“Oh Jesus, Grayson,” Holly says.
“It’s the truth,” I say. “That’s all I’ve ever used this for. To store some porn I wanted to, you know, revisit.”
Meeka rolls her eyes and asks, “But nothing from that night?”
“Not a thing,” I tell them. “I’m not the one who fucked up.”
Meanwhile, Holly is tapping her phone like a maniac. “Well, I’m changing my password anyway. And I suggest you two do the same.”
A quick breeze blows up some dust and we all turn. The door is open again and this time it’s Logan standing there, all sweaty and red.
“I got here as soon as I—”
“Log into your cloud, check your photos on October twenty-ninth,” Holly says. “Then change your damn password!”
He freezes and squints. “I didn’t share anything, and if you think—”
“Do it!” Holly screams.
Logan holds up a hand—a total dick move, like he’s saying “shut up, bitch”—and it’s obvious why he and Holly aren’t a thing anymore. But when he checks his phone, his mood changes.
“Oh, wait,” he says.
“What?” Holly asks.
“There’s that other service,” he says.
“What other service?” Holly asks.
Logan puts that hand up again, and checks his phone again, and then his voice sounds like a little boy’s. “Oh crap.”
“It’s on there?” Meeka asks. “The video?”
Logan lowers his phone and takes a good long look at his shoelaces. He nods.
Fuck.
HOLLY
NO ONE KNOWS my passwords. No one. There are some things you don’t share, even with the ones you love.
No one could guess my passwords. No one. They’re random letters and numbers that I always memorize. Do I write them down? Of course I don’t. That’s not something I would ever do.
Logan, on the other hand, shares his passwords with his girlfriends—I know that firsthand—and he probably has a piece of paper with them taped on his desk, like some grandpa who refers to the internet as the World Wide Web.
Jesus, Logan.
“Who has your passwords?” I ask him. “Who have you been sharing your passwords with?”
“No one,” he says.
“Not exactly true,” Meeka says, and she turns to me for confirmation.
“Well, I obviously didn’t do it,” I say. “Is it Esther? She’s part of hack club, isn’t she?”
“It isn’t Esther,” Logan assures me. “I don’t know her like that. And yeah, I might’ve shared a password or two with you back in the day. But no, I’ve never shared them with anyone else.”
“No one else?” Meeka asks.
“Well . . .” Logan says. “No. No one else.”
“Why the hesitation?” Meeka asks.
Logan shrugs.
“Jesus, you didn’t share passwords with Cole, did you?” I say.
“Cole is gone,” Grayson so helpfully reminds us. “There’s no Cole to worry about anymore.”
“I didn’t share any passwords with Cole,” Logan says. “But he did recommend it.”
“A password?” I ask.
“The cloud service I used,” Logan says. “On my old phone.”
“What?” I ask, because seriously, what?
“You were supposed to wipe the old phone,” Grayson says. “Even I knew that.”
“I wiped all the pics and stuff,” Logan says.
“But not the apps?” Meeka asks.
He shrugs and says, “Didn’t seem necessary.”
Meeka throws her hands up. “Oh well, now fuck us all to—”
“But I never gave Cole my passwords!” Logan screams. “He only recommended the cloud service. Told me how to install the app. That’s it.”
“Show us,” I demand.
“Like I told you, I only had the app on my old phone,” he says. “But . . .”
“But?” the three of us respond at the same time.
“There’s a web interface,” Logan says as he holds up his phone to show us a web page.
And again, at the same time, we all grimace.
“What the fuck is that?” Grayson says. “That shit looks like something I would make.”
Okay, I’ll hand it to Grayson. He beat me to the punch. Because this page looks about as unprofessional as it gets. Simply terrible.
“It’s bare-bones,” Logan tells us. “That’s why it’s free. I didn’t want to pay for some cloud service when I could have one for free. It made sense financially at the time.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Logan,” Meeka says. “It’s called GOTCHYA. How could you think that it’s reputable?”
“How could you think anything that came from Cole is reputable?” I ask. “Everything associated with that kid was infected. His viruses had viruses.”
“GOTCHYA worked great. A little slow, but it had twice the storage of Dropbox and it was free. I’m going to be running a nonprofit someday, so these are decisions I take seriously,” Logan says.
“Here’s the thing,” Meeka says calmly. “Cole always wanted access. And if you fell for one of his—”
“I didn’t fall for anything!” Logan protests, and he’s on the verge of tears.
“You did,” Meeka tells him, and she puts a soft hand on his tense shoulder. “And so did I. More than I want to admit. If you ever signed into anything on one of his computers, Cole would keep you logged in. I learned that tidbit a little too late.”
“And when exactly did you learn that tidbit?” I ask, because that isn’t exactly a tidbit. This is huge. Enormous.
“A few days before . . . you did it,” Meeka says, whispering the last part. “He was messing with my iTunes and Netflix. Some really passive-aggressive shit. Making playlists with songs about guys who kill their girlfriends, adding super-gross horror movies to my queue. I confronted him. He admitted he’d stolen a ton of data from people. He was proud of it.”
Are you kidding me? Talk about important information to share with your friends. “Why the hell didn’t you tell us?” I ask.