Within a week, the number of messages on the site had doubled, and a lot of them now had videos attached. I imagined people walking the halls of Haver with their cell phones constantly out and recording video, burning up their batteries … just in case.
‘These videos are shit,’ Seth complained. ‘They’re all shaky.’
We were sprawled over the old couches in Seth’s basement on Saturday, laptops balanced on knees, practising for the ACC. Well, Mouse and I were practising. Seth was obsessing.
‘Dude, put the website away.’ I tapped the screen in front of me. ‘We’re almost done with this unit.’
Seth was the one who’d insisted we run the attack simulations in his practise program, and now we were failing the last drill, because he was too distracted to do his part.
He ignored me, scrolling through more video submissions. ‘And most of them are just people talking behind other people’s backs.’
Mouse and I exchanged a look and gave in together, tossing our laptops aside.
‘We’re in the business of justice,’ Seth said, ‘not gossip. This is just petty.’
‘Remember when we were in the business of winning the ACC?’ I reminded him.
‘We can kill two birds with one website,’ Seth countered.
‘Speaking of petty.’ Mouse jumped in. ‘I heard people talking about our Vicious Valedictorian post this week.’
Seth looked up from the computer propped on his lap. ‘And?’
‘And they said she might get that title stripped.’ Mouse continued in a voice full of mock curiosity, ‘Hey, Seth, who’s next in line to become valedictorian again? Oh wait – it’s you, right?’
Seth didn’t answer, but his mouth turned up in the tiniest smile.
‘I knew it!’ Mouse hooted. ‘Tell the truth. You sent that video, didn’t you?’
Seth slapped his laptop shut and spluttered, ‘Did not – never be so stupid – don’t need to—’
‘Whoa, touchy!’ I laughed.
Mouse shook his head, grinning. ‘As my pal Shakespeare would say, “The lady doth protest too much.”’
Seth answered with a middle finger and a huff, while Mouse and I cracked up.
It didn’t matter that so many videos were ‘petty’ or poor quality, because we had enough now that we could pick and choose, which was exactly how we spent the rest of the afternoon – separating the worthy videos from the unworthy.
‘This is definitely the one,’ Mouse said a couple of hours later, turning his screen around.
Our new headline stretched across the top of the screen.
‘Who Run the World?’
Below it, a video starring a freshman homophobe who got a kick out of calling kids ‘tranny.’ Apparently one of those ‘trannies’ used to be his friend, and said friend just happened to hold on to a video of our little homophobe around age ten – all dressed up in booty shorts and his mom’s heels, dancing to Beyoncé’s ‘Run the World (Girls).’
A worthy video, indeed. It had nothing to do with Jordan and everything to do with him at the same time. The guy in the video hadn’t done anything directly to Jordan, but he had victims of his own. The way we saw it … whoever submitted this video was just another Jordan waiting to burn a hole in our cafeteria floor.
Mouse grinned in response, and his face reminded me of an expression my aunt always used – the one about a cat and the cream.
‘Hey, Mouse, what’s your real name?’
‘I’ll never tell.’
‘It’s William,’ Seth said from behind his laptop.
Mouse’s eyebrows gathered together, and his feet – always tapping – worked overtime, so the computer in his lap bounced.
‘Why “Mouse”?’ I asked. ‘Is it because you can deliver a RAT?’
A Remote Access Trojan was what he’d used to get inside Brett’s computer and take over the camera.
‘What?’
‘You know, mouse … rat.’
‘Oh. No.’ He shook his head. ‘Like the dormouse in Alice in Wonderland.’
‘I don’t get it.’
‘Because that mouse is always so sleepy, and this mouse’ – he pointed to himself and smiled wide – ‘is always so awake!’
I nodded appreciatively. ‘I dig it. Maybe I can be the caterpillar – he’s all wise and shit, right?’
‘You need a hookah,’ Mouse said. ‘Who should Seth be?’
I didn’t hesitate. ‘Tweedle Dum.’
‘Or the rabbit,’ Mouse offered. ‘He’s pretty uptight.’
Seth groaned but didn’t engage.
‘Or one of those talking cards.’ I grinned.
‘Or the Mad Hatter!’
‘Yes!’
We were both snickering now, and Seth finally put his tablet aside with a sigh. ‘I would be the Cheshire Cat … clearly.’
I squinted one eye and looked him over. ‘Nah, you’re more of a Queen of Hearts.’
I dodged the pillow Seth hurled in my direction and hit the floor laughing. When I looked up, Mouse was tapping the screen, a freeze-frame of the homophobe in heels.
‘Excuse me, but I think this is the queen.’
Even Seth laughed at that, and we both gave Mouse our approval for the post.
I felt a surge of adrenaline as he published the page. How would people react to this new video? Would our submissions double again? I had laughed when Seth called me powerful that first day, but he was right. There was power in what we knew how to do online, power in our ability to stay anonymous. We were the puppet masters, and no one at Haver had a clue. I wondered what they would say if they knew who was pulling their strings.
*
The next day was a typical lazy Sunday playing video games in the living room with Zach. Normally, we’d be gaming at his house, but he’d come to my place since technically, I was still grounded – though that punishment seemed to be wearing off by the day. Misty had let me go to Seth’s yesterday with an übergeneric explanation about my new study group, and I was pretty sure Dad had forgotten he ever grounded me in the first place.
