catfish ; j.g

$0.08

My phone buzzed underneath my thigh. Jack was texting me nonstop. I held my phone to my ear and heard Jay's voice from the other line.

"Hey, what's up?" Jay said over the phone. I sniffles and tried to get myself together.

"Can you come over? To my house." I said.

"Are you okay Jennifer?" He sounded worried.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. Come over. Please" I said.

"Okay I will." He said.

"I'll text you my address." He agreed and the call ended as I pulled into my driveway. Parking my car I opened the door.

I walked into my house and went into my bathroom turning on the light. I sighed as I looked at myself in the mirror.

"Damn Jennifer, get yourself together." I splashed water in my face and walked into my room sitting at my desk.

I applied under eye makeup to cover the dark bags and made myself looks decent.

I heard a knock on the door as I ran downstairs. I opened the door to see a confuser Jay. I smiled at him. I missed him honestly. He does me better than Jack. I was wrong a few years back.

"Come in." I said to him.

"Hey, why'd you call me over. I'm not like I don't want to be here but like why? I mean I'm glad you called." He looked nervous as I lead him into the kitchen sitting at the table.

"I just needed company." I said.

"Where's your new boy toy, Jack?" He asked as he scrolled through his phone.

"He's not my boy toy. And I um" I cleared my throat.

"I found a girls bra in his room. Long story short I don't think we'll be together too long." His eyes widened.

"I'm sorry Jennifer. That's his fault he did you dirty." He sighed as I handed him a water bottle.

"Yeah um I really called you over because I need help. I need to help find my brothers killer."

"Um what? Why me? I mean where's Emily and Dylan to help you?" He asked.

"I called you because you're good with computers." He furrowed his eyebrows as I grabbed the laptop from the edge of the counter and slid over to him.

"Its Jacks" I choked out.

I might've missed the part where I sneaked it under my shirt when I was in his room.

"What? How do you have this? Emily this is theft." He explained.

"Do you want to be here or not?" I asked him.

"Yeah yeah okay." He said.

"Okay so um I need you to hack it open so I can look through his gallery. Johnson said something about Jack knowing something about what happened to Jason. I don't know why I'd think I could find something here but its worth a shot." I said. He shook his head in disbelief as he asked me several questions about Jack typing them in as a password.

After every try he entered, 'Jennifer' into the computer and hit enter.

"Let's take a shot huh." He said as the computer unlocked.

"You did it! How did you know it was Jennifer?" I asked.

"Because it was mine." He simply said as he looked through deleted files.

I blushed at was he said. Maybe he still liked me?

"Okay look." He said.

He turned the laptop to face me. The computer had the trash bin open.

"Okay I don't get it." I said.

"I have to get the encrypted deleted files to see if there was anything." He walked over to his backpack and took out a big black cable box thing.
"Look, when I plug this in it takes out all the deleted files and reopens them." My eyes widened at to what he could find.

'Downloading 2347 files' was displayed on the screen. We sag in silence as the files loading onto the black disk.

"So how are you?" He asked.

"Not okay really. He mistreated me and I don't know what I'm going to do. I don't want to get back with him. I can't trust him. He's not good for me. But I need to pretend to fotgive him, after we find something on this I need to find out what he's hiding. What he knows about Jason." I explained. He held my hands in his and the sudden lust and trust I had for him years ago returned.

"He doesn't deserve you, you deserve better. Someone who'd have time for you and only you everyday whenever you need it." He smiled at me and I couldn't help but not think about it. What if I'm meant to be with Jay?

A beep interrupted my thoughts as the disk fully loaded. Jay picked up his bag and gave me the disk.

"Plug it into your computer and watch them their because if you put on them on his it'll just put them back there. I hope you find what you were looking for." He smiled at me as I got up to wrap my arms around his torso.

"Bye Jay." I smiled into his chest. I missed this.

I let him walk out the day and I walked into the kitchen and connected the disk into my computer.

The files loaded and I scrolled through endless videos and photos until I got to 'December 12, 2012'. I took a deep breath in and clicked on the video.

It was dark. Barely shown. I could hear Jason's voice in the background which shocked me. How could Jack have even known Jason?

'Babe come here.' A young brown haired girl pulled Jason against a tree after drinking water.

She leaned him against the tree and made out with him. As confused as I was I could also comprehend the fact that the young girl was Madison. The guy recording was Jack. I could hear other voices around but I couldn't quite put my finger on it.

'Pass the weed' a voice spoke in the background. The camera moved and showed a firepit and a couple guys with gang colored bandanas rolling up weed.

'Jack pass the lighter.' The young blonde boy said to Jack as he handed him the lighter. It wasn't Johnson.

'Yo man, so after this we need to take Mads to bed as soon as possible. If not shes gonna end up as dead meat just like little Jason over there.' Another curly haired boy pointed at the two against the tree.

'Yeah, I hope he's done for. Were doing him a favor really. If not the Tigros would've cut him up. And that's not decent. As much as I've experienced seeing Anjelo getting scattered across the city I couldn't bare seeing another one.' The blonde boy explained.

Cut him up? It was evident that these boys were in a gang, they all wore matching Red bandanas.

'Yeh, but fuck him. Shit he took their money without speaking to us. We the real Gs. He was never a fucking loyal gang member. We only contacted him to have connections in San Fran. Shit, if it was me. I woulda shot him already. Took out his family to.' A red haired boy added in as well.

A pit in my stomach opened up as I paused the video to let the tears that blinded my eyes out of the way. 
It was a 18 minute long video and I was 9 minutes in.

I'll see what else I find out.

I pressed the play button and continued the video.