Scrims

Previously: The team confronts the Parisi twins.

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1:08 PM - Monday, November 10, 2014

Xavier Prep, Outer Richmond District, San Francisco

“Okay,” Mark began, “let’s go back the beginning. We’ve heard Pr3pSF came online at the beginning of the last school year, correct?”

“It went live on October 1st” Angela muttered. “I started building the day school started.”

“Can I ask what prompted you to make it?”

Angela huffed a sigh and looked up toward the ceiling. “I was sick of it all. Everyone came back to school and then the parties started on the weekends — parties I didn’t really want to go to —” she glared at her brother, “and all I did was hear everyone else’s bullshit all the time. Everyone just talks so much shit. I was tired of hearing it, so I thought, why not make something where everyone can put it all out there and spread it around instead of telling it to me?”

“People told you their gossip?” Jeannie asked.

“Not exactly.” Angela swallowed. “I just listen around and no one notices. So I just thought, why not get everyone blabbing and see what happens?”

“What happened is people got bullied.” Jeannie countered.

Angela shrugged with one shoulder. “I didn’t bully them.”

“No, but you made a space where people could post rumors and nonsense with zero accountability.”

“Yeah, have you ever been on a social media site? Accountability isn’t really a thing.”

“It’s true,” Raj agreed. “I’ve read through Pr3pSF from the beginning and you only prompted other people to share things, or you’d ask them to find intel on things.”

“Yeah.” Angela shrugged again.

“And maybe you could keep tabs on people yourself?” Raj asked.

The girl chuckled slightly. “Like who?”

“Like your crush. You do have a crush, right?”

“It was you. It was you messaging me just a little while ago.” Angela’s eyes narrowed.

“It was. Both me and Mark.” Angela said nothing. “So…you built Pr3pSF to keep tabs on your crush, right?” Raj prodded.

“Why would I do that? The guy I have a crush on tells everyone everything.”

“Who is he then?” Jeannie countered.

Angela looked at her brother. “He’s not really a crush, not any more. He was once. He made out with me at a party in junior year and has ignored me ever since. I was convenient. I won’t be ever again.” Angela looked down at the floor, almost ashamed.

“Was it just a make out or something more, Angela?” Jeannie ventured gently.

“It was just a make out.” Angela looked at her from under her brows. “Honestly, I could have been anyone. He’s that type.”

“Dash Reilly?” Jeannie asked. Angela’s eyes snapped to her with a glint of fear and pride.

“How did you know that?” The girl croaked. Vin Parisi’s head swung to his sister in disbelief.

“He seems like that type.” Jeannie told her, trying to be sympathetic. “I used to know guys like that. Couldn’t get away from them fast enough, no matter how compelling.”

Angela’s chin shook again. “I hate him,” she said quietly.

“I can tell.” Jeannie offered, leaning forward slightly. “Which makes me think it was more than just a make out.” Angela glared in response. “If Dash did something you didn’t consent to —”

“He was drunk.” Angela said simply. “He doesn’t remember. Not that I’d remind him. It’s a waste of time altogether.” Jeannie slunk back in her chair, thinking Angela may be correct about it being a waste of time.

“How did you know I had a crush?” Angela asked Raj.

“Just some of the words you used in your chat.” He told her simply. “We’re trained to analyze word choice, things like that.

The girl exhaled wearily, rubbing between her eyes.“I figured. I knew it was only a matter of time.”

“What do you mean?” Mark asked her, leaning against the wall slightly.

“You’re not the only one who can trace an IP. Yours kept coming up in the Presidio, which tracked because Alexa lived in the Presidio and you were using her account. I didn’t know if she’d just left it open on her laptop or if someone else was using it.” She sneered at Mark. “You were on there all the time — “

“We weren’t the only ones using it.” Mark cut her off. “Some of Alexa’s friends were using it for a while too — they were the ones you were messaging originally, when they said they knew who you were.”

“They didn’t know who I was.” Angela shook her head, mouth hard.

“They didn’t. They thought you were the guidance counselor at Academy Prep.”

Angela chortled. “What? Why?”

“Someone saw Pr3pSF open on her computer one day at school and adults aren’t allowed, so they thought —”

“That a guidance counselor would build a shit-posting site? That’s clever.” The girl’s voice had gone flat. Everyone was silent for a long moment, Vin Parisi looking at the floor intently. Angela sipped more water and looked at the ceiling again.

“So, tell me how you built it.” Raj asked gently. The girl shrugged awkwardly.

“I don’t know. I just built it.”

“What did you have in mind when you began?”

