And done.
There I did it like I said I would. They thought I was lying and trying to regain my followers, but I did it.
No more Mickey Summers.
I wonder what they think now that site is gone. Aww. It doesn't matter any more. I'm free. I'm finally free of all this mess. Finally, I'm done. I'm alone.
I don't want to be alone again.
Don't think about that. I should just continue. Wait. Do I even to need to anymore? I've done it already. Well it's better to go through whole thing to get rid of the baggage.
Alright. After seeing the channel, I didn't know what to do anymore. I was scared. I was scared of going out again. I didn't want people to see me, to look at me, and to judge me. I wanted to hid away until the whole thing blew over, but no one would let me.
I guess it got big really quickly if she was able to find out that fast.
“Do you know what Skeleton Girl is?” Mom asked me the next day after bursting through the doorway. “And why aren't you dressed for school?”
I was sitting in bed still in my pajamas, looking like I had just woken up, but the truth was that I had been awake for hours, thinking about school.
“Yes I know about it. And I'm not feeling well enough to go to school today,” I said nonchalantly.
“Why didn't you tell me! We could have handled this earlier! We can't have someone passing off fake videos of you! It's ridiculous! Me and your father will handle this just get ready for school.” she said completely ignoring what I had just said.
“Mom. They're real. They're the real ones. My real videos! Mom! They took it from me!”
“How did they take it from you? Did you give some one at school your Indego? Oh my God, Mickayla how many times have I told you to keep it safe at all times when your at school? You never know what kind of person would try to take advantage of you.”
“Do you think I'm an idiot! Of course I know that Captain Obvious!” I screamed at her. “It was a mistake! I couldn't find it for a few days! How was I supposed to know someone would hack it!”
She rushed to the side of my bed and slapped my face with the back of her hand before I tried blocked it with my pillow.“Who do you think you're talking to? Don't raise your voice to me! Look at me when I'm talking to you!” I rubbed my eyes and held my breath as I turned the side of my face to her. It was the only thing that kept me from making the mistake of yelling at her again.
She took a deep breath and said, “Look. I know your angry. We all are, but that's no reason to lash out at me and I'm not going to take something like that from you again. Do you understand?”
I shook my head and she left my side, walking towards the door. While in the doorway she said, “Since its already too late for you to get ready, you can stay home. But you're not allowed to leave this house or slack off without my permission. We need time to think about what were going to do about this.” before going away.
At that point, I grabbed the pillow to my face and cried into it again. I felt so awful. Couldn't she tell? Parents can be so stupid, but she was right. I was stupid to start have sulking after the first time I tried to handle it didn't work. It was my fault that it spread again was too nice, too naive to think that making an empty threat one time would be enough to get her to stop.
So I finally did the more useful thing and reported it. Unfortunately, those bastards didn't do shit. You would think they would take the report of one of their popular users more seriously, but not they didn't. All they did was block a couple of videos, but apparently a full ban couldn't be done unless it was “egregious displays of bullying” or some shit like that, completely useless idiots.
Basically there was nothing I could do to stop it. It was hopeless. I looked at the band that had went untouched for so long, resting carefully on its charging port. Nothing had changed about it except the thin layer of dust on its sleek black surface. Its green, done charging lights blinked at me like a dog waiting for its master to let it go outside.
I ripped it off and chucked it at wall, it should slid into the crevice of my desk, but it saved by flower on the yellow hat. I grabbed the hat and stretched it as tight as I could. Seeing it made me so angry, that flower, that dull, faded sunny yellow fabric, I hated it. I didn't remember where it came from or why I kept it so long, but I suddenly became sick of it and everything it stood for, the nice, sunny Indestar I desperately tried to be, but couldn't be. I pulled and pulled and pulled, but for an old hat it was pretty strong or I was pretty weak.
When I got desperate and tried to cut the top with scissors, Mom walked in.
“Mikayla what are you doing to your hat!” she snatched it out of my hands. “Look what you've done to Aunt Lucy's hat.”
