Page 50 of Web of Lies
With your blood and many parts
If you thought this was fun
If you thought this was games
Just wait till the end
Well, fuck my life. Who put this in here?
From: [email protected]
September 4th, 2020
Hey girl!
I really hope everything is going good with you. I tthink I’m finally learning to just get along with everyone hhere. Ainsley is still bullying mee like crazyy, but it’s okay, I think I’m getting the haang of tuning herr out. And everyone else. She gets her brother Chase and their twin friends Zepp and Seger in on it too. They can get mean, but that’s okay. I’m okay. Someone spread a rumor about me. But I’ve tuned that out too. I’ve got this. I won’t let this school teear me down, especially them.
It’s all good. Don’t worry about me.
Aanyways, I’m glad I got to see you at my grandparent’s ffuneral. It was nice to see a familiar face for once and a friendly one at that. It’s too bad I couldn’t hang around afterwards, I’m not sure why tthey shipped me right back here, but I missed saying goodbye to you. Sometimes I think they have it out for mee or something. Like how can you kick me out of my own grandparent’s after funerral dinner? Bullshit.
I got back to school that night, and someone had broken into my roomm. The door was open a little and then…. nothing was missing. Honestly, I expected for my shit to be slashed and all over the place, but it wasn’t. This time, I guess. Who knows? I’ve talked to the people who can fix it, let’s hope they actually do it this time.
Anyways, I’m going out tonight. I was invited to some sort of bonfire. So, I’m going to be bravee.
Magnolia xoxoxo.
Sitting in front of my computer erases everything, easing the ache growing in my heart at the lack of—well, everything. With Magnolia gone, I only have Tristan. Never in the two years since I met him on a gaming server have I thought about meeting him in person. Or telling him about every awful detail of my life. But right now? Right now, I’m close to spilling my guts over text messages about how screwed up everything is. I needit’ll be okay, girl. Socializing has never been my forte, for obvious reasons, but I miss it—I miss her.
I miss Magnolia poking me in the ribs to remind me a teacher was talking. Or repeating softly in my ear when I missed a key point. My shoulders sag at the thought, my forehead resting against my sweaty palms.
This is all so screwed up. How did I convince myself I could do this? How did I imagine I could figure out who killed her? Maybe she hurt herself?
No.
You can’t stab yourself thirty times and have done it yourself. Even the angle of the wounds was off in the autopsy report. Someone did this to her and covered it up. I have to remind myself. Again. I can’t get lost in the rush of bullying. Or get lost in the boys that might have led her to slaughter. Everyone is still a suspect, and my number one suspect’s phone content is currently loading onto my computer.
Like I told Zepp, this is a piece of cake. It’s like I’ve prepared to do this my whole life. From an outsider’s perspective, it is impossible to break through the code on Carter’s phone. From a computer genius’s perspective, my software can break through anything in a matter of minutes. So, I don’t have to figure out whether his code is his dick length or his birthday or his mommy’s birthday or whatever people use these days. It could be 12345 for all I know, but who is stupid enough to do that?
My software pings, loading the contents of Carter’s phone onto my screen. From here I can mirror everything he does and get all his notifications, including emails and text messages live. The only downfall? I can’t screen his live phone calls. I can see who calls, but what they talk about will be a mystery. One of these days, someone out there will invent a phone call recording app transferable to my software.
My leg bounces again with the exhilaration of finally seeing what his phone holds. All day it’s sat protected in my skirt, burning a hole through it. I could have skipped class, but despite being invisible, my attendance is mandatory. And my education is very important to me.
I go straight for the kill, searching through every—
What. The. Hell.
I blink twice to make sure I’m seeing straight. There’s absolutely nothing. Blank. Nada. Not a trace. Text messages? What text messages? Phone records? What stinking phone records? His friggin’ emails are blank too! I repeat my earlier sentiment: What. The. Hell. There’s nothing.
Looking through his internet history makes me want to slap his grandma. It’s empty, like a damn black hole. There’s not even porn hanging around in his history. And a boy like that with that much anger, has to watch porn.
This has been on my mind all day, and this fucker erases everything! My knuckles knock into the wood of my desk, forcing my lungs to expand from the pain exploding in my hand. Crap. So, this won’t be as easy as I thought. There’s still a way—always a way. Like most computers, you can’t erase everything, it’s still there. Whether it’s in the cloud or buried in the deepest depths of the hard drive, I can find it. It just takes time lots of time.
With a grunt of frustration, I dig, cutting through the red-ribbon protective software. Strip by strip, piece by piece, I finally cut through the bullshit masking his secrets. Crap. It’sAntiEyes. One of the many programs designed for privacy.
Drug dealers use it, the mafia uses it—shit—even the president uses it. But don’t ask me how I know that. I most definitely didn’t dig through the White House’s protected files, glimpsing their protection protocols. Not me. Never. I wouldn’t do something evil and illegal like that. I’m an angel, just ask my parents.
