Hacked Read online

  Update status?

  I enthusiastically signed out of chat and switched to the When in Rome website. It took forever to load. And then I had to sign into my blog and wait all over again for the main page to come up. One thing was for sure: at this rate, I’d never get a vlog posted. I’d die and fossilize before the connection would upload any photos, let alone a video. A short post would have to do. I could write something about my first impression of Costa Rica. I composed the opening sentence in my head as I waited for the blog page to load. Maybe that’s why it took me a moment to process what I saw on the page when it finally did.

  My blog had already been updated, only not by me.

  OTHER BOOKS YOU MAY ENJOY

  Agnes Parker…Girl in Progress Kathleen O’Dell

  Eleven Lauren Myracle

  The Fashion Disaster That Changed My Life Lauren Myracle

  How My Private Personal Journal Became a Bestseller Julia DeVillers

  Lights, Camera, Cassidy Episode One: Celebrity Linda Gerber

  Lights, Camera, Cassidy Episode Two: Paparazzi Linda Gerber

  The Total Tragedy of a Girl Named Hamlet Erin Dionne

  Twelve Lauren Myracle

  Yours Truly, Lucy B. Parker: Girl vs. Superstar Robin Palmer

  Yours Truly, Lucy B. Parker: Sealed with a Kiss Robin Palmer

  episode three:

  Hacked

  by LINDA GERBER

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  An Imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3

  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

  Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre,

  Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand

  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue,

  Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in the United States of America by Puffin Books,

  a member of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2012

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Copyright © Linda Gerber, 2012

  All rights reserved

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA IS AVAILABLE

  ISBN: 978-1-101-57202-3

  Design by Theresa Evangelista

  Text set in Adobe Caslon regular

  Printed in the United States of America

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed

  in any print or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or

  encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights.

  Purchase only authorized editions.

  ALWAYS LEARNING

  PEARSON

  For Lily. Welcome to twelve!

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: Special thanks to everyone who helped make this book a reality; to my family for respecting the closed office door (and loving me despite my crazy moments); to Mama Tica for teaching me about pura vida; to Elaine Spencer for supreme agenting and friendship; to Kristin Gilson for editorial wisdom and guidence; and to Theresa Evangelista, whose cover work I adore. I owe you all big time!

  Table of Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  Epilogue

  Lights, Camera, Cassidy: Episode One: Celebrity

  Travel tip: Most people come to Costa Rica to relax, so please don’t be in a hurry.

  For my last vocab test, I learned at least three definitions for the word irony. But it wasn’t until weeks later, when I was riding shotgun with Bayani on a winding dirt road in Costa Rica, that I fully understood the meaning.

  He had cranked up the truck’s stereo as high as it would go with his favorite classic rock CD and was drumming his hands on the steering wheel to the pounding beat. At the top of his lungs he shouted along with “Born to Be Wild”…as he drove at the heart-racing pace of about five miles per hour.

  Even more ironic: I had jumped at the chance to ride from the airport with Bayani because I couldn’t wait to get to Monteverde and I thought he would be the fastest driver. As it turns out, the truck he was driving was the one carrying all the show’s equipment, so he had to take it careful—and slow. It wasn’t so bad when we were on the Pan-American Highway, but the minute we turned off onto the unpaved roads, forget about it. The other three SUVs carrying the rest of the crew passed us before the first bridge.

  “Aw, c’mon!” I bounced in my seat. “Can’t we go any faster?”

  He turned the music down long enough to give me his (terrible) Joker impression. “Why so ssserious, Cassidy?”

  “I just want to get there.”

  Bayani laughed and cranked the music back up. “Relax!” he shouted over the heavy bass beat. “Don’t be in such a hurry to get where you’re going that you can’t enjoy the ride!”

  Sure. Easy for him to say. His best friend-slash-crush wasn’t waiting for him at the end of the ride. Mine was. I hadn’t seen Logan since Spain; I think that gave me the right to be anxious.

  Not that I’d ever tell Bayani that. He’d just use it in his arsenal of Tease Cassidy ammunition.

  Bayani’s the “fixer” with my mom and dad’s cable travel show, When in Rome. He’s the guy who makes all the practical arrangements for the show when we go on location—secures reservations, lines up the local guides, gets the necessary permits, and hauls equipment. He takes care of everything in advance so that when the rest of the crew shows up, all they have to do is shoot the episode. Bayani’s been with the show so long, he’s become like a big brother to me…with all that goes with the role, like being a huge tease.

  But I wasn’t going to let his teasing or anything else spoil this trip. Logan was here! That was all that mattered.

  Logan and I go way back, to when the show first started. His dad’s When in Rome’s producer, my mom and dad are the stars, so Logan and I both traveled with the show. We were the only kids in the group, so we became best friends by default. For years, we were inseparable—until his mom decided it was time for him to “stop ladding about” and settle down with her in Ireland.