“Aunt Lucy's... hat?” Then an image flashed in my foggy brain. Before she got sick, Aunt Lucy gave me it just before I moved to make me feel better and there I was treating it like it an old rag.
“Yes. I know its been a long time, but you shouldn't have forgotten that she made it for you. If you're going to be so careless with your clothes, I'll stop you from getting anymore.”
“I'm sorry. I just- Why are you back here anyway?”
“First to tell you that half you're sponsors have decided to drop you.”
“What! Why didn't you tell me? What about Cassandra?” I said,still surprised that I still cared about sponsors at this point.
“Who do you think told me? Cassandra's had to handle this whole fiasco with the sponsor's herself since you're not talking to anyone. Eventually I had to let her go because we couldn't afford to keep her any more. We've decided to use the money to hire a private investigator.”
“Cassandra's gone? Private Investigator? For what?”
“To figure out who did this? Since ComplX isn't doing anything, we hired a private investigator to reveal the identity of the Skeleton Girl. Then we'll press charges once we find them.”
I thought she was doing too much, though I would be lying if I say I didn't imagine the police barging in the scumbags room and leading them away in handcuffs.
“In the mean time, me and your father talked about it, and we believe that its time for you go back to school,”
When she said that it felt like the floor had broken underneath me. How could she think I was ready to go back? I tried to talk her out of it, but it was no use.
She gave me this stupid speech about how they must have all forgotten about it and how I have nothing to be afraid of and moping about will make it worse and Dad just backed her up on it.
Did they even see what I said about my friends!…
Whatever, I guess I can't blame them for not knowing how bad it was.
Going to school was torture. Maybe it would've been better if they all hurled tomatoes at me as I walked through halls and just taped a bunch of angry notes to my locker. At least then I would've been prepared for that.
When I stepped through the door that morning, they all just stared at me, silently. I could hear them whispering as I passed by, but no one wanted to make eye contact with me. It was the same cycle every where I went. It was like I sucked the energy out of every room I went into. The only people who didn't seem completely disgusted with me were the teachers, but some of the younger ones had similar expressions.
The tension was so heavy I could barely move as the day went on. It was like they were all waiting for me to give them an explanation, but I didn't know where to start making amends.
Then I thought my answer came when Wendy was walking in my direction.
“Wendy!” I yelled without thinking. She briefly looked at me then turned away as she walked as close to the lockers on the other side of the hallway as possible. I expected her to do something like that, but it still stung when she did it. I tried to swallow my nerves and went up to her.
“Wendy, wait!” I said while trying to match her increasing pace.
“Look, I'm sorry for anything that you heard, but I didn't mean it like that I swear!” She only walked faster, and I knew that I couldn't keep up with her runner's legs for much longer, so I touched her shoulder.
“Slow down! Can we please just talk about-” I tripped and fell into her back. She pushed me back so violently that I fell hard on my ass. I heard people giggling a little bit.
“The last person I want to see is you,” I heard Wendy say though she still not looking at me.
“Please. Can we please just talk?” I picked myself up.
“What could you tell me that the video didn't tell me. I'm glad I finally know how much of two-faced bitch you are.”
It's so ironic she said that. I mean she was behind everything and she still had the nerve to try to make me feel guilty!
But I'm over that now. I have to be over that now.
As I expected, people even avoided me at lunch. They literally got up and moved away from when I sat down.
It was so awful, being so alone. I kept my head down, so I wouldn't see them looking at me, probably laughing at how far I fallen. I lifted my head high enough to see the table where Marco's friends were, but he wasn't. I sat there with my head down for what seemed like hours until the bell sounded, and I could finally feel their eyes off me and started searching for him in the crowd.
