Deviants

Chapter 24

Johnny

I stare at the screen, frustrated. Why can I not figure out anything about Dean Curtis while Ace can find the dirt on someone as random as my mother? I reconsider about the idea of emailing him again, but I feel stupid all over again. I can't keep having him do my dirty work. And someone as popular as Dean Curtis should be easy to find.

I hear footsteps in the walkway around the little park that's in the middle of the university building and look up to see May Eve. She smiles and waves at me. I wave back even though I feel slightly disappointed that it isn't Kate. I see her carrying a small duffle bag with her and she breaks off her path and heads towards me.

"Hi," she says. I notice that she doesn't seem as cheerful as she usually is, but she still seems to stand tall.

"Hi," I say, "I heard you went to Wyoming to visit your mom." She nods her head and sits down next to me.

"Yeah," she says, not offering any other explanation. I frown with concern.

"Is everyone in your family alright?" I ask. She looks at me as if she's slightly caught off guard.

"Oh, yeah. I just mostly felt homesick," she says. I think about how close she was to my own mother. Do I dare to travel to Wyoming? I want to reach out to my mother, but she had never in almost ten years tried to reach out to me. Do my brothers know that they have two older siblings? "What you up to?" May Eve asks.

"Oh... I'm just trying to look up someone for Clint," I say.

"Oh? Who?" I shrug my shoulders, hesitant to tell her because this is Clint's business.

"His name is Dean Curtis. Someone who, I guess, got on Clint's bad side. Possibly a drug lord," I say.

"Oh, so you're trying to look for some dirt?" She asks, her interest seemingly piqued.

"Yeah," I say.

"Well, you don't go here," she says, then quickly says: "I mean... I happen to know... Here, let me see." She grabs the laptop and turns it to face her before she opens a new internet tab. She quickly types in a web address and a dark site appears. "Then... you go here..." she says, mostly to herself as she presses a few keys, and the site turns into all the codes that it's built from. She scrolls down, almost to the bottom and types in something into the code before the page changes into something slightly different. I turn the laptop to me so I can read the title of the page. "There, now you can see anyone that's on the wanted page and why," she says. I look at her.

"Did you just hack into police department files?" I say. She looks at me with cute wide eyes.

"Yeees..." she says, slowly, as if being caught doing something she shouldn't have. I squint at her.

"And you applied to this college to be a journalist?" I ask. She slowly nods her head, still that same manner in her attitude. I slowly turn back to my laptop.

"Oookay... Thank you," I say. We hear more footsteps and we both look up to see Kate approaching us. My heart beats faster at the sight of her. Even with a cream white winter jacket on she still looks like she is freezing with her jet-black hair hanging over her shoulders in waves.

"I'll let you two be," May Eve says while standing. I give her a small goodbye while I stand as well. She walks past Kate and does a small gesture that I don't see, causing Kate to blush, but she smiles. She walks towards me as she runs her fingers through her hair. I push my sleeves to my elbows and my glasses up the bridge of my nose.

"Hi," she says. I want to hug her, but I feel like something is off since this morning.

"Hi," I say.