Read Scam on the Cam for Free Online Page B

probably think you should permanently look three years younger than you are, but act forty years older. This is why I was made, that evening, to wear a red corduroy dress, tiny shoes and a ridiculous metal hair clip with a flower on it, but asked to revise my French grammar, geographical vocabulary and advanced math in order to be able to converse with the erudite people of St. Catharine’s as if I was just as old and wrinkled as them.
    â€œAnd sit up, for goodness’ sake, remember to sit up,” said Mum for the hundredth time as we walked into St. Cat’s.
    â€œI will. You look uniquely gorgeous tonight, mesmerizing Mother,” I said. “That coral necklace is super tip-top.”
    â€œThanks,” Mum muttered.
    â€œOf course, it’s extremely bad to wear coral. Did you know coral is an animal?
Viz
, you’re currently wearing a dead animal. Plus, it’s an endangered one. Most of the coral in the world is already dying, and with it all the sea-life thingies that live in it. So because of your necklace, lots of little fishes are dead right now, or going ‘I don’t feel very well today, due to lack of coral.’”
    â€œYes, thank you, Sophie,” said Mum.
    â€œDon’t worry, though. All that aquatic slaughter is justified. You’re the hottest momma on the block with that necklace.”
    â€œDavid,” said Mum to Dad, “please tell your daughter to be quiet.”
    â€œBe quiet, Sophie,” said Dad, and we walked into Formal Hall.
    Formal halls, in case you don’t know, are huge dining halls in colleges, where profs andstudents eat when they feel like having long, tedious conversations with one another, all wearing black gowns. This is instead of staying home dipping fish sticks in ketchup while reading detective stories, which is what I’ll do every evening of my life from the minute I turn eighteen.

    As I was sitting down, my phone vibrated in my pocket. I looked at it discreetly: it was a text from Gemma, saying,
Toby & I went to university boathouse tonight. No trace of earrings. Also, pirate chest mysteriously disappeared. xx
    I was just composing a response when an old lady exclaimed, sitting down next to me, “Ah! You must be Agnes and David’s daughter, Sophie!”
    â€œNot Sophie,” I replied, “Sesame.”
    â€œOh, I beg your pardon,” she said, shaking my hand. “It must be your sister they told me about—a clever but devilishly uncontrollable little girl, from what I understand.”
    â€œOh yes,” I sighed, “she’s a handful, bless her. We have to keep her constantly locked up. But she’s got cryptic crosswords to keep her busy, and we give her slices of meat to munch on through the bars of her cage three times a day.”
    â€œGracious heavens!” the lady cried.
    That’s when I noticed something familiar about the plates and the cutlery.
    That familiar thing was the college crest, engraved on them.
    And that college crest was unmistakably the round, gold, many-beamed rudder that Toby had drawn from his hypnotic memories of the pirate chest.

    â€œAnd what are you doing in class these days, my dear child?” inquired the lady next to me.
    Still trying to figure out why the pirate chest would have the crest of St. Cat’s on it, I explained I was at an edgy school with a very modern curriculum comprising Carpentry, Ancient Aztec and the geography of Saturn. While she marveled, I was keeping an eye on my parents, whose glasses of wine kept getting refilled by a watchful waiter. When the port arrived, they were both as rosy as Mum’s coral necklace of death, and Dad had started talking in spoonerisms.
    It was time to slip out.
    â€œIf you’ll excuse me,” I murmured to my neighbor, “I should very much like to pay a visit to the bathroom.”
    And I left Formal Hall and threw myself into the dark corridors of St.