Chapter Six: Make it a Plan

Most of his life, he'd been a rather timid person. A wallflower that blended in at social functions and had more fun with his nose stuck in a book than out at one of the school's pep rallies or sports game. However, Carlos thought that over the years, his timid nature had faded a bit as he got into his high school years. He had wonderful friends that would stand up for him, and the bond that he made with them over the years made him fiercely protective of them.

He'd fight for them, which was saying a lot in his opinion since he normally liked to remain out of physical confrontation whenever possible. And yet, despite becoming less timid over the years, people still thought they could take advantage of him. It didn't bother him really; he kind of expected it; he was small for his age, so it made sense that everyone would want to pick on the smallest, thinking that he couldn't defend himself. But he'd never thought in a million years that someone would take advantage of Jay and make his friend feel so vulnerable.

Jay was similar to an idol in Carlos' mind; he was outgoing and friendly, athletic and tall; everything that Carlos wished he had in his next life. He wasn't jealous of his friend but was glad that someone as great and as popular as Jay would want to be friends with someone as geeky as Carlos. When they'd met in elementary, it was Jay who had come up to him, asking to play even though there were dozens of other children to choose from; he chose to befriend to geeky little mouse in the corner reading a book about outer space. To Carlos, that said a lot to him about the character that Jay was.

And it bothered him that Jay was so deeply bothered by the leaked nude photo. There were only three people in his life that he hated to see in a distraught state: Mal, Jay, and his mother. And with his mother generally a distraught mess most of the time when she was in one of her "inspirational" manic states, seeing two of these three people in distress made him feel distraught himself.

He wasn't good when it came to anxiety. In an attempt to shake the feeling that clung to him like a monkey on his back, Carlos had been searching non-stop to try and figure out where the original location of the email had come the age of six, Carlos had learned that his mother was a bit of a lost cause; he couldn't force her to take her meds, but Jay was not. He wasn't about to give up in searching for the culprit, but at the same time, he didn't want to alert any undercover cops browsing around online for pedophiles and such. Jay was right when he said he had to be careful. Unfortunately, the thoughts of cops and prison only succeeded in making his anxiety worse.

Needless to say, after finding out about Jay's secret, Carlos had become more wary about the locker rooms himself in fear that someone would capture his nude image without permission. From the other pictures he had found that captured some students he knew, all of them were taken in the boys locker room, either around the locker area or in the showers themselves.

It was disturbingly strange that no one had caught glimpse of a Peeping Tom with a camera at their side; it was as though they were like steam, appearing when the water ran hot and disappearing as soon as the water had run cold. And walking around with a camera in a locker room of all places seemed rather suspicious to begin with. From the porn site where he had found Jay's picture, he had found six other schoolmates nudes as well. Not all he was friendly with, but he knew them all by name and face. He didn't know if they knew about the pictures like Jay did, but if they didn't he wanted them to know. Perhaps if they teamed up together, they'd be able to catch whoever the culprit was.
It was a plan that he would have to put into action.

Most days after school had let out, Carlos liked to take his little furry friend, Dude, for a walk. And most days, he was rather routine about it, but today he was running a bit behind because he had gotten so caught up in trying to find the Peeping Tom's true IP address. Although he hated to admit it, whoever this person was, they were really smart; they must have been bouncing their signal off of more than a dozen IP addresses if Carlos couldn't track them down immediately.

He hadn't even taken two steps on the side walk before he saw Evie come down the street with her clones in tow. They were all chatting over one another, which vaguely reminded Carlos of the sea gulls from Finding Nemo. A few of them glanced at him and gave him a snarky little smile. Evie paid him no attention. Even though Evie had disconnected from him and others last year, the ache he felt every time he saw her still felt fresh. He missed Evie, but he wouldn't know how to go about winning her back; he wasn't great when it came to talking to girls, even if these girls were his friends.

Evie and Carlos had been neighbours practically their entire lives. When they had been friends, it had been a great advantage to see each other everyday, especially if Mal or Jay weren't available for whatever reason. Their rooms were right across from one another, and their houses mirrored design layouts, so sometimes they'd sit out on their respective roofs and watch the stars. It had been nice to have private, quiet moments like that with Evie and it was such a shame that Evie seemed to want nothing to do with him, Jay or Mal anymore. Carlos had never thought that joining cheer team would change her so much, Evie seemed so resilient to change, but obviously he had been wrong about that. He wondered if he was wrong about anything else when it came to his friends.

The weekend was coming to an end rather quickly, and tomorrow Monday morning would be the official second full week of school. And although that didn't sound like an accomplishment to most people, Carlos was glad to survive the first entire week of school without having any pranks played on him. Thank god there were freshmen for that.

Carlos had stopped by over at Jay's, who seemed glad to get out of his place for the night, and headed back over to his place. It wasn't very often that Jay stayed over at his house; he rarely had anyone over due to his mother being rather insane or drunk or a combination of the two. But when she wasn't drunk, she actually was fairly productive when it came to her line of work. Cruella had become an insanely popular fashion designer in Europe and her career was finally starting to take roots in good ol' USA. However, Carlos assumed that the stress was getting to her lately; the more stressed she was, the more liquor that disappeared from the wine cabinet.
It was nothing new for him, but it was starting to worry him nonetheless.

