What If ... Your Past Came Back to Haunt You (15 page)

INVESTIGATE MIA

Even the most explicit video doesn't reveal everything.

H
aley couldn't concentrate on her homework. She kept thinking about Whitney Klein's father and Mia Delgado. Was there really something going on between them? Haley couldn't rest until she found the answer. She knew how she'd feel if her own father were involved with someone her age: disgusted. Luckily, Haley's father wasn't that type. At least, as far as she knew. He was surrounded by college girls for half the week. Did Whitney realize her father was a perv? She'd have to be pretty blind not to. But people could be blind when confronted with something they didn't want to see.

Haley logged on to the Internet and went to the Web site for Jerry Klein's company, New Jersey Breath Spray. She knew that Mia had been on Jerry's guest list for a campaign fund-raiser for Governor Eton, so she had a sneaking suspicion that she'd find clues about the nature of their relationship in his email correspondence. Somewhere, Jerry Klein probably had e-mails from Mia. All Haley had to do was find them.

To her surprise, breaking into Mr. Klein's e-mail account was far easier than she'd expected. She was no hacker, but once she'd found his e-mail address through the company Web site and the remote access site, all she had to do was crack his password. She sat back and thought,
What would an obvious password be?
He couldn't be so stupid as to use his name or birthdate. Who else's name would he use? How about his daughter's? Haley typed WHITNEY in the password box but it didn't work. Too easy. Next she tried his new wife's name, Trisha. Access denied. Aha—what if he combined the two names somehow? That would make sense—the names of the two most important females in his life—not counting, possibly, Mia. TrishWhit? No. Whitrish? Haley chuckled as she typed in WHITRISH.

Voila! WHITRISH worked. She was in.

Excited and nervous, Haley got up and double-checked that her bedroom door was locked. She didn't want anyone catching her when she was up to no good. But it was all for a worthy cause, she told herself.

She searched through Mr. Klein's e-mails. He had several private folders, one marked “Trisha,” another from his ex-wife, Linda, and several others filled with nothing but boring business exchanges. Then she hit the jackpot: a folder marked with a simple “M.” Haley opened it, and sure enough, M stood for Mia Delgado.

Mr. Klein had saved dozens of e-mails from her. Haley shook her head. There had to be something going on between them, or why so much correspondence? She opened the most recent message and read it.

Haley couldn't believe her eyes. Mia was asking Mr. Klein for money to pay off this Philip Fogelman character and save what was left of her reputation—Poor Mia, being blackmailed by that icky man—and having no one else to turn to for help but Jerry Klein. Haley began to see the glamorous Spanish girl in a new light. She noticed an attachment at the bottom of the e-mail. She didn't dare open it—she assumed it was probably the “romantic footage” Mia was worried about, and that was the last thing Haley wanted to see.

Her phone beeped and she noticed she had a load of text messages coming in all at once. Most of them were from boys she barely knew and carried the annoying subject line “Boob Tubing Babe.” She didn't bother with them and opened the one normal-looking message instead. It was from Matt Graham, a boarding-school buddy of Spencer Eton's. Haley hadn't heard from him in a while and wondered what he could want.

XO? From Matt Graham? That was a surprise.

So, there's more to Mia than meets the eye. But is she telling the truth? Or is she up to something sneaky? If you think finding out the truth about Mia's complicated life has made Haley want to RESCUE MIA, turn to
RESCUE MIA.
If you think Haley doesn't need to help this girl gone wild—after all, Mia's made so many foolish decisions on her own, she may be beyond help—
LET HER ROT.

Is Haley less concerned with Mia's problems and more embarrassed about her own online scandal at the moment? Have her try to get over her fear of
GOING PUBLIC.
If you think that Haley should forget her troubles and take Matt up on his invite to SIGMA at Spencer's, go party hearty at the boys' hangout on (
OLD HABITS
).

GETTING FRESH

Sometimes the truth can be very refreshing.

“H
i, Marta,” Whitney Klein said to the secretary at the desk outside her father's office. “Is Dad in?”

“He is, but he's on the phone,” Marta said.

“I don't care,” Whitney said, marching past the secretary's desk. “We're going in.”

“Whitney, wait!” Marta cried, but Whitney ignored her.

“Come on, girls.” She waved at Haley and Sasha to follow her.

Haley and Sasha had agreed to go with Whitney to the corporate headquarters of her father's breath spray company. She needed moral support because her mission was painful: to confront him about the video of Mia Delgado he had stashed on his home computer. Whitney had been shocked to think that her father was obsessed with a girl in her own grade at school, and was determined to confront him about this once and for all.

Whitney barged into her dad's corner office and sure enough, he was on the phone, a conference call. “Whittles, what a pleasant surprise! What's the occasion?”

