“Whoops,” his mom said, and dabbed at the carpet with a napkin as, on-screen, avatars appeared for all of Jonah’s aliases, for his role-playing games, and for what I could only assume were hacker memberships.
“Jonah was just about to tell us about this new club he joined,” I told his mother.
“A club,” she said hopefully. “Like a school one?”
“Extracurricular,” I said.
Jonah pressed his lips together. “It’s nothing.”
“Well, I’m sure it’s not nothing.” Mrs. Logan had finished with the spill and now turned her attention to the coffee cake. “Who wants cake? Sorry, kids. Jonah always gets the first piece.”
Rory gazed at Sharma. “Be still my beating heart.” Then, cracking his knuckles, he said, “My turn.”
Now on Jonah’s G-File, under the video section, small clips filled the screen. It was all the videos he’d authored. Mine and Mr. E.’s was first, as it had the most views, but the other girls’ came right after.
“Wait,” Jonah said. “What are you doing?”
“Is that too big a slice, hon?” Mrs. Logan stopped cutting cake; in an aside to me, she mock-whispered, “Jonah thinks he’s getting chubby.”
As if his mother’s humiliation of him weren’t enough, on-screen there were now what appeared to be a bunch of old Batman movies that had Jonah’s head superimposed over Batman’s. Rory selected one. It whirled to life. It was immediately obvious, as Batman faced off against the Joker, that Jonah was playing all the parts.
“Harsh,” he whispered, then louder: “Stop it.”
“You don’t have to eat it all.”
Beneath the video, all the pics that Jonah was Woofered in began to surface. Pics you could normally only see through ConnectBook could now be viewed by anyone. Rory and Sharma had just uncoded his life and privacy faster than it took Jonah’s mom to cut a slice of cake.
“No!” Jonah shouted. “You can’t put all that…dessert…on my plate for everyone to see. This will ruin me.”
Mrs. Logan blinked once, twice, then chuckled. “Jonah, it’s just cake. You love cake.”
But then the sheer delight on four of the five faces around her finally caught her attention.
“What’s everyone looking at?”
She turned to face the wall screen.
Jonah shouted, “Safe America. It’s called Awareness for a Safe America.”
The wall screen flipped back to Jonah’s original, bare G-File.
“Dear me,” his mother said. “That sounds like quite the dope club. What does it do, JoJo?”
Jonah’s face was white. With shaking hands, he took the huge slice of cake his mother offered him.
“I’ll tell you about it later, Mom.” Jonah set the cake on the coffee table and sat on his hands. “Do you mind if I hang with my friends now, alone?”
Now that everyone was served, Mrs. Logan had just been about to sit. She covered the hurt over her revoked invite with a bright smile and patted Jonah on the head, then left. Sharma or Rory—who could tell which at this point?—was already bringing up the Encyclo screen for Safe America.
“You won’t find much written there,” Jonah said, correctly.
The definition stated that Awareness for a Safe America was a privately funded Internet-safety watchdog group. And that was about it.
“They found me. Messaged me through a Kruel Killers board—”
“Detective game where you hunt and kill serial killers,” Rory chimed in.
“—things like: ‘Interested in being a Kruel detective in real life? Make money finding RL Kruels.’ I thought it was spam. Except a dude I’m connected with on the game said he worked for them. That they’re legit. Said the work was fun and all-caps DOLLAR SIGNS. Zipped-lips face what kind of work. Didn’t take me long to find out. I totes hacked my friend’s e-mail. ASA had him scooping up Woofer pics of congressmen with chicks who did not equal-sign their wives—I sent ASA my e-sumé stat.”
Jonah couldn’t make eye contact worse than anyone I’d ever seen. It was like an invisible hand was pushing his head down and to the left. And it was horrible listening to him. He practically spoke in emotes. I was tempted to have Sharma give him subtitles. Wait. That was where I’d heard that name before.
“Safe America brought down that shady senator, right?” I asked. “They’re behind the Dubai scandal exposé.”
“Couldn’t say.” Jonah smirked. “The focus they assigned me was to stop-sign child molesters. It was all up to me to find the supporting vids and pics. It’s not hard. You find raunchy home vids, then use Woofer software, then write a diff program that cross-references against employment info, one that cross-references against age info. Found a doctor, a guitar instructor in Jersey—”
“And then, let me guess, you stopped finding people so you started forging the videos instead? That wasn’t me with my teacher.”
Jonah shrugged. “Well, it could have been. In the original vid the girl’s face was all blurred out, but the guy was clearly a teacher. That’s clearly sex in a classroom. I just connected A to B. I mean obv the guy’s got issues if he gets off on that kind of thing. Is that someone you want around impressionable sixteen-year-olds?”
“But it’s fake. And he got fired. You’re ruining lives.”
“I posted one vid on your school’s faculty message board after hours. It was taken down five minutes after it posted. Your life equaled ruined in five minutes? Please.”
“No, it was ruined the next morning when you reposted it to the Student Activities board.”
“I never reposted it. The only people I need to see it are the administrators. My job is done as soon as pervy gets caught.”
“What about those photos you took of me and Mr. E. by his apartment? What about that video you shot of me through FaceAlert? What about AnyLiesUnmade?”
“What’s that?”
“Your alias.”
“No it isn’t,” he laughed. “Trust me. Why waste all that effort when the vid is the clincher? The last time I touched anything having to do with your case was when I posted the vid to the faculty board, like, a week ago. Look, you saw all my aliases up there. ‘Any lies unmade’? That’s just dumb. ‘All lies unmade’ is more like it and better English.”
Said the guy who barely spoke the language. Yet it matched up to what Mr. E. had said about the video first posting the night before on Prep’s Faculty Activities board. Jonah’s whole life was exposed before us. Why would he lie?
Jonah snorted. “Sounds like I’m not the one who ruined your life after all.”
“So who did?”
“You figure it out.” Jonah took a huge bite of coffee cake and then coughed on the powdered sugar topping. “I’m sure you have frenemies abounding.”
I couldn’t believe it. We were back to square one. Mac stroked my thumb with his. It felt nice, but it was more of a…you know what? I needed to focus. We were back to square one. Sharma txted me a pic of a French bulldog that looked like it was bowed down in prayer. The caption said: Have Faith.