✔ DRUNK words, SOBER thoughts ✖ hemmings au

46: Snowball

ARI.

In AP Psychology with Mr. Samuels, I learned about the snowball effect. I also learned about this fallacy in AP English class, and while I did what I was told in memorizing the definition and understanding the concept for exams, I pushed the information aside when tests were completed. I didn't think I'd be using this concept in everyday life, but as I sat in the passenger seat of Reese's car, I couldn't help but to let my mind delve deeply into page 342, paragraph 5, of where I first learned the notion.

You know when you roll a ball of snow at the top of the hill, it gets progressively bigger as it runs down the hill? It's because it grabs more snow as it rolls. Kind of like my life at this point. A culmination of problems rolling into one huge ball of fuckery.

Hence, the snowball effect.

"So, your sister didn't see anything?!" I was desperate for more answers and stressed with the lack of it.

"No," Reese shook his head. "Kimmie just said she heard the gunshot from upstairs. Then she ran to my room and found Michael on the floor in his own blood."

I cringed just thinking about it.

"And neither you or Michael sent any text or creepy photo to either Luke or I," I asked for the millionth time on the car ride to the hospital.

"No, I promise you," Reese confirmed again. "The only reason I found out that the two of you were getting texts, was because I was the one who supplied the creep with the phone."

"The fûck you say?" My head snapped towards the boy in the driver's seat with furrowed brows.

"Don't get mad. I didn't know what I was getting into at first," Reese justified. "I got an anonymous envelope in the mail inquiring a phone that could send texts that couldn't be traced. I was offered $500 cash."

"How did this person even find you?" I asked, annoyance to my tone.

"I just assumed it was someone from school," Reese shrugged, taking a left turn at the street light. "Someone from class who knew of my weird techy side. I thought it was some kid who just wanted to play a prank on someone else with an untraceable number."

"So tell me how the phone works," I asked him.

"Every time they send a text, the program invented and installed by me, uses a new recycled number from different parts of the nation. The GPS in the phone also gets jumbled so the number can be from Arizona but the phone's tracking device will say it's in New York," Reese explained.

I could see a slight twinkle in his eye as he spoke about the phone, and I could sense the high-level of pride he had from developing a software that could do such an advanced thing. It was honestly fascinating, and if I weren't the victim of this, I'd be more intrigued.

"How did you link that person and their texts to Luke and I," I brought up, watching as Reese took a right turn. The community hospital was coming up in a few blocks and I was feeling anxious.

"I was still a little fishy. Why didn't this person just come to me in person instead of being all enigmatic and shit, ya know? So I installed another program into the phone that notifies me every time a text is sent, what the text is and to whom. I didn't recognize Luke's number because I had never seen it before. But your number, I recognized it right away because it's in my own contact list," Reese explained.

I nodded my head with a drawn out exhale as I fidgeted my fingers. I was so overwhelmed by the amount of information being thrown at me, in addition to all the shit that keeps adding up. My life was tumbling down an endless steep hill with no sign of slowing down, catching every problem as it plummeted. My senior year of high school started off so perfectly. I didn't have any real problems except math exams and the air conditioning failing to work in my car. Then one thing lead to another, then another, then another, and now my life was a twisted puddle I was drowning in.