Louder Than Words (6 page)

When they’d all gone out again, I checked my precious new phone and saw a message from Josie:

I bit back a smile of amusement. I probably shouldn’t laugh. Something about all this made me feel nervous, as if it could all turn very nasty. But another part of me was thrilled Lloyd was getting what he deserved.

I did smile as I sent the response. I liked how understated it was. So few words and so much said.

A huge grin burst out over my face at her answer, until I looked up and found two of the girls in my year watching with their mouths open at the sight of me texting and grinning. I doused the smile from my face and quickly rammed the phone back in my bag.

CHAPTER 7

Josie came round after school and I whisked her upstairs to my room – that was what normal people did, right? – before my mother, who was rearranging pictures in the sitting room, could pass comment.

‘It’s all over school,’ said Josie, flopping breathlessly on to my bed as if she’d run here the whole way. ‘Loads of people were watching Lloyd’s stuff because they thought the whole thing with the pictures of me was excellent drama, and so now they’ve all seen it. They’ve been tweeting about it all day and this afternoon a Twitter account appeared under Lloyd’s name, linked to his website and other stuff, and it keeps tweeting apologies to me and saying what a total dumb-ass he is and please, please forgive him. Lloyd never even
had
a Twitter account. But if that was your brother, how did he do that from school? Don’t you have security?’

I smiled and rolled my eyes. The school system was nothing that Silas couldn’t get around in a few minutes. The laughable thing about my school was it didn’t even teach computing as an A level because it was considered too ‘new’ a subject for the universities to take it seriously, so all the computing geeks did maths and further maths. We only did a piddly bit of ICT up to GCSE. What this meant was that there wasn’t a teacher in the place who had a clue how to stop Silas – or anyone – on a mission.

‘So it was him then!’ Josie grinned. ‘Look at this.’ She showed me a series of text messages on her phone, from Lloyd. To say he wasn’t happy was an understatement. The amount of abuse he was giving her made me quite angry and I almost growled as I read the messages. ‘Oh, don’t worry about him. I told you – I don’t give a toss about him any more so I don’t care what he thinks of me. I just wanted it to stop.’

Yes, but what if Silas actually made it worse by making Lloyd so mad he did something even more awful?

She saw my worried face. ‘Don’t – I’m sure if your brother can do all this, he can cover his tracks so Lloyd doesn’t find out it was him.’

Actually and surprisingly, it wasn’t Silas I’d been worrying about but she didn’t need to know that. There was no point making her nervous when she obviously hadn’t thought of that possibility, and she looked so happy.

‘It is very, very awesome of your brother to do this.’

Yes, it probably was, but I didn’t like the kind of hero-worshipful face that had appeared on Josie. I wanted to tell her that she really should not fall in love with my brother out of some misguided sense of gratitude. Because you see, Silas does not fall in love back. No girl ever touches his heart. He isn’t mean to any of the girls he dates. No, it’s not that. But they always end up the ones who get hurt when he realises they like him more than he does them. He tries to break it off gently, but it never works out like that.

It seems to me from what I hear when they cry on the phone at him, when I hear the girls in school sobbing in the toilets before morning registration, that a boy can never break it off gently. It always seems to leave a big, gaping wound. Getting dumped hurts however nicely it’s done.

Or maybe it hurts even more if they do it nicely.

‘Anyway, enough of me,’ Josie said, grabbing my old teddy and settling back on the pillows as if they were cushions on a sofa. ‘And more about
you
.’

Er, me. Oh no, no, no. There was absolutely no need to be talking about me at all. Really not. Nothing interesting to see here – move on. Maybe I would prefer her to be mooning over Silas. It would divert her attention away from me at least.

‘I’m mostly guessing, but I decided you probably don’t like talking about yourself much, given the whole not talking at all thing?’

I nodded, knowing my cheeks were flushing, but unable to stop them.

‘So that’s OK because most people, including me, talk about themselves far too much and don’t listen enough.’

