Overcast | ✓

A Very Anticlimactic Villian

Faye is sitting in my swivel chair, spinning slowly as I enter. I am beyond angry and seeing her smile makes me want to throw her out my bedroom window.

"You have two minutes," I say as I close my door.

"Okay, so, my cousin Esme was over earlier today and she's literally a genius. Like, this girl is 13 years old and somehow hacking websites and stuff. I don't understand any of it, but maybe that's just because I'm an idiot. Anyway, I was like 'Esme, we have all these anonymous pranks going on at school and they're stemming from this gossip blog. Can you find out who's behind it?' and she's like 'yeah, give me 10 minutes'. And, low and behold; she found the IP address of the owner of the blog."

"Okay," I say slowly. "That means nothing. We still don't know who's IP address it is."

"Yeah, yeah. I'm getting to that." Faye is talking very fast and moving her hands wildly to emphasize each word. It's extremely distracting and I'm beginning to get frustrated. "Basically, Esme took the IP addresses of everyone in the junior class and compared them to the IP address of the blog owner, but we didn't find a match. So, we tried the sophomore class and, boom. There was a match."

"Holy shit," I say. "Who?"

Faye holds up a finger as she unlocks her phone before shoving the screen in my face. There is a picture of a blonde haired, blue eyed boy. He looks so familiar and I'm not quite sure where I know him from. "Jack Miller is his name," Faye says. "Do you know him?"

I take in a breath, because I do. "Yeah. He's the boy who gave me the letter which led me to room 304 in the first place," I say. Of course he's the one behind this all. How did I not put that together?

"Well, that adds up," Faye replies, pocketing her phone. "What I don't understand is why he started protesting. Are he and Elio good friends?"

"No," I say. "Elio barely even talks to him at school."

"So, why switch from posting gossip to beating up Marcos?"

"I have no idea. But, believe me, I plan to find out."

The door behind me creaks open and I jump before seeing my little brother standing in my doorway. "You jerk," he whisper-screams. "I knew something was up."

"What do you mean you 'knew'?" Elio shuts the door and throws his arms out.

"Orion was curled up at my feet the entire dinner," he scoffs. "And you are a terrible liar. What is she doing here right now?"

"Elio Davidson," Faye says, standing and extending a hand to my brother. He looks at her as if she were from another planet. "Okay," she says after a beat, pulling her hand back. "My name is Faye Edgell-"

"I know who you are. Sunny has told me plenty."

"You talk about me," Faye giggles, nudging my side.

"Focus."

"Right, okay. Basically, I found out who's behind the pranks and came over as quickly as I could to let Sunny know since she's kinda my partner in crime or whatever. Well, I guess 'anti-crime'. Hah."

Elio's eyes flick between the two of us before he focuses on me and crosses his arms. "Sunny, bà and ông are downstairs interrogating me about my fake concussion. I have never wanted to disappear more than I do right now and you swore you would help me through this."

"El, look-"

"I'm not asking a lot of you. You told me that I'm allowed to be selfish so here is me exercising that right; Be downstairs in five minutes or I'm taking the cat and running away to Chicago."