I had just taken aim at some enemy troops, when Misty leaned into my vision, blocking the screen. I ducked my head, trying to see around her big hair and her big – ugh, I wish she’d just put them away already.
‘These are the low-sodium pretzels, but I have regular if you boys want them,’ she said, dropping a bowl on the coffee table.
‘Thanks,’ Zach said, stuffing a fistful in his mouth.
‘Thanks,’ I echoed, waving her out of the way.
She moved a second too late, and blood splattered my side of the screen – my soldier dead.
‘Thanks a lot,’ I muttered as she walked away.
‘Relax,’ Zach said.
‘So what? You’ll regen.’ He dropped his controller. ‘This game sucks anyway.’
‘We’ll come up with better,’ I agreed.
‘Hey, what about a shooting game that interacts with the real world?’
‘You’re still on that augmented reality stuff?’
‘It’s the next big thing.’
‘Maybe, but a shooting game?’ I twisted my lips. ‘Possibly not in the best taste.’
Zach half ignored me, his imagination taking over. ‘So we keep it clean. Nothing too gory or too real. Like paintball without all the pain. Or laser tag without the black-light arena, because the whole world is your arena.’
I tried to see what Zach was seeing. ‘You mean, you’d point your phone to shoot another player, and if you aim just right and hit their phone—’
‘—you’d get points,’ Zach finished. ‘And maybe you can steal whatever weapons they’ve collected.’
‘So we’d drop weapons, like Pokémon, all over the place.’
‘Right. But how do you know who’s the enemy? Do people have to join teams, maybe?’
Now, that sounded original. The challenge of it set something clicking and whirring inside me. Numbers streamed past my vision, then lines of code. My fingers suddenly itched for a keyboard.
But before I could get to a computer, my phone interrupted. I checked the screen – lit up with a message from Seth.
First Haver ‘hero’ bites the dust.
Over the top of my phone, I saw Zach tip his chin at me. ‘Is it Isabel?’ he teased.
‘Who’s Isabel?’ Misty called from the kitchen.
I ignored them both and opened a link attached to Seth’s message. It was an article in the sports section of the Haver Herald website. The headline read ‘Steroid Scandal’ above a photo montage of Brett in his various team uniforms. But only the first few lines of the story were about Brett – how he was caught on camera, how he was banned from all sports, how his scholarships were being revoked.
Basically, this kid’s life is over. Next paragraph.
My stomach tightened and my breath caught in my chest. It was one thing to feel a sense of power; it was another to see that power played out. We had made this happen. Seth was pretty much claiming it as a victory. But if Brett was the bad guy, why did I suddenly feel sick to my stomach?
The article went on to say some of Brett’s teammates were under investigation for steroid use and that all Haver athletes might have to submit to testing. And the last bit … was about us.
The scandal appears to have been exposed by anonymous hackers calling themselves Friends of Bishop. Investigators with Haver school district’s cybersurveillance team say there’s no evidence yet that the hackers are students, though their moniker may be a reference to Jordan Bishop, a Haver High freshman who made national headlines last year when he committed suicide by fire in the school cafeteria.
The story wrapped up with the obligatory paragraph about how Jordan’s death changed national laws involving students’ cyberactivity, yada yada. I let out a long breath before I remembered that Zach was sitting right next to me.
‘Not Isabel?’ he said, his forehead scrunched up in a concerned way. ‘You all right?’
My heart was racing, my stomach churning – definitely not all right.
‘I’m fine,’ I said. I held up my phone with the article. ‘Have you seen this? Some kids at school got busted for steroids because of a video that … well, because of a website …’
God, I was so close to telling him the truth.
‘Oh, that revenge site?’ Zach said.
‘It’s more like a justice – um, yeah, yeah that one.’
I was a little surprised he’d even heard of it. For two guys who never unplugged, Zach and I were generally disconnected from the rest of Haver High.
‘They got people busted?’ Zach let out a low whistle. ‘Crazy.’
‘Crazy,’ I echoed.
‘Who sent that to you?’ he asked.
‘No one.’ I fumbled for an answer. ‘I … have a Google Alert for stories about school.’
Zach seemed satisfied with that. He picked up his controller and started to reset our game.
‘So … what do you think of that site?’ I tried to sound casual.
Zach’s eyes stayed on the screen. ‘I haven’t really looked at it, but whoever’s behind it seem like white hats instead of black hats, so that’s good, I guess.’
Relief washed over me. Maybe I could tell Zach—
‘Really stupid white hats, though,’ Zach added.
I bristled. ‘What? Why?’
‘Well, they’re breaking some big-time laws, busting into people’s computers and stuff.’
‘They’re vigilantes,’ I said, trying hard not to sound defensive.
‘They’re idiots.’
I was glad Zach was watching the game, so he couldn’t see me glaring at him. ‘Only if they get caught.’
‘When they get caught. They’re going to end up hurting themselves worse than anyone else.’
The confession that had been on my lips just a moment ago now slid back down my throat and sat there in a hard lump. It stung to have your best friend disapprove, even if he didn’t know it was you he disapproved of.
‘Guys!’ Misty stomped into the living room and parked in front of the TV, hands on hips. ‘Who is Isabel?’