Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
Olivia POV
La Reunion Dormitory
I held the phone to my ear as Cathy sighed through the handset for the twenty eighth time.
“What was it called again?”
“Quick. Acc-ess,” she drew out the word in obvious frustration. So palpable, if I set my phone down, I was pretty sure some kind of pinkish-tan ick would ooze out of the speaker and form the word: frustrating.
I tried again to type into the little bar, but my thumb brushed the mousepad and my cursor was someplace else. I needed a new laptop.
“You sure you can't wait until I'm there to do this?” The sound of tapping in the background was Cathy's signature soundtrack. I wasn't entirely sure what to call her other than my friend and resident cyber expert. She coded, she gamed, she scripted, she hacked. But “only for the good guys”, she'd say. I just hoped she and I were always on the same side.
“What if you just sent me the file?” Cathy said.
“Oh, um, sure.” Made sense. “I can do that. But then how?—”
“I’ll unzip it and load everything up on my personal ShareDrive for you. Once it’s done, I’ll forward you the link to the folder. I'll set it up inside the folder you already have access to.” Some more key tapping. “And done.”
“Ok. Now I just need to figure out how to use this.” I selected the file and it blinked red. When I clicked the error a registration form came up. With a fee. I huffed. “Of course, I need to create an account and pay money. Suck.”
“You can just text me when you've sent it.”
“We haven't caught up in ages. This won't take me long.” I filled out the online account form.
“Liv, I'll be there next Friday. We have the whole weekend to catch up.”
“Oh, before Hilda and Dubby get here? Awesome. We can stream this new K-drama Lucy told me about.”
“Deal.” Some more rapid-fire typing. “I need something funny. And romantic. I'm tired of little boys .”
I winced. That could mean only one of two things happened. I guessed at which one. “Got hit on by another thirteen-year-old gamer?”
“Ugh, it's depressing,” she said with a groan.
Bingo. Happened far too often. She liked to game, was a badass at it. And too many of the guys who could keep up with her were younger teens. “I know the feeling.” My prospects are just as depressing . The screen went dark. My stomach dropped and my reflection in the laptop screen grimaced. Then the little loading icon came up. “Phew.”
“What's that?” Cathy’s voice sounded far away. More tapping filtered through my phone.
“Nothing. Just quietly freaked out when the screen went dark. I can't say the user experience with this thing is worth what I had to pay to send one stupid file.”
She snorted. “Whose is? But yeah, I'll be there Friday. What've you been up to since you got there? Seen much of the campus? The town?”
I laughed. “Hate to break it to you, but this is what you get for doing a virtual reality tour. There's no town. Campus is nice, though.”
“Eh, doesn't bother me. I'm there for school, my few friends. And no parental oversight telling me what to do twenty-four hours a day.” The clickity-clack typing stopped. “Ah, freedom, besides, I can do what I do as long as I have power and wifi,” she said with a real sigh of relief. She and her adopted parents had been struggling to connect since her older brother had gone away to college. They meant well, but didn't really understand her.
“I can't wait. That and non-stop hang-outs with you and Hilda.” Cathy said with a smile in her voice. “At least until her medical internship takes her away.”
The loading bar crept across the screen. I had to stop looking at it. “Not until junior year. How can anyone plan that far ahead?”
“Some people just . . . do. But anyway, you didn't say?—”
“Been covering baseball camp—for the paper.” The upload bar finally finished. The page refreshed, displaying the words: check your email for confirmation. What the hell? “I have check my email to make sure the file went?”
“Seriously?”
“That's what I said.” I opened my webmail. There were at least ten messages from the service already. Ugh.
“More baseball? You didn't get enough testosterone and tiny balls while interning for Curt?”
“You sound like Dubby. Ugh, looks like I signed up for FastTransfer’s perma-spam program. Joy.”
“Oh yeah, they already sold your data. That’s how it works.”
I ducked my head into my hand. “Great.”
“So, what’s in this one hundred and twenty-eight gigabyte treasure trove? By the way, who’s the school Internet provider? That upload speed’s not the worst I've seen.”
“Uh. Hmmm.” I glanced around my computer screen as if that would somehow tell me . . . something. “How do I tell the provider?”
“There’s usually a clue in the SSID. What’s your wifi connection called?”
I pulled up the list of available networks I'd chosen from earlier. “Student-verse Reunion.”
“Hm.” She clicked her tongue. “What others are in the list?”
