Caught

Chapter 12 - Just for the Record(s)

Felix sits across from me at the table, waiting patiently. His fingers tap mechanically on the wooden surface, like a metronome counting the steady beats of my heart rate.

Thrum, thrum, thrum, thrum.

"Would you cut that out?" I ask sternly.

"Sorry, but you're kind of over building the suspense right now. I'm guessing you didn't ask me to spend my entire lunch period at the library for nothing."

"Of course not. I want to be here even less than you do, trust me. I'm just waiting for the librarian to stop giving us the stink eye." I glare at the woman as I say it, and she seems to get the message, instantly turning her gaze back to the computer monitor on her desk. "You'd swear the lady thinks I'm gonna steal something."

Felix gives me a mischievous grin. "To be fair, I'm guessing you don't normally come here."

"Touché." I say. "Onto more important things though. I think I know how we can get Mr. Caplan in trouble for his story theft without giving up the recommendation letter or my story."

He raises an eyebrow, interested. "Bold claim."

"It's not without risk, and the whole thing could totally not work at all, but hear me out. Step one, we find out who the original ghost writer is."

"There's no way Sam will ever talk to us again." Felix interjects.

"Then we'll just have to find another way to track them down. I read the summary of Mr. Caplan's novel last night and it got me thinking. The protagonist, Sasha, is a girl, right?"

"I've got to be honest Ali, so far you're plan is not impressing me."

"Shut up and listen to me please. If the protagonist is a girl, that probably means the ghost writer is also a girl. I mean, I don't know a lot of high school boys that would write a story with a female protagonist, or at least not one as emotionally complex as Sasha. You can't argue with that."

"Okay, sure," he agrees, "our ghostwriter is probably a girl. So what? That leaves about fifty percent of the student population."

"I'm not finished. The protagonist Sasha, on top of being a girl, is also a member of her high school improv team. It seems like that was a large element of the story, so I'm guessing that whoever wrote it was actually on the improv team themselves at some point. If I'm not mistaken, Berkley High has had an improvisation team for the past three years."

"It's a bit of a leap." Felix deadpans. "I mean Christ, for all we know this ghostwriter could actually be a soccer player named Chad who likes writing in his spare time."

Bending down, I pull a couple of heavy books out of my backpack and drop them onto the table. "Yes Felix, I get it, I'm making a lot of leaps here. Can we at least try and do things my way? Without Sam's help, this is kind of our only option."

He sighs. "Fine. Continue."

"Thank you. So I found the yearbooks for the past three years here in the library and looked up the improv team members from each of them. After eliminating all of the members who were dudes, we're left with seven possible candidates. Two of them were Freshmen at the time the assignment was handed in, so I think it's safe to rule them out. Considering the story's content and style, I doubt it was written by anyone under the age of fifteen."

"That still leaves five people." Felix says. "Assuming some of them have graduated since last year, I don't exactly want to track down five different Berkley alumni. Is there any way we could cut down that number more?"