36

A line of students stretched from the front entrance, where two uniformed police officers and a guy in a suit were collecting cell phones and other electronics.

‘You’ll get everything back at the end of the day.’ Principal Givens was pacing up and down the line, his hair wild and his pants rumpled. He was waving his hands in an impatient way, trying to reassure students who were complaining loudly.

‘But I need my phone for emergencies!’ one girl cried.

‘Can’t we just turn them off?’ another argued.

‘This is illegal search and seizure!’

That comment came from a guy who looked more concerned about having his stash seized than his phone.

I joined the back of the line, trying to look casual and confused. Or casually confused.

I probably just looked constipated.

‘What’s going on?’ I asked a guy in front of me.

‘They’re confiscating phones and tablets. I guess we can’t have them in school anymore.’

‘Oh,’ I said, sweat beading up on my back. ‘Was there a note about that?’

‘No, they just decided all of a sudden. There are cops up there.’ The boy pointed at the officers, and I nodded without looking. ‘I think it has to do with that website. They don’t want people taking videos with their cameras.’

A girl next to him turned to join the conversation. ‘I bet that’s not all. I bet they’re going to go through our phones while we’re in class – looking at all of our videos and pictures and stuff.’

‘How would they do that? Everyone locks their phones,’ the boy argued.

‘They’re the police. They have ways of getting around your password,’ the girl said.

False – mostly.

Police usually couldn’t crack even the most basic technology without the cooperation of the software companies that created it, and as a general rule, those companies were not cooperative. They erred on the side of customer privacy rather than law enforcement. And why not? They were in the business of profit, and we were the ones paying up – not police.

I suspected the phone collection was more of a show by the school to appear to be on top of a situation that had gotten completely out of hand. As for the police – well, I wasn’t entirely sure why they were there, and the beads of sweat began sliding down my spine.

Up the line a little way, Principal Givens pulled at his hair, creating tufty white cones on either side of his head. Teachers had joined his crusade to calm students, and everyone appeared to be in a full-on frenzy. When we first launched the site, I thought it might be funny to see Haver High driven to chaos with a few keystrokes. But now, in person, watching people who were supposed to be in control totally lose it was a little scary.

The line moved painfully slow, and it was only growing longer as more kids showed up for school. I looked for Zach or Mouse or Isabel, but it was impossible to pick anyone out of the crowd. The line had really become more of a mob.

An angry mob.

Some students were shouting their protests, others were looking for hiding places in their clothes or bags, and a few even called their parents. Cars came and went, picking up students and ferrying them away. One mom pulled right up to the front door and got out, with the engine still running, to yell at the guy in the suit – who was apparently some district administrator. She called him several colourful names until the police officers gently suggested she get back in her car and go away.

By the time I reached the front of the line, first period had already come and gone, and my back was drenched under my pack. I shuffled up to hand over my phone, and a woman helping with the collection passed me a sheet of paper in exchange. In an instant, it was clear why police were there.

CHILD PORNOGRAPHY IS A FELONY OFFENCE.

I stopped moving. Or maybe the world stopped moving around me.

The headline, on Haver Police Department letterhead, was followed by a summary of Iowa laws – including some explicit information about videos of people who are underdressed and underage. My vision blurred as I scanned the page, glazing over a list of penalties that ranged from thousands of dollars in fines to years in prison.

Prison?

And here I’d been worried about whether my friends would forgive me – whether we could still be a team and figure out another entry for the off-site category. What a joke.

‘Keep moving,’ the woman barked.

Back off, lady. I’m having a meltdown here.

I looked over my shoulder. Where was Seth? Where was Mouse? Had they called their parents and bailed? Maybe I should have called Misty. The paper shook in my hands.

The woman huffed. ‘There’s a long line behind you.’

The cold fear inside me suddenly heated up to a boiling rage.

‘Oh really?’ I snapped. ‘I hadn’t noticed.’

‘Excuse me, young man—’

‘Maybe if you weren’t violating our rights by taking our personal property, there wouldn’t be such a long line.’ My voice rose with every word, and I heard a few kids behind me call out shouts of support.

The woman looked scandalised, but I didn’t care. I needed to release something just then or risk implosion, and she was the closest target.

‘Just like you violated our rights with your stupid cybersnooping. Maybe if those laws didn’t exist, neither would this line!’

The crowd close enough to hear erupted in a cheer, and I left the woman dumbstruck, holding my phone.

I pushed through the double doors but then stopped in the hallway, unsure which direction to go. If Seth and Mouse were here, I didn’t know if I even wanted to see them. If they hadn’t posted the video, none of this would be happening. It was their fault I had to tank the site, their fault police were at our door, their fault we might go to jail instead of to the American Cybersecurity Competition.

But it was your video, a little voice inside me said.

I squirmed.

I could look for Zach or Isabel, but one didn’t know the truth of the trouble I was in, and the other hadn’t called or messaged me once since the Ashley video went live. In truth, I was a little afraid to face either one of them.

The river of students broke around me, flowing in all directions as I stood motionless in the front hall – utterly stuck and, for the first time in weeks, utterly alone. The gap between me and everyone else had never felt so big.

I ended up skipping second period too. This seemed to be the day to get away with cutting class, and there were only about fifteen minutes left in the period anyway. I spent most of the time at my locker, half hoping one of my friends would come to me, since I was too much of a coward to go to any of them.

Across the hall, a group of guys clustered around a contraband phone.

‘See? Told you. Tumbleweeds.’

‘Bet they got busted.’

‘Then why all the cops today?’

‘Put it away. A teacher’s coming.’

I waited another ten minutes. No sign of my friends. I wasn’t sure I still had any.

On my way to third period, I finally got brave enough to check out the East Wing, to see if Seth and Mouse were in their usual spot, but the only people in the hall were a pair of girls staring at a locker with their hands cupped over their mouths. Their whispers carried in the mostly empty corridor – not that they were really trying to keep their voices down anyway.

‘Who do you think did it?’

‘I don’t know, but if anyone deserves it …’

‘Don’t say that.’

‘It’s true, though. You know that striptease wasn’t even for her boyfriend? It was some other guy.’

‘I know. It was that junior, Adam something. I heard police questioned him and confiscated his computer.’

I slowed down as I walked by, and over the girls’ shoulders, I clearly saw the thick lines of a black Sharpie marker scrawled across a locker door.

SLUT

Even if I hadn’t seen Ashley at that very locker in the past, I would know it was hers.

‘So one guy dumps her and the other gets arrested for pimping her out online. She sure knows how to pick ’em.’

The girls giggled, and I was ashamed to have played a part in providing their entertainment. They were probably girls Ashley had mistreated in the past, but did that give them permission to laugh at her misery?

I was no better, though. I had laughed at Brett. I had thought he deserved his shame. So did Seth and Mouse. So did Isabel even. Everyone was sitting in judgment over everyone else, enjoying each other’s misery, and I could no longer see the line between us and them.

I stopped at a random locker and pretended to work the lock.

‘She skipped school again today,’ one of the girls said.

‘Well, obviously. She couldn’t show her face after that.’

‘Why not? She showed everything else.’

Their giggles turned to hysterics, and they finally wandered away from the locker. I closed my eyes and threw my head back, letting out a long breath. When I opened my eyes, I was looking at the wall above the lockers, where one of Haver’s No Bully Zone signs was partly peeling off the wall. It was once bright red, but like its message, the sign had faded over time.

I reached up, closed my fingers around the loose corner and tugged. The plastic sign hit the floor with a hollow thunk that echoed down the empty hallway.