Chapter 1

Neil was the one to notice it: Stacy Richards cheating on an examination! He nudged his friend Gary and pointed towards the front of the class.

"Check it out," he whispered.

Gary saw, but couldn't believe what he was seeing. Stacy Richards - the ice-queen cock tease of the senior class at Greenwood High - was staring intently at a slip of paper hidden on her desk under the exam. Just then, Mr.Edgar, the teacher, coughed quietly and shifted position in his seat at the front of the class. Stacy quickly pushed the cheat-sheet back under the exam paper and looked up guiltily, her face flushing a pretty shade of red. If Mr.Edgar had glanced over at her at that moment he would certainly have known that something was wrong with her. But why would he be checking out Stacy Richards, who had been getting straight A grades ever since she had begun attending Greenwood High four years ago? Instead, he turned his attention to Neil French and Gary Syms, who were the class trouble-makers: Neil with his long, greasy hair and semi-stylish ripped clothes and Gary with his cynical, cutting sense of geek humour. Sure enough, they were grinning and whispering together at the back of the classroom rather than writing the exam.

"French... Syms," he called out, drawing himself laboriously out of his chair and up to his rather unimpressive full hight, "Front of the class."

No longer smiling, the two boys got up and walked slowly forward, the centre of attention, with everyone in the class looking up at them from their exams. Neil noticed Stacy smirking at him with her typical, haughty sneer.

Bitch, he thought, we'll see who's laughing in a second.

"Mr.Edgar," he blurted as he reached the front of the room, "We saw..."

He was cut off by Gary elbowing him subtly, but stiffly, in the side. He drew in a breath to continue speaking, but he was interrupted by the angry teacher.

"You two have been nothing but trouble since you started this class in September," Mr.Edgar announced, his full white moustache quivering with indignation. "I can no longer allow you to disrupt this class with your infantile jokes and games, particularly during exams."

Neil started to protest, but was again cut off by Mr.Edgar, who had worked up a full head of steam.

"You have both failed this examination. You will apologise to the class for the disruption, and then you will leave." He glared at the two boys. "Do you understand?"

Both boys nodded a sullen 'yes'.

"Any further problems," the teacher finished his pronouncement of sentence, "And you will be removed from this class permanently. Perhaps you will be able to make up the course in summer school."

Gary didn't react, but Neil looked up in alarm. That was about the most serious threat a teacher could make, short of outright expulsion. Bakersville was a beach town in southern California, and summer was by far the best time of the year, particularly for the teenagers. Being forced to waste the summer months inside the stuffy high school while everyone else partied on the beach was about the worst fate a teenager could suffer.

Apparently cowed, Neil and Gary turned around and stammered out an embarrassed apology to the class. A few kids giggled - Neil noted that Stacy was one of them - but most looked away, uncomfortable at the humiliation of their fellow students. The two boys then filed out of classroom and into the hallway.

Stacy shrugged her blonde hair off her shoulder and looked back down at the examination as the class returned to normal. Thank god those two geeks were gone, she thought, and tried to put Neil and Gary from her mind. In her world, there were "people" and there were "geeks", and Neil and Gary definitely fell into the latter category. She wouldn't even have known their names except that Neil had spent the better part of the first term of the previous year following her about, and had even asked her out on a date. As if! She had refused in as cruel a manner as she knew how (which was pretty cruel), and had later asked Pete, her then boyfriend and captain of the football team, to beat Neil up, just to warn him off. Pete had dutifully administered the beating, and Neil had backed off. She had soon afterward broken up with Pete - he had lost his place on the football team that spring - and had put the entire episode from her mind.

Reluctantly, she turned her attention back to the exam. She frowned down at the test, as if she could intimidate the answers off the written page. Questions which had been easy for her a year ago now seemed impossibly hard. Stacy was quite intelligent, and had always gotten almost perfect marks at school, but lately the constant burden of socializing - cheerleading, beachparties, student council etc. - had left her little time for schoolwork. As a result, she had found herself approaching the first set of school exams of her senior year completely unprepared. And if she did poorly or - unthinkable - failed, she would loose her record of straight As, and would probably fail to be elected Homecoming Queen, the goal toward which she had been working for the last few years. Hence, she had decided to make a few crib notes to get her through the first round of exams. After that, she told herself, she would get back on track with the schoolwork.