Angela sighed and shook her head. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“I wouldn’t?” Raj’s eyebrow went up and he glanced at Mark for the first time. Mark smirked in response.

“What, you know how to code? Everyone knows how to code.” Angela teased.

Mark chuckled. “I wouldn’t underestimate Raj, Angela. He hacked the FBI mainframe.” Angela’s eyes went wide. “I found him and I recruited him.” Jeannie was reeling inside. This was the first time she’d heard any of this. Angela looked Raj over again.

“You’re young.”

“Yeah, I was 19. Did it in my college dorm room at Carnegie Mellon. And then I woke up one morning with a bunch of FBI guys screaming in my face and that was that. My roommate asked to be transferred right away.”

Jeannie suppressed a small giggle, looking over at Raj.

“So tell me what you were thinking of when you started.” Raj prompted.

Angela thought for a long moment, staring in the mid-distance. “I wanted — I wanted like…like you know in theatre they have scrims? They’re sort of this super-fine mesh and when you light them from one side they’re opaque, but when you light them from the other side they’re transparent. Do you know what I mean? I wanted that, but in a website. I wanted people to sort of know it was me, but also never be able to find me. Does that make sense?”

“It makes all the sense.” Raj was rapt, eyes glowing.

“I wanted something untraceable, you know? No fixed IP. I wanted everything out in the open — verified members. I didn’t want any fake accounts, so I got the different school’s rosters and double-checked invitations to make sure everyone was who they said they were. But then I realized people would share more if they didn’t have their name attached. That’s when I knew everyone had to have a codename handle, but I’d still know who they were on the backend.” Angela’s eyes got fiery. “That was great: people I knew didn’t know anything good would be on there the most popping off. It was ridiculous… I wanted, in a perfect world, some kind of way to track behavioral biometrics, you know like keystrokes and timing, that kind of thing?” Raj leaned forward slightly. “You know, so you could tell peoples’ patterning?” The girl shrugged. “It doesn’t really exist yet though, or at least, I didn’t know how to code it.”

Angela let out a long breath. “I made strict rules, that nothing outside of the site could be shared elsewhere. I said that if I ever heard or saw anything about Pr3pSF anywhere else that the leakers would be banned. I wanted to figure out a way to ban any screenshots too, but couldn’t figure that out either. I wanted to build in booby traps, you know, to trap people that weren’t playing it cool or were sharing things they shouldn’t but in the end it just kind of became another Facebook-style feed because that was all I could figure out. I did make it secure though.”

“You did.” Raj agreed quietly.

“I — I wanted,” she began again slowly. “I really wanted to build a ghost, you know?” She looked at Raj pleadingly, rolling her lips over her teeth. “I wanted to be the ghost, and have a site that was a ghost. I wished for something built on nothing, you know like a spider web or…or like shattered glass. Like, no one would ever know how to put it all together except for me. But, but I don’t know how to do that.”

“You will someday.” Mark offered, his eyes wide. This tiny girl was envisioning things far beyond her pay grade and it stunned him.

“So, tell me.” Raj said. “Frontend?”

“AngularJS.”

“Styling?”

“Bootstrap 3.”

“Backend?”

“Node.js”

“Real-time?”

“Socket. Io”

“Database?”

“MongoDB.”

“Authorization?”

“Passport.js”

“Security?”

“Helmet.js and a few things I cooked up.”

“Yeah, I noticed.” Raj offered the girl a small smile. “Well done, you.”

Angela’s face scrunched slightly. Her brother shook his head silently next to her on the sofa.

“Angela — “ Jeannie began quietly, exhaling a pent up breath. “I still don’t understand why you’d want to build it. Just to be in at the kill with people spreading rumors?”

Angela chortled. “Yeah, you don’t get it at all.” She gave Jeannie a victorious little smile. “This wasn’t about gossip, it was about me being in charge of it. I could give two shits about what they said, it was everything that they were on there saying it without knowing I was the one in charge. You think I don’t know what that bitch Tally Briggs says about me? About Jen Tyson? The way she called Jen “Tyson the Dyson” was awful. She calls me “Goody Goody” and thinks I don’t even know — I’ve barely ever had a conversation with Tally and she labels me? She thinks she’s better than me, but I know she’s a coke head who’s into game theory and she has no idea I built Pr3pSF and all her shit is all over it. I wanted to be the one. I wanted all of them playing at my game without any of them knowing.”

Vin sent out an exasperated breath next to his sister. “It’s so dumb. You built a website just so you could spy on everyone else?” Even Mark resented his lack of vision.