  After that, I didn’t see Logan for two years. I didn’t hear from him, either. He never wrote, never called. And then suddenly, there he was at our shoot in Spain.

  The years we were apart changed some things—we were both a couple of years older, both a little taller (though Logan gained several inches on me), and his voice had gotten deeper. But in many ways, we picked right up where we left off, as if Logan had never been away. We still talked, we still joked around, we still fought; we were still best friends. It wasn’t until it was time to leave Spain that I realized I liked him as something more. By then, it was too late, because I had gotten myself shipped off to the States to stay with my gramma.

  Logan and I IMed and video chatted the whole time I was away, but it wasn’
t the same as being there in person. Now I was moments away from seeing him again, and I couldn’t get there fast enough.

  I turned down the stereo and nudged Bayani’s arm. “How much farther?”

  “Not far. We got about twenty minutes to Monteverde, then another fifteen to the farm.”

  Not far? Thirty-five minutes hardly qualified as not far. And was he talking thirty-five minutes at the speed the rest of the crew was traveling, or at the snail’s pace he was driving?

  Oh, and the farm? Here’s another lovely bit of irony for you…when the network invited me to come to Costa Rica to film some kid-friendly spots for my mom and dad’s show, I’d been at my gramma’s farm in Ohio for nearly a month and a half and was dying to escape. Don’t get me wrong. I love my gramma, and I love going to visit her between shows, but I grew up on the road. Staying in one place for so long was torture. And let’s face it, farm life? Not so exciting. So here I had left one farm only to travel all the way to Costa Rica and land on another one.

  But it didn’t matter. Logan was here! We could be staying at a monastery for all I cared.

  As the road wound higher up the steep hillside, misty tendrils of fog drifted by the truck. No, not fog, I reminded myself, clouds. Always-present clouds. The forests of Monteverde were called cloud forests for that reason.

  From the valley, we hadn’t been able to see much of the mountain because it had been swallowed by the clouds. Now we were driving into them, bumping and swaying over the rutted dirt road. The mist grew thicker and denser until the road, the trees, and everything ahead of us faded to gray.

  Bayani slowed the truck even more and rolled his window down a crack. “Smells like rain again,” he said.

  The air that whistled in through the opening was earthy and damp. It was also cooler than the air in San Jose had been. I shivered and grabbed the Ohio State hoodie from my backpack and slipped it on. I didn’t think I would need it when Gramma gave it to me as a good-bye present, but now I was glad I had it. “Has it been raining a lot?” I asked Bayani. “Is that going to mess with the shoot schedule?”

  “Ooh.” He slid me a look and mocked me with his eyebrows. “Look at you being Miss Diva, concerning yourself with schedules and all.”

  I smacked his arm. “Shut up.”

  Of course he’d rib me about the diva thing. Apparently, when I had been in Greece filming a kids’ travel special, one of the American tabloids said I was copping a diva attitude because I “turned up my nose” at my “hottie costar” Nikos Kouropoulos. They claimed I thought I was too good for him. Which is ironic, because the European tabloids made it sound like the two of us were taking a ride on the Love Boat.

  What none of them understood—and what I wasn’t about to tell them because it was none of their business—was that (a) the whole time we were on the yacht, I was trying to set Nikos up with my friend Zoe, and (b) the only guy I was interested in was Logan. Still, somehow it got out that I was being a diva—just the kind of thing Bayani loved to have in his arsenal.

  “If the weather interferes,” he continued loftily, “we can move your ten o’clock to eleven and your eleven o’clock to twelve thirty. I’ll have my people call your people and we’ll pencil it in.”

  “You’re such an idiot.”

  “And you are, if I may quote, ‘a rising young star in the galaxy of reality TV.’ Wow, does that sound wrong.”

  I smacked him again, and he hunched his shoulder away from me. “Hey. No assaulting the driver.”

  “No insulting the passenger,” I shot back.

  “What insult? I’m just repeating what Celeb Style said.”

  “With a little personal commentary at the end.”

  “Ah, c’mon.” He reached over and ruffled my hair like I was three instead of thirteen. “You know you’re my favorite starlet.”

  “Stop with the starlet stuff,” I warned him, smoothing my bangs. Without thinking, I flipped down the visor so I could check my hair in the mirror. I didn’t want Logan to see me for the first time in months looking like I had just woken up.

  Bayani burst out laughing, and I slapped the visor back up against the truck’s ceiling.

  “Ha!” he crowed, waggling a finger at me. “Who’s not a diva?”

  I huffed and slid down in my seat, arms folded tight across my chest. But even as I muttered to myself and stared out the window, I couldn’t hide my smile. It was good to be back.

  Just before we reached the farm, Finca Calderón, it started to rain. No, that sounds much too tame. More like it started to pour, all at once, like someone had turned on a faucet above us full blast. The dirt road melted into slick mud beneath the truck, running in rivulets down the hill as if it might wash away altogether. The windshield wipers thwapped frantically back and forth, but they couldn’t keep up with the deluge. Water cascaded down the glass in sheets, turning the world into a wavy, soft-focus kaleidoscope.

