hey, I like Call of Duty and Avengers movies and all that too—but they were intense about it.
Also memes. The two of them were always fucking around with memes.
But that was mostly freshman year. Then they quit hanging out. I never heard anyone trash the kid, so I always figured he wasn’t much trouble. But who knows? Maybe Gus is a bigger dick than Cole. Maybe he’s one of those jealous kids Meeka is talking about. Maybe he cares more about getting paid than getting justice for an old pal. Yeah, he seems harmless, but how do I know for sure? All I know is that he’s our guy. I can feel it all the way down to my core.
Meeka nods because she’s feeling it too. “I knew you’d get there.”
“It makes sense, right?”
“Oh yeah. Tons. But I wasn’t going to say it first because he seems like such a puppy dog.”
“Yeah, but puppy dogs can still bite. So what do we do about our boy Gus?”
“We let him know we know.”
“Like, call him?”
“No. Like face him. Make him know this is real life.”
Okay. Tomorrow, then. School. I know the perfect place.