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I knew I had to face my fear eventually, and I couldn't let it control me forever, but until then, I was stuck as a victim of my paranoia.
“Are you sure you don’t want to report this to the police?” My best friend, Keisha, asked for the umpteenth time.
I shot her a blank stare in response. I had lost count of how many times she had asked me that question.
I opted for just giving her blank stares instead of a verbal response.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know what you’re thinking in your head.” Keisha rolled her eyes, which made me feel slightly offended.
She was the one who kept asking the same questions over and over again, after all.
“You’re probably thinking, ‘How many times are you going to ask this question?’aren’t you?” Keisha mimicked me with a small smile.
“If you know, then why do you keep asking?” I scoffed.
Both of us were seated on my couch beside each other. I sat with my legs folded underneath, holding a cushion to keep my hands busy.
“In case you change your mind.” Her voice was pitched high as she responded. Her countenance became serious, and she turned her body to face me.
“You’re isolating yourself. You’re so full of fear that you haven’t even come to work for a week. Aren’t you worried that you’ll be fired? How long do you think your boss will allow you to take a break?”
“If I give a good excuse, I might get two months.” I cracked a small joke.
Keisha was stuck between cracking a smile and giving me an unimpressed stare.
I sighed and shook my head. “No matter what, I can’t risk going to the police. What if they investigate me and find out what I did in the past? I could get arrested!” I exclaimed.
“There’s no need to be dramatic. You can’t get arrested?” Keisha scoffed in amusement.
“Excuse me?” I huffed in mock offense.
“You’re going there as a witness. Why would they investigate you?”
Okay, maybe it was my paranoia talking, but still, I refused to go to the police.
I exhaled loudly. “Looks like I’ll just have to stay cooped here for the rest of my life.”
I dramatically flopped backward on the couch and stared at the ceiling.
“If you’re so scared about being caught by the police, why did you even do it in the first place?” Keisha snickered as she hit me with a nearby cushion.
“I needed the money.” I groaned with my eyes closed.
“And so, you had to hack into companies and sell their secrets to their rivals?” Although Keisha was smiling, one of her eyebrows was raised high.
“I really needed the money,” I answered as an explanation.
As Keisha playfully hit me with a nearby cushion, her question echoed in my mind:
If you're so scared of getting caught by the police, why did you even do it in the first place?
I let out a small laugh, trying to hide my unease. The truth was, I had been desperate when I resorted to hacking into companies and selling their secrets.
It was after my parents passed away, and I found myself alone, without any family willing to take me in.
I was barely eighteen, an adult on paper, but still so lost and vulnerable.
I needed the money to fend for myself and survive. As a teenager, I was always interested in technology, especially computers.
