Page 65 of My Brother's Best Friend

“It’s fine,” Kai said from the couch, scrolling on his computer. He was the techie of the group and could hack into any software, even the scoreboard at the football game. Everyone at Redwood had seen his work after Poison declared war on Redwood a few weeks ago. “I’m already in.” He looked up at Imani. “But just this one time.”

Grinning wickedly at João, Imani nodded and walked to the couch beside Kai. She patted beside her for one of us to sit, but I didn’t move. Alec didn’t let me either. Who knew what these guys did on these couches?

Imani stared over Kai’s shoulder, leaning her head onto him. Then, she looked back over at us. “Do you know who did it?”

“No,” I said, finally relaxing when João stopped glaring at Imani and disappeared up the stairs with Landon, the brawn of Poison. I grabbed Alec’s hand and walked over to her, leaning against the opposite wall and glancing around. “We have no idea.”

“What about Sandra?” Imani asked. “She hates you.”

My eyes widened. “You think so too?”

She nodded. “It’s obvious.”

I looked at Alec, who scratched the back of his head.

“I’ll talk to her about that.”

“It wasn’t her,” I said, though I still wasn’t a hundred percent on that.

I refused to believe her after a couple of text messages.

“Do you think it was a teacher?” she asked.

“A teacher?” I asked, confusion building up inside me. “Why would it be a teacher?”

Imani and Kai shared a long and tense look, and then Imani scrunched her nose. “You have no idea how corrupt some of the teachers at Redwood are. They flirt with students, watch them in the locker room—cough, cough, our last principal—and, you know, are just bad people, like most of the Redwood rich.”

Alec took my hand and finally sat on the couch, pulling me down next to him. “I don’t think it’s a teacher. It’s someone close to us. It has to be. They knew exactly where we’d be and when we’d be there.”

“Well, if you find them, let me know.” Imani jumped up and hiked her thumb back to the stairs, where the other two members of Poison had disappeared. “I’ll get those two on them to kick their ass. Nobody should go through what you did. Students at Redwood are nasty.”

My lips curled into a small smile. Imani was so much nicer than I’d expected her to be. She had always been nice to me during class, but she was actually like best-friend material, like Vera and Piper were. I’d never really had that many friends, only a select few, but girls like us needed to stay together, especially in a town like Redwood.

“Thank you,” I said honestly. “This means so much to me.”

“Anytime, girl,” she said.

“Got it,” Kai said, looking up at Alec. “I changed your password for all your social media accounts and took down what I could of the videos left up online of you and Maddie in the locker room.”

I was so happy that I could burst into tears, but I held them back.

“Make sure you change your passwords once more to something that you will remember,” Kai said. “And don’t make them all the same thing. That’s how you get hacked and locked out of your accounts.”

After Alec thanked Kai and changed his passwords, he pulled Kai over to the side and talked quietly to him about something that I couldn’t quite hear. Imani slumped on the couch next to me.

“I know this week at school is probably going to be hell for you,” she said. “You, Vera, and Piper are welcome to sit with me and Allie at lunch. We usually sit with the football team or Poison. If you sit with us, people will know to back off you.”

“I’ll have to take you up on that,” I said. “Vera would like that.”

Alec scooped up my hand and nodded toward the other door. “Let’s get you back home.”

I stood up and thanked Kai again. “I’ll see you at lunch tomorrow, Imani.”

“See you then!” she called.

Once we were outside, I blew out a breath and felt so much better now that the images and videos were off the internet and Alec had all his accounts back. Now, the only thing bothering me and making my chest tight was the thought of heading back home for tonight.

Oliver had to be home, waiting for me,waiting to scream at mefor what had happened today.

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