Virtual secrets

Shannon’s bedroom floor was covered with Barbies.

“We were just sorting,” Shannon insisted, turning from her mother to George, Bess, and me. “I found some old toys in my closet, so Rebecca and I were just going through them so we could give them to charity or something! I mean, I am way too old to still play with the silly things. We just wanted to — brush their hair before we give them to some poor unsuspecting child.”

I couldn’t help but notice, as Shannon explained all this, that the Barbies seemed to be all dressed up in evening gowns, and that there was a tiny sign that read THE ACADEMY AWARDS taped onto a cardboard box that seemed to be serving as a makeshift podium.

Mrs. Fitzgerald looked delighted. “There’s nothing to be ashamed of, Shannon,” she said, reaching out to stroke her daughter’s long blond hair. “Why, I used to love playing Barbies when I was a girl! And isn’t playing with your dolls more fun than living some imaginary life on whozit dot com?”

Shannon ducked away from her mother, her face bright red. “ Mother,” she insisted. “We were sorting. Gosh, you never listen!”

“A-hem,” I broke in, clearing my throat. “Not to interrupt, but if you can stop sorting for a few minutes, I had some questions to ask you girls.”

Shannon glanced from her mom to me, and Rebecca looked up from the floor, where she was rapidly shoving the glammed-up Barbies into a shoebox. It was like both girls were noticing me for the first time: I watched their expressions go from embarrassment to confusion and dread. After our last few visits had ended with groundings and counselors, I’m sure they were wondering what questions I could possibly have for them now.

“I’ll just leave you alone,” Mrs. Fitzgerald announced, with one last nervous glance at me. “If there’s anything I can do,” she told me, lowering her voice. “Or Mr. Fitzgerald — anything at all — we’ll be downstairs.”

I gave her what I hoped was a reassuring smile. “This shouldn’t take long.”

She nodded and slipped out the door, closing it behind her.

“What are you doing here?” Shannon asked me as soon as her mother was gone, in a not-entirely-friendly tone. She and Rebecca were both watching me suspiciously now, their lips curling with annoyance. Oh well. I hadn’t expected them to be happy to see me.

“I have some questions for you,” I replied casually, walking over to Shannon’s pink-covered bed and taking a seat. “And before I start, I want to stress that you guys aren’t in trouble, okay? But I need you to be completely honest with me. This is serious, and I need to figure out what’s really going on.”

Rebecca frowned, and she and Shannon exchanged a quick, curious glance. Shannon nodded at her friend almost imperceptibly, then turned to me.

“Okay,” she said in a resigned tone. “Shoot. Let’s get this over with.”

I nodded. “Right. Well, I know you guys haven’t been on BetterLife in a while.”

Rebecca looked stung, like just my mention of the popular online game hurt. “Um, no. Thanks to you, all we do now is sit around and dress up Barbies.”

Shannon glared at her friend. “Re- becca!”

Rebecca gulped. “I mean, design clothes for them. Or sort them to give away. Whatever.”

I nodded again. “Okay. But today, I got a pretty disturbing message on BetterLife. It said I’d better learn to mind my own business — and it had copies of some very confidential files of my father’s attached.”

Both girls stared at me blankly. “What, embarrassing e-mails or something?” Shannon asked.

George chuckled. “No,” she replied. I had to admit, though, the thought of my dad sending e-mails dogging his BFF or something was fairly amusing. “Nancy’s dad is a lawyer,” she explained. “These were files having to do with a very important case he has coming up.”

“They’re files that nobody should see before the trial,” Bess added ominously. “Files that, if they were released to the public, could ruin months and months of his hard work.”

Shannon and Rebecca glanced at each other, seeming to absorb this information. I tried to read their expressions for any sign that they knew what we were talking about, but saw none.

“Okay,” Rebecca said finally, in a cautious tone. “And this brought you to us — why?”

Shannon swallowed and flipped her hair, fixing on me with a petulant expression. “I don’t know if you picked this up, but we’re twelve,” she told me, shaking her head a little. “We don’t know anything about your lawyer dad or his big dumb case.”

I bit my lip. Normally, when you question someone and they suddenly turn nasty, that implies they’re uncomfortable with the line of questioning and might have something to hide. With Shannon, though, it was just par for the course.

“The message was from Guitarlvr15,” I replied. “Rebecca’s old avatar.”

Shannon and Rebecca exchanged glances that I couldn’t quite read.

“That’s really weird,” Rebecca said finally, looking me in the eye. “Because I haven’t touched Guitarlvr15 or anything having to do with a computer since I got grounded.”