“I'll tell you what the occasion is,” Whitney said, her voice already rising to a shrill pitch. Haley moved quickly to close the door to the office. No need to scandalize everybody in the company.

“You're a pervert!” Whitney shouted.

“Um, gentlemen, I'm going to have to call you back,” Jerry said nervously, disconnecting the call.

“You're involved with Mia Delgado! How could you, Dad? First you dump Mom for that bimbo Trisha, and then you start slobbering over a girl in my class?”

Mr. Klein looked stunned for a moment but quickly recovered. “Whittles, honey, what makes you say this? You've got it all wrong—”

“What makes me say it? How about I found that raunchy video of Mia on your computer?” Whitney said. “What are you doing watching filth like that, of a teenaged girl?”

“I'll tell you what I was doing with it,” Mr. Klein said. “If you'll all just take a seat and calm down.”

“I won't calm down! I won't!” Whitney shouted.

Haley gently led her to a chair and made her sit. “Listen to your dad, Whitney. He might have an explanation.”

“I already know the explanation,” Whitney said. “My father's a perv! Ew!”

“Whitney, stop,” Jerry said firmly. “Now listen. The reason I bookmarked that video is that Mia asked me to help her. The man who posted that footage is a New York fashion photographer she used to work for named Philip Fogelman.”

Whitney sat up. “I've heard of him,” she said. “We saw him at Bubbies the other day. Love his work.”

“Well, I don't,” Jerry Klein said. “He and Mia used to be . . . involved, I guess you'd say. And he has a lot of video footage of their . . . involvement. And now he's blackmailing her, saying that he'll post even more explicit pictures and films of her on the Internet if she doesn't do what he wants.”

“She's lying,” Whitney said matter-of-factly. “Philip Fogelman wouldn't do something so terrible.”

“How do you know?” Sasha said. “Do you know him personally?”

“No, I just think, Why would a known photographer have to stoop so low?” Whitney said.

“To get what he wants,” Jerry said. “Either Mia goes back to New York to work with him again, or he'll post those videos. And the only other way to stop him is to pay him off. That's why Mia came to me—to borrow the money she needs to make him go away.”

“Oh.” Whitney looked chastened now and kind of annoyed that she'd have to rethink her opinion of Mia.

“It goes without saying that what I'm telling you girls is confidential, okay?” Mr. Klein said. “Okay, Whitney?”

“Okay,” Whitney said.

“Of course,” Haley said.

“So, you're not dating Mia?” Whitney said. “Not at all?”

“Not at all, pumpkin,” Mr. Klein said. “I've got my beautiful, if demanding, Trisha at home.”

Whitney looked relieved, but at the sound of her stepmother's name she couldn't help making a sour face.

“Good,” she said to her father. “Keep it that way.”

So that explains that. Jerry Klein is not—in this case, anyway—a pervert. And Mia Delgado is not as skanky as she appeared to be, either. In fact, she seems to truly be the victim here.

But has this changed Haley's opinion of her? If you think Haley feels sorry for Mia and wants to help her, go to
RESCUE MIA
. If you think Haley still doesn't like her or trust her, no matter what Philip Fogelman is doing to her reputation,
LET HER ROT.

If you think Haley would rather forget all about this online scandal and do a little much-needed partying instead, send her to SIGMA with Matt Graham on (
OLD HABITS).

TOTAL MORTIFICATION

It's not easy to be a hermit in the burbs.

H
aley logged on to her computer for the fifth time in an hour. She went to the Hillsdale Hauntings site and clicked on “Boob Tubing.” Yes, it was still there: that horrible vision of her at age ten at Lake Tahoe, riding on an inner tube being pulled by a motorboat. She cringed as the tube crashed through a heavy wake and she lost her bathing suit. There she was again, washing ashore naked. No, it wasn't all just a bad dream.

Why did she keep doing this to herself? She knew the nightmare was real; she just couldn't get her mind around it. It was too horrible to contemplate, yet there it was in living color for the whole school to see.

Ding
—another text message came in. She didn't have the heart to even see who it was from. She'd been bombarded for hours with e-mails and texts about the humiliating footage; then she'd locked herself in her bedroom and vowed never to leave. She couldn't take it anymore. How had this happened to her? Well, she knew how. Garrett “the Troll” Knoll had began working at the post house where her father had been transferring all their old home movies to digital. But it didn't make the fact that the most humiliating home video ever shot was now leaked onto the Internet any easier to take. Her life was ruined. All she could do was hide in her room until the scandal died down—if it ever did.

