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“We’re not going to be hanging out anymore, so, you know, goodbye and everything. And thank you for what you did back there,” I add, ignoring the sadness that swells up inside me at the thought of losing my best pal.
But we can’t go on as friends, and I have proven to be terrible at relationships, so where does that leave us?
Paxton smiles at me, reaches down, and actually gives me a noogie.
“Hey!” I squawk indignantly. I reach up to smooth out my hair.
“You’re so cute when you’re delusional,” he says, and then strides off without another word.
30
PAXTON
I know Ruby is sensitive about her birthday, but it wouldn’t feel right to completely ignore it.
On the other hand, I can’t make a huge crazy deal about it, or she’d freak. My first choice would be something like a horse and carriage ride, followed by dinner at a fancy restaurant—I may love diners, but they’re not birthday-appropriate. Then we’d go back to my place and she’d be greeted by a pile of presents.
Then I’d rip her clothing off and . . .
Never mind.
Today is not about me. It’s about her, and what she needs. I’ve baked her a cake. It’s in the oven as we speak. My mother gave me the recipe, since, as Ruby has pointed out, I’m not known for my cooking skills.
Yeah, I could have ordered an absolutely kick-ass cake from the best bakery in town, but I know Ruby. She won’t be impressed by something like that. She will, however, appreciate someone taking the time to make her something from scratch.
I got the ingredients from a store that sells baking supplies, because you can find any and every specialty store in the world in Manhattan. While I was there, I spotted something that gave me an even more brilliant idea—gel frosting pens. You can actually write words with frosting. I’m going to write something meaningful on the cake. I’m thinking of writing the poem that the professor stole from her, a sort of a way of giving them back to her.
Sometimes I have wacky ideas, like taking a girl out on a fishing date without finding out if she gets seasick first, but this just feels right to me. Also, I’m a lousy cook but I do have very pretty handwriting. My mommy told me so.
Now, I just need to go look up the words to Ruby’s poems. Ruby recited part of the poem that she’d written, but I can’t remember it word for word. I need to get it exactly right.
I go into my home office, open my laptop, and start typing in the words that I do remember. Of course, Professor Nass-hole’s book comes up, with all of its glowing reviews.
Anger rises up inside me, dark and hot.
Okay. He stole a bunch of her poems. However, the book had a lot more poems than just hers, which makes me wonder... did he write the rest of them? Did he steal the rest of them? Did people like all the poems in the book, or just Ruby’s?
I start reading through the reviews, and although there’s a lot of praise, there are also some comments on the inconsistent style of the poetry. Someone even mentions that it almost reads as if the poems were written by different people.
Ha. Now we’re getting somewhere.
Poetry is highly personal.
Of course, it makes sense that the poems that Ruby didn’t write would sound different than the ones that she did write. I’ve read plenty of books of poetry myself, and generally there is a consistency of tone and style that you would expect when they’re written by the same person.
Did he, maybe, steal from multiple people?
I need to find some other poems of Ruby’s.
There are sophisticated computer programs these days that can detect an author’s unique style, no matter how much they try to hide it. I read a newspaper article a while back, about how a computer program outed J.K. Rowling as being the author who wrote The Cuckoo’s Calling under the pen name Robert Galbraith.
I type in a query and find out that the type of computer program is called forensic linguistics. And I lean back and crack my knuckles in anticipation.
Oh, the Nass-face isn’t going to know what hit him. He was counting on being able to bully and intimidate Ruby into silence. He underestimated her, and he underestimated me.
I do some more searching and poking around until I find a place where I can get access to one of those forensic linguistics computer programs.
Then on a whim, I type in “Ruby James poems.”
