I walked out the door, seeing Andrew standing on the grass, awaiting my presence. He had a toothpick in his mouth, digging it around in his gums, before he flicked it onto the ground, smirking as he saw me.
“You came out. Good choice,” He said nonchalantly. I stepped off the porch, taking controlled and perturbed steps toward him until I was completely in front of him.
“Look, what do you want?” I said, trying to sound tough, failing, as my voice cracked during my sentence. Andrew could sense I was scared as he smirked at me again. He looked around, as if he was making sure nobody was listening. He turned back.
“I just wanted to get you out here to let you know what’s going down tomorrow at school, and to give you some tips,” he said. I looked down, kicking the blades off the grass from beneath my feet. Was I really this helpless in this situation to the point Andrew had to give me tips so I had a better chance against him?
“I don’t want to do this, Andrew,” I said, my voice shaking. “It’s cool if you don’t want to be friends anymore, just leave me alone,”
“Oh, I can’t do that, Ryan,” Andrew said, grabbing another toothpick from his pocket. He started moving it around his teeth like he was already bored of talking to me.
I remembered about the photo and the fact he had my iCloud password. “How do I know you’re not gonna send that photo and leak my password?” I said. I tried looking him in the eyes, but I couldn’t. I was too mentally weak.
Andrew took the toothpick out of his mouth, keeping it in between his fingers. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and opened it, going to his files. He flipped his phone around, showing the screen to me as he deleted the photo and cleared my iCloud password from his phone. He put his phone back in his pocket, putting the toothpick back in his mouth. He kept his word.
“I see you got yourself a girlfriend. I’m proud of you, Ryan. I didn’t think you’d be able to do it,” Andrew said mockingly. He was talking about Mia.
“She’s not my girlfriend-“ I started protesting before Andrew put a finger to my lips. I went silent instantly. He slowly pulled it away as he got closer to me, almost uncomfortably so.
“First thing’s first. Tomorrow, don’t go into the school bathroom. At all,” he said into my ear. I shivered. What did that mean? He kept going. “Secondly, don’t come up to me to start shit you don’t want. You’ll know when something will happen,”
Andrew turned around, walking away snail-like before he stopped suddenly, and turned back around. “Also, if you tell the cops, or any adult about this. I’ll know, and I’ll have to do something I didn’t want to do,”
I gulped, getting stiffer. “Do what?”
Andrew surveyed his surroundings and gave me a cold stare. “I’ll have to kill you,”
Andrew walked off after saying that, not looking back at me as he stuffed both of his hands in his pockets. I was left alone in my front yard, a mixture of emotions. Shock, uneasiness, and fearful of the future. I didn’t know what my best friend had become, and, in a way, I knew I wasn’t going to win this fight.
But I had to try.
“Hey, you okay?”
I looked up from my desk in math. It was the next day, and I was tired. I barely got any sleep last night because I was too busy thinking about Andrew and what he said. I looked to see who said that and saw someone standing over me with a worried expression on his face. He had slicked back hair and was wearing a blue jacket.
“Huh? Oh, yeah, I’m fine,” I said, my voice tired. The kid kneeled beside me.
“Right… You’re Ryan, right? I heard the teacher call your name before,” He said. I sat up straight in my chair, stretching out my back.
“Yeah, that’s me. If you don’t mind me asking, who are you?” I said, getting a little embarrassed because, in hindsight, it was a little rude.
He scratched his neck before responding. “I’m Quintin. Wasn’t that guy who fought you yesterday your friend? I could’ve sworn 3 years back you were walking the halls together…”
“Yup, that was my best friend,” I said, taking a deep breath. I see Quintin get confused.
“Hold up, your best friend wanted to beat your ass? And actually did it?” Quintin said. I nodded my head, not wanting to talk about it further.
“Yeah, but, listen, I’ll tell you about it later, but-“
“Quintin! Go back to your seat,” The teacher stood up and yelled at him. Quintin got startled and stood up as other kids started laughing. “You’re a senior for crying out loud, you should know to stay seated,”
Quintin started walking back to his seat as I started getting uncomfortable myself. Quintin leaned over and whispered to me “Tell me at lunch.” I nodded my head in response, the teacher irritatingly eying him.
I couldn’t even focus on the new math formula we were learning in that class, and in my next 3 classes before lunch, I also couldn’t focus in, though I was able to get my work completed. I was trying to figure out how to put my story together and be able to tell Quintin everything. I finally had a friend I could vent to about this and who seemed to care.
In my third-period English, Mia asked me where I sat during lunch. I told her I didn’t have a set place I sat, and I would sit anywhere and to just try and find me.
