Catfishing on CatNet Naomi Kritzer (reading strategies book txt) 📖

do anything about it that I wasn’t wearing gloves or anything when I plugged in the USB drive, so if it does occur to them to dust for fingerprints, they may find incriminating evidence. It’s a relief to watch Ms. Kirschbaum take apart the robot without any particular care and yank out the USB drive with her own bare hand. Pretty sure any fingerprints on there now are going to be hers.

The principal snatches the USB drive out of Ms. Kirschbaum’s hand and turns toward the secretary’s computer. “Wait, stop!” Ms. Kirschbaum yells. “Don’t just plug it into a school computer; it’s probably got hacking software on it!” They dig an old laptop out of a closet and take a look at the drive, but either the script was self-deleting or CheshireCat covered my tracks, because the USB drive is blank, or at least they don’t see anything on it, which sets off a furious argument about whether this makes it more my fault somehow, or if maybe it was actually an outside hacker and not me at all. There’s an angry conversation about patches for the robot’s control software that might or might not ever have been installed.

The principal takes a break from yelling at her staff to come yell at me. Well, not yell. Exactly. She takes me into her office and closes the door and gives me a poisonous glare and says, “Miss Taylor, what exactly did you do?” in what was probably supposed to be a calm, controlled voice, one that would make me think I was in deep trouble and had better cooperate if I knew what was good for me.

But not for nothing have I listened to Marvin and Ico discuss—endlessly—the best ways to respond if you’re in trouble with some authority figure but they don’t actually have any hard proof that you did the thing they think you did.

“Never confess,” Marvin says whenever this comes up. “They’ll try to convince you that you’ll be in less trouble if you confess, and it is basically never true.”

Lying makes me nervous, but no one here even knows what I look like when I’m nervous. I furrow my brow and say furiously, “I can’t believe you’re accusing me of being responsible for this just because I’m new.” There. That wasn’t even a lie.

“Then who did this?”

“Why are you asking me? I barely even know anyone’s name.”

“I know what my students are and aren’t capable of. Except for you.”

I fold my arms and stare fixedly at the wall.

“Do I need to call your mother? Bring her in here?”

Might as well get it over with. I feel a pang, because I hate New Coburg but I don’t want to leave Rachel. “If you’re going to keep accusing me of messing with your robot, then yeah, I think I do want my mother here.”

Her eyes narrow. She pulls up my record from the computer and takes out her phone. I can’t tell if she’s actually dialing my mother’s number or bluffing, but no one picks up because she puts the phone down. I feel a prickle of worry and try to shake it off. Surely even if she did call, Mom is just busy. Or napping. She was better this morning.

“Principal Collins?” The secretary is knocking on the door. “I think Emily must have also called the police.”

The police officer who comes in is young, like barely older than me. “May I help you, Matt?” the principal asks. “I mean, Officer Olson?”

“I got a call from someone at the school,” he says. “Involving porn and minors? And the robot? Do I need to arrest the robot?”

“There was no porn,” Ms. Tetmeyer calls.

“Were you there?” He turns to her and whips out his phone to record her. “Please describe what happened.”

“The robot said it was going to go through all the questions submitted through the question box page, and then it actually answered all of them instead of saying, ‘You’ll have to ask your parents.’”

“What I was told was that there was graphic descriptions of sexual acts,” Matt says. “And hacking, which is also illegal. Is this the suspect?” He points at me.

“If I’m going to be questioned by the police, I want a lawyer present,” I say.

Matt goes beet red and gets right in my face, bending down since I’m in a chair. “You’ll get a lawyer when I say you get a lawyer, and not one minute before, missy. Is that understood?”

Wow. Rachel was not exaggerating about the police here.

“Is it understood?” His spit flies out and hits me in the face. I grab a Kleenex out of the box on the principal’s desk and wipe it off me.

“I am exercising my right to remain silent,” I say. “I’m not answering any questions until I have a lawyer.”

The principal is rubbing her forehead like it hurts. “You’re not under arrest, Stephanie,” she says.

“Then can I go back to class?”

Matt straightens up and says, “Have you talked to Rachel and Bryony yet? Whatever it is, they were probably involved.”

“I was going to do that next. Why don’t you stop back in later and we’ll pass along anything we’ve learned. All right?”

They ease him out the door, and then they do summon Bryony and Rachel. I’m briefly worried they’ll turn me in. Or try to help and accidentally incriminate me. But they disclaim all knowledge and clam up; Ico and Marvin would be proud. Ms. Tetmeyer is eyeing Rachel speculatively and shoots me a look at least once, but doesn’t point out that she left me alone with the robot, briefly, yesterday, when Rachel abruptly got dizzy. Probably because she doesn’t want to get in trouble herself for leaving me alone with it.

In the end, they send us all back to class.

Victory.

I mean, unless I regret staying by this time tomorrow.

I start hearing rumors about TV reporters an hour and a half later.

Emily, unsatisfied by the complete lack of arrests, has called the local news. They sent over a