Looking around to make certain she was unobserved, she pushed the exam paper upwards to expose the notes she had written on the cheat-sheet...

Neil smouldered with anger as walked down the hall with Gary. That had been the perfect chance to get back at that bitch Stacy, and Gary had blown it for him! Neil's thoughts lingered on Stacy as he grumbled to himself.

Stacy was one of those unattainable high school princesses who enjoyed showing herself off, but didn't put out. With her shoulder-length blonde hair, perfect face (large green eyes, pert nose and thick, pouty lips), and athlete's body (she was a member of both the swim team and the track team), she was easily the most beautiful girl in Greenwood, and every male student's dream.

But dream she remained for most. She moved exclusively in the highest high school social circles, and only went out with sports stars and the like. Neil had developed a crush on her earlier the previous year, and it wasn't until she had sent that football jerk to beat him up that he got over her. The fact was, she only noticed guys like Neil (and Gary, for that matter) when they bothered her, and she had to put them off (or "... out of their misery..." as Neil had once heard her laughingly remark to one of her friends).

The two boys left the school by the side entrance and began to walk across the south parking lot. Finally, Neil could contain himself no longer.

"Why'd you shut me up in there?" he complained, "I had that bitch right where I wanted her. I owe her."

Gary just smiled at this, making Neil uncomfortable. Where Neil was loud and obnoxious, Gary was quiet and strange. Despite the fact that the two had been friends for a number of years, Gary was still capable of unnerving his larger friend with his strange smile and even stranger ideas.

"What's so funny?" Neil asked nervously.

"You're right," Gary answered quietly, "We do have her where we want her, but not in the way you mean."

Neil was puzzled. "What are you talking about?"

"If you had told on her back in the classroom just now, Edgar might or might not have believed you. Probably not; you know he doesn't like us. And if not - if Stacy had managed to hide her cheating - we would have been kicked out of the class for good, and been stuck in summer school. And even if he had caught her, at most she would have failed the exam, if that. The teachers love her. Then she would set her friends on us."

"But..." Neil began.

"You remember Pete."

Neil could only nod glumly in agreement, recalling the beating he had suffered last year. Stacy had no shortage of friends on the football team. "So," he said finally, "You said we had her where we wanted her."

"Yes, I did," Gary agreed.

"How?"

By now, the two boys had reached Gary's car, a large, black Pontiac. Gary unlocked the doors before answering.

"If she's cheating now on a math test," he explained, "she must be in trouble with her schoowork. She's always gotten top marks in math."

"Yeah?" Neil was still confused. "So?"

"So," Gary continued patiently, "It's a pretty safe bet she'll cheat again. There's an English test coming up next week, and I don't think a little cheat-sheet will be of much use to her. You have to have read the material." He started up the car and began to pull out of the parking space. Neil thought this over as Gary manouvered the vehicle out of the school parking lot and onto the road.

"So," he asked finally, "What do we do about it?"

"I'll tell you when we get to Sharon's place," Gary answered, "We'll need her for what I have in mind."

Sharon was Gary's friend and sometime girlfriend. Neil was never really sure about their relationship - he knew that they went out and that they occasionally had sex, but he also knew that Sharon did the same with at least a couple of other guys. Gary, however, didn't seem to mind, so Neil had decided to take things at face value. He had even made something of a pass at Sharon at a beach party last summer, but had been rebuffed. He was philosophical about it; Sharon wasn't really his type anyway.

The girl in question appeared in the doorway, answering their knock. A year younger than the two boys, Sharon was short and heavy, with large breasts and curly, brown hair. Any suggestion of cuteness, however, was quickly dispelled by her hard face and small, piggy (Neil thought) eyes. If there was any beauty there, it was definitely in the eye of the beholder. She was smoking a cigarette as she answered the door.

