Secrets & Lies: Two Short Stories(26)

“Oh, stop whining,” Whitley said. “I have an idea. What if Justine turned herself in?”

“She never would—”

“What if she had to?”

I stared at her. “What do you mean?”

Just then, Nathan walked back into the room. “Okay. You two ready for the movie?” He stopped when he saw our faces. “Why so serious?” he asked in his best Joker impression.

“No movie,” Whitley told him.

“What? Why not?”

She looked at me, then back at him, an evil grin spreading across her face. “Your sister needs your help,” she said. “And I think your geek skills may finally come in handy.”

***

“I don’t know if I can do this,” I said as Whitley handed me my cell phone. “I can’t do this. I can’t—I can’t—”

“It’s ringing,” Whitley said, sitting crisscrossed on my bedroom floor. “And recording.”

“I can’t—”

“Yes, you can. Now shut up, stop whining, and do it.”

Nathan was a little kinder. He put a hand on my shoulder and said, “You’ll feel better when it’s over.”

I pressed the phone to my ear.

Two rings.

“Hello?”

“H-hey, Justine.”

“Hey, Bailey.” She sounded like she was in a good mood. I wasn’t sure if that would make things better or worse. “What’s up?”

“N-not much.” I couldn’t stop stuttering. “I just, uh…”

Whitley glared at me. After a pause she mouthed, Come on.

I cleared my throat. “You need to tell Principal Roth what you did.”

“What did I do?”

“You know,” I said. “The video… of Elsie. You need to tell him you posted it.”

She burst out laughing. “What? Are you kidding me? Why would I tell him? What the hell are you thinking?”

I swallowed. “If… if you don’t tell him, I will.”

She stopped laughing. “You have lost your mind. Go ahead and tell him. He’ll never believe you. You don’t have any proof. And if he so much as asks me about it, I’ll turn it around. I’ll tell him you did it. And that’s the least of what I’ll do to you. People might like you now, Bailey, but they won’t if you mess with me. You’ll be a narc. No one will want to hang out with you.”

I could feel my bottom lip shaking. It was disgusting, but as horrible as she was, I had to fight the urge to apologize. To beg for forgiveness. I didn’t like Justine anymore, but I wanted her to like me.

Nathan squeezed my shoulder.

“What if I did have proof?”

“What?” Justine asked.

“I have proof.”

“That’s impossible,” she said. “The YouTube account is connected to an e-mail with a fake name. So are the links I sent. You can’t trace it back to me.”

I glanced at Nathan. He nodded and held his hand out. I gave him the phone.

“Hi. Justine? This is Bailey’s brother, Nathan. How much do you know about computers?” He paused. “Oh, okay. Well, that’s a bummer, because I know quite a bit. Has anyone ever explained IP addresses to you? Because the thing is, the YouTube account may be connected to a fake e-mail, but it’s also connected to a real IP address, which belongs to your computer. You following? So, turns out, I can track down your IP address through this account and prove that the video was uploaded from your computer…. Uh-huh. Well, I just thought you might like to know. Here’s Bailey.”

He handed the phone back to me. I must have had a look of terror on my face because Whitley stood up and walked over to the bed to put an arm around my shoulders. I took a deep breath.

“Justine?”

“You got your geeky brother involved?” she snapped. “How old are you? Seven? I can’t believe I was actually friends with such a baby.”

“I can’t believe I was friends with you, either,” I murmured. “So are you going to tell Principal Roth or do I have to?”

There was a long pause. “I could tell them Brody did it, you know,” she said. “He has access to my computer. I could blame it on him. You wouldn’t like that, though, would you? Since you like him so much. Might as well kiss that good-bye either way. He’ll never like you. Not if you rat on his little sister.”

“His little sister who’d be willing to throw him under the bus?” I asked. I’d been shaking before, but I was feeling different now. Angrier. “You’re worse than I thought you were. Your record might be clean, but you’ve done this before. I know about Gretchen. By the way, that IP address thing works on blogs as well.”

“Go, Bailey,” Nathan mouthed, doing a little fist pump.

I kept going. “And you couldn’t blame it on him anyway. He was at a game that night. People saw him there. He left school before the video was recorded. That wouldn’t be hard to prove.”

Justine didn’t say anything.

“Tell the principal,” I said. “You’ll get in less trouble if you turn yourself in. You’ll seem like a better person if you do than if I tell them the truth.”