Living in a Blur: a Sokeefe University/Road Trip AU

Chapter 15

"He isn't picking up," Sophie said, frowning. "It's just ringing."

"Maybe his mom took away his phone," Biana suggested.

"What good would that do?" Sophie asked, initially thinking that her only motive would be to keep him from contacting her, something he probably didn't want to do anyway. But then she remembered Keefe's story about how he was visiting Elwin, his past foster father. Of course Gisela wouldn't want Keefe to be able to contact him.

"It seems on brand for her," Biana pointed out, and Sophie had to concede that she was right. "So what are we going to do now?"

"I need to take the picture back from her," Sophie said, frustrated. "The problem is, I sent it to her digitally, so she probably already has it downloaded. I don't want Keefe to get in trouble. Do you think she already emailed the Dean?"

"Maybe," Biana said, "but honestly? I think it's more likely she's using it as blackmail."

Sophie winced. "Yeah, it makes pretty good blackmail," she mumbled, remembering the way she'd forced Keefe to let her travel with him in the first place. She still regretted the way that went down. She regretted a lot of things when it came to Keefe.

Strangely enough, the one thing she didn't regret was getting close to him. Despite the complications and how everything had been handled, she liked having feelings for him—and she was determined to get him back.

"Either way, it doesn't matter, right?" Biana pointed out. "I mean, it's not like you can just break into their mansion and steal the photo. It's not a polaroid."

True.

But... "Your boyfriend is pretty tech savvy, isn't he?"

Biana lit up. "So true! What if he's able to hack her phone from his laptop or something?" She pulled out her phone, shooting her boyfriend a text. "I told him to get his butt over here right now, his notifications aren't silenced, and I know he's free and currently in the library, so he should be here in 72... 71... 70... 69... 68... 67... 66..."

Biana continued counting down, and sure enough, when she got to "4... 3... 2... 1... zero!" There was a knock at the door.

"You've memorized how many seconds it takes for Dex to get from the library to here?"

"There's three different times, depending on the level of urgency in my message," Biana explained. "Come in!"

Dex was understandably surprised to see Sophie. "Sophie? Aren't you on the other side of the country?"

"It's a long story," Sophie said, "and it's one we actually need to fill you in on, so get comfortable."

"Would you like some snacks?" Biana offered.

—

"I can't just hack some random phone out there with no direction. I'm good, but I'm not that good, if that's even possible," Dex said. "I mean, if you had her phone on you, I could probably get past her security so you could manually delete it from her photos, but you don't, so..."

"So we're back to the breaking in plan?"

"Wait, that was an actual plan?" Sophie asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Well, it wasn't before, when we couldn't physically steal it back, but now we can," Biana said. "So what are we waiting for?"

"Breaking in where?!" Dex waved his hands. "Whoa whoa whoa. Slow down. Why are we talking about breaking in places?"

"The Sencens' estate," Biana said by way of explanation.

"Are you guys crazy? You want to break into some supremely rich person's house to steal a phone so you can delete the evidence that someone did in fact try to cheat on a test? Do you have any idea how much trouble we could get in if we got caught? Do you realize that their lawyers will stomp our futures into the mud?!" Dex pulled out his phone, quickly dialing a number. When the person on the other end of the line picked up, he said, "Hey Fitz. Sophie, Biana and I are about to do something completely crazy. You in?"

"Wait, you're on board?" Biana asked eagerly.

"If I wanted my life not to be insane, I never would have started dating you," Dex told her. "Sorry, that was to your sister," he said to the phone. "As I was saying, we're about to do something crazy, and I'm inviting you to do it with us."

"I cannot believe this is a serious plan," Sophie said, the world tilting slightly.

"I'll call Stina," Biana said, pulling out her phone.

"Isn't Stina on the other side of the country?"

"Not anymore." Biana dialed a number quickly and held the phone up to her ear. "Hey Stina."

There were a few muffled words, and Biana nodded. Stina must have asked to be put on speaker phone, because that's what Biana did, and immediately afterwards, Stina addressed Sophie directly: "You stupid bitch."

"You could have told me she was lying!" Sophie exclaimed. "You were there!"

"I didn't know what was going on then! Now I do, and I'm calling you a stupid bitch!"

Sophie couldn't disagree with Stina's assessment, so she said, "Me, Biana, Dex, and probably Fitz are going to break into the Sencens' estate. You in?"

There was a moment, and then Stina replied fondly, "You stupid bitches," and it was abundantly clear that she was all in on the plan.