Then I remembered that I hadn't seen him even in the classes we shared together. I wondered if he was just absent or if he was avoiding me, but I settled on him being just absent because in the back of my mind I truly believed that he probably hated me less than all my other friends since he still didn't have an Indego. The hope that I could get him to help to restore some of my reputation, lead me to pretending to throw up in the nurse Jackie's office to get her to send me home. I wasn't that hard to fake it since I was really feeling nauseous.
When I got home, I kept playing the sick act until dad let me go to my room where I ran to the desk and fished through the desk crack with a stick and pulled out the dusty, but surprisingly still unbroken Indego. I wanted to just open it quickly, call him and find out how he felt but even though I managed to turn off the beeping coming out like crazy, I heard the dial tone until I remembered that he was still in school, so I ended it and sent him a thext instead. When I got no answer, I foolishly decided to check my mail to see if he sent anything in the past. However, I was distracted again by a message, a lot of messages about it actually, about the most recent video about me and Marco, one that said Marco and Delilah broke up.
I wonder what happened with them? I was too scared to find out then, and I'm not sure if I'm comfortable with knowing it now. Did she break up with him or did he break up with him for me? No. I'm not asking these questions. I shouldn't be thinking about that now.
I didn't even have a chance to really deal with the fact that I destroyed their relationship when mom and dad called me into the living room.
Waiting for me outside the door was a skinny middle aged man sitting next to my parents.
“Mickayla. This is Lamar Carlson, the detective I hired a while back.
When he gave me a weak wave, and I couldn't help wondering why she would bother introducing me to the guy now. Then it hit me that it must because he might thinks I know the person.
“Hello… Mr. Carlson.” I managed to mutter out while the name of the possible suspects rolled around in my head.
“It's nice to meet you. Now that we're all here. I'll repeat what I said to them.” He looked down at the screen top on the table. “After some digging, I discovered that the main Skeleton Girl site was operated by two users, Michael Nealson and Wendy Kyle.”
There it was. Wendy. He just said best of best friends was responsible. It had been just her creepy cousin, Michael. He must have been just using her account right? That's what I kept telling myself.
That's what I told him, well shouted at him. The poor man almost hit his screen top.
Dad went to my side and said,“Sweetie, I sure Wendy is not apart off this, but in any case, we have to get this straightened out today.”
“What are you going to do?” I said.
“We're just going to tell them what we found and get this all sorted out.”
Unfortunately, They didn't get all sorted out in any sense of the word. If I had been with them when they v-chatted with Wendy family maybe they wouldn't have threatened to sue them.
They acted like they had no other choice. They told me that the Kyle's didn't believe them and wouldn't meet them or something so they had to go to the extreme choice. They didn't even bother think about how I felt about it. I just wanted all the drama to stop not pull me into another one.
I should cut them some slack though. It was a messy, terrible situation. I only made it worse when I tried to control the situation by talking to Wendy.
She didn't bother to lie about it.
“Yeah. It was me.” Her voice was so low and cold that it chilled me. I couldn't believe it was her voice coming through my speaker.
“It was you? It really you?” I sputtered out. “Why? How?” I tried swallow the cry in my throat but I was slowly losing control. I was so glad that weren't on v-chat.”
“Why? I… I was mad, ok.”
“Mad? You ruined my life because you were mad at me?”
“Hey. All I did. Is show who you really are. It's not my fault everyone turned on you.”
“Gee. Maybe you could've talk to me instead of being a bitch about it!”
“Fine. I know I did a shitty thing, but you're taking this way too far with the suing thing.”
I couldn't take it anymore. There was too much shit coming out of everyone's mouth. I just wanted it all to stop. I couldn't take it anymore. I wanted to fire back.
“You know what. I don't care. You tried to pill this shit on me. Now, you're getting it flung back at you!” I yelled.
“Don't fucking call me again!” She ended the call, and I responded by throwing the Indego at the wall again.
I didn't know what to do anymore. I wanted revenge. No. I didn't want revenge. I wanted a solution.
Thank God for Pastor Jean. Unfortunately getting rid of the site was the easy part.
I can't isolate myself anymore.