True.

‘But friends need to know some stuff about each other so I thought we’d start with some small things. Kind of get to know each other better?’

Tentative nod.

‘So I’ll ask three questions and then you can do the same. Got it? Good, so number one – what’s your favourite colour?’

I let out the breath I’d been holding. OK, this wasn’t so bad.

‘Mine’s red. Someone said it suited me once and it cheers me up. Number two – what’s your favourite food?’

This was easy. The smell of basil always made me feel happy.

Josie grinned ruefully. ‘Chips. Or chocolate. I can never decide. Number three – you might have to think about this one – what’s your favourite quote? I collect quotes. I try to snag at least one good one a day. I get most of them from Pinterest. My favourite at the moment is, “We forfeit three fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.” That’s so cool, especially for just right now in my life because some days I forget that. Some days it seems like it’d be easier to be like everyone else, you know?’

Nod.

Yes, I knew that feeling; except I couldn’t be like everyone else so sometimes I thought it’d be easier to fade away so completely I was invisible. Some days I would do that if I could. Perhaps one day I’d have the courage to tell Josie about that. I thought she might understand and that she might not laugh at me for it. After all, it was amazing that she collected quotes because that meant words must be important to her too. I wanted that to be something we had in common.

But my favourite quote?

Her face lit up. ‘That’s amazing. No, really, I love that. Do you write then?’

Absolutely scarlet-cheeked nod.

‘Can I see something you’ve written?’

Can you see my soul, you mean? That was like asking me to cut myself open and lay everything inside me bare.

I began to shake my head in horror, but then I remembered another quote I loved but would never dare aspire to: ‘Speak the truth, even if your voice shakes.’ When I came across that one last year, it made my eyes fill up and I had to let the tears roll down my face for a while before I could stand to breathe again.

I couldn’t speak the truth. But I could write it maybe.

Plus I could never be a writer if I didn’t show anyone my work.

Dare to believe in your future
, a voice said in my head. I didn’t know where it came from. More than that, I didn’t know why I listened to it then, because I never would have done before that moment, but somehow I found myself getting up on wobbly legs and, with shaking hands, taking out my notebooks from the box under the bed.

I flipped open a simple exercise book. I liked to keep my short stories separate, in their own individual books. I shoved the book at Josie with a shrug and retreated to the other side of the room. That story, the one about an adopted girl who was trying to find her birth mother, was one of my better ones. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t feeling sick and paralysed as I watched Josie read it. Or rather when I didn’t watch her because I couldn’t stand to look. So I sat by the window and stared determinedly out of it.

I was concentrating so hard on what was outside – our garden looking exactly the same as it did every day – that I all but jumped out of my skin when she said, ‘Rafi, this is great. It really, really is!’

I turned round, flustered and shaking my head. Josie was grinning at me.

‘No, Rafi, it is. I could never write anything like that. I swear I thought I was going to cry at the end. Can I see another one?’

Was she flattering me or was she serious? She
looked
serious, but I knew my stuff wasn’t that good.

Still, I’d shown her one so I might as well dig another out. The one in the red notebook wasn’t too awful. I could perhaps let her see that one.

I suppose the feeling you have when someone reads what you’ve written for the first time is a bit like actors getting stage fright. There’s no point writing for it only to sit in a box under your bed, but letting someone else into your world is
terrifying
.

I sat motionless and nauseated again as Josie read the next story. Again she beamed at the end and told me how fantastic it was, but I wasn’t at all convinced. Still, it was nice of her.

‘I want you to do something,’ she said, watching my face. ‘Will you try?’

I held my hands up to say I didn’t know.

‘I want you to write a story about you, about when you stopped talking. I hope one day you’ll show it to me, but even if you never do, I want you to write it. Do you think you could try?’

Could I?

I felt a prickle of nervous excitement at the thought. Yes, that was something I should write. I didn’t know why, but something inside me told me it was a good thing to do. A
true
thing.

