Circuit Board Snow White
Chapter 3: Eighteen
Darcy waited patiently behind the line of students vying for attention and kudos points from their new professor. Sadly, she wasn't here to suck up. With just over a month until her eighteenth birthday, she still needed special treatment when it came to her class work. This had all been so much easier when her parents talked to the principal, who would then send the information down to her individual teachers.
"Hi," Darcy said.
"Yes," the TA said. She thought it was meant to be a question, but it came off as very brusque.
"You said notes and quizzes would be emailed out, but I don't have a computer."
"Use the computer lab on the third floor," the woman said.
"I can't. I'm not allowed to use computers."
That got the woman's attention. She paused while stuffing her notes into her bag and looked at Darcy, properly looked. Her hazel eyes narrowed down to nearly nothing. "Not allowed?"
"Yeah, court order."
"Ah," she said, her face reconfiguring itself as she puzzled out whether Darcy was pulling an initiation prank or if was telling the truth.
"I can get the county clerk to fax over my paperwork if you need, but it's only for five more weeks. If you could just let me take paper quizzes until next month, that'll solve a lot of problems. I can get the notes off someone in class."
The woman nodded slowly. "I'll talk to Professor Avelito about it."
"Thank you," Darcy replied, turning to leave.
"What did you do?"
"Took down the third largest bank in the US with a computer virus when I was nine."
"Fuck."
"Yeah," she shrugged and walked up the stairs and out of the lecture hall.
That had gone better than she expected. The last professor she had spoken to informed her that if she insisted on hand-writing her papers, he would deduct twenty points. She marched from the history building straight to her advisor's office to have him replace that class with anything else that would fill the requirement, ending up in POLS 1001, American Government.
Five more weeks, she thought. Just five more weeks.
A package arrived three days before her birthday with Grama Lewis's return address written on it. She got another, considerably smaller, package from her parents the next day.
"Are you going to open them?" Beth questioned.
As far as roommates went, Beth had been pretty great so far. She came with her own mini-fridge that Darcy was allowed to use. She helped Darcy set up her loft, and together they hung fantastic purple curtains and an epic number of fairy lights. She did question Darcy's lack of computer and phone almost constantly the first week, but that stopped when Darcy offered up the lie of not being able to afford either until the rest of her student loans came through.
Darcy hugged each of the packages in turn and set them on her desk with reverence. "I don't want to be tempted."
The girl gave her a look that spoke to just how odd she thought Darcy was but said nothing more. "So, big birthday plans?"
"Open my presents," she said.
"After that…"
"Nothing special."
That was a lie. Darcy did have plans. Big plans. Ones that involved the new computer from Grama Lewis, Culver's unlimited high speed internet and several hours of setting up proxies to hack into as many government servers as she could in as short a time as possible – the faster she cracked their codes, the less chance there was of them tracing it back to her.
Clearly she wasn't stupid enough to say that out loud.
"Darcy. You aren't home with mom and dad anymore. Let's get you a fake ID and go out!"
She paused, lost as to what to say. She had friends, sure, but she had never had friends close enough to have them want to hang out, let alone break the law together. Admittedly, Darcy's idea of breaking the law ran a bit contrary to the average person's.
"Yeah, okay."
"Awesome. I know a guy. He can make up an ID good enough to fool a lax bartender." As if to prove her point, she pulled a plastic card from her handbag and held it out. Darcy studied it a moment, noting how obviously fake it was and wondering how it could fool anyone.
"I think I could manage one," she insisted. "Could I borrow your computer?"
"Of course!" the girl replied with a wave of her hand. "Just don't break the thing. I know you're, like, stupid with technology."
Darcy forced a laugh and sat down at Beth's desk, typing with speed and purpose, easily breaking the encryptions on the DMV's website and accessing the template for the West Virginian official driving licenses. She cloned it to Beth's computer, deleted her tracks – after dropping her signature into the coding of the system. It would have been easier and made for a better ID to just hack the system to request an ID, but she knew that would have sent up a red flag to her probation officer. She pulled up the file in Photoshop and added some hairline imperfections and odd specks, then printed it out. She pulled a nearly depleted Starbucks gift card from her purse and glued the printed ID in place.
"Laminate that and I think that will fool even the strictest bartender in town," Darcy declared less than an hour later.
"Fuck," Beth cried. "You've been holding out on me, Lewis. How much do you charge for these things?"
"What's that guy you know charge?"
"Fifty bucks."
"Ninety, then. Mine is way better."
"Make me one then. I'll help you pay for that new computer of yours." Beth dug into her purse and started pulling loose twenties from the pockets and odd corners.
"Sixty. Friends and family discount," she insisted. "Plus I'm using your computer to make it happen."
