Page 79 of Chasing Headlines
“Chica, this is the point of a baseball game, right? To watch it?”
I grumbled and made a face at her, that she couldn't see. “I'm flipping you off right now.”
She laughed through the speaker.
“I wanted to see him win.”
“The Wildcats are winning,” she said. “They're ahead by two runs.”
“Buthe'slosing.” Coop dug into the batter's box on my television screen. He leaned too much, then over-corrected. “He looks miserable out there.”
“I wonder why the coaches let him play. It's too much.”
No, Storm Cooper or not, he was human. Seeing him struggle after the death of his mom . . . made him vulnerable and real. And as irritating as he was in person, the other night, I don't know what happened, but somewhere in between the barbs and aggravation, he became a real person to me. Not just the fantasy guy my teenaged idiot self used to scrawl her name beside. Liv Milline-Cooper. Hyphenated, of course, for maximum baseball clout.
My stomach squeezed. I needed to burn anything in my closet or desk that might still hold those childish scribbles.
I shook my head and opened the door to the student center. “Maybe we could learn to behave more like friends.” I grabbed a double-paned cardboard coffee cup.
“Oh, well now, sweet thing, I don't think we should behave at all. You look like you want a guy who gives you what you need.” A voice drawled over my shoulder. “And I know. What you need.”
“What?” I glanced up to see a guy in his frat-boy polo shirt with his slick playboy-like grin leer at me. I frowned and tapped my left ear. “On the phone.” I shook my head and whisked past him to the register. I kept my hand near my ear, palm hovering over my cheekbone as the lady scanned my ID card. I faked again like I was muting my phone with a tap to my ear. “Thank you.” Tap. “Oh, what was that? Oh, ha ha ha. Yeah, you caught me, gotta have my caffeine.” I pointed at my ear. “Sister. Knows me too well. Thanks again, bye!”
Coffee in hand, I all but ran out the door toward the athletic center.
You've got to stop talking to yourself out loud. You're gonna get in trouble.
But like a lot of things, it was a habit I didn't know how to break.
Chapter Twenty-One
Olivia POV
La Reunion Dormitory
“Idon't get it.” Cathy stared at me over the top of her laptop. “If you're going to hack, don't hand over the blueprint on how to catch you. Dumbasses.” She went back to typing something into her computer.
While I agreed with her, that didn't solve the problem. The problem being, or, well, the potential problem being that I didn't want any of my team, er, the baseball team caught in scandal. Or, at the very least, I wanted to bring it to the coaches—with my commentary, of course—before it went anywhere. “Our faculty sponsor, Mrs. P, she's already alerted the professors' whose tests had been accessed without permission.”
“Sure, makes sense.” She grabbed her Star Struck cola and sipped at it. One hand continued to fly over the keyboard, not missing a beat. I stared, watching the evolutionary battle of wills: fingers versus keys. “So, there's, ya know, not any actual harm done. Right?” I blinked.
“Hm, in the words of past tense Liv: ‘I'm pretty sure there’s some acceptable use language that says it’s against policy to hackthings.' I'm paraphrasing of course.” Cathy's mess of red curls bobbed from side to side as she mimicked me.
“But the people who got it from that pastey site didn'thackanything.” I crossed my arms. “But then how did theyknowabout it?”
“PasteBin is a site that stores blocks of plain text. Gonna have to work on your leet-speak.” She stopped typing long enough to shoot me her playful know-it-all smirk over her shoulder. I rolled my eyes.
We're missing something. There couldn’t have been multiple students stealing the same tests at the exact same time. “I wish I knew what Rivers's angle was. Does he think there was a group that went in together and like hired a hacker or something?” I paced the length of our living room couch. “Then the whole group would be guilty. And that's fair. But, doesn’t sound like something a group of athletes would do. It’d be a huge risk.”
“Uh-huh,” Cathy exclaimed like she was actually paying attention. But was she listening?
“What if a friend found it? What if I was minding my own business and my friend Cathy just happened to send me a link?”
“It wouldn't be me. And you should report it for phishing.”
“Not actually—” I stopped and ran a hand over my forehead. I flopped down on the creaky sofa. “I mean, theoretically, a real person—not you.” I pointed at her. “But still real. Sent me a real link to a real test bank, but claimed it was a study guide or something for my class?”
“Wouldn't common sense say that's hella sus?”