Social Suicide Read Online Free PDF Page B

couple minutes later. She must have sent that tweet right before . . .”
    Sam’s eyes got all big and round. “She went in the pool,” she finished for me. “Ohmigod. She was killed while tweeting. It was Twittercide!”
    Again that too-close-for-comfort ball of nausea flared up in my stomach. I grabbed a rice cake, chewing quickly to wash down the sensation.
    “Honestly, I think that’s one more point against Sydney having killed herself,” I decided. “If she was tweeting when she died, wouldn’t she have left some sort of message? Tweeted why she was doing it? A ‘good-bye cruel world’ kind of thing?”
    Sam nodded. “Totally. That would have been classic Sydney.” She paused. “But why would anyone want to kill her?”
    “I can think of one reason,” I answered. “She was about to talk to me. Maybe whatever she was going to tell me was something that someone didn’t want to get out.”
    Sam’s eyes went big again. “Whoa. You killed Sydney!”
    I shifted uncomfortably on my patchwork comforter. “No I didn’t! I mean, not exactly. But the point is that the cops all think it was suicide, and we’re the only ones who know it was actually homicide.”
    “Meaning?”
    I bit my lip. “Meaning,” I said, the realization sinking in, “it’s up to us to figure out who really killed Sydney.”
    Which, I realized the next morning, was easier said than done. As I’d mentioned to Raley, you didn’t get to be the homecoming queen front-runner by being a wallflower. Sydney had been visible, active in everything at school, and not afraid to do whatever she needed to in order to get ahead. Needless to say, Sydney had as many enemies as she did friends. However, there was one person who would qualify at the moment as both Sydney’s best friend and worst enemy: Quinn Leslie, the former BFF who Sydney had ratted out to the principal when she’d been caught cheating.
    Unfortunately, Quinn had been suspended along with Sydney, so cornering her during school was not an option. Instead, I made plans to visit her during lunch, and impatiently sat through first period, where I got no less than six texts asking if it was true that I’d found a dead body. Again. During second, I got two gleeful tweets announcing that Sydney’s suicide meant Mrs. Perry was delaying the chem midterm. During third, two texts said black armbands would be available in the quad at lunch. And during fourth, I got a tweet with a link to the official Sydney Sanders memorial page on Facebook, already outfitted with PayPal links to donate to teen-suicide prevention programs.
    By lunch period, everyone on campus was buzzing about the suicide that I was sure was not a suicide, and I was more anxious than ever to prove just that. I was shoving books into my locker and planning my strategy for confronting Quinn when Chase cornered me.
    “Hey, Hart,” he said. “Where are we on Sydney’s story?”
    “I’m fine, thanks for asking. Finding her dead body didn’t rattle me at all,” I said, heavy on the sarcasm.
    Chase grinned. “Okay, my bad. How are you Hartley? Holding up?”
    “Yes.”
    “Good. So, where are we on the story?”
    I rolled my eyes. “We’re good. Fine. Great.”
    “Meaning?”
    “Meaning, I’m working a unique angle,” I said, emphasizing the word.
    Again he grinned at me. “Lay it on me, Featherstone.”
    And, considering he was my editor, I did, outlining how I thought someone had committed, as Sam had put it, “Twittercide.” When I was finished, Chase’s eyebrows were drawn together in a frown.
    “But I thought the police were looking at her death as a suicide?”
    I nodded. “They are. But they’re wrong.”
    “And why do you think that?”
    “Because of the meeting Sydney had set up with me for yesterday afternoon. She knew I was working on the story, and she was going to tell me something.”
    “What?”
    “I dunno.”
    Chase shot me a look. But before he could comment, I quickly backtracked,