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“I’M SO SORRY, PEN. I didn’t realize how shallow and cruel those people are! Fuck them all. I relinquished my pledge badge.”
As her roommate Jeanette bursts through the door of their dorm dressed to the nines, Penny sniffles and grabs a tissue. Jeanette turns down the speaker on the desk blasting Lights by Ellie Goulding.
Penny scowls. “Do you mind?” Feeling the need to throw a small pity party, she turns her pillow over and crushes it against her chest. Her makeup from her cave girl costume for the Halloween frat party two nights ago is smeared across her sheets because she’d cried her eyes out after she left in complete humiliation.
But today in class? Yeah, she needs a new lab partner. Stat.
Her lip quivers. “Preston told everyone in our lab section about the party. It was so embarrassing. Why do I fall for these losers? I thought college was supposed to be different. It isn’t. Men suck.”
Jeannette’s short, edgy bob hits her shoulder as she sits next to Penny on the bed. “Bad luck with guys too, hey? Was your last boyfriend a tool like mine? Asshole videotaped us having sex and leaked it on some porn sight.”
Penny squirms against the bed and sniffles. “I’m sorry. That’s awful. Were you of legal age?”
Jeannette huffs. “Does it make a difference? Anything can be found on the web. That’s why I’m majoring in cyber security. We need better protection from shit like this. What they did to you? It’s a total breach of privacy.”
And illegal.
Penny rips her Kleenex in pieces and croaks, “Were you able to find out how they got that video?”
Jeannette sighs. “No. Whatever site they pulled it from is gone.”
“It better be.” Penny had called Colt right away. Fortunately, having a big brother in the FBI was helpful. Promising it would disappear, he turned in the request to his partner, David Cross, a highly skilled computer analyst.
Not that she believes it’s gone completely. It’s the incident that will not die.
Penny picks at her comforter and sighs. “I have six more weeks dealing with this idiot. My professor won’t let me switch lab partners.”
A wicked grin streams across Jeanette’s face. “We can still make him pay.”
“How?”
“Leave it to me.” Booting her laptop, she logs onto the school’s canvas site. After typing for what feels like forever, she finds the emails from Anthony to their Biology teacher.
Penny frowns. “Holy, crap. Those were our assignments from last month. How did you get into his account?”
Jeannette squints at the screen. “When is your final project due?”
“December fourteenth. It’s worth fifty percent of our grade.”
Nodding, Jeannette types some more. As the black screen turns a greenish hue, she says, “No problem. Try this out, asshole.” Her fingers fly across the keyboard. A few minutes later, squiggly lines fill the screen like some scene from Aliens. She laughs. “This is classic.”
Penny’s eyes narrow. “What are you doing?”
Jeannette sits back with a satisfied grin. “Sending frat boy a worm. I disguised it as an email from your professor. Once he opens it, it’ll target all the saved files on his hard drive—and his cloud. By the time he tries to access the data he’s collected, including any research for papers, the worm will corrupt everything.”
“Holy—” Penny sucks in a breath. And then she smiles. “You’re ruthless, girl!”
“Don’t fuck with geeks. We rule the world.” She wraps her arm around Penny. “I’m sorry this happened to you.”
Penny shrugs. “I’m used to it. It isn’t the first time.”
Jeannette clears her throat. “So that video?”
Penny hasn’t told anyone at NMU about the incident. It’s too hard to bring up. Not because of what had occurred. Thinking about that year brings back memories of Luke, and she doesn’t want to deal with them. His betrayal still burns her to the soul.
She snuffles. “It was just a stupid high school prank.”
Crossing her arms, Jeannette scoffs. “A prank? Seriously? They drugged you. And all that crap they did?”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s supposed to be done and over with. I’m not that same girl!” Then why does it hurt so much? Penny bursts off the bed. “I’m a psych major. I want to help victims that have suffered like I have. How am I going to do that if I can’t get on with my life?”
Jeannette stands and hugs her. “It takes time, girl. My brother was bullied in school.”
“Is he okay?”
Pressing her lips into a grim line, Jeannette shakes her head. “Brady killed himself when he was fifteen. I was only ten.”
Swallowing the pain that erupts in her chest, Penny embraces her friend. At one time, she’d thought about suicide, too. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah. He didn’t have anyone to talk to about it. My dad was one of those tough guys who told him to get over himself and beat the crap out of his bullies. My mother was a softie. She had the hardest time with it all.”
Penny grips Jeannette’s hand. “I get it. I didn’t have much support, either. Except for Colt.”
“What about your parents?”
Penny bites the side of her lip. “My dad died when I was young, and my mother never recovered from his death. Colt and I were on our own.”
Except that isn’t exactly true. Mrs. Donovan had been her living saint for years. And of course, there was Luke...
Jeannette grabs her coat from her desk chair. “Enough. How the hell did we get started on this depressing shit? Come on, girlfriend. Let’s go.”
Slipping on her shoes, Penny smiles. “Where to?”
“Pedro’s. My treat. I need fish tacos. And so do you.”
Hope fills Penny’s heart. This is what she needs. A friend. Someone that cares about her, willing to sacrifice something as important as a sorority pledge because she has a sense of human decency.
There aren’t many people like this left in the world.