《Evolve》6 - Revenge and Sushi
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We all arrive at the girls' lounge and chaos breaks out, with everyone getting angry and worrying that their secrets aren't safe. I'm not thrilled, either, but I try to stay quiet because this isn't super helpful at fixing the problem. Zoey realises this too, and is determined to calm the mob that is forming.
Standing on the furniture, Zoey whistles so that all attention is brought to her. "How does she do that?" Quinn asks, raises her fingers to her lips but failing to produce any sound.
"Now, look, someone in the girls' dorm is spreading our personal secrets all over the PCA campus." Everyone watches Zoey, intrigued by the whole situation.
"And we're gonna find out who," Dana says, arms crossed and glaring at the room.
"How?" Vicky asks.
Quinn jumps in, "hey, I invented my own lie detector machine, and it's over 98% accurate!"
"That's great, let's do that!" I say.
"How's it work," Nicole asks.
Quinn indulges us, "well, I just connect three wires from the machine to your brain, so that I can-"
"Wait," Zoey says, "how do you connect the wires to our brains?"
I watch Quinn closely. "Oh, I just have to make a small incision just below your left ear, so that I can-"
"No! I've changed my mind, let's not do that," I tell her, as Nicole begins freaking out.
"Nobody's taking a lie detector test if you have to do surgery on our heads," Zoey agrees, but Quinn is confused.
"It's one incision," Quinn says, as if this makes it any less terrifying that she would be cutting into our heads.
"Hey, if Zoey's so afraid to take a lie detector test, maybe that's cause she's the one who's been spreading our personal secrets!" Vicky suggest, which is stupid because Zoey was one of the first people to get hurt by this.
"Okay, so you take the test," I tell Vicky, but the others aren't convinced.
Even Nicole starts to think Zoey could be the culprit, "yeah, that's it!"
"Come on!" Zoey says, "I'm one of the victims! Why would I spread secrets about myself?"
"To trick us!" Nicole shouts.
Zoey is offended by her best friend throwing her under the bus, rightfully so. "Nicole!"
"Seriously?" I ask.
"Well?" Nicole asks. Chaos begins again, with everyone arguing, me shouting at Nicole for being so quick to give up on her friend. This gets us nowhere, and we eventually break off and go to Zoey's room, hoping for a more diplomatic investigation.
"Okay, here's what we know," Zoey says, while I wait with my notebook and pen. "Somebody in the girls' dorm is telling our secrets all over campus."
"Right," we say.
"Now, what else do we know?"
"That's puréed peas taste way better than creamed squash," Quinn says, and I scoot away from her.
"Quinn, put down the baby food and focus," Zoey tells her.
Then I have an idea. "We know when it started!" They look at me, waiting. "Well, the first secrets to be spilled were from our game of Confess or Stress, so that's when it began."
"Yes! Good job," Zoey tells me.
"Why would one of the other girls sell us out?" Nicole asks, and we all wonder.
"I don't know," Zoey sighs. "Wait," we watch her, now anticipating what she will say. "This all started a few nights ago, after Confess or Stress?"
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"The night we ordered sushi," Quinn adds.
"And Logan brought us that big teddy bear," Nicole says.
"Which I thought was suspicious," I tell them, standing up and feeling stupid. "Why would one of the girls sell us out? They wouldn't, but Logan would."
We go back down to the lounge and sneak over to the teddy bear, so that we're behind it. Quinn has a device which she hopes will help us uncover what's happening.
"Ready?" She asks us, and Zoey nods. She presses some buttons and the device beeps as she moves it around the bear's head. "That jerk!" She says, as the beeping crescendos then stops.
"What?" Zoey asks.
"What does it say?" Nicole asks.
Quinn shushes us, "you guys, let's go, this way." We leave the area and go back to room 101. This is where Quinn reveals what she found with her machine.
"Well?"
"What's the diagnosis, Quinn?"
"That bear is broadcasting both audio and visual transmissions via broadband wavelengths to a remote digital receiver," she tells us. I understand some of it.
"I knew it!" Nicole shouts. "What does that mean?"
Zoey is also confused, "in English?"
Quinn dumbs it down for us, "there's a wireless webcam in that bear."
"I knew it," Nicole repeats.
I scoff, "that jerk, I'm going to kill him!"
"Wait, I still don't know what that means."
I sigh at the clueless girl, who probably needs to spend less time rating boys' lips and more time studying during study hall.
