Trust Me, I'm Trouble Read Online Free PDF Page A

that was in February. Besides, both spots are taken. One of the students would have to bow out. Even then, you wouldn’t get in. There are two alternates selected, and both of them would have to pass. Plus, there’s no guarantee the program director would accept your application. The internship starts next week.”
    “May I ask who the accepted students and alternates are?”
    Karla gives me a suspicious look—I am Julep Dupree, after all—and then scrolls to the bottom of the screen. She reads me the names. I thank her for the information and walk out.

    Once in the hallway, I pull out my phone and scroll to a number in my contacts app. I press Send and wait for Kurt Peddleton to pick up.
    “Kurt, hi. It’s Julep. Remember that favor you owe me?” He answers in the affirmative, though reluctantly. I don’t know why everyone is so apprehensive about the favors I make them promise me when I do a job for them. I’ve never asked for anything crazy. Well, except that one time. But it’s not like his eyebrows will never grow back. “Well, I need you to back out of the NWI summer internship program.” We go around about it a few times before he finally caves. They always cave eventually. They have to. I have too much dirt on them, and they know it. “You’re a gem, Kurt. Thanks.”
    Then I call Rajid Ahmed, one of the two alternates, and have an almost identical conversation with him. He finally agrees (after much whining), and we hang up.
    Sonja Warrick is another story, though. I don’t have anything on her, and I don’t know what leverage there is to use against her. So I call Bryn.
    “What is it this time?” she says when she picks up. Bryn likes me, I’m fairly sure, in spite of how I manipulated her into going with Murphy to the formal last year. In the end, she’s happy dating Murphy, so she mostly forgives me for duping her into saying yes. But on some level it still irritates her.
    “What do we have on Sonja Warrick? Anything I can use?”
    Bryn sighs heavily. “I don’t know, Julep. She’s a nerd. She does all her own work. She keeps to herself. I can’t remember the last time I even talked to her.”

    “There has to be something. Does she like someone? Does she hate someone? Everyone has a secret.”
    “Ugh, that is so…you. Why don’t you just ask her for whatever it is you want? Maybe she’ll give it to you.”
    I frown at the phone. “I don’t understand the words that you are speaking.”
    “Oh, for— I don’t have time for this.” She hangs up on me.
    I pace back and forth, thinking. And then I get an idea. I call Murphy.
    “Hey, Murph, I need you to change Sonja Warrick’s bio grade to an F.”
    “Hello to you too,” he says, but I hear him tapping his keyboard in the background, so I don’t berate him for insubordination. “Why are we changing Sonja Warrick’s bio grade to an F?”
    “I need her disqualified from the NWI internship. The powers that be will figure out the grade ‘mistake’ in a week or two, but it’ll take them long enough to verify everything that she’ll be disqualified from accepting the internship until after it’s already started.”
    “You know, there’s a note here that she’s accepted an international internship in Mumbai for the summer.”
    “Oh,” I say, sheepishly. “You can change her bio grade back, then.” Bryn was right. I could have just asked.
    I hang up with Murphy and walk back into the Professional Development Office. Karla is on the phone.

    “All right. I’ll make a note of it. Thank you for calling,” she says, and hangs up. Then turning to me, she says dryly, “Apparently, one of the students backed out of that internship you were asking about. And then mysteriously, one of the alternates backed out as well. If the other alternate backs out—” She taps a few more times on the keyboard. “Actually, it looks like that alternate is out of the running as well. Interesting.”
    I smile innocently at her. She hands