“My father said he had some help in his office last week,” I added. “Some girls your age. When he described them, they sounded a whole lot like you.”

Shannon swallowed, and turned to glance at Rebecca.

“It was,” Rebecca replied, breezily. “I mean, probably. One of our neighbors asked us to help her boss, some big lawyer guy, with his files last week. We were just being nice. I mean, he just gave us a few bucks and free pizza.”

“Which wasn’t even good,” Shannon added, turning to me with a piercing glare. “Who eats pepperoni?”

Rebecca shook her head. “ Anyway,” she went on, “we didn’t even know the guy was your dad. Why would we have stolen his files?”

I just looked at Rebecca, considering. Yup, that was definitely the big hole in my theory — why would they have done it?

“To get back at me?” I theorized. “When I told your parents what you’d done on BetterLife, you got in a lot of trouble. I know from talking to Shannon last week that things haven’t been fun for you guys since you got grounded. Maybe you took my dad’s files as a harmless prank to show me who’s boss — maybe you didn’t even realize how important they were.”

Shannon pursed her lips and shook her head, looking like she was bored of this whole conversation. (Which really said something, considering how bored they supposedly were when we came in.) “We didn’t even know that lawyer guy was your dad,” she insisted. “I mean, yeah, you’re not our BFF or anything, but that’s just way too much energy to put into ruining your life,” she went on. “No offense.”

“Besides,” Rebecca piped up, looking like she had just thought of something, “how would we have scanned them or posted them online? We have no computer access, remember?”

I glanced over at George. She shrugged like they had a point. If they really weren’t accessing the Internet, how could they have done it?

“And you’re really telling us the truth here?” I pressed. “You’re not sneaking on to computers at school or anything? You can tell me.”

Shannon rolled her eyes. “Only when we have to for computer science,” she replied. “We’re building a class web page, which is totally boring. Other than that — no.”

I looked from Shannon to Rebecca. Their faces both seemed totally open and sincere, if bored with this conversation and ready for us to leave so they could get back to what they were doing. I couldn’t help but sigh. If Shannon and Rebecca weren’t behind the e-mail with my dad’s files attached, who was? Who would care that much about showing me who was (virtual) boss?

Reluctantly, I got to my feet. “All right, girls,” I said with an apologetic shrug. “Sorry to waste your time.”

I nodded to Bess and George, who also stood to go, both looking as disap- pointed as I felt. We began shuffling toward the door. Just as Rebecca and Shannon were looking from our retreating forms back to each other, a loud BLOOOOOOP sounded.

“What on earth?” Bess asked, turning to George. It sounded like the BLOOOOOP had come from her jeans. “Are you electronic now?”

George just smiled and fished a small black square out of her pocket. “It’s my PDA,” she replied. “I have an e-mail.” Pressing a button, she brought the screen to life and frowned at the display. “That’s weird,” she said, shooting me a meaningful glance. “It’s from Ned. And the subject is ‘Important!’”

That was odd. “Open it!” I replied. “Ned doesn’t fool around with that word.”

George made a series of clicks and scrolls. Soon whatever the e-mail contained lit up her screen — and George’s eyes widened.

“Whoa,” she breathed. “Uh, Nance — you’ll want to take a look at this.”

Without another word, George passed me her PDA. I grabbed it, then turned it right side up, and then read:

TO: [email protected]

FROM: [email protected]

SUBJECT: IMPORTANT! LOOK RIGHT AWAY!

GIRLS —

WONDERING WHO COULD BE BEHIND THESE E-MAILS, I DECIDED TO DO SOME SLEUTHING OF MY OWN — ON BETTERLIFE. YOU’LL WANT TO CHECK OUT THE ATTACHED PAGE. BE CAREFUL, NED.

Hmmmm. I scrolled down to view the attachment. It appeared to be a screenshot from a message board from the BetterLife community. All of the messages were replies to one posting under the subject SHE’S BAAAACK: BLONDIE86, R U SHANNON?

I skimmed through the postings.

SHE HAS BLOND HAIR, AND SHE JUST TOLD ME HER FAVORITE BAND IS BLUE MONDAY. WE KNOW SHANNON LUUURVES THEM….

…SHE WAS OFFLINE FOR EXACTLY FORTY-FIVE MINUTES LAST NIGHT, RIGHT WHEN SHANNON HAS HER PIANO LESSON….

…SHE PLAYS THE GAME EXACTLY LIKE SHANNON DID WITH SASSYGIRL 48: FIRST SHE’S A JANITOR, THEN A BOOKSTORE MANAGER, PLUS SHE DRESSES ALMOST EXACTLY THE SAME….