“Oh, yikes, ImHackingYou, all one word. FBI Surveillance Van, uh- huh . Student-verse Alamo, Student-verse Rio Grande, names of nearby dorms. Can you tell we’re in Texas? Mobile h0t sp0t with some suspicious-looking zeroes instead of oh’s.”
She giggled. “That’s my girl.”
“Z-Verse-Athlete-Zone? Maybe one of the athletic dorms? And Not-a-pineapple.” I snorted.
“You have hackers on campus. Already.”
“The only people supposed to be here are those in athletic camp, and some support staff—like coaches, trainers, journalists.”
“Don’t connect to Not-a-pineapple, or we can’t be friends.”
I laughed. “You've taught me better than that! So, Z-verse? Is that what you were looking for?” I shrugged like she could see me.
“That’s it. I can look up their coverage map to be sure. My guess is the college is on its own dedicated lines.”
“Even if it wasn’t. It's not like?—”
“Uh Liv?” Her voice dropped. “These look like emails. Does the name Hank Schorr mean anything?”
I frowned at my computer screen. “Yeah, he’s the Strikers head Coach. Why?”
“Looks like someone sent you the Coach's entire email archive. Is that what you were looking for?”
My chest tightened. “No. Weren’t there some, I dunno, Excel files? Database exports? Something with actual data?” I rubbed at my temple.
“The coach didn't send this to you, did he?” Her voice held a strange timbre.
“No, Lan did.” I found myself pacing the floor. “The trainer guy? I guess Coach gives him access to his emails?”
Cathy blew out a breath. “If you say so.”
“I mean, Coach does everything via hard copy. He asked me to create tracking sheets and keep his calendar. Then handed me a bunch of paper—lots of printed off emails.”
“Oh.”
“Someone has to actually respond to people?” Maybe that’s why my emails went unanswered. “Could be why Lan was given access?” Seemed plausible, right? Maybe. Hopefully. My stomach churned, telling me it had its doubts.
“I’m logging my opinion as ‘sus’.” Cathy’s voice took on a grump-tastic tone Curt would’ve been proud of.
“That’s fair. I’d hoped he’d send data files. As it is, I’m still stuck having to do a bunch of manual?—”
“Shit work.”
I sighed. “Joke’s on me. Coach did say it wasn’t going to be exciting work to start.” I rolled my eyes and sat back in my chair.
“Sorry, hon. There’s quite a bit of stuff to sift through.”
“I only need emails back to, well, let me find it.” I flipped through the pages of the paper block of doom. “Looks like May of this year.”
“You want me to delete the rest?”
“I mean. Yeah? I’m curious. Nosy, even. But also super gut wrenchingly anxious that Coach would think I . . . did something wrong.”
“You flirted and got access to stuff you shouldn’t have. There’s a name for that.” She lowered her voice to a whisper: “social engineering.”
“Ok ok.” My breath was now coming in gasps. My heart raced in my chest. “Delete everything before May, but let me get you the list of what I do need.” The paper shook in my hand. “But even you can agree that printed hyperlinks are horribly unfair.”
“Yeah ok. He deserves flogging for that.”
I forced out a laugh. “I’ll try to find out what the situation is with Coach’s email—who has access and why. But just in case. I don’t want any record . . .”
“Leave the last part to me,” Cathy said. “See ya Friday.” She hung up.
What would have possessed Lan to send me Schorr's entire email archive? Was it just easier than backtracking through the files that were printed off?
Find an angle. Tread lightly. Maybe it’s no big deal.
My stomach said it didn’t believe that either. Maybe it was just grumpy cause it needed food. Real food. Not another chicken sandwich with extra-dry sand-based bread. I needed to renegotiate my allowance with my dad.
Two weeks later . . .
“He acts like I’m somehow personally responsible for his-his bullshit.” I groused to the ceiling of my dorm room. Stretched across the lone couch made quite possibly of stone, I threw my head back against the square-shaped arm. “I’m a reporter for the school . Not here to embarrass our team or the players. It barely counts as real journalism: so and so went one for five before hitting the winning run. Jerk. Imbecile. Certified asshat.”
“Who cares?” Dublin the “real world” human behind the social influencer handle GirlBoss-Power hissed back. She flipped her long black hair over her shoulder. “He’s a delinquent. He shouldn’t even be here.”
“Coop’s not a delinquent . If his mom were still alive, he’d be in the majors this season. And I would be deprived.”
“Uh. So, what, go death?” Cathy’s head with her auburn waves finally peeked over her open laptop screen.
“No!” I righted myself and stared. “No. That’s not what I—Just . . . he’s an amazing ball player.” And even hotter in person. Dammit. How can he hate me?
