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chapter 3: Secrets Hidden in Plain Sight

Jude fought the antiquated registration software for two hours before finding the issue. He scowled at the obdurate line of code, imagining the patch he was going to have to build to work around it. There were times he hated this job. At its worst, it made him feel like a cog in a giant machine. He didn’t want to work on someone else’s schedule. He had more important things to think about.

Mind drifting, he began to recode, his fingers moving in a blur as he tricked the finicky computer program into working around the archaic script that had caused the error. He paused, scrolling back through the lines of text, double checking for colons and brackets, the way a prospector searched silt for gold. One character off, and this wouldn’t work, but Jude was confident in his work. He’d been coding since high school and had always had an eye for details.

Focus, and patience, was all it usually took.

In twenty minutes the patch was installed, and the computer registration system reinstalled. Jude opened the registration files for two of the students who’d been bumped from their classes. All the pre-requisites were linked in again, the registration no longer causing an error. He closed the files, ready to call out for the supervisor, but paused instead, his hands hanging above the keyboard. He took a furtive look around the Registrar’s office. Irene was standing up at the front desk, going through a working transcript with a student; the second office secretary, nowhere to be seen. Dropping his eyes back to the screen, Jude clicked on general registration, typing in a single name.

Indigo.

There was no match.

Frowning, Jude flicked through the various iterations that Indigo might be formed from: Ida, Irene, Imogene, Iona, Inez. None of them worked either. He drummed his finger on the desk before backspacing until one character remained, cursor pulsing.

I.

On instinct, he hit enter. The system chugged, and a file appeared. A single student, ‘I. Sykes’, was registered at the university. His or her detailed information was “screened for privacy at request of student.” A thrill of anticipation ran up Jude’s spine.

In seconds he was in her file: Indigo’s ID photo removed any question that he’d found who he was looking for. He peered at the screen, heart pounding. I. Sykes: twenty-six years of age. The information surprised him; he’d been certain she was only twenty-one or twenty-two like most of the other sophomores. He leaned closer, reading in chunks. Indigo had been accepted into the university on a Design scholarship. Jude clicked open the next screen. She had a GPA of 3.5 and had been given special permission to take seven courses, and a full load of summer courses, rather than the standard five during a single semester. Her permanent address was a post office box, though there was a notation about off-campus housing. He moved the mouse, about to click to the next screen.

“Mr. Alden?”

Jude jumped at the sound of Irene’s voice. She was a few feet away, but she was staring at the computer screen in indignation.

“What are you doing in that student’s files?!”

Jude turned, raising an eyebrow. He left the screen open as it was. If you seemed like you knew what you were doing, most people would believe you. He’d been in tighter spots than this.

“I wrote a patch,” he said with an easy smile. “I’m just trying to see if it works.” He paused, counting to three. Rushing never helped. “It was sophomores and juniors who were being bumped from their classes, right?”

Irene strode to the computer, pulling the mouse from his hand and closing the file. She glared down at him, cheeks flushed.

“I shouldn’t have to tell you this, Jude,” she huffed. “But all state universities follow FERPA now.” She pronounced the acronym like a foreign word. “The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act ensures that no student’s information is available publicly without the student's permission. It’s a federal law! What I saw here today is absolutely NOT acceptable behaviour. If someone knew those files had been accessed by unauthorized personnel there would be—”

“Look Irene,” Jude interrupted, “you can check the files yourself, or I can check them, but someone needs to find out if the patch works or not.”

He pushed back from the computer, standing up from the chair and hooking his thumbs in his belt loops. Irene reminded him of the worst parts of his mother, and he really wasn’t in the mood for that today.

“If you want to run through it,” he added, “then go for it. ‘Cause I’ve got other things to do. Just give me a shout if you need me to rewrite any of the code.” He moved toward the door, raising his voice enough he knew she’d hear him. “The patch I put together is part of the linking structure for the closed courses and the live courses, but if you have trouble you might have to reroute the registration information for the—”

“Wait!” Irene barked.

Her face was so flushed it was almost purple, one hand pressed against her heart.

“Hmmm?”

“Just wait a minute!” she snapped, bustling forward. “I… I can’t let YOU access those files, but if you could just wait until I do it, then I could go through them myself.”

He shrugged, following her back to the computer.

“So what do I do?” she asked.

“I need you to find a sophomore and see if their prerequisites are starting to come through.” He coughed. “That’s what I was trying to do a minute ago.”

She clicked open the demographics folder, popping up the student information list. It wasn’t Indigo.

“For one thing, you’re in the wrong folder,” she answered tartly. “Student registration and timetabling is what you need, not demographics.” She narrowed her gaze at him, and Jude gave her an impish grin in return.

“That’s why you’re the expert in the Registrar’s office, Irene, not me.”

“Glad you remembered that,” she replied smugly, and Jude hid a smile under his hand.

On the screen, the student timetable for Wendell Rhys Hibbert, a second year Biology student, appeared.

