Chapter 2: Just a Pic or Two

‘Hello Piper’ Her new iPhone 4 buzzed with an innocuously titled email. It made it past the spam filters on her gmail account, so she took a break on scrolling through facebook and opened it up.

‘You’re quite the free spirit. We should talk, you and I. We’re going to have so much fun. Click the link below to chat with me. Love, The Nerterologist’ The link was to a site called drkmsngr.com.

She frowned and thought silently, ‘How did that not get flagged as spam?’ She didn’t think about it again until she got another email in school on Monday. There were just two weeks until the end of the school year and finals were next week. She was dressed normally since there were no more sports games to cheer at, and she’d been sandwiched between Devin and Sarah at lunch when the second email arrived entitled, ‘You should read me, Ms. Embrie.’ She opened it without a thought, but when an image loaded up on her phone that made her eyes bug out and shut the phone screen off reflexively. Piper’s eyes darted between her friends. Devin was looking at Sarah and Sarah was talking about maybe going to Spain this summer. Neither of them had seen the picture. She put on a fake smile as her heart pounded. The image she’d seen was one of the pictures she’d sent to Jake!

She retreated to the bathroom after lunch with thoughts whirling. Mostly, she needed to read that email. If this was a prank, Jake was going to be in serious doo-doo.

‘Ms. Embrie, I was so upset when you didn’t log on last night. So I sent you a little picture to brighten your day. I think that maybe you might have lost the link, so I’ll send it again. It’s a special link that you can use so we can chat. But if you don’t, then I am sure I can send that picture to a few other people and brighten their days. Oh, but I would much rather play some fun games with you. Toodles, The Nerterologist’.

She frowned, then decided to send a message of her own. It was a text to Jake, ‘hey U remember those pix?’ ‘hellz yeah’ he replied.

‘if u showed them 2 NEone, u can forget about <eggplant emoji><peach emoji>’ For emphasis, she added, ‘like EVER’ ‘no way BAE, U R Only 4 me’ ‘I’m serious.’ she texted as the bell rang.

‘me 2’ came his fast reply.

Piper trusted him. She knew he wouldn’t share those pics. He was a jealous guy to begin with so there was no way he’d share them. She didn’t have time to ask him if he was pranking her. She’d just need to deal with this after school. She rushed off to class worrying less about the lecture and more about getting home quickly.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come with us?” Jake offered one more time as he pulled up to her house.

“No, I think I want to do some extra studying for finals.” She smiled her lie and held back her heart from his disappointed eyes.

Jake added, “Alright, but tomorrow, we’re hanging you after school, ‘kay?”

She gave a thin lipped smile and waved bye before running inside and up to her room. Piper plopped onto her bed and flipped her laptop open determined to talk to the netologist or whatever his name was. There was a small chance that it still could be Jake, but this would be a really strange prank to play. Conner sent her a message as soon as she was online apologizing for something Bobby had said. It was sweet and he didn’t have to, especially since Bobby was pretty much just being Bobby. She couldn’t let herself get sidetracked, so she opened up another tab and went to the link from the email. It prompted her to pick a password for her new account on Dark Messenger. The account name was already set up, “Pretty_Piper”, and she couldn’t change it. She went ahead and used the only password she had memorized and it let her in putting her in a chat room with one other person, “Nerterologist”.

Piper’s stomach twisted with nerves as she typed in, “wut do u want?”

“Please, young miss, try to type in full words. I know you’re more capable than that.”