When lunch came around, I didn’t bother going through the line to get food as I wasn’t hungry, and instead followed Quintin to an empty table and took a seat.
When we had settled into the lunch table, I told Quintin everything that had transpired in my last update, from Andrew blocking me on everything, what he said to me before our fight, and how he must’ve followed me home and even threatened to leak my iCloud password. I even told him about our confrontation afterward.
When I was done telling the whole story, all Quintin could respond back with was “Wow, that’s really fucked up,”
I nodded my head. “Yeah. I don’t know what to do. I’m lost,” I say, loosening my arms on the table. I watched as Quintin zipped open his backpack and pulled a laptop out, setting it in front of him on the table. “What are you doing?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I can see what made Andrew change or whatever,” Quintin responded, opening up his laptop and logging in.
“How?” I asked him. He thinks for a moment before responding.
“You said he blocked you on everything, including Instagram, right?” He entreats me. I nod my head in response. “Okay, I was thinking I could hack into his Instagram so I could get his other information in his settings, and we can slowly figure things out from there,”
“You can hack?” I say, quite amazed.
“Hell yeah, I can,” He says, opening google chrome. I start thinking about it more, and plenty of worries started sticking to me. “I’m kind of an amateur, but…”
“But, isn’t that, I don’t know, illegal?”
Quintin stops and considers it for a moment before saying something. “I mean, yeah, it’s an invasion of privacy, but Andrew’s done worst stuff. He’s stalked you, threatened you, and literally got your personal information, too,” He said, looking back at the computer screen.
A second later, I gave Quintin Andrew’s Instagram name. When he looked him up and saw his profile picture and bio, he said, “Well, that’s… Weird,”
“I know, just hurry up,” I say, looking around the cafeteria anxiously. I watched as Quintin opened up an application and started typing stuff in rapidly, faster than I could even read what he was typing. I was getting so hooked on what he was doing that I didn’t notice Mia set a tray of food time next to me and sit down.
“Hey Ryan, what are you doing?” She says to me. I snap my head around to face her surprised, stuttering over my words. Mia looks over my shoulders and sees Quintin as he turns to face her. “Hi, I’m Mia,” she says, waving.
“I’m Quintin, but uh, anyway, we’re just hacking into his friend’s Instagram, no big deal,” Quintin says, pointing at me. I whirl my head around to look at him, shocked that he just said what we were doing out loud.
“Dude, what the fuck?!” I say. I see Mia’s face turn into confusion.
“I’m sorry, I don’t like lying,” Quintin says in defense, putting his hands up. I groan and turn to face Mia again.
“Wait, why are you hacking someone’s account?” Mia says, inching away from me slowly. I contemplate telling her before I figured fuck it.
“Let’s just say my ‘friend’ Andrew is a psycho,” I respond, turning back to Quintin’s computer. He was still typing away. At this point, I was getting a tad impatient. I just wanted to figure out what happened to Andrew, and why he was so different now.
“Andrew? As in the guy that fought you yesterday?” Mia seemed to have calmed down at that point. I sighed while nodding my head, still self-conscious about the whole fight.
“Yeah, that guy,” I said back. Eventually, a buzzing sound came from Quintin’s laptop, and I saw his face light up. I looked at his screen. He was in Andrew’s account.
“Wow, I guess he didn’t have good enough security on his account,” I said, excited. I watched Quintin’s face go from excitement and victory to horror. I notice his change in demeanor quickly. I hear him mutter “Oh shit,” under his breath.
“What’s wrong?” I say, getting more worried myself. Quintin turned the laptop towards me. I looked closely at it.
“When I got into his account, that popped up,” he pointed at the application he had opened. I looked at it. There was a textbox that said *’*Account Owner Notified,’
I looked at Quintin as a realization started to hit me and he slowly nodded his head. “That means it sent a notification to his phone, telling him we had hacked into his account and gave our exact names,”
“What!?” I nearly yelled out. “How did it get our names?”
“He must’ve had some program that tells him exactly who hacked in- I don’t know, but we’re fucked,” Quintin said, quickly trying to log out of Andrew’s account. His laptop started lagging, and he began lightly hitting the screen. “Fuck, the school wifi is disconnecting,”
My heart starts beating fast. Andrew was going to know it was me and he was going to kill me. As I told Andrew to hurry, I looked up and saw Andrew walking past the aisle of tables, going towards ours, like a predator stalking his prey. Quintin saw him coming down too and quickly closed his laptop, putting it back into his backpack.
Within a matter of seconds, Andrew had made it to our table and sat across from us, trying to smirk at me but failing, as he clearly looked pissed. He looked at Quintin and Mia and pointed behind them. I felt Quintin and Mia practically shaking, and, I can’t lie, I was too.
