Freak Week: Day 6

Spicy Rain!

Dear Printer-Paper Diary, 

So it's the middle of Day 6 and Crush and I are still locked in the computer lab while Banana is who-knows-where with Loudmouth, who, need I remind you, is out to DESTROY ME!  How is it that my brother-my smart yet crazy big brother-got me mixed up in this madness? I bet this is karma for not keeping in touch with him. It's not like I didn't...I just didn't know what else to expect from him. 

Anyway, while we've been stuck in here, Marmie, Harry, and Jim have been keeping us up-to-date on the outside. They've been looking everywhere for Banana but can't find her. Marmie's been sending me frowny faces for the past several hours to show how dire the situation is. 

Plus, and get this, it's raining hot sauce! I'm not a spicy food kind-of gal but Banana is so wherever she is with Loudmouth she's probably dancing around and wanting to go outside with a huge pale to fill it up with the spicy substance. 

For some reason, Jim sent me a picture of us when we went to the beach and he buried me in the sand. A few minutes later, Marmie sent me a reminder that today was the day that she took a pencil from Banana without permission. Then I was remembering how I accidentally knocked over Jim's favorite science trophy and blamed it on Mom vacuuming. The hot stuff is bringing back memories where we did some petty, but somewhat bad, things. 

You wanna know what the worst of it is? I still haven't talked to Crush about the screen shot of Banana and I talking about his eyes and hair. He's been trying to break the door down but nothing's been working. We've been able to ration for food and water by eating the confiscated snacks and drinks that the computer lab teacher took from the students. We're running low though and I'm quite tempted to sticking my head out the window and drink some of that falling hot sauce. 

Sincerely, Lace. 

Lace folds the two and a half pages of her diary and then places then into her pocket before heading over to Crush, who is on one of the computers. She grabs a chair and rolls up next to him to see him pulling up a website on the Internet titled "Science Lovers.com". 

"What's this?" she asks him. 

"It's the science dating website Loudmouth was on," Crush replies as he heads to the login page. "I can use my old account to get in and see if I can give us any clues on Loudmouth." 

"That'd be a big help. We've gotta figure out what to do about them," Lace says. 

Crush nods and then begins typing in his username: BlueHair2298. 

Lace tries to stifle a laugh. Even his username is cute, she thought as Crush accesses his account. He searches through his browsing history to reveal stuff from a few months ago. There was a lot of it by the looks of it and Lace was quite curious. She wants to look at it all but knows that they have to focus on finding out Loudmouth. Still, she wants to know something; "Hey Crush, can I ask you something?" 

Crush looks up from the screen. "Sure Lace, what's up?"

Lace rubs her arm and then shifts her gaze away from Crush for a moment to look at the chili pepper rain before looking at Crush again. "So, uh, about that screen shot-" 

"Yeah, I was gonna ask you about that," he politely interrupts. "Do you really think my hair makes my eyes more perfect?" 

A huge blush forms on Lace's face and she smiles nervously. "Uh, well..." Lace looks at the screen to see that Loudmouth's page had loaded up. "Hey look, the page is loaded!" 

"Finally!" Crush does a quick turn-around to face the page. He rolls down the conversation page to see if anything that was helpful could be found. Then he came across something telling; it was a link to a video. "Lace, I think I found something. It's a link to a video." 

"Click on it and see what happens." 

As soon as Crush did, the browser opens a new tab for the video that says "Live Broadcast Central" on the top of the page with a video loading very slowly on the screen. "Dang it!" Crush shouts. "Everything is so slow!" 

"....I'm worried Crush," Lace admits after a few seconds of silence. "What's gonna happen if we can't stop this guy? What if Banana gets hurt because of me?" 

Crush looks to see Lace has tears forming in her eyes. She doesn't know what to think. One of her friends could get punished for something they have no control over. "Lace, everything is going to be all right." Crush assures her as he stands up to hold her in a hug. "I promise you that." 

The teen sniffles a bit and buries her face into Crush's shirt. She never thought in a million years that she would ever get this close to her blue-haired knight in shining armor. She thought that she would admire him from afar for the rest of her natural life and then end up being the creepy cat lady with fifty cats. 

"I know what would make you feel better." Crush reaches into his pocket and pulls out his phone to go through his photo gallery. He scrolls through the pages and then pulls up a picture of him when he was in middle school. It was Crush but...

"Wait, is that you?" Lace questions when she sees the picture. It looked like Crush except it wasn't Crush. The kid in the picture had on classic big-rimmed glasses with the tape in the middle to keep the frame together, black hair up to his ears, and braces on his teeth. Still, Lace could recognize those eyes anywhere. 

"Yep, that's me," Crush answers after letting Lace have a good, long look at the picture. "I was a pretty big nerd back at my old school. All I did was go to the science lab everyday, all the time. The other kids would tease me by saying that I lived in the science lab. They called me a lab hermit and said I should probably marry the chemicals.

"That summer, I got my braces off early, dyed my hair, and got laser eye surgery.....which hurt like the dickens, let me tell ya. When I got to school that year, no one knew who I was. It was great. No one picked on me and they all thought I was from another school. People who were picking on me wanted to have lunch with me and they even wanted me to go bowling with them. I never had so many people talking to me while I was doing math before." 

All of this was a huge shock to Lace. She had so many other questions going around in her head that she had to ask Crush. Just as she was going to ask him some, the video finally loaded and it was a live broadcast video from somewhere in the school. The person on the screen was wearing a duck mask over their face and was blocking the whole screen. "Greetings!" they say in a indistinguishable voice. "I am catfish-lover247, and I am here to make my demands!" 

"Hey, are we live?!" Banana shouts in the background and then pushes Loudmouth out of the frame to look at the camera. "HI INTERNET WORLD! I'M BANANA AND I'M ON THE INTERNET! CAN YOU SEE ME?!" 

Loudmouth growls and nudges Banana away. "Please, let me finish!" 

"Geez, sorry." 

"Anyway, Lace, meet me in the science lab or else Banana will go split." 

"LAME! You gotta be more threatening than that," Banana shouts in the background. 

"LOUDMOUTH OUT!" The screen then goes dark and Lace pales. 

"I gotta save Banana!" she pronounces. 

"Lace, you can't go alone," Crush tells her.  

"I can't put you in danger," Lace states. "I don't want anyone else to get hurt." 

Crush stares at Lace and nods, understanding what she had to do. "Okay. Be safe." 

"I will." 

**********

Lace makes her way towards the lab, passing all of her classes and remembering all the times she had in them. She was going to miss it all. When she got to the lab, Lace opens the door to find Banana sitting in a chair swinging back and forth. "Lace," Banana says. 

"Banana!" Lace ran to Banana and hugs her. "Are you okay?!" 

"I'm fine," Banana replies. "Did you see me? I was on the Internet! I'm Internet famous!" 

"Banana, where's Loudmouth?" 

"Right here," a voice from behind speaks. Banana and Lace look to see the duck-masked villain right there who no longer had on a mask. "Hello Lace, we meet again." 

Lace couldn't believe who it was. "So it was you all along!" she shouts.