“Take a look and see if he’s been reinstated into his class,” Jude prompted.

“Hold on.” She clicked through several boxes, then opened another student’s files, doing the same check. “Oh look at that,” Irene said with a happy chortle. “Seems like things are working just fine now.”

“Anything else I can help you with before I go?”

She closed up the registration program, beaming up at him.

“Well, if you’ve got a minute, my daughter sent me an e-card and I can’t for the life of me get it to play on my laptop.”

“Sure, Irene,” Jude said, forcing himself not to groan. “Let’s go check it out.”

: : : : : : : : : :

Indigo stared out the smudged subway car window, unfocused eyes on the flickers of light and shadow. Her mp3 player was cranked painfully loud, the angry strains of Velvet Revolver echoing and buzzing her ears. Wrapped in the motion of the train and the blanket of sound, she was in a cocoon, separate from the rest of the world. It wasn’t a comfort, per se, but it steadied her. Indigo liked that most days. The trouble was, the rest of the time, she liked the unpredictable, the dangerous and damaged.

She could feel herself slipping toward that again.

The bell rang inside the car and the train slowed as it neared the station. She sat up straighter, her stomach tightening into a knot. This station led to one of the newly resurgent neighbourhoods in the city. Townhouses in this area had been bought up by university profs and moneyed middle-class families. The shady oak-lined streets that had once been the home of drug dealers and pimps were now full of fat-cheeked children and picture-perfect families. Indigo sneered, the thought inexplicably distasteful.

She only looked because it was his station.

The train shuddered to a stop, doors pulling open, and throngs of people began to push their way inside. A young mother with a baby in a stroller forced her way toward Indigo, taking the other half of the seat, two teens and a middle-aged man coming in behind her. Indigo grimaced as the woman pushed the baby up next to her legs. She turned, searching for another seat. Finding none, her eyes drifted back to the platform, watching the crowd the way she always did at this station. She knew he’d probably still be at the university at this hour, but she still looked.

She didn’t know how not to wait for him.

The crowd thinned as those leaving traded places with those entering. Indigo had just relaxed against the seat when a man’s blond head appeared in the distant crowd. Her body tensed, attention honing onto the single figure. He was facing away from the train, but the hair tipped her off. Wavy blond locks brushed over the back of his suit collar.

“It looks messy,” she’d said to him one night as they lay in his bed. “Not like a real professor at all.”

“A ‘real’ professor,” he’d laughed. “And who exactly am I competing with for your attentions, Indigo?”

The train started up with a lurch and she slid forward, bumping the woman next to her as she followed the figure with her eyes. Her fingers reached out on their own, pressing the glass in sudden panic. Like a silent movie, Indigo saw, rather than heard, someone calling out to him. It was a woman in a skirt and heels, her arms pinwheeling to get his attention. The train had begun to move but Indigo’s gaze still followed, hope and pain tangled together. At the last second, the man turned, laughing.

Indigo’s chest crumpled in defeat. It wasn’t him.

She slumped back against the seat, ignoring the sidelong glances of the mother next to her. The train pulled away from the station, disappearing into the next stretch of dark tunnel, and her mind spun back to the present.

What she needed, Indigo knew, was someone ‘nice’, but her heart always had different plans.

: : : : : : : : : :

Marq Lopez was already waiting at the bus stop when Jude made it out of the tech dungeon. His hands were shoved deep in his pockets, and he paced nervously in the late-afternoon chill.

“Hey, Marq,” Jude said with a smile. “You didn’t have to wait around for me.”

Marq turned, pulling a set of keys from his pocket and jangling them. “Thought you might like a ride home, man. It’s cold tonight.”

Jude stared at the keys in confusion. “You bought a car?”

Jude knew Marq Lopez, and although he might be one of the best programmers in the Tech Department, he had his fair share of financial problems. The guy was the best person to party with, but the worst to lend money to. He just didn’t plan. Ever. A car made no sense.

Marq grinned, gesturing down the street. “C’mon,” he said proudly. “Just picked it up yesterday.”

“How?” Jude coughed.

“I finished up the contract I was telling you about,” he said. “Told you it was worth the time.”

“F*ck me,” Jude groaned.

“In your dreams,” Marq cackled, punching Jude in the shoulder. “So come on! I want to show it to you.”

The two of them walked for half a block, jealousy turning down the corner’s of Jude’s mouth. He wished that he’d agreed to help Marq with the programming contract, but it was too late now. Halfway down the street, Marq stopped.

“There she is,” he breathed. “Whaddya think?”

Jude’s mouth fell open. The sportscar by the curb was candy-apple red, the interior black leather.

“Ho-ly shit, Marq!” he gasped. “How in the hell did you finance this?!?”

Jude was still struggling to pay off the last of his student loans from university. His mother wanted him to ‘value his education’, and that meant paying for it himself. A car – any car! – was out of the question. Marq laughed, leaning back on the car and drumming his fingers on the roof.

