Stargazing With Beilah

Web of Lies (Part Two)

Parker had never intended it to get as bad as it did. He never meant for this to happen yet it had and it had changed- ruined- everything. Now, he could never return. He could never go back to his happy, peaceful life and that weighed on him just as heavily as his actions did, if not more so. He had never meant for this to get so out of hand- it was merely intended to be an experiment, nothing more. It has turned out to be so much more than he had ever imagined, though. 

A few weeks after his fourteenth birthday, Parker and his father had finished the project that they had been working on all year: hand-building a high-tech computer together. It ran incredibly well with its combination of fantastic parts and programs utilized in its creation and programming. The computer was also perfectly specialized to fit Parker's needs as far as technology went. Best of all, it was almost completely under the radar, safe from any prying eyes. Parker supposed that was the first of many mistakes leading up to his demise. 

Upon finishing their masterpiece, Parker decided to give it a small test run, so to speak. A test run that he would experiment with at his father's college, after hours. That wasn't to say that the campus was abandoned at the time he was in there- it was rarely barren of life between the classes rotating between day and night and the office hours that different teachers held, but it was a time in which the campus was relatively quiet- including his father's classroom, which had long run its course of classes for the day. 

Parker curled himself comfortably in a corner of the classroom and pulled out the new computer, powering it up and carefully hooking it to the WiFi. All of his actions were careful and experimental despite knowing how durable the computer had been designed to be. After poking around on the computer, assessing how smoothly and accurately it could perform different basic actions, and seeing how well it could run his favourite video games, parker decided to become a little more risky with his actions. He decided to see if the computer could achieve what it had secretly been designed to do: performing specific actionsto gain information meant to be hidden while ducking completely under the radar. He assumed this was the safest setting to do this in, relatively low-risk as far as failure or destruction went, but he was wrong and Parker got a little cocky. 

The further he dug into the information archives of the school, the more he pushed his boundaries, the further he dug into the secrets. This was all fine and good, mainly picking out small bits of tea on different members of the staff and becoming disgusted at how little the teachers were being paid for their jobs. One small action, though, changed this from harmless, playful sleuthing to something far more serious and sinister. While searching through what he could do, he discovered he could quite easily access email conversations held between teachers and while doing this, he stumbled upon a small scandal, one that could ruin the careers of several members of the staff. That day, Parker discovered that a few particular teachers were exchanging drugs and money with their students for good grades. Of course, immediately upon finding this, he forwarded all of the information to the home computer, sending his father an alert immediately after to check out what had happened. Parker believed he was doing something good- what those teachers were doing was immoral and illegal. Once he sent the information to his parents, he gathered his things and rushed home, avoiding as many teachers as possible where he would usually stop and chat with all of the ones he came in contact with. Returning home to figure out what was going on was far more important. 

As it turned out, the law works very differently depending on people's statuses. The faculty members who had been buying illegal drugs from their students- of age and underage alike- in exchange for raising their grades didn't matter when it was discovered by illegal means through the child of lower-class teachers who had been around for far fewer years than the others. The law wasn't on their side when they were trying to expose and take down someone in a higher position of power than them. 

The trials went horribly. Parker's family couldn't prosecute them using information found through illegal means regardless of how true it was. With this being known, the teachers were forced to stop these interactions out of fear of being caught in the future- this time with a possibility of them losing the case. As if losing the case alone wasn't enough, Aaron and Lucia's superiors didn't take well to them going against them in such a way and trying to expose them as they did, leading to both of them losing their jobs at the college. 

Lucia, of course, was still able to sell her paintings but artists rarely made a lot of money- especially while still alive and Aaron was reduced to working at a low-paying store, doing small-scale repairs on people's computers and such. The Lee family lost the majority of their income and fell on incredibly hard times as far as money went. Lucia was still fairly content with painting, especially now that she had more free time to do so, but she hated the fact that she was no longer able to go in and teach her students. Aaron, on the other hand, was completely at a loss. He was completely out of his happy comfort zone and nowhere near being able to show off his real skill. Immediately, tensions arose in the family due to this. There was less money on top of all of them feeling incredibly sad due to the changes and it was all Parker's fault. if he had just stayed the hell out of it they wouldn't be where they were. His parents wouldn't be out of a job, swimming in borderline depression and their family wouldn't be struggling financially. 

Parker had ruined everything. 

A few weeks in, they saw that things kept getting worse and worse rather than finding a way to cope with the new issues as both Aaron and Lucia promised him they would. Things only got worse and not only was it parker's fault but the majority of their money- the money that his parents needed- was going towards him. he understood that it was normal for parents to put forth plenty of money for their children and that children in and of themselves were incredibly expensive beings, but he couldn't help to feel as though he was the source of all of their burdens. 

He couldn't stay knowing that he had ruined their lives and was only making it worse. He realized as the days wore on, that the best way he could help them, was to just leave. With that in mind, Parker packed his bags and left, taking only some of his clothes, a few family photos, the computer he and his father had built, and the charging cable for it. He left plenty of his clothes behind so his parents could sell them for money as well as the majority of his electronics. He couldn't bring himself to part with the computer his father and him and built together, though, as much as he wanted to leave it for them for the money. 

With his bag packed, Parker left, knowing he could never return.