“Looking at his IG account. Talk about bare. Just a pic with some mongrel-looking dog. Wolf? You did say Oklahoma farm boy.” She shuddered. “Probably raised by wolves.”
“Coyote?” Cathy called out over the tap tap tap of her keyboard.
“How old is this pic?” Dublin held out her phone. I stood so I could look at the image. A younger version of Breslin Cooper knelt next to a hunting hound. One arm around the animal’s neck, hair naturally tousled over his forehead. Those dark midnight eyes gleamed. Gorgeous.
“Hm. I can see his incredible baseball player abilities tattoo on his left pec.”
A tattoo? I snagged her phone, eyes darting to the expanse of bare-chested wonderfulness, but not before noting the carefree grin on his face. “I don’t see a tattoo.”
A loud dramatic huff before the picture was rudely ripped away. “You’re clearly interested in his ‘baseball talent’.” Dublin's mouth pressed into a thin line.
“Yeah, I am. I think he’s a real opportunity—for our school. We haven't won a national championship since my brother played for the team.” I need to download that pic.
“You mean has a real opportunity? Or is one?” Cathy's voice managed to hold some inflection, unlike her usual blunt tone.
I fidgeted. “Is one.”
“Yeah, you just like watching him ‘play ball’ in those tight baseball pants.”
I shrugged and looked away. I mean, it wasn't the primary reason I liked baseball. Just, a particular perk of the job. But my friends have never understood or fully appreciated my #baseballlove. “It's not why I love baseball. It's the family business. I spent time with Curt over the summer on the job with him. And I've decided that's what I want to do: I want to be a baseball scout.”
There. I'd officially said it.
“Oh no. No no no no.” Dublin's face screwed up into a scowl. “Are you kidding me, Liv?”
“Full support.” Cathy called from her corner of the room.
“See? Cat gets me.”
“Just fuck one or seven of them and get the whole lot out of your system.” Dublin held up her phone again. This time the picture was of Coop being led away, in handcuffs, by Oklahoma sheriffs. “But not this one.”
“I don’t want to sleep with him.” Not now. I mean, maybe before. But definitely not until I could find a way to make him realize . . . I was on his side. And we should probably just start with kissing. Those lips looked like they were made for kissing.
“If there was something I could do that would help him, or anyone on the team, I would.” And that didn’t come out right. I pointed at Dubby. “That’s not meant to be sexual—in any way.”
“That’s not actually what a baseball scout does.” Cathy tossed into the conversation. One earphone over her ear, one off. How does she do that?
“Not helping, Cat.” I called over my shoulder. “Dubby, Coop was the best .”
“He is . A nightmare. You don’t want a bad boy type. That’s not who you are, Liv. You are a badass. A sharp, ambitious badass and one of those disgustingly motivated entrepreneurial types. I see them all day, surrounding my dad. They exhaust me.” She sighed with her whole body as she flopped onto the couch.
Wait, was that a compliment? Or an insult?
“Oh, but not you, dear.” Dublin waved a hand as she stared at her phone.
“Right.” I glanced at Cathy, but her gaze was transfixed on her computer screen. Did I say that out loud? I ran a hand over my face. This was the experience that was Dublin. “What do you need this time?”
“Not finished. The bad boy alpha type?” She perched on the edge of the sofa. And it was like a different person took over: stick straight posture from her modeling days. Long fingernails wiggled in the air. “My GirlBoss Power women are so over them. The new hotness is cinnamon roll love. The kinda guy who’s a little happy-go-lucky and a lot high on cheering for his girl.” She lifted her eyes and gave me a pet smile.
“Uh-huh.”
“If one of them exists in tight little baseball pants, by all means, grab one and delight in his delicious gooey center. And that is meant to be sexual. In every way. Oh!” Her eyes widened. “I should totally make a reel about this.”
I groaned, although this was a new record, I was fairly certain, before Dublin’s mind went back to her ‘full time job’ of being an Influencer.
And she took my picture. Great.
“When does Hilda get here?” Cat threw the question out into the silence of the room.
“Thursday,” I said with a sigh. “She got caught up in the worst series of flight delays. But she’ll be here Thursday.” I turned to look at Cathy. “She’s asked us to collect syllabi and assignments from her classes.”
“You’ve got the list?” Cathy's keyboard tapping began again in earnest.
“Yeah.” I unlocked my phone as I moved closer. “It’s in my ForeverNotes. You want me to text it to you?”
“No need. I'll just snag them from your cloud account.”
I frowned and looked at my phone. “What?”