“Didn’t have to finance it,” he said with a wink. “Paid it off.”

Jude’s head bobbed up in shock. “You’re f*cking with me.”

Marq opened the door, and climbed in, waiting until Jude did the same.

“When I said that the contract was worth the time,” he said smugly, “I wasn’t kidding you.”

The engine started with a roar, and Marq pulled onto the street in a squeal of tires, Jude dumbstruck beside him. In seconds they were heading away from the university: the forty minute bus ride reduced to mere minutes. When they stopped in front of the aging apartment building, Marq was still grinning.

“So what do you think?” he asked. “You haven’t said a damned thing.”

“What I think,” Jude grumbled, “is you’re an a*shole who likes to rub your good luck in your friend’s face.”

“I bet I can change your mind,” Marq said. “So?” he prompted.

“So what?” Jude snapped.

Marq snorted.

“So can I change your mind?”

Jude stared at him, struggling to follow where this was going.

“I just got offered another contract,” Marq explained, “and I need your help to get it done.”

: : : : : : : : : :

It was only five when Indigo got back to the apartment, but in the autumn gloom, it was already dark. Leafless trees beside streetlamps cast skeletal hands over the sidewalk, needles of wind stabbing under her coat. She took the stairs to the fourth floor, shoulder aching with the weight of her book bag. The incident last year had left her leery of the elevator and the people who hung around it. It was one of many reasons she wanted out of this apartment, out of New York, out of this chapter of her life.

She was panting by the time she made it to the end of the hall, her back slick with sweat. Glancing both ways, she unlocked the door, then shoved the edge of the door open with her shoulder. She dropped her bags on the floor and locked the door behind her in seconds, releasing her breath with a sigh. Safe.

The heady smell of cooking led her toward the kitchen. Shireese stood at the stove, sautéing vegetables, the counters cluttered with various bowls and spice bottles.

“Oh my god, that smells good,” Indigo breathed, reaching into the pan to snatch a piece of half-cooked pepper.

“Get out of my kitchen,” Shireese said cheerfully, smacking her knuckles lightly with the spoon. “You’re worse than a stray cat.”

“You love me anyhow.”

“True,” Shireese said, “but I like cats too. That’s not saying much.”

Indigo laughed just as Shireese turned to pick up a bowl of slivered almonds. Before she could turn back around, Indigo grabbed two more pieces from the pan, stuffing them into her mouth and chewing, open-mouthed, as they cooled. Shireese glared at her, pointing to the table with her spoon.

“Go!” she ordered. “I need ten more minutes and I’ll have it done.”

“Tastes amazing already.”

Shireese went back to cooking and for a few minutes the two friends caught up on their day. Tanis, Shireese’s girlfriend, had another concert coming up, and was wondering if Indigo would do the posters again. She agreed, and the conversation shifted to school: the troubles with the video project, the unexpected meeting with Jude Alden, and then the coffee afterward.

“I’m surprised he remembered my name,” Indigo mused.

“You know him?” Shireese asked.

“He was the guy from O’Reilly’s that night. The one you dragged me off of.”

Shireese turned from the stove, staring at her in concern. “Jesus! He’s a prof at the university too?”

“No,” Indigo said carefully; she knew what a sore spot Shireese had about last spring’s events. “Jude works at the university, but he’s not a prof. He’s one of the nerds in the tech department.”

Shireese nodded, pulling the pan off the burner with a tea towel.

“And?”

“And nothing,” Indigo said. “We had coffee.”

Shireese pushed the finished stir-fry into a bowl, uncharacteristically quiet. After a moment she peered over her shoulder. “Nerds can be nice,” she said sagely.

“Don’t,” Indigo grumbled. “He’s worse than a nerd.”

“Worse?” Shireese chuckled. “Not sure how that’s possible.”

“Because he’s kind of cute, but he knows it. Total frat boy. Worst kind.”

Shireese tapped the spoon on the edge of the bowl, smirking.

“You didn’t seem to mind when you had your tongue shoved down his—”

“I said stop!”

Shireese spun around, flicking the tea towel over her shoulder with a snap. She was watching Indigo with half-closed eyes, full lips twisted up into a sardonic grin.

“Neither of you were stopping,” she teased. “And I’m not gonna stop now...”

“F*ck off,” Indigo growled, but Shireese kept talking.

“It’s good you’re finally talking to other guys. You’ve been out of the loop for too long, honey. You’ve gotta start living again.”

Indigo crossed her arms. “I’m not telling you anything anymore!”

“I’m not bugging you,” Shireese grinned. “I’m just saying it’s nice you went out on a coffee date. It’s time for you to move on, hon. It has been time for months.”

“It wasn’t a date,” Indigo insisted. “I had a computer problem in class, and Jude fixed it, and then we had coffee. That’s it. Nothing else.”

Shireese shook her head, turning back to the stove.

“Bet you ten bucks your frat boy thinks different.”