The discussion thread ended with a final posting entitled U GOT ME.

POSTED BY: BLONDIE 86

ALRIGHT U FOUND ME OUT BABEEZ! IT’S ME — UR FAVORITE BLONDIE! KEEP IT ON THE DL THO — YOU CANNOT TELL MY PARENTS!

SHANNON

I looked to George. Could it be real — could Shannon have just lied to us about being back on BetterLife, or being near a computer at all? She frowned. “Yup. It means exactly what you think it means,” she said, turning to Shannon. “You were lying when you said you haven’t been on BetterLife since you were grounded! You’ve been posting this whole time — under your new username, Blondie86.”

Shannon looked stunned. After a moment, her face fell. She looked nervously to Rebecca, but her friend looked just as crestfallen as she was.

“Just tell us the truth,” I urged them. “We’re not here to punish you. I just need to get to the bottom of this.”

Shannon looked down at her lap, then quietly spoke. “Okay,” she said, and got up from the bed and walked over to her closet. Without another word, she opened it up and pulled out a purple backpack. She placed the backpack on the floor, opened the top, and carefully pulled out a huge, beat-up–looking laptop. PROPERTY OF RHMS was stamped on the top.

“You can’t tell my parents,” Shannon pleaded, looking up at us for the first time.

I shook my head slowly. “You know I can’t promise that, Shannon.”

“Just tell us what’s going on,” Bess coaxed from behind me. “We already have a fair idea. Tell us whether you’re behind the e-mail with the files.”

Shannon sighed and brought the laptop over to her bed. Slowly, Rebecca got up and stood near her friend as Shannon opened the computer and powered it up.

“It’s from my computer science teacher,” Shannon explained. “I told her I needed it to work on the class web page outside school. I told her we didn’t have a family computer — not that I was grounded.”

I nodded. “Okay. Why did you do that?”

Shannon’s eyes flashed angrily. “I was so bored!” she cried. “You don’t know what it’s like — you’re so much older. For us, though, so much of talking to our friends and keeping up with each other is online! Without a computer, I felt like a total outcast. I didn’t even know what my friends were talking about half the time, because I couldn’t get on BetterLife.”

Rebecca nodded. “It just didn’t seem fair,” she added. “I mean, I’m sure our parents thought taking away our computers would be like taking away TV or phone privileges. It would be tough, but we’d be fine without it. But being online means so much more to us than it does to them! Without BetterLife, I felt like less of myself. ”

I glanced at George. I was sure the alarm I saw in her eyes was present in mine. Less of myself? Because they couldn’t play a computer game?

“So I lied to my teacher,” Shannon went on. As she explained, her laptop became available and she double-clicked on the Internet browser, then entered the BetterLife URL. “I didn’t want to. I had to. I needed to be able to see my friends, not just at school, but —”

“In this virtual world,” George supplied, her voice sounding as though she couldn’t quite believe what she was saying.

“Right,” Shannon agreed sheepishly. The login screen for BetterLife was up, and she quickly typed in “Blondie86” and a password my eyes weren’t fast enough to catch. Immediately, the game loaded and we came up on a young blond girl sitting on a park bench, reading the newspaper.

“Wait a minute,” I cried, pointing. “I recognize this character! She was protesting VirtualNancy earlier.”

I looked to Shannon; she just shrugged and glanced at Rebecca. “Blondie86 might have been there,” she agreed, turning back to the screen. Her voice dropped. “It was cold what you did to that boy.”

“I didn’t —” I started to defend VirtualNancy, then stopped. It wasn’t worth it. As part of my cyberharassment, someone had hacked into my BetterLife account and made it look like VirtualNancy was making racist slurs against one of my reallife friends, Ibrahim. Video of my avatar doing this were then uploaded to uVid, a related site where BetterLife users can share moments from the game with other players. VirtualNancy got lots of attention from her fellow players after that — mostly negative.

Shannon was staring at the screen. YOU HAVE 1 NEW MESSAGE, it read. She clicked on the envelope icon that brought you to messages left for your character.

There was only one message in her in-box. The subject was STAY TUNED. And the sender was UrNewReality.

“Wait!” I cried, pointing at the screen again. “UrNewReality. The person who sent that message. Have you gotten messages from that person before?”

UrNewReality was no stranger to me or VirtualNancy. I’d gotten several messages from him or her over the last week or so, all threatening. UrNewReality was not one of my biggest fans.

Shannon gulped and looked at Rebecca again. Then she looked up at me, and her expression was sincere. “I’m really sorry.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, drawing closer.

