Chapter 31 – The Immortal Diary – Holly Hayfield

Val rode off on her motorcycle not long after dropping me off. She had a curfew of her own to beat. There wasn’t much left for me to do but to take a shower and prepare for bed. I stayed up only a little while longer to do a little pleasure reading. Just as I was closing my book to go to sleep I got another ‘Meow’ from ChatCat. Val let me know that she made it home ahead of her curfew.

She may have made a mistake by telling me that in group chat. Immediately Jay began asking questions. I explained that we went to go visit Annabelle Noelle’s grave. Suddenly Lilith entered the group chat with interest, asking to know more. When I told her that we found Annabelle’s grave marked with one of Malorie’s affections Sam also joined the chat. Val and I ended up giving a full explanation of everything that happened.

We talked for a little in ChatCat and then we all said our goodnights. I put my phone to sleep and connected it to the charger on my nightstand. I went to bed with a good feeling inside. It felt like I finally had a group of my own at this damned alternative school. We were only three weeks in, but it had been the roughest three weeks of my life.

The frightening thought that came to me when I closed my eyes was the fact that this group might not stick. Maybe I was being paranoid after losing my former friends, but the thought made me anxious. The primary problem was that we still had to win the student council election. If we couldn’t win then that would likely mean dissolution of our little group. My heart was in this race now.

This group was an unusual assortment of questionable people. Val was still an unpredictable sociopath. Jay was still a selfish jerk. Sam was still a new mystery. Lilith was still a distant introvert. I… I was still a shadow of my former self. This group may have been unorthodox for someone like me, but they were all I had.

That was why I wouldn’t even entertain Megan and Black Brittney’s threat. They could go to hell. If we really won and came upon any real power then I wouldn’t mind if Val were to use it against them. I wasn’t sure what Val had in store for her plans to win, but they’d shake up the norm. That was why Black Brittney and Megan wanted the power for themselves. They planned to cause their own disruption to serve their own interests.

The next morning went about as expected. One of Black Brittney’s lackeys warned me between classes that I needed to convince my group to dissolve. I told her that Val isn’t having it. That wasn’t the truth, because I didn’t tell Val. If I told Val then there was a risk she’d do something unpredictable and end up hurting our chances to win the student council. In reality I was the one that wasn’t having it.

I thought that’d be my only trouble for the day but I was wrong. Out of nowhere Lilith posted a link into our ChatCat group chat. It was just a link to a blog called “The Immortal Diary”. I clicked on the link while I was carrying my lunch tray to the library office room. I stopped dead in my tracks when I realized what I was looking at. Malorie’s diary had been uploaded to the internet.

“What the hell, Lilith?” I asked as I burst into the library office room.

It was just Lilith inside the office room. She was sitting there eating her lunch while staring at a laptop I presumed to be her personal computer. She had Malorie’s diary open on the table beside her.

“What’s your problem?” She asked defensively.

“I can’t believe you uploaded Malorie’s diary to the internet! Do you know how dangerous this is? We were supposed to be digitalizing it so that we’d all have a copy, not so the whole world would know!”

Lilith stood up angrily.

“It wasn’t me! How about you get your facts straight before you go throwing accusations around?!” She shouted.

“Isn’t that what I’ve been telling you this entire time?! We don’t have all the information and now the secret is going to get out!”

“I’m telling you, it wasn’t me!” She protested.

“