REMEDY [ninjago jaya]

19. Prejudice vs. Reality

• Jay Walker •

"So you're telling me it wasn't her?"

Jay's skepticism was met with a nod of certainty.

"She looked like she was escaping someone. It didn't seem like she had any bad intentions at all." Cole's face on Jay's laptop screen glitched out as he kept speaking. "But...when...Nya...she...like...don't...you..."

Groaning, Jay tilted his head back against his chair. The wifi inside the trailer had never been this bad, but the hooligans who had vandalized the junkyard had also cut the wifi router's wires. Ed Walker had tried to reconnect the wires as best as he could, but there was only so much he could accomplish with his older age. At least the wifi wasn't completely gone.

"I can't understand you, Cole," Jay said, his tone flat. He could see that his best friend wasn't getting a thing he said. "Listen, I'll call you back when I can, okay?"

He waited for an answer, but it never came. Instead, a message from the video chatting system appeared on the screen, telling him his wifi connection was unstable.

As if he didn't already know that.

Sighing, Jay closed his laptop and leaned back into his chair. His entire Monday and Tuesday had been a whirlwind of stress, anxiety, and frustration. Between speaking to the police because of the vandalism on both his car and the junkyard and trying to stay sane, he had not yet gotten the confirmation as to who was actually behind it all.

He wanted to believe it wasn't Nya who had told everyone about his home life, but it surely wasn't Cole, and Jay hadn't told anyone else. It was a process of elimination—if it wasn't Cole, it had to be Nya.

But now that Cole, his best friend, the only person beside his parents he trusted, told him he believed it hadn't been Nya, his sureness faltered.

Jay had doubted Nya in the past way too many times, and every single one of his prejudices had turned out to be based on nothing. Not a single time had his suspicions about her turned out to be correct.

Still, though, it must have been her. Unless...

Jay picked up his phone and opened his chat with Cole, smiling at the outrageous messages he had just received after disconnecting from the video call.

Cole
How dare you hand up
on me
sent 04:13 p.m.

Cole
*hang
sent 04:13 p.m.

Cole
Come back here before
I turn up at your place
and vandalize it myself
sent 04:13 p.m.

Cole
That's a serious threat
btw
sent 04:14 p.m.

Cole
FINE I'll go and beat
your high score on
PE then
sent 04:15 p.m.

Don't you dare touch my
Prime Empire high score
sent 04:18 p.m.

Also do you by chance
know where Nya is rn?
sent 04:18 p.m.

Jay watched the three dots with a newfound curiosity as Cole typed out his answer.