Not the Same

The Search

Julia's POV

After the awkward dinner yesterday, Jack and I were on edge the next day. "Jack, do you think that dad would really do something like that to Cam," I ask him, concern in my voice while we sat on his bed.

"Honestly, I don't fully know," Jack declares. "Cam and dad have always had an odd relationship. Ever since what happened with mom and Elliot, everything just seemed to change."

"I know," I tell him, sullenly. We both jerk up when we hear our dad's voice from the other room.

"Jack? Julia? Do you want to go to the movies with Cam and I," he asks.

Jack and I look at each other, both looking for an answer until Jack says, "We're good. You two go on ahead." After he said that, we heard the murmurs between Cam and dad followed by the door shutting.

"Jack, I'm worried," I tell him. "Maybe we should tell someone."

"I am too, but what would we tell them," he asks me. "That we might think our dad beats our brother even though we have no proof."

"We could search around the house," I declare, rising from the bed. "We might find something."

"Okay," Jack says, joining me on the floor. "Where should we start?"

"Here is good," I tell him, walking over to Cam's side of the bedroom. I start going through Cam's drawers, trying to find anything unordinary. Luckily or unluckily, I only found clothes. I looked up on top of the dresser to only see a bunch of random trophies from different kinds of sports. One trophy stood out which was a tall trophy from one of his football games. On the plague, it read, "1st Place Middle School Championship". Beside it was a trophy that was half the height of the championship trophy that had MVP on it with Cam's name on it as well.

Jack walks over to me and looks over my shoulder. "I remember this day," Jack says. "This was the proudest I had ever saw dad. I thought he would never stop smiling."

"I remember that day too," I tell him. "I also remember the huge bruise that was on Cam's face from that day too. Do you think dad hit him?"

"I don't know," Jack answers. "Cam said it was from the game."

"You find anything," I ask him.

"Unless you count dirty boxers in the hamper or videogame cases missing their discs, no," he tells me. "You?"

"Nope," I sigh. "I don't know if that should be a good thing or not."

"Same," Jack says back. "Maybe we should go check dad's office."

"But, he keeps it locked 24/7," I remind him.

"Just follow me," he orders softly.

We walk to his office door and I immediately try the doorknob. Unsurprisingly, it was locked. "See, I told you," I respond.

"Step aside," he tells me. I do as he says. Jack gets down on one knee and puts something in the keyhole. "What are you doing?"

"Picking the lock," I answers nonchalantly.

"How'd you know how to do this," I ask him.

"Well, let's just say there was times I forgot my key to the house," he tells me. "I kind of needed to get in the house without dad knowing I was home early from school."

"Why would you be home early," I respond.

"Uh, girlfriend," he says quietly.

"Just stop there," I tell him. "I don't need to know anymore."

"You asked," he laughs. I then here a click. "Anyway, we're in." He turns the knob and the door opens. We walk in to see a lone desk with a laptop, a desk lamp, and picture frame sitting on it. There was nothing else in the room. We walk over to the other side of the desk to see there were four drawers in the desk. I tried to open them. In three of them, there was nothing of particular use. When I tried to open the fourth drawer, it wouldn't budge. I saw that in needed a key.

Jack goes on and opens up dad's laptop to see that it required a password. "Any thoughts," he asks me.

"Try our names and mom's," I tell him. He types them all, but none of them worked. I sigh in frustration and looked at the picture on the desk. The picture of Cam and the rest of the football team from when Cam got that huge trophy. "Well, dad's not biased at all."

"Yeah," Jack says, grabbing the picture. "He always did love it when Cam was in football." Jack scrunched his face as he stared at the picture.

"What's wrong," I ask him.

"There's a piece of the picture sticking out of the frame," he tells me while he turns the picture around. He then pulls out the picture. "Why would it be out if we've had it this long?" As he said that, a key fell out. He looked on the back of the picture to see that something was wrote on it.

"What does it say," I ask, taking the key.

"Dallas is the best child a father could ever have," Jack says with a tone that was mixed with anger and sadness. I felt the same as he did. We looked at each to see our eyes had the same expression of building emotions. However, we didn't have time to let our emotions bubble over. I immediately tried the key on the drawer to find that it worked. I pull open the drawer to see several dozens of papers and photos in there.

"Jack, try Dallas for the password," I tell him. He sighs heavily and tries it. Sadly, it worked. On the screen, it showed several emails to random people. I pulled out the papers to see stuff about Cam, his principal and his coaches from high school, and stuff on Kian and his friends. Digging deeper, I found stuff from college along with a picture of Cam with some random guy. "Who is this," I ask. Jack looks over to the picture.

"I think that's his friend Matt," Jack answers. "Cam used to talk about him all the time."

"Used to," I ask him.

"Apparently something happened back then and now they're not talking," he says. "What's on those papers?"

"If I'm looking at this correctly, dad has been keeping tabs on everyone in Cam's life," I tell him. "Anything interesting from the emails?"

"Well, there is several emails from Cam's college saying how Cam was being disobedient, rude, violent, and several other things," he responds.

"Cam," I say, confusingly.

"That's not all," he tells me. "Dad has been threatening to reveal something big to the authorities if anyone said anything about this."

"He's blackmailing them," I ask, astonished.

"It looks that way," Jack declares. "Julia? Who is this person? Should we even call him our father? He's done nothing by lie and keep stuff from us."

"I don't know Jack," I respond. "Why does he call Cam, Dallas?"

"I wish I knew why too," Jack tells me. "But we're going to find out."

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