Top 8 by Katie Finn Page A

break. I didn’t write any of that stuff.” Inwardly I sighed, wondering how many more times I would be required to say that sentence. “If you check it now, you’ll see it’s all been restored.”
    â€œHmm,” he said, making a note on the file. “I’ll look into that. But this is troubling,” he said, looking over the tops of his glasses at me. “Quite troubling.”
    â€œI agree!” I agreed. “I mean, I don’t even know how someone managed to hack my profile in the first place!” As I said this, I realized that I’d failed to ask myself that very question. How had someone managed to hack into my profile?
    â€œWell,” he said, closing the file, “I’ll continue to monitor the situation. But as Mr. Atkins pointed out, Miss MacDonald, this” — he held up the file for emphasis — “is not the kind of thing we expect from our student government officers.”
    I had been in the process of getting my stuff together, but I stopped and sat straight up. “Mr. Atkins?” I asked. “ Connor Atkins? He’s the one who told you about this?”
    â€œI don’t know if I’m at liberty to disclose that,” Dr. Trent said stiffly, as he placed my file in his drawer. “But he did point out — and I quite agree — that our student officers need to represent the best parts of Putnam High School, and —”
    â€œNaturally,” I said, inwardly seething. “But as I’ve told you before, I had nothing to do with this. My profile was hacked .”
    â€œNevertheless,” Dr. Trent said. He picked up a different folder, this one about the size of a phone book, and sighed as he looked at it. “Would you please ask Mr. Turtell to come in?”
    â€œSure,” I said, still furious about Connor. “Thanks, Dr. Trent,” I said, leaving the office. I wasn’t sure what Iwas thanking him for — implying that I might lose my hard-won position as class secretary because I’d been hacked?
    I waved goodbye to Turtell, who advised me to “fight the man” and “speak truth to power.” I nodded, held up a fist in solidarity, and headed out into the hall, my thoughts racing.
    What if it wasn’t just a coincidence that Connor had reported my profile to Dr. Trent?
    What if he’d been the one who’d hacked it?
    He’d been on my list, of course, but I hadn’t really believed it was him — I couldn’t imagine him doing something so duplicitous, since he was so by-the-rules.
    But then again, I reasoned, so was Mussolini.
    I texted Ruth the situation, knowing that she’d be in class, but could read it when she got out. Then I pulled out my list and added to it.
    Â 
    Mad’s Friendverse Hacker/Possibilities:
    1. Kittson Pearson — I THINK IT WAS HER!! Motive: wanted Justin, got him, once she got me out of the pic.
    2. Connor Atkins THINK IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN HIM! Trying to get me kicked off student government, still angry about the recount thing. Bitter that I didn’t want to go out with him?
    I folded up my list and checked my watch — although I had Latin in twenty minutes, I wanted to get some answers as to how this had happened in the first place. Armed with a Diet Coke, I went to see Frank Dell — hold the Frank.
    Â 
    â€œCan you keep that away from the equipment?” Dell asked, eyeing my can of soda warily. “I can’t tell you how many computers I’ve had to repair because people dump soda on them.”
    I picked up my DC and held it tightly. Dell worked in the basement, out of what I was pretty sure was a converted maintenance cupboard. At any rate, it was tiny and dark and carried the lingering scent of lemon Pine-Sol. It was also filled with laptops and desktops, keyboards, dismantled hard drives sprouting wires, and pieces of equipment I couldn’t even begin to identify, beeping softly