“I have the list, now.” Cathy sipped at her StarStruck soda and went back to typing.
I looked at Dublin. She shrugged and focused on her social media-ing.
“Um, how?”
“I'll just download the assignments and syllabi from the administrators' ShareDrive. We won’t even have to leave the dorm.” Cathy cracked her knuckles and wiggled her fingers. As if she needed to rev them up.
“Uh? Isn’t that kinda, illegal?” I leaned over her shoulder. “I can just hoof it tomorrow.”
“Is it illegal to have a bad password?” Cathy yawned and stretched. I darted out of the way.
“Um? I don’t think so?” I stared at my ForeverNote app and looked for some sign she had accessed my files. “Can anyone just get into my stuff?
“Is it illegal to randomly guess a bad password?” Cathy kept her eyes on her computer as she scoffed her question.
Curious, I leaned over her shoulder, again. Several dark screens with green code sat open on her desktop. In one window, she typed a series of commands. Words scrolled across the screen.
“No,” I said as I straightened and leaned against her desk. “But, I'm pretty sure there’s some acceptable use language that we signed that says it’s against policy to employ a password cracker and obfuscate your IP address while using university resources. She finally glanced up and gave me a lopsided grin.
“I’ll go tomorrow. Don’t . . . hack anything.”
Cathy pouted.
I rolled my eyes at her. “Unless it’s an emergency.”
Green eyes met mine and she grinned.
“What did you do? No, don't tell me.” I shook my head and rubbed a hand over my forehead. “Yes, tell me.”
“Hilda's all checked in. Wouldn't want her to get dropped for missing the first class.”
The fact that it was a fair point . . . I sighed. “Just don’t hack anything else .”
“Unless it's an emergency. Got it.” Cathy actually bounced in her seat as she went back to her coding. Or whatever.
“I’ll finish editing this reel later. It's going to be epic.” Dublin announced as she bounded to her feet. “I’ll call it ‘Cinnamon Rolls over Alpha-holes, advice from Livvie’s BFF.’”
I turned to face her. “Sometimes I hate you.”
“But you always love me . Liv, your toxic ballplayer guy has anger issues, a juvie record.” She lifted her eyebrows and made a ‘mom’ face at me.
I groaned. I can't argue with that, but the way she says it is so unfair.
“And is only here at Podunk Cattle Tech West Texas on scholarship . Translation: he’s poorer than dirt.”
“It’s actually a good school. Often called the Ivy League of the South.” Cathy argued the point like she was reading a Wikipedia page.
Dublin rolled her eyes in such an exaggerated fashion her head swiveled on her neck. “Please.”
Cathy pushed back from her desk. “It’s not cheap. Out of state tuition is over twenty kay a year.” She glared at Dublin. “How is it you’re here, then?”
“Me? Oh, I’m not enrolled .” Dublin held a manicured hand with lavender nails to her chest and laughed.
I gaped. “What?”
“I’m taking a class. One. So I can be here, on campus with my girls. I may need to crash in your room a few days a week. Depends on how fast I find my own cinnamon roll love.”
“Uh.” My stomach flipped over. Hilda would be pissed. “And how long do you think you can hide from your dad this time?”
She shrugged. “As long as I want to, dear. I just need the teensiest bit of a loan. I can Venmo you once I convert some of my digicoin to cash.”
I was clearly not cut from the same cloth as Dublin. But we'd been friends, frenemies, some strange ebbs and flows between the two, since we were toddlers when she stole my doll then knocked over the “house” I was building for them to live in. “How much do you need?”
She winced. “Just a couple of hundred. Geez.”
And that would kill my allowance money. For the month. I sighed. “Dubby.” I had a small amount of savings and no idea if I could manage a job on top of my schoolwork, reporting, baseball. Or even if I could find one in this town.
“Don't 'Dubby' me, Livia. You know I wouldn't ask if it wasn't epically essential.”
“This one time. And you pay it back by the end of the week.”
“In spades,” she purred.
“And you owe me. Cat, make a note. Dublin Serra owes me a favor. I can cash it in at my whim. And she cannot question or refuse. Are we all clear?”
Dublin gave me a thin-lipped smile. “I look forward to the challenge.”
I had no idea what I would ask for. But with her follower count in the hundreds of thousands, I was pretty sure there was something she could do to repay the many many many favors I'd lost count of over the years.
“And thanks for always being there for me when I need it, Liv.” Dublin tossed over her shoulder with her dramatic exit.
Yeah, right. And so we're back to frenemies. I wonder if she'll change the name of her reel.