As Carlos turned the key in the lock and pushed open the door, he could hear two loud voices coming from the living room, neither of which belonged to his mother. Carlos sighed heavily, hurriedly ushering Jay upstairs towards his room before his mother's goons realized that he was home. Carlos wasn't exactly sure what the relationship between Horace, Jasper and his mother was. He knew they were more than friends, and when he was younger his mother had referred to them as his uncles, even though they weren't blood relatives. But they always seemed to be around; needless to say he tried to avoid being in the same room as them.

They could be a bit strange at times, and they weren't exactly the brightest, but Carlos appreciated the fact that they both seemed interested in his inventions, even though they had no idea what he was talking about. But today, he wanted to stay out of their way. He rarely brought anyone home with home. He feared that they'd run into his mother, who was more than a bit unhinged, and normally drinking wine like it was going out of style, and if she was super drunk, well then...she could chat your ear off as long as Cruella was in a good mood. Anything other than happy and she'd be ready to hurl the closest object at whoever happened to walk by.

Luckily though, his mother wasn't anywhere on the second floor so it was easy to sneak Jay into his room. It was only when the two snuck downstairs to get something to eat that they ran into her sitting in the parlor, a glass of wine in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other. The room was thick with the stench of smoke from the cancer stick. It felt like a bear trap

"Darling, who's your friend? I don't think I've met them." Carlos fought the urge to roll his eyes; this statement was not true, Jay had met his mother numerous times, the first time being at his eighth birthday party when it had just been him, Jay, Evie and Mal.
"This is Jay, you've met before.'
"Hmm,: she muttered. She tapped her chin thoughtfully. "Well, I certainly don't recognize the young man."

"Whatever happened to that blue haired girl," his mother asked, placing her glass of wine carefully back onto its coaster. "She had a decent sense and understanding of fashion. I quite liked her actually."

"You mean Evie?" His mother nodded, taking a long drag off of the cigarette she had in hand. "Yes, that one. She would have made such a good work assistant. She actually knew how to sew and make the clothing she designed." Her eyes focused onto Jay as though she had only just realized he was in the room. Her beady little eyes traveled up and down his body. As she took a swallow of wine, she pointed at him with her cigarette, the butt glowing an angry orange.

"Have you ever thought about modeling? You certainly have the looks and body for it." In his peripheral vision, Carlos noted the way Jay shifted uncomfortably under his mother's words; they were definitely the wrong thing to say at the moment with what Jay was dealing with. They needed to get out of the room before his mother decided to tell some story; she tended to ramble way too much when she was drunk.
"Jay was actually helping me with fixing that upstairs heater. You know, the one in the office." It wasn't technically a lie, but Carlos wanted to get back upstairs before his mother could start a drunken tale. But sooner rather than later, Carlos would have to get around to fixing said heater or his mother would box his ears, and that wasn't just an expression.

Once they had consumed their snacks of Cheetos and Mountain Dew, Carlos redrew their focus back to the porn site and the photos. After several quiet moments, he turned to Jay, who gave him a strange look.
"What's with that expression Carlos, I don't like it."
"So, those photos I found, apparently on this site you can organize them into folders, depending on what you want to look at."
"And where is my picture filed to?"

"Yours and the others are under a folder that's just labeled "School Boys"." He took a swig of his drink and spun his computer desk chair around to face Jay, who sat on his bed. "And I'm starting to think that we should let Mal in on this."
"Why?"
"Ben's on here."

"Shit," Jay muttered. He flopped backwards onto Carlos' bed, covering his face with his hands. "Do we really have to let Mal in on all of this?" Carlos glanced back at the small list of names he had gathered from going through the pictures on the site and then looked back to his friend. He knew Jay wanted to keep the issue as quiet as possible, but Carlos wanted to do right by the others that had their bodies on the internet for all to see; there was a possibility that they, unlike Jay, were uninformed about the nude photos floating around a porn site. But did they really want to get Mal involved?

"I think we should tell Mal, and the other boys that we found on here." Carlos stated. Jay glanced at him from between his hands. He groaned and slowly boosted himself into a sitting position. "Why do you have to be so moral?" "It's the right thing to do, Jay. Besides, Ben is on this list. He's our friend; I'm looking out for him just like I am for you." Jay sighed heavily, visibly upset about the idea of telling other people.

"Who else is on the list?" Jay demanded, the curiosity too much for him to handle.

"Chad, Herkie, Aziz, Gil and Harry." If hearing Ben was on the list upset Jay, hearing the other names made him groan. Once in disgust, once in hate, and thrice for good measure. He got up from Carlos' bed and bent over his shoulder to see the laptop screen better. Carlos watched silently as Jay browsed through the pictures, his expression darkening as he came to the pictures of Aziz.

Carlos knew vaguely that Jay's family was a bit...complicated. Aziz and Jay both shared the same mother, but their fathers were different, and unfortunately, not on best terms with one another. But, as Jay had put it, it hadn't stopped him and Aziz from being brothers and friends. Carlos could only imagine what thoughts were going through Jay's mind at seeing his half-brother's image on here; if he had had any siblings, Carlos would more than likely want to protect them as much as possible. Jay sighed deeply, his breath tickling the side of Carlos' face. He sounded annoyed, but by the way his hand, which had been resting on his desk, had turned to a fist, Jay seemed way past he point of annoyed.

"Okay, do you have a plan on what to do next? Who do we talk to first and what do we tell them?"

A/N: Okay, I lied. One more chapter before I leave for vacation. Hope you enjoy! Likes and reviews are highly, and always appreciated as is constructive criticism if you have it. I honestly found Jay and Carlos hard to write, so I hope I did de Vil justice because he is one of my favorite boys, along with Gil and Harry.