In response, she turned back to the computer and clicked on another message. “I got this a week ago. A few days after I created Blondie86.”

I looked at the screen.

FROM: URNEWREALITY

TO: BLONDIE 86

SUBJECT: UR NEW REALITY

UNR KNOWS WHO U REALLY R. UNR KNOWS WHO CAN’T KNOW. UNR NEEDS A FAVOR, AND U WILL COME THRU, OR UNR WILL TELL UR PARENTS THE TRUTH ABOUT U.

I looked up at Shannon, stunned.

“I didn’t want to do anything wrong,” Shannon explained. “Really. I mean, I knew I was going against my punishment by being on the computer at all, but I really just wanted to talk to my friends. Hang out with them online. Have a little fun.” She cringed. “But I really didn’t want my parents to know. I didn’t want to get in trouble again and get grounded even worse. So a couple days later, when UrNewReality contacted me again…”

I couldn’t believe it. “What did he ask you to do?” I asked.

Shannon sighed. “He — or she. I don’t know,” she explained. “He wanted me to chat up my neighbor, Mrs. Fultz, who works for your father. I didn’t know why. He just wanted me to say that Rebecca and I were looking to make a little money this summer, and did she know about any odd jobs? That’s when Mrs. Fultz told me that your dad needed some help filing.”

I nodded. This was completely blowing my mind. How had UrNewReality known my father’s office was overloaded with filing, or that Mrs. Fultz was Shannon’s neighbor? And why did the final message to me come from Guitarlvr15? Were there two cyberbullies working together, or were the two avatars being used to confuse me?

“So we went and worked for your dad one night,” Rebecca took over. “It was totally boring: filing and pizza. But before we left, Shannon got one last message: We were supposed to steal some papers from your dad’s confidential files while we were there, scan them at school, and then put the hard copies back.”

Shannon nodded. “We did it, and I snuck them back into the files when we went to pick up our pay.”

I glanced at Bess and George. Their expressions seemed to say exactly what I was thinking:

Whoa.

“And the files?” I said finally, after processing all this. “The computer files, I mean? Did you send them to… Guitarlvr15?”

Shannon frowned and shook her head. “No. That would have seemed pretty weird. We didn’t even know there was another Guitarlvr15 online. A few days after we did this, I got a message from UrNewReality with an e-mail address I should send the files to,” Shannon explained. “So I did. I thought after we did this, we’d be done, but UrNewReality keeps sending me messages that say I should ‘stay tuned’ …for his next instructions, I guess.”

I shook my head, trying to make sense of it all.

“What was the e-mail address?” George asked, her head tilted pensively.

Shannon made a couple of clicks on the laptop to bring up the message. “Someone at anonymous dot com,” she replied. “A weird one. I’ve never heard of that e-mail service before.”

George nodded, looking disappointed. “They specialize in anonymous messages,” she murmured with a sigh. “Those addresses are basically impossible to track.”

I was still trying to figure out what all of this meant. “So you did it,” I began, “but you didn’t really. Or you did it, but you didn’t know why. UrNewReality is really the person behind this. You don’t know anything about Guitarlvr15’s involvement. Is that it?”

Rebecca nodded furiously. “That’s it,” she said. “We were just innocent people being blackmailed into helping!”

“And this isn’t, like, a two-weeks-ago situation,” Bess suggested, “where you tell us over and over that you don’t know who’s sending the messages, and then it turns out to be you?”

Rebecca gulped. “I swear to you,” she replied, holding up her left hand in something that looked like the Girl Scout symbol, “I have no idea who UrNewReality is.”

“I was being honest about one thing before,” Shannon added, nodding supportively. “I really would not put this much energy into ruining your life.”

I sighed. Bluntly spoken, another dead end.

After a few seconds of biting my lip and running over it all again in my head, I became aware that Rebecca and Shannon were still staring at me. Staring at me imploringly. Maybe even desperately.

“What?” I asked, already thinking ahead to who we’d question next.

Shannon gave me a pleading look. “Are you going to tell our parents?” she asked.

“We’ll do anything you say,” Rebecca added. “We’ll throw away our computers! We’ll even help you find this NewReality guy! Just please —”

I held up my hand. “Girls,” I said, “you know I have to. I can’t lie to your parents.

Now totally crestfallen, the girls turned to each other with utterly hopeless expressions. After a few seconds, Shannon started to sniffle.

“Come on, everyone,” I said with a sigh, beckoning the girls, Bess, and George into the hallway to find the Fitzgeralds. “I hate to say it, but it looks like this is going to be another long night.”

Дата добавления: 2017-01-14