“What do you think I’m going to find?” Anastasia asks, starting to type. I can tell she’s only half-paying attention to me now, though.
“I don’t know. Snuff porn?” I watch her click around and type a few things, but honestly, it’s boring. I thought there’d be a bunch of numbers scrolling by on screen, or she’d have to type ultra fast in order to bypass some sort of timed self-destruct protocol.
Maybe I watch too many movies.
Her fingers go still on the keys, and she glances up at me. “Please tell me you’re kidding,” she says.
I pretend to think about it. “Like, fifty percent kidding?”
Anastasia shakes her head. “Okay. Well, I’m going to run a program to hopefully crack the encryption on the drive. In the meantime, let’s take a look at the tablet.”
I pass Samantha’s tablet to her. Anastasia turns it on and taps on the screen.
I’m once again confronted with that awful picture of Samantha with Zayden.
The urge to take a red sharpie and draw all over Zayden’s face is strong. I want to draw a thick red line across his neck. Gouge his eyes out. Cut his mouth all the way to his ears.
Fuck, maybe I should have kept the head after all.
My impulsiveness robbed me of some catharsis.
I bet the boys simply disposed of it. What a waste.
While I’m imagining all the awful things I could have done to Zayden, Anastasia taps on the screen. After a few seconds, the lock screen is gone, and we’re looking at the desktop.
“Uh. What did you do?” I ask.
“There was a pattern swipe password option,” Anastasia said. “I tried the most common patterns. The second one got me in.”
I feel a bit silly that I hadn’t been able to figure that out myself, but I guess that’s why I’m not an elite hacker. I ruffle Anastasia’s hair again. “Good job, baby sis.”
“I am thankfullynotrelated to you,” she says, but her cheeks turn pink anyway. “Anyway, what am I looking for in here? Texts, DMs, whatever?”
I lean in closer and tap the email icon, which shows over fifty new messages. “I know somebody who wants to make you my sister,” I say, grinning. “Tall, muscled, kind of an idiot, can’t spell for shit?”
“Kratos doesn’t have a crush on me,” Anastasia says dismissively. “I tried to ask him on a date a few months ago and he turned me down.” She scrolls down the list of emails. “Okay, so it looks like she hasn’t checked her email in over two weeks.”
I snatch the tablet from Anastasia and angle it away from her. “Yeah, I got it.”
There’s no need for Anastasia to know all of Samantha’s private business.
The most recent email is from somebody named Hank Lawrence. Her father or brother? I click it open.
Re: School absence
The administration has told me you’ve been skipping your classes. Why am I paying the exorbitant fees if you aren’t going to actually go? If you’re uninterested in learning—as we told you you would be—then come home and get married. John is still willing to take you. Lord knows nobody else would have you, after the scandal you caused.
I grip the tablet tighter, and before I can think too hard, I hit the reply button.
Go fuck yourself.
I send the short message, but I feel only a little better about it.
“Kratos didn’t turn you down,” I say to Anastasia. “There’s no way he turned you down. Did you ask him directly or did you say it in big words he didn’t understand?”
Anastasia has gone back to the laptop, and this time, she doesn’t bother to pause in her typing as she replies, “I asked him if he wanted to go to a small show I was playing at.” She shrugs. “I’d ask Ares, but that’d be barking up the wrong tree, I think.”
I cannot imagine Kratos refusing to see Anastasia play. But I also don’t get her comment about Ares. “Wait, are you into Ares? What wrong tree?”