  It was through the kaleidoscope that I saw the cows. Three ginger and white and one black and white huddled together at the base of one of the trees, stoically blinking against the rain. I was never so happy to see cows in my life. We were staying at a dairy farm after all, which meant…“We’re close?”

  Bayani nodded. “Just over this rise.”

  Suddenly, I was nervous. Not scared-nervous, but excited-nervous. In just a few more minutes, I’d be with Logan. There were so many things I wanted to say to him. So much time I wanted to make up. I couldn’t wait to see him. If it hadn’t been raining so hard, I might have been tempted to jump out of the slow-moving truck and run the rest of the way.

  Bayani must have noticed me getting antsy. “Can’t wait to get in front of the camera again, huh?” he ribbed.

  “You know it.” I fluffed my hair and blew him a kiss and left it at that. The last thing I was going to do was tell him how excited I was to see Logan. If Bayani knew, I’d never hear the end of it.

  Fortunately, he didn’t have time for any follow-through. Just as he’d said, a big wooden sign announcing Finca Calderón stood at the crest of the hill. We turned onto a long dirt driveway that—if possible—was even more hole pocked and rutted than the road. A couple of rustic-looking houses and a cluster of outbuildings waited for us at the end of the driveway.

  “I’ll let you out by the door,” Bayani told me, “and pull the truck into the shed. We can unload when the rain lets up.”

  It didn’t look like that was going to be any time soon. Rain pelted against the windows as hard as ever. “Do you have an umbrella?” I asked hopefully.

  “Naw. I’ll be fine,” Bayani said. “I’m not worried about getting wet.” He paused for a moment and then gave me one of those fake, wide-eyed, just-now-understanding faces. “Oh, you mean for you. No. I’m afraid not. That would be why I’m dropping you at the door.”

  By then he had pulled the truck to a stop in front of the larger house. Not more than ten steps from the driveway, a porch with a vine-covered arbor ran the length of the building, but the way it was raining, ten steps was enough to get soaking wet. Maybe if I protected my head with my backpack…

  “Get out already,” Bayani said. “Unless you want to walk with me from the shed.” He pointed to an outbuilding several yards from the house.

  “No, this is good.” I resisted the urge to check the mirror one last time (what good would it do?) and pushed the door open.

  I was right. It didn’t matter how fast I ran. By the time I made it under the protection of the arbor, my hair was plastered to my head and my sopping clothes clung to me. Not quite the look I was going for when Logan saw me again for the first time, but what could I do? I squished up to the front entrance, shivering. A sign by the door said in Spanish and English, ¡ENTRA! COME IN! I pushed my dripping hair out of my face, squared my shoulders, and walked through the doorway.

  The lodge didn’t look nearly as rustic inside as it had on the outside. A wrought-iron chandelier hung in the two-story entrance, and the wood floors held the kind of mellow
gleam that comes with age and a lot of care. In the huge center room a fire crackled in a stone-lined fireplace. Woodsmoke mingled with a homey spice-and-floral smell that was both exotic and familiar at the same time.

  It looked like a regular meet-and-greet was going on in the big room. My tutor, Victoria, our makeup guy, Daniel, and a woman I guessed was our new techie were sitting on the leather couches in front of the fireplace. My dad had mentioned gaining a new crew member while I was gone. Britt, I think her name was. She was supposed to be a computer genius or something. From where I was standing, she looked more like a flirt, batting her eyelashes at a couple of dark-haired guys I didn’t recognize and laughing behind her hand, all dainty and coy.

  Across the room, my mom and dad stood with Logan’s dad, talking to some blonde lady I’d never seen before. Huh. Dad never said anything about two new crew members. But before I could give her much thought, the blonde lady, my mom, my dad, and the entire room faded away when I finally saw Logan, sprawled in an oversize wingback chair in the corner, reading a book. My breath caught, just as it always did when I saw him. And I froze on the spot.

  For months, all I’d been able to think about was seeing Logan again, but now that the moment had come, I was suddenly unsure. How should I make my big entrance? Act casual? Call out to him? Sneak up and smack the book from his hands? That last one would be the most fun. I started toward him, but before I could take two steps, Daniel’s voice cut through the chatter.

  “Ah, there she is!”

  Everything went quiet for a heartbeat before picking up again. So much for sneaking.

  Victoria called hello from her seat near the fireplace and stood to make her way toward me. Daniel followed close behind. My eyes skipped over them both to where Logan was still sitting. Only now he was watching me. My face suddenly went hot, and I forced a smile, waving to him. His smile looked a lot more genuine when he waved back. That’s all it took for hot chills to ripple through my stomach.

  “We thought you got lost,” Victoria said when she reached me.

  I reluctantly pulled my attention away from Logan. “Not lost,” I said. “Just slow.”