Chapter Five: Not Alone

He was hoping the new school year would end smoother than last year did. Last year he had crashed and burned, and it wasn't because of the stress of exams. It was about something far more personal, so personal he wasn't sure if he should tell anyone. All the problems had started in the second semester, not long after Christmas break. The email he had recieeved during last year's second semester from an unknown source had struck more than one nerve, it had struck many and frazzled them all. It had bothered him all through the summer and it had eaten hours off of his sleep.

Lonnie was first to comment on how he was starting to look like a racoon due to the dark circles under his eyes. His half-brother Aziz, noted that Jay seemed jumpy and a little paranoid. And this was true; he had a right to be jumpy and paranoid. Someone had been watching him through a lens and snapping photos. Obscene didn't know why he had been targeted. He didn't know if anyone else at school had seen the picture. He didn't want to know what kind of people were looking at the picture.

Jay just wanted to forgot that it existed, but it was there, in color and in hundreds of thousand little pixels. He didn't tell his father, or his mother, or anyone. But Carlos seemed to catch onto his sudden shift in behaviour since he seemed to latch onto Jay like a baby koala to its mother. Just before their sophomore year wrapped out, Carlos eventually confronted Jay on his behaviour, and Jay had caved like a mine without support beams.

It felt good having someone else know. The sick feeling he had had in the depths of his stomach had eased considerably, but he was still distraught about the fact that someone had taken nude photos of him and more than likely spread them throughout the internet. If it was on the internet, which he assumed it was, it would be there forever; talk about the lack of privacy.

"Are you sure it wasn't one of the other guys from our gym class, or one of the sports teams trying to pl-"
"I'm sure about it, 'Los!" Jay exclaimed, struggling to keep his voice down to a conversational tone. "If it was a joke, it would have been plastered all over the school. Everyone would know. This was creepy. It came from an email address I've never known and it's probably on the internet but I'm too scared to look...What if there are dozens, or hundreds-"
Carlos placed a firm hand on his shoulder. "Jay, calm down. It'll be alright."

And now, here they were in their junior year and they were still trying to deal with the problem. It still grated on Jay's nerves, and he wasn't sure how much more of it he could take. The little voice in his head wondered time and again if things were going to ever be "alright" again.

Instead of heading home with Mal after final bell, Jay met up with Carlos outside near the bike racks while the school emptied. Sometimes, Jay wanted to get Mal involved in their situation; she was good at dealing with the pressure that came along with problems. But at the same time, he didn't want to involve her if it wasn't necessary; right now, Carlos seemed like more than enough help. And he was the only one of their small group that had a decent understanding of computers; he wasn't sure how Mal would react to the situation on hand. She could be rather hot headed at times, and Jay didn't want her exploding on him for trying to keep it hidden for so long. Especially from her.
Thankfully, Mal was more concerned about her own problems at the moments than his own, which was just fine with him.

"Let's go to the library," Carlos said, leading the way, "I don't want to dig for this kind of info at home." Jay trailed slightly behind his smaller friend, hands shoved deep into his pockets, his mind floating up into the clouds.

"So, I was thinking that whoever took this picture is most likely someone from the school," Carlos said, keeping his voice relatively low so anyone passing by wouldn't overhear them. "So that narrows it down a lot. Whether that be student or teacher, that's not clear yet, but I feel like it could be a teacher with what you said about if people were pulling a prank." He really appreciated that Carlos was so eager to help him find out who had taken the photo and released it onto the world wide web, but at the same time, there was this anxiety that gnawed at his innards about solving the problem, if it could be solved. Sometimes ignorance was bliss, not knowing better than knowing. Hearing Carlos say that there was a possibility that there was a teacher taking photos of students while they changed deeply disturbed him.

"What if we're just creating a bigger problem, Carlos?" he asked, coming to a stop just outside the library doors.
"How would we be making the problem bigger," Carlos asked. He pushed open the doors to the library and led Jay to study table that was in the farthest corner of the library in a fairly empty, secluded area. "I'm trying to help you Jay; I'll be as careful as I can."
"I mean, I know you're practically a genius, but what if you make a mistake and instead of sending the police after the Peeping Tom, what if they come after us."

There were times that Jay wished that he was technologically savvy instead of athletically inclined, but if he was, he probably wouldn't have met Lonnie by being a computer nerd. Not that there was anything wrong with being a computer nerd; Carlos had helped him out countless times and he had managed to meet sweet Jane through his engineering class. So, their talents had worked out for them in their own way.

While Carlos dug around and tried to hack into whatever system, Jay tried to focus on some of the homework that had been given to him for his Geography class, anything to try and calm his nerves about what Carlos might find. He was surprised that for the first full week back to school, the homework seemed like too much, but as his teacher, Mr. Fitzgerald, had said, he wanted to everyone to get a look ahead before they came to the hurdle. At least, it was something like that.

He wasn't aware that he had drifted into a sleepy daze until he heard Carlos call out his name rather loudly, even though he was siting right across from the smaller boy, which resulted in some cross stares from other students who stayed behind to do school work.
"What did you find?" Jay asked past the building lump in his throat.

"Okay, so there's good news, and there's bad news." He glanced towards Jay; Carlos' eyes read as concerned, but his posture showed excitement, which left Jay feeling confused. " Which do you want to hear first?" Jay gripped the table tightly as he felt his stomach clench in anticipation. Did he really want to know about the good or bad news? Right now, his gut was definitely tell him that no news was good news. He didn't want to hear any of whatever Carlos had found.

"Okay, bad news is that whoever took this picture and sent it is covering up his tracks. I can't locate the original IP address that it was sent from; it keeps bouncing around. And, from what I've seen while searching around, the photo is on a couple of porn sites. The good news though...," he trailed off, his eyes drifting back to the computer screen before darting back to Jay's face.
"What, Carlos, just tell me already."

Carlos took a deep breath and exhaled equally as heavily. "I mean, I think it's good news, for you anyway." Jay glared at his friend, urging him to hurry up and spit it out for him. He couldn't take much more waiting or the anticipation just might kill him.

"Whoever is taking pictures wasn't targeting only you Jay." Carlos glanced around for prying eyes before turning his laptop around to face Jay. "There are other students from this school that have their picture up here. They're in the same situation as you Jay; you're not alone."

A/N: Sorry that this chapter was a lot shorter than the others. For some reason, Jay and Carlos are probably the most difficult for me to write. But I hope you enjoy! And thank you to those that have left reviews; they really make my day! This will probably be my last update until April; I'm going on vacation in a few days so I won't have access to my computer.