Page 29 of The Wrong Side of Kai
Chyna fires him a look, because Kai has yet to understand that she is simply here on the grounds of hacking a phone, and not because she wants to be part of our overall scheme. “Hey, I’m not really Harrison, don’t meet me,” she suggests, smiling sweetly.
“I know,” I say, taking Kai’s phone from him. My thumbs hover over his screen, ready to type, when I notice that his phone is in airplane mode. It raises my suspicions – why doesn’t he want any notifications coming through right now? And then it crosses my mind, for the very first time, that I don’t even know if Kai is single. What if he has a girlfriend?
“You need to type something,” he says into my ear, his breath tickling my cheek. I’m pretty sure all the hairs on my arms stand up.
I swallow hard and type a biography for Harrison:
What’s up? I’m Harrison. I’m just testing the waters here so casual encounters only. Keeping it low-key.
“That’ll do for now,” Kai says, taking his phone back. His fingers brush over my hand, but all I can think is that there’s a girl out there who will kill us both if she finds out her boyfriend is in my room. He finishes setting up the profile, then grins proudly once we’re all set and ready to go. “Time to start chatting.”
I know what we’re doing is wrong, but I have a one-track mind right now. All I can focus on is screwing with Harrison, nothing else, so I’m incapable of worrying about the consequences of my actions. Kai and I spend a while talking to different people, striking up casual conversations, until eventually Kai gets up to head for the bathroom. It leaves me in charge of all the scandalous communication.
The second Kai leaves the room, Chyna lowers the lid of her laptop and gives me a scolding look. She slowly shakes her head, lips pursed. “Girl, he’s an absolutesnack, but he’s also kind of a jerk. What nice guy would really be happy to do all this stuff?”
“And I kind of need him to be a jerk,” I say. I pull myself up from the floor and sit down on the edge of my bed with a deep sigh. “No nice guy was ever going to slash Harrison’s tires for me, or sneak into locker rooms with me, or set up a fake ‘casual encounters’ profile with me. I’m being a jerk too.” My smile is tired, disheartened. “I know you don’t agree with what we’re doing, but. . . have youseenwhat everyone is saying about me online? Harrison did that to me. He betrayed me.”
Chyna pushes her laptop to the side and crawls over to me, hooking her arms around me and burying her head into my shoulder. “Okay, Vans. You do what you need to do.”
I reach up and squeeze her hand. I know screwing with Harrison won’t make that video ever go away, but it’ll at least offer some compensation. “Thanks. And I promise we won’t take it too far.”
“You better not, because I’m not bailing you out of jail for committing a felony,” she teases half-heartedly, pushing me away as she crawls back to her laptop, sinking back into my pillows. “Even though I’m pretty sure I’m committing a crime myself right now.”
“And I love you for it,” I say. I blow her a kiss, she catches it, and then I leave the room to go find Kai. I want a minute to talk to him alone, and I catch him out in the hall just as he’s making his way back to my room. I close my bedroom door behind me.
“I don’t think your friend likes me all that much,” Kai says with a wary smile. He leans back against the wall and stuffs his hands into the pockets of his gym shorts.
“You’re right. She doesn’t,” I agree. It’s quiet out in the hall, only the sound of the static buzz of Kennedy’s TV from the other room. There are no lights on up here, either. We keep our voices low. “This might sound crazy,” I say slowly, “but it feels like I’ve known you for way longer than forty-eight hours.”
Kai’s eyes softly narrow as he looks me over, his gaze meeting mine. “Maybe because I’m already seeing your worst side and you’re already seeing mine. Most people don’t see this stuff until at least six months down the line.”
I cover my face with my hands and let out a frustrated groan of self-defeat. “We’re assholes, aren’t we?”
“Only because we have to be,” Kai says. I drop my hands and lift my head, searching his face for answers, desperately seeking a reason for why Kai is even here right now. He knows exactly what I’m doing, because he says, “You’re wondering again why I’m doing this, aren’t you?”
“I wouldn’t have to wonder if you actually told me,” I say. I cock my head to one side and stare at him. “I mean, c’mon. Who am I to judge?”
Kai’s gentle smile falters into a frown. He looks down at the floor and is silent for a few seconds, deliberating over whether to finally tell me the truth. He shrugs, but never glances back up.
“Harrison was texting my girlfriend behind my back,” he says, his voice unusually gruff. “Knew she wasn’t single. Kept hitting her up anyway and trust me, he’s persistent – I read the messages he hounded her with. That’s when I found out she was cheating on me back in the summer.”
I know in that moment that I’m a selfish human being, because all I can think about is the relief that comes with the realization that yes, Kai must be single. “I’m sorry. You don’t want to be with a girl like that, anyway.”
He looks up, his face thunderous. “I was in love with her, but she wasn’t in love with me. So yeah, you’re right. I don’t want to be with a girl like that.”
The hurt in his eyes takes me aback. In the past forty-eight hours, I’ve only ever seen Kai’s fun, playful nature and his mischievous smirks. It’s like there’s a totally brand-new person standing in front of me now – a boy whose anger is bubbling within him, a boy who is hurt.
“Then Harrison deserves everything that’s coming to him,” I say with a nod.
Harrison not only sent an explicit video of me out into the world, he also stole Kai Washington’s girlfriend. Any morality I had left is now gone. Between the two of us, we’re bringing Harrison Boyd down.
11
I wake at six the following morning to a text from Chyna telling me to check my email. Groggy and half asleep, I search for my laptop in the dark and boot it up. The brightness of the screen burns my eyes, forcing me to squint. It’s too early, but my need to find out what exactly it is that Chyna has emailed me is desperate, irresistible.
Last night’s process of hacking into the device ended up taking much longer than we anticipated. Chyna left at eleven with her laptop and promised to stay up as late as necessary until the slow extraction of Harrison’s files was complete. Meanwhile, Kai and I, posing as Harrison, openly flirted with far too many different folk to count on that app. A handful of them now thinks they’re meeting Harrison later tonight at Bob Evans.
I pull up my email: A list of unopened newsletters from websites I don’t remember ever signing up for, and a new email from Chyna. My stomach lurches when I read the subject line:Harrison’s files.
