Teen Hyde (High School Horror Story #2)(34)
They’d created a monster.
Beside me, Lena’s breath smelled like a Fruit Roll-Up. “Now what?”
I was already pushing open the door and poking my head inside. My fingers twitched, ready to get ahold of the last scrap of evidence. It was important that they didn’t have the pleasure of owning my misery. Instead my misery would become theirs.
“Watch for anyone coming this way. Three knocks for me to get out.” I stared hard at Lena to make sure she wasn’t wavering. “Got it?”
She nodded. Sweat and cologne hit me squarely in the nose as I sealed myself inside Mick’s dorm room. It was empty. I walked between two twin beds pushed against either side of the room. Sheets draped halfway off the mattress from the one on the left. Dirty boxers and T-shirts covered the foot of the other bed.
Two matching, standard-issue desks stood flush against the window. I studied the photographs taped to the wall beside one of them. I recognized the boy smiling out of them at once. It wasn’t Mick. Instead, it was the one I’d been calling California because of his chin-length hair and flip-flops.
I stared at the photographs feeling like I was staring into an alternate dimension. There California was smiling in each frame with a rail-thin girl whose hair was strawberry blond and nose was dotted with freckles. I recognized her from the walk back from the fraternity house.
I could see her kissing his cheek, legs straddling his waist in a piggyback ride, arms wrapped around each other. White-hot rage scalded my throat like coffee, burning and bitter. California had a girlfriend. And I’d bet a thousand dollars that she didn’t know what a pig he was.
No worries. I would show her.
Before moving over to Mick’s desk, I quickly rifled through California’s belongings until I found a worn paperback copy of Catcher in the Rye with a penciled inscription on the inside cover that read, Property of Jessup Franklin. I punched the name into the notes section of my phone and stuffed it back into my jeans pocket. Another one for my collection.
I moved across the room to Mick’s desk, known only to me in life as Short One. An open math book lay on the wooden workspace. A paper airplane. A clean pair of socks. Everything left there like he was planning on coming back. A laptop was hooked into the wall by a cord. In the hutch above, I found what I was looking for. The lens of the handheld camcorder stared out at me like an unblinking eye. I reached for it on the shelf and turned the equipment over in my palms. They’d been smart enough not to take the video on their phones where access to the cloud and other Internet mysteries would be a constant threat. But still, what sick psychopaths wanted to videotape their conquests?
Posters of famous comedians plastered Mick’s side of the room. Late Show with David Letterman. Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show. Conan O’Brien. Always a spectacle, I guessed.
With a spare glance toward the door, I pulled Mick’s chair underneath me and sat down at his laptop. I opened the screen to find that the computer was password protected. So I logged in as a guest, removed the memory stick in the video recorder, and drummed my fingers impatiently while thumbnails of videos loaded on-screen.
Three rows of images popped up in neat lines. I chose the first. The picture consumed the frame and began to play. “Say hi, asshole,” Mick’s voice came from behind the camera. There was a shot of the back of a head that I recognized as Circus Master’s. Without looking back, Circus Master saluted the air with his middle finger. I felt my mouth curl into a snarl. The camera shook. Mick’s breathing was labored.
Off to the side I could hear someone else’s voice carrying on a singsongy rap, “All the bitches love me, all the—all the bitches love me.”
Mick gave a gleeful giggle and panned left where California was walking with a swagger. He formed his fingers into a peace sign and flashed a brilliant white smile. The screen went black and the reel automatically switched to the next thumbnail down the line.
The five boys were at the same club I’d first seen them in—Ten Gallon Cowboy. Their images were grainy in the dim, neon-cast lighting. The camera zoomed in on the face of a boy in a baseball cap. He pinched a shot glass between his fingers. “Get it out of my face.” He wrapped his palm over the lens. “Coach finds out I’m drinking the night before a game, he’ll suspend my scholarship.”
There was rustling and then Mick must have managed to wrestle the camera free. The focus had changed to a group of girls standing at a high-top table. The shot homed in on one of the girls’ butts. “There’s your home run, Brody.”
Brody. Baseball. I made another note in my phone. Got it.
I watched the playback from the next thumbnail with a sickening sense of dread as the girl whose ass had been video recorded laughed with the boys and then showed up in a room that looked much like the one I was currently in minus a few details. At some point, she was passed out, arm draped over the side of a bed, and the boys took turns taking pictures with her, lifting up her skirt and spanking the bare flesh. I couldn’t watch the rest and quickly clicked on the next frame.
More of the same. More girls. More taunting. And all the while, they grew more brazen. The girls less drunk. In one clip, I heard the word no muttered just before I hit fast-forward.
And then her face filled the screen.
I hovered the mouse over the “stop” button, but the images were already moving before my eyes. Instead, I moved my hand into my lap and I let it play.