"Truth!" Beth said. "I think Maggie down the hall has a laminator. I'll see if I can borrow it."
She threw the door wide and ran down to knock on the girl's door. By the time she got back, she had collected orders for five more IDs and had even gotten advanced payment from three of them. Suddenly, Darcy wasn't so worried about acquiring all the new computer components she had been circling in catalogues.
Nine hours later, the glow of friendship and possibility had not worn off. Not after her IDs had gotten half the girls on their hall into the best bars downtown. She wobbled down the quaint cobbled sidewalks of the town attached to Culver in heels that only a teenager could think were sensible. Darcy, though smart, was no more clever than any other eighteen-year-old when it came to things like high heels. She giggled as she nearly toppled over into a trashcan, only remaining upright by sheer determination.
"After the next bar, these things are coming off," she decided.
"I hope you mean the pants," a guy smirked at her.
"Dude, smarmy much?"
"Aw, come on, sweetheart, don't be like that," he groaned and sidled up to her, slipping a hand over her shoulder and pulling her close. "Let me buy you a drink."
Darcy was far too inebriated to wield her pointy elbows efficiently. The jackass held her tight, letting his hand slip down her side, groping a breast before taking a firm hold of her hip.
"Dude, let go!"
Beth was too drunk to do anything more than sway menacingly at him before turning and emptying her stomach against the wall.
"Looks like it's just you and m—" his declaration ended in a harsh cry of pain as he was ripped away from her.
Darcy staggered and stumbled but managed to turn and watch him fly across the sidewalk. Her eyes had trouble focusing on the man left in his place. He looked like someone she knew but not someone she had ever met, which made no sense. He was tall and broad-shouldered. His hair was long, and so was his face. Actually, he looked like he disapproved of her life choices.
"Am I supposed to thank you now? I think I'm supposed to thank you now," she slurred.
He said nothing as he turned and summoned a taxi. Darcy managed to get Beth into the backseat and giggled her address to the driver before waving to the man she knew-but-didn't-know. He stood stock still on the pavement as the cab pulled away, his face impossibly sad. The taxi turned as he did, vanishing into the darkness and reminding her where she had seen a man like him before.
oOo
"Ow."
"Don't. It hurts."
"Ow."
"Seriously. Shut it."
"Ow."
"Beth, I swear on all that I hold sacred, I will smother you with a pillow if you keep whining that loud."
Silence met her threat. Her roommate's bed squeaked as she rolled over and, presumably, fell back asleep until the worst of the hangover passed. Darcy would have loved to do the same, but she was still thinking. It hurt her head like she never thought anything could, but she couldn't stop. There was something about last night that was important, but it was lost to the blur of alcohol.
"ow," Beth moaned quietly into her pillow.
Darcy crushed the pillow over her own head and willed the confusion and pain and sickness away. It didn't work, though after a while she did manage to fall back asleep. When she woke, it was getting dark again, the fairy lights bathing the off-white cinder-block walls in a warm glow that was far kinder to her hangover than the daylight had been.
With a grunt, she shoved herself off the bed and down the ladder. Beth was still snoring into her pillow, forming a small whale-shaped ocean of drool on the orange cotton. She found her pain killers and downed three dry before dragging herself down the hall to the bathroom for a shower, a tooth-brushing and a glass of water, not necessarily in that order. Maggie had her door open as she sat on the floor of her room, looking no better than Darcy felt.
"Great birthday," the girl slurred. "Totally doing that next month for mine."
Darcy's stomach turned at the thought of dealing with this agony again so soon, but she managed a noncommittal noise that she could claim as either an affirmation or a refusal whenever the subject was brought up again. She really hoped it wouldn't be mentioned for at least another year, though.
By their powers combined, the shower, pills and water helped her regain her humanity. She returned to her room, forced Beth to wake long enough to take some pain killers and chug a glass of water, and finally opened the presents her parents and Grama Lewis had sent her. She tore into the brown paper wrapping, throwing it over her shoulder in her zeal to reach the treasure within. Her parents had finally added her to their phone plan and upgraded the whole family to smartphones. She gave the pristine device a pet before turning her sights on the real prize.
Grama Lewis did not disappoint. She had found the most powerful laptop available, and it was even purple. Darcy held her breath as she plugged in the cord and set the machine to running. Its fan barely whispered where The Monster groaned out its annoyance at being made to work. She waited impatiently for the computer to run through its initial start-up greetings and tutorials. It had been years since she had been allowed to work with anything so advanced.
Somehow she had gotten it into her head that if she just had a newer machine, she could track down that gorgeous computer system that she had lost all those years ago. It was childish, and she knew it. If the system had been deleted or disconnected, she would never see it again, but she still had hope.
She didn't know how long it would take, but she'd find what she had lost.