Zoey fills her in, "it means somebody's spying on everything we do and say in the lounge."
"And considering Logan gave us the bear..." I trail off, and she realises, her face turning to disgust as we all get mad. Zoey leaves the room, angry.
I go back to my room, determined to calm myself before I go to confront Logan, knowing I'll say something I'll regret if I go to see him when my anger is this fresh. I'm glad I waited when Zoey calls us all for a meeting, outside and away from the bear. She tells us a really good plan that will pay Logan back for the webcam. "Okay, does everyone know the plan?" We all murmur yes.
"Good, and everybody be in the girls' lounge at 8.15 tonight," Chase tells us. "I'll show up at about 8.20, and that's when it all goes down."
"Wait," Dana says, "how do we know for sure that Logan'll be watching the webcam?"
"Oh, don't worry about that, we watch every night." I glare at Michael, who just keeps going. "Like once, we saw her dribble spaghetti sauce down her shirt, and then she-" his laughter trails off as everyone stares at him in disgust. "But now I know it's wrong, to spy on people."
"Yeah," I say, "you'd think that would've been obvious from the beginning."
"Very, very wrong," he says, and offers me a dollar when I don't stop glaring at him. I take it, but keep looking back at him anyway. "I'll make sure he's watching, okay?"
"You better!" I say, finally pulling my eyes from him.
"Okay, let's make sure we have everything we need," Zoey says.
"Right," Chase says, "Quinn, you got the cue cards?"
"Got 'em right here," she says, holding them up.
"Nicole, you got the breakaway vase from the drama club?" Zoey asks.
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"Breakaway vase, check!"
Vicky leans over the railing to ask, "what's a breakaway vase?"
"Oh, it's fake," Nicole tells her.
"It's breaks super easily," I add.
"You can smash it over someone's head and it doesn't even hurt. Check it out!" She smashes the vase over the janitor, who looks up briefly before returning to his duties. "See," she says, and I sigh at the loss of the vase.
"Um, Nicole." Zoey says.
"Right, I'll get another one."
When it's time for the plan to happen, we're all waiting in the lounge, so that Chase can show up. Right on time, Chase runs in with a box of sushi.
"Hey, sushi's here," Zoey says, reading her cue card.
"Hey, Chase," I say, acting naturally, while Nicole and Zoey stand up.
"Thanks, Chase," Nicole tells him, "we love the free sushi!"
"Look, girls, I don't know if I can keep hooking you up with all this free sushi," Chase pretends to be concerned, and I lean forwards.
"Why not? I thought Logan was still off sick, so he can't know about it."
He turns to me, reading his next line, "I think my boss is starting to get a little suspicious."
"Kazu?" Zoey asks.
"Yeah, so listen, if anybody asks, just say-" Kazu then comes up and grabs Chase by the shoulders, pretending to have caught him.
"Aha! I knew it," he says.
"Kazu!"
"You've been stealing all my sushi and giving it to these girls!"
"Um, uh, no, that's not true!" Chase stutters.
"We pay for our sushi!" I read out, acting nervous and pulling the dollar Michael had given me out of my pocket, for effect.
"No you don't!" Kazu says, "I'm going to tell the Dean." We gasp. "And then you will be... and then you will be..."
"Quinn, next card," Zoey whispers, as Quinn was so absorbed in our performance she has forced Kazu to buffer.
"Sorry," she whispers, turning to the next cue card.
"Expelled! You will be expelled!"
"Expelled?" Chase shouts.
"You're going to prison!" Kazu continues.
"No!" Nicole shouts and Zoey reaches down, grabs the vase and smashes it over Kazu, who pretends to collapse. The other girls all gasp and pretend to be shocked while I fake a small scream and move out of the way of his body.
"Zoey, what'd you do?" I ask, feigning horror.
"I'm sorry! I panicked!"
Chase kneels down and pretends to check his boss. "He's out cold."
Zoey joins him on the floor, "oh no! Now we're all gonna get expelled!"
"No!" Chase shouts, waving his arm. "Nobody's getting expelled!"
"Well what do we do?" I ask.
"He's gonna wake up eventually, and tell the Dean what happened," Nicole says.
"Yes, that's why we have to get rid of him!"
"Get rid of him, how?" I ask, and Zoey pretends to come up with a plan.
"Let's tie him up and shove him in the closet!" She points at the closet.