After a quick greeting (and an obligatory "hello" to Sharon's mother - propped up, as usual, in front of the television), Sharon led the two boys down to her basement bedroom, locking the door behind her (Sharon's parents were "progressive", and felt that she needed her privacy). Neil accepted a cigarette and flopped down into a chair while pulling a lighter from his jacket pocket. Gary, who didn't smoke, just leaned up against the dresser. Sharon lay down on the bed and propped herself up with a pillow.

"So," she asked, flicking some ash onto the dirty shag carpet, "What are you guys doing here? I thought you had math with Edgar until 3:00."

Neil grimaced. "We did," he answered, "Until he kicked us out."

"What?"

Gary took over the explanation and outlined the sequence of events that had led to their expulsion from the math class. Typically, Sharon immediately blamed Stacy.

"That cunt!" she swore angrily, "Cheating on the test and getting you guys kicked out. She's really asking for it."

"Yes, she is," Gary agreed quietly, "And I think I know how we can give it to her."

"What do you mean?"

"We know she's cheating on her exams, right?"

Neil and Sharon nodded in agreement.

"I think that it's pretty likely she'll cheat again. I don't think that she's had to do it before, so she's probably way behind in her work. The fact that she's cheating - and that we know she's cheating - gives us a hold on her; a way of blackmailing her, but we need more."

Neil thought this over for a few moments. "Like what?" he asked.

"First, we need concrete evidence of the cheating. No one is going to take our word over Stacy's. That's where you come in, Sharon. Your dad lets you use his video camera and radio - microphone. We'll use that to trap her."

"And then what?" Neil was starting to become excited at the prospect of blackmailing Stacy.

Gary fell silent for a moment, looking at his two friends.

"How much," he asked finally, his voice strained and odd, "How much do you hate her? I mean really. How much do you want to see her suffer?"

"Hey man," Neil answered uneasily, "I just want to get back at her for putting me down last year. I don't want to, like, beat her up or anything."

"Well, I would," Sharon spat out. "I hate the bitch. Always flaunting herself, and prancing about like she owns the whole fucking school. She deserves whatever she gets. I'll do whatever you want to help get her."

Gary looked over a Neil, his eyebrows raised as if to ask 'are you in?'.

"Aw, fuck it," Neil said finally, "I hate the bitch as much as anybody. I'm in all the way."

"Good," Gary nodded, "Cause when we're through with her, she'll be the biggest slut in the history of Greenwood High."

The English exam was being held the following Monday, only five days away, so they had to move quickly. The first step was to get ahold of the exam questions beforehand, a proposition which might have proved difficult but for the advances in electronics technology which had culminated in the computer. Exam papers were commonly written out on school computers and stored in the school network, which allowed for "maximum flexibility within the school bureaucracy regarding application of secretarial assets". Incidentally, it also allowed someone with the appropriate equipment and skills to break into the system and download the required information without leaving any traces of his actions.

Gary, something of a hacker, had broken into the system a number of times in the past with his home computer and modem and was quite familiar with both the security measures and the layout of information within the network. In the end, it took him all of about twenty minutes to download the appropriate exam paper. Neil and Sharon were impressed.

"Jesus," she muttered, "I wish you'd told me about this before I failed my fucking history test last year."

Gary just shook his head. "I don't think this is the kind of thing you want to do too often. If I go in often enough, they'll figure out what's going on. I was saving if for a special occasion." He looked up at his two friends and grinned maliciously. "And I think this is it."

Frustrated, Stacy slammed the book shut. The exam was coming up in just a few days, and there was no way she was going to be ready. She had done her best to catch up on the first two months' work in a couple of days, but it was almost impossible for her even to get through the material in time for the test, much less actually understand it. And there was impossible for her to cheat on this exam the way she had in math. In that class, she had gotten away with writing out a number of formulas and applications on crib notes, but that just wouldn't work for an English test. There was too much material to read and assimilate, and without knowing exactly what material the test was going to focus on, she was forced to try to learn it all in just a few days: a daunting task at best, and almost certainly doomed to failure. She was going to blow the test for sure!