I nodded.

Josie let out a triumphant squeal. ‘Awesome! That’ll be the most amazing story ever, I know it.’ She rushed over and hugged me. ‘And I hope you do let me read it when it’s ready.’

Now
that
I couldn’t do, but I was still buzzing with the notion of writing my story for myself and so I blocked that unwelcome thought out and hugged Josie back.

Hugging a friend felt good. I felt
normal
.

We hung out a while longer and then she went home when it got dark. It was only when she’d gone that I realised I never did ask her the three questions.

If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared.

(Niccolo Machiavelli)

CHAPTER 8

At lunchtime, the library computers were full. I stared as people crowded around, giggling and nudging each other. The librarian watched from her desk with a frown. She knew they were up to something, but couldn’t catch them. And Silas’s friends were right in the middle of it all.

I sneaked over and sat down where there was space, near some boys in my year, Ben and Callum.

‘So what’s this?’ Callum asked Ben.

‘The
Codes of War
site. Two nights ago, the forum starts buzzing about some guy taking an epic revenge on another so I followed a couple of links until I saw it for myself. Basically some guy made an “I got dumped so I’m acting like a little bitch” website about his ex-girlfriend. Posted some naked pictures of her, to make out she’s a mega slut, and tried to get all his mates to spread it around. Then a few days later, someone else, and nobody knows who it is because this guy has completely covered his tracks, comes along and takes him out. Like totally. He hacks all the guy’s sites and changes everything – look, see this – to make the guy look like the biggest tool ever, and he gets what he’s done everywhere. And I mean everywhere – this thing is all over the net. It started at night, when the US gamers were on the forum. Now it’s right round the world.’

‘It went viral?’

‘Viral like Ebola,’ said Ben with a grin. ‘What makes this really interesting is this girl goes to the Catholic High and her ex is at the college.’

‘What, here?’

‘Yeah. So this is global, mate, but right on our doorstep too.’

‘So that’s why everyone is buzzing about it.’

I got up and left as quietly as I’d come. My text tone had pinged. It was Josie asking me to meet her in town after school. I could, but I’d have to tell Silas and he was still with the others in the library. I took a deep breath and went back in there, pushing my way through the throngs around the computers until I got to him.

Toby pushed back from the screen, nearly running over my foot with his wheeled chair. ‘Silas, have you seen this? It is seriously messed up.’ He was reading down a messageboard with the
Codes of War
logo at the top. My brother glanced over, but their friend Jake pushed him aside so he could see.

‘He’s built a botnet,’ Jake exclaimed. ‘In, what, two days? Whoever he is, he’s scary!’

‘What’s a botnet?’ Rachel asked.

Toby scanned through the posts. ‘So what he did was clone Lloyd’s social media accounts, all of them, and then got all his friends to swap to the cloned accounts before anyone knew what he’d done. And he’s created this video which everyone’s been watching – no, don’t click on it! When this went viral, people opened it and it’s got code hidden in there that takes ownership of their machines. That’s what the botnet is,’ he said, looking up at Rachel who pulled a freaked-out face.

‘Looks like they’ve only found out because he’s told everyone on the forum. He’s used their machines to relay spam messages supposedly from Lloyd saying how sorry he is and how the pictures were all a fake and will Josie please forgive him,’ Jake said with a frown. ‘Hey, that means he’s got control of my laptop too!’

‘And mine,’ Toby added, glowering. ‘Nobody on here knows how to stop him. He says he’ll release the machines as soon as Lloyd apologises publicly to Josie and stops going after her. And that he won’t use the botnet for anything other than that.’ He yanked his phone out of his pocket and began texting furiously.

‘What are you doing?’ Rachel asked.

‘Texting as many people who know Lloyd as possible to give him some hassle! This is heavy stuff. I tell you, I’m more than a bit scared of what this guy could do. This all hit from nowhere and so fast. I’ve got no idea how he’s done it.’