In a way, it was all her dad's fault for taking the videos to an amateur in the first place. If only he were home, she'd go downstairs and yell at him once again for letting their personal footage fall into the wrong hands . . . even though she knew in her heart her dad didn't really deserve to be yelled at. It might help her feel better, that was all.

Her phone beeped again. Five more text messages from random guys with the same subject line: “Boob Tubing Babe.” There was one from Matt Graham labeled “Hi Haley,” but who knew what he had to say. Matt was a friend of Spencer Eton's and a well-known party guy. She shut her phone off in disgust and threw it onto the desk. She couldn't take it anymore—negative attention overload. She started to tear up and fell onto her bed to settle in for a good cry. Why did this have to happen to her? Just when things were starting to go so well . . .

The doorbell rang. Haley stopped crying and listened. There was no one else home to answer it. She lay still, waiting for whoever it was to go away.

It rang again. And a third time. Who was this annoying, persistent person? Haley got up and went into the hall. She peered through the window and saw Reese Highland standing on the front porch, leaning on his crutches.

Reese. What did he want? Haley wasn't sure she had it in her to hear what Reese had to say on the subject of her public humiliation, but he certainly seemed determined to say something. He rang the bell again, and Haley gave up and decided to let him in.

“Hi,” she said when she opened the front door.

“Hi,” he said.”

“I'm hiding,” Haley confessed. “I'm thinking of becoming a hermit when I grow up, so I thought I'd get a head start and practice now.”

“Can I come in and be a hermit with you?” Reese asked.

“Sure.” Haley let him in. How could she resist an invitation to co-hermit with Reese? “Come on up to the hermit cave.”

She got them some tea and they settled down on the rug in her room. “I understand how you feel, but you can't take this so hard,” Reese told her. “Have a sense of humor about it. Really, it's not so bad. You got off a lot easier than Mia did.”

Haley shuddered. Mia's video showed her making out in bed with an older guy, in her bra. “But that's different. Mia's video is more . . . sexy. At least she doesn't come off like a complete idiot. And she's not totally naked.”

“But her video is . . . pretty hard-core,” Reese said. “From what I've heard. While yours is innocent and kind of cute.”

“Cute?” Haley softened up a little. Reese thought she looked cute?

“Sure,” Reese said. “You're just a kid. It's funny. We've all been there.”

“Not all over the Internet,” Haley said.

“Come on, these things happen all the time in high school.”

“What things?”

“Embarrassing things,” Reese said. “Haven't you ever heard your parents talk about all the humiliations they suffered when they were younger?”

“Yes, and it gives me nightmares,” Haley said. “I don't like to think about it.”

“I'm just saying, it happens to everyone sooner or later.”

“Not to me,” Haley said. “I'm not the naked video type. Except now everyone in school thinks I am. You should see all the texts I've gotten, just in the last few hours! Every boy in Hillsdale wants to see how my body has changed. Up close and personal.” She sighed. “I swear, I'm never going out in public again. People are going to give me weird looks and whisper behind my back—”

“So they whisper for a few days—so what?” Reese said. “Lap it up. It's your moment in the sun. Scandal's not what it used to be, you know. Now it's chic. All the celebrities are doing it.”

Haley laughed. “That's the spirit,” Reese said. “Laugh it off.” He was surprisingly good at cheering her up when he put his mind to it.

“Aren't you starting to feel a little claustrophobic in your hermit cave?” Reese said. “I think we need a field trip.”

“No way,” Haley said. “I'm not going out there.”

“Yes you will. Come on, you know you can't stay hidden forever. Will your parents let you skip school for the rest of your life? Didn't think so.”

“There's no place to go anyway,” Haley said. “No place safe, that is.”

“I know a place we can go,” Reese said. “And I can almost guarantee nobody we know will be there.”

“Where?”

“The public library.” Reese grinned. “Let's go right now. You seriously need to get out of here.”

Haley had to hand it to him—nobody they knew hung out at the library. It was about as safe a haven as she was going to find in this town.

Good old Reese—it's about time he came through for Haley. He hasn't exactly been there for her lately, but times like these make up for any neglect. Or do they? Is it enough to keep Haley's spirits afloat, or is it just a temporary salve, a slight bandage over a bullet wound? All those text messages crowding Haley's in-box suggest that the problem may be bigger than Reese thinks.

If you believe Reese is right that Haley needs to get out of her house, turn to,
GOING PUBLIC.
Or maybe Haley should read through the text messages she's received while her phone was shut off. If she does, she'll find a message from Matt Graham inviting her to the next SIGMA bash at Spencer Eton's house. If you think she should forget her troubles by going to a wild party, turn to,
OLD HABITS.
Finally, if you think suffering through this scandal has given Haley sympathy for Mia Delgado's plight, turn to,
RESCUE MIA.