Lainey and the Magicians (First Draft)

Chapter 21

 Lainey clicked onto another file called 'Riches.'

 David got rich when he was younger from helping his dad work around the house in Missouri and he also got rich from working on top-secret government projects. He also got art awards and was a part of a few secret companies that carried secret operations. He was also a part of the Communications Inc. Board of Trustees and used this position to help people extensively monitor the internet activities of everyone across the country so they could make sure that everyone wasn't a member of the Magicians. In the District of Columbia that was surrounded by walls, Communications Inc. had to approve everything someone typed into a search engine and they restricted much. No hacking could stop it. Nothing would be able to purge their monitoring activities. David Lars also received a significantly large amount of money from being a spy. His friend, Kiop Stanton, was the bald man in the photo who had a gray head in his pocket. It had been crossed out. Not much is known about him, but the photo had been edited by David just in case enemies reached it. Kiop might not even be the bald man's real name.

 Lainey clicked off. There was very little information in any of the files, but it helped her piece together the entire story. She thought about everything that she had read. It was crazy. David must have been a spy. She went to the picture and entered it into an Image search. Inside the image search, after she had cropped the picture to match the gray head in a separate duplicate of the photo so the other one would remain, it showed up on an image search. However, no images matched. She thought she must have been blocked from seeing it by a company, but her new friend had gotten her this far. Wait! Why was this new friend helping her? Who was this new friend and why did they care about David? Grace? Chard? Nathan? Codebreaker? It could have been Codebreaker that was helping her. David might have been helping her, but he was still seeking leads about his daughter Jolene in the middle of the night with his detectives. She thought about David's dad. He had been a Magician who made medicine and used mushrooms in cooking, but his mom hated magic and she was triggered by any mention of it.

 Life stories accounted for half of a person's personality and beliefs. It could be based on the family that they lived in, and that family could help them make up their feelings about certain situations. Some people didn't have families while others had families. These people's genetic makeup and memories helped shape them. Lainey knew that. She remembered when her mom would read to her when she was pulling up the covers to her chin. Her mom was a fashion designer. She could have been knitting clothes and lacing threads together at night, but she chose to read to one daughter. Eventually, she read to both of her daughters. The house in Salt, Arizona, built Lainey. She thought of the times she had been pushed around by Carla and she thought about all the truant officers in Salt, Arizona close to the school which was a few feet away from the mall. She remembered parties at her parent's mansion and the reckless week in Vegas. The drugs she'd smuggled into her room. Smoking. Everything flooded into her mind at once including her music career. The alternative clubs that she'd had and some that she led at school were one activity that she had with multiple diverse people which would sometimes go way back and listen to new wave music like Morrisey. In the Alternative club, they also listened to Haz's first album from 1999 called Burning Bridges which wasn't as widely known as their newer albums were. Haz was more of a band that stuck to their roots more than artists such as Skillet, Taylor Swift, Ari Rose, Katy Perry, Brock Akuji, and even George Michael. Many artists strayed from their roots for a variety of reasons. One of these reasons was that some of them grew up and changed. Some of these artists rebelled against social norms already, but some of them changed into either better or worse versions of themselves. A lot of people liked Katy Perry, but some people didn't since she did and said some things that could be considered questionable. Katy Perry also rebelled against her parents in many ways and that impacted her musical style. It also impacted her life choices. Ari Rose did the same thing, but she might not have rebelled against her parents as Katy Perry did. She used to wear red lipstick, black eyeliner and used to dance in unique clothes. On her third album, she switched her dressing style and started to wear skin-tight dresses. Her music videos became more inappropriate and her music became dumber. Most of it was fine bubblegum pop, but some of it was about all night medicine. Ari Rose used to be a great artist, but she turned into a princess of relationships. This made Lainey shudder when she first heard the album. She kept skipping songs because she didn't see the point of listening to songs about inappropriate topics involving relationships. She had to skip four songs, but the other six songs were fine. This was how most artists were except for people like Skillet whose songs were good.