“Yeah, why not? You know, that’s your problem right Vin? You think everyone else is better than you and act that way. None of them are better than us. None of them.” She leaned within inches of her brother’s face, fury pouring off of her. “Our parents are just as rich and our house is just as big and beautiful — even more. We’ve been to Europe, we have nice clothes, cars. Why do you let them walk all over you, all over me? If you want to be that way, fine. But I’m not doing it any more.” Tears spilled over Angela’s cheeks again. “God, I’m just SO fucking done.”

“Done with what, Angela?” The Dean asked from his chair. She turned to glare at him.

“This whole place, this whole thing. This whole small town with its small people. My Dad still works with his friend from high school — from THIS high school. Do you know how pathetic that is? It’s like they never even realized there’s this huge world out there. I just cannot fucking wait to be done with this place.” The Dean looked cowed.

“Where are you going next year, Angela?”

“We’re both going to Santa Clara.” Vincent muttered.

“I’m going to MIT.” The girl said clearly, almost shouting it. Her brother looked at her incredulously.

“Dad won’t let you — he won’t pay for it.”

“Too bad, because I got a scholarship. A full ride.” She turned to him. “Dad never even knew I applied.” Vin looked like she had hit him in the head. “You’re on your own, Vin.”

“Well, all of that depends on if there’s nothing on Pr3pSF that could be considered a cyber crime.” Mark countered. “You allowed a revenge porn video to be posted to the site — the one that went up on Friday? All three people shown in the video have agreed that the filming was non-consensual and that they didn’t know they were being filmed. You never took it off of Pr3pSF so you’re on the hook for Civil Penalties, Copyright Infringement — the Communications Decency Act has —”

“I’ll take it down.” Angela cut him off. “I’ve been very careful not to do anything illegal.”

“You went to my house and hacked into my family’s WiFi —” Jeannie countered, her fury barely below the surface.

“Actually —” Angela rolled her lip. “It wasn’t me. That was Tyler Shea. He just used my computer.” Vin chortled next to her in disbelief. “Okay, you don’t believe me? I made a request as the Admin that people find out any information about the lady cop who went to Xavier— “ Angela gestured at Jeannie, “and I knew that was the kind of little task someone like Tyler would love to do. He’s a sneaky fuck.”

“Angela, please — “ the Dean said quietly.

“So Tyler asks if he can borrow my laptop because he’s borrowed it before, well Vin made me loan it to him, and I hand it over. So yeah, it probably hit my IP but I wasn’t the one who went over there. I gave him the instructions as the Admin, step-by-step, and then he asked little Angela Parisi if he could borrow her laptop again. I could tell he was scared.” She chuckled a little. “Whatever, he got that picture.” She looked to Jeannie. “I’m sorry.” It was issued flatly and Jeannie knew there was zero sincerity behind it. “It’s a great photo of you though.”

“Thanks.” Jeannie’s disdain made Angela’s face fall.

“Well, we’ll be evaluating the full site — we have a copy of it, you know.” Mark told her.

“Yeah, I guess you’d do that.”

“Yeah, we do, and we’ll decide if we need to press charges in any capacity.” Mark’s blue eyes bore into her. “Cyber crime is serious, Angela. They’re coming up with major fines and jail time these days.”

“I told you, I was careful not to do anything illegal. I’ve read up on cyber law, so…” She rolled her eyes.

“Okay, like I said, we’ll be the ones to judge. I’m assuming you have Pr3pSF backed up somewhere?”

“Of course, it’s on a hard drive at home. In my room.”

“We’re going to need that. And once we have it, the site is going dark, do you understand Angela?”

“Yeah, I figured. I kind of knew it when we were chatting before. It felt sort of like the end.”

“It’s not the end,” Mark said, approaching her on the sofa, “it’s just the end of Pr3pSF. And it’s better this way — it’ll just be gone.”

“Can I say goodbye to everyone though? I want them to know it was me in the end. They can all go fuck themselves, but I want them to know it was me.”

“Fine, I’ll agree to that.” Mark told her. “But nothing more. Say your goodbye, pull the plug and give us the hard drive. Deal?”

“Deal.”

“Okay. You two are free to go. We’ll visit your home a little later to pick up the hard drive.” Mark assessed the girl a final time. “I’ll be keeping an eye on you. I know professors at MIT.”

“Here, take my card.” Raj rose to give it to her. “Keep in touch, okay?”

“Why would I do that?” Angela scrunched her face looking at Raj’s FBI card.

“Because I want to hire you someday, that’s all.” Raj offered her a small smile as she took the card, slipping it into the outer pocket of her backpack.