“Ryan, we need to talk,” Andrew said in a low voice. “But your little friends need to go. Now,”
I slowly and fearfully took a look at both Quintin and Mia. They both knew it was best that left. Without saying a word, they both got up and slowly walked away, taking their stuff with them. I watched them leave, and I was in defeat, knowing I was left to talk to Andrew on my own.
When they were out of Andrew’s sight, he looked at me again, and finally formed a smirk.
“You’re making more friends. That’s good. I was your only real friend for a while, so congratulations,” Andrew said, popping a piece of gum into his mouth. I started to feel tense and petrified. He was so… Calm, and it freaked me out.
“Look, Andrew, I’m sorry we hacked into your account, we-“
“There’s no need to apologize, Ryan,” Andrew cut me off. “It was a good play. It just wasn’t a smart one,”
I stayed silent for a few moments, and as Andrew got bored and went to get up, I finally found the courage through my fear to say, “Why?”
Andrew turned to face me, almost offended that I asked that. He got up and leaned his face over the table close to mine, gritting his teeth. “Because you tried to steal my shit, I’m not okay with that. You can do better,”
“You’re a hypocrite,” I spat at him. His lips quivered in anger, and as I tried processing what was going on, Andrew grabbed the back of my head and slammed my face into the table, stunning me and making my eyes water. People around us heard the impact and turned to face us.
“I’ll always be one step ahead of you. Don’t forget that,” Andrew nastily said to me before getting up and walking off. I heard a few kids snickering at me from behind me. I ignored them as I grabbed my bag and got up, heading to my next class for the day in absolute shock and terror.
In English, Mia and I were sitting next to each other, discussing what we should do about Andrew. She said I should just walk away from the whole thing, but I can’t. I can’t just walk away from it. That would make Andrew even madder and make him target me even more. I tried to make sure Mia wouldn’t get involved, because I know she was a huge target for him now, too. Quintin is too, but I needed his help badly.
When school was over, I started walking to the door the buses were at. On my way to it, I walked past the bathroom, noticing there was a putrid smell coming from inside. I didn’t think too much of it and walked past it, covering my nose as I did so.
My mom was in the kitchen when I got home, and you can imagine she was happy to see me. She hugged me and gave me a kiss on the cheek, much to my protests. I’m 17 and that stuff embarrasses me. I threw my backpack to the floor and ran up to my room.
When I got into my room and closed the door, I started getting an overwhelming sadness about the situation with Andrew. We were such great friends, and I couldn’t believe that was thrown away now. I walked up to my drawer and opened it, pulling out a picture of Andrew and I when were 15, standing in front of Splash Mountain when we took a trip to Disneyland. I cracked a smile looking at it. I’d do anything to get this friendship back.
I haven’t told my mom yet, because I remembered what Andrew said earlier about if I did. I started getting emotional looking at the picture before I started getting an incoming facetime call from Quintin.
I quickly put the picture back and closed the drawer, picking my phone up and answering the call. As I picked up and connected, I said “What’s up?” into the phone.
Quintin fumbles with his phone for a moment before bringing it up, the top of his head coming into view. “Alright, so I wasn’t logged out of Andrew’s Instagram, so when I got home I went into his settings and saw he had made the account with his email, and I was able to get into his email as well,”
“Nice, what did you find?” I said into the phone.
“I went in and saw an email that he responded to as well from some random company saying he was invited to something, but I can’t click and view the email. I also saw he sent a recent email to some random person and it had your name in it but I couldn’t read the rest of it because I got kicked off his email and locked out,” Quintin continued, almost sighing at the end of it.
I processed everything he just said. I knew those emails were important, they had to be. Before I could say anything else though, I heard my mom yell my name from downstairs.
“My mom’s saying my name, I gotta go,” I said into the phone. I saw Quintin set his phone down as I looked at his camera.
“Alright, call me back when you can though,” Quintin said. He hung up a couple of seconds later.
I opened my door and walked down the steps. When I got downstairs, I saw my mom standing outside the kitchen, looking at me. She looked disappointed. I was immediately confused.
“What is it?” I said. My mom looked at the floor as I heard her sniffle. She looked back up at me, the disappointment remaining on her face.
“I just got a call from your school, saying that you were expelled and that the cops are on their way,” She was able to get the words out. My heart sank deep as she said this. Was she being serious?
“What? Why?” I sputtered out. I looked my mom in the eyes, but she couldn’t look back at me. She didn’t respond. I started getting more frightened at how my mom was acting. “Why are the cops coming? Why was I expelled?” I repeated myself incredulously.
My mom was finally able to look me in the eyes. The disappointment and the now sadness on her face told a whole story as she uttered the words, “For killing another student.”