"Right," Chase says, "then, late tonight, when everyone's asleep, we hot-wire his car, and put Kazu in the trunk!"
"And drive him to Mexico!" Zoey shouts.
"Who here can drive?" I implore, turning to face the crowd, and one girl raises her hand, coming over. "Good, you can drive the car."
"But what if the Dean finds out?" Nicole asks.
Zoey sighs, "she has a point."
"Hey," Chase says. "He didn't see who hit him!"
"Right, we'll blame it all on," Zoey pauses for effect, "on, Logan!"
"Yes," everyone says.
"I feel bad," I say, and Chase puts an arm round my shoulder.
"Do you want to go to prison?"
"No."
"Then we have no choice," he says, and I pretend to be convinced.
"Okay, we'll blame the whole thing on Logan," I announce.
"Stealing the sushi, knocking out Kazu, everything," Chase says.
"Okay, quick, let's tie up Kazu and shove him in the closet," Zoey says, and we move to 'tie' him up.
"I got some duct tape!" Nicole shouts, as we put his arms together behind his back.
We carry on with the act until Michael messages us that Logan fell for it and is on his way with the Dean. We clean up and quickly make it all seem normal. Logan runs in with the Dean not long after, the Dean in a robe, slightly wet, and with suds in his hair.
"There, there they are!" Logan says, and I wave kindly at him.
"Hey, Logan," he glares at me and I pretend to be confused by his coldness.
"Logan?" Dana asks
"Dean Rivers?" Nicole asks.
"What's up?" Zoey asks them.
Logan is out of breath and stares accusingly at us all, "you know what's up! You've been stealing sushi from Kazu, and when he found out you knocked him on the head with a vase, and they shoved him in that closet!" He drags the Dean over to the closet, which is empty.
"A vacuum?" Dean Rivers asks, unsure what's going on, no doubt.
"You wanna borrow it?" Zoey asks.
"I know!" Logan says, pointing at us, "they probably already put Kazu in the trunk of his car!"
"What?" The Dean shouts, and then Kazu enters.
"Hello, children!"
"Kazu!" We all greet him, as he comes over to us with Chase.
"How's it going, Kazu?" Zoey asks.
"Kazu?" Logan asks, baffled.
"Oh, hey, what's up, Logan?" Chase asks.
Kazu sees the Dean. "Oh, hello, Dean."
"What brings you here, Kazu?" Nicole asks, politely.
"Oh, I was just helping Chase with his deliveries," he says, wrapping an arm around the bushy-haired boy. "Since Logan is sick." Logan smiles awkwardly at the Dean as he is caught in his lie. "But, you don't look so sick to me."
"He's not sick," Zoey says, sweetly.
"Uh, Kazu, I can explain."
"So can I, you're fired!" Logan jerks backwards in shock, as we smirk at him. Kazu laughs, "I feel like Donald Trump."
"But, you got whacked with a vase!" Logan protests.
"What?" Kazu asks, looking shocked by the information.
"What are you talking about, Logan?" I ask, and he looks at me in surprise.
Logan is desperate now, "it's true!"
"Okay, Mr Reese," the Dean says, "I think your little joke has gone on far enough."
"It's not a joke, I swear! I saw everything, see!" He points out the bear. "I put a webcam in this teddy bear!"
We all gasp and I step closer, "you did what?" I sound really angry, and I pat myself of the back for how good my acting is right now.
"Logan, I am shocked," Zoey says.
"I'm dismayed," Nicole adds.
The Dean is not impressed, "you mean to tell me you put a camera in the girls' lounge and you've been spying on them?"
Logan realises his mistake, and I let myself smirk for a second while he struggles to come up with an excuse. "Well, well, yeah, but-"
"Alright, mister, it's time you and I had a little conference call with your parents," the Dean tells him, grabbing Logan's wrist. "Sorry to interrupt your evening, girls."
"But, Dean Rivers!"
"Quiet! You interrupted my shampoo for nothing!" They leave and I laugh.
"Okay, who wants some sushi?" Kazu asks, and we cheer, before stuffing our faces with the delicious food.
I spend the last hour of my night messaging Logan, who apologises at least fifty times for his actions.
H: You're a jerk, I keep telling you and you never listen!
L: fine, i admit that today was NOT good
H: And you putting the camera in there a week ago was??
L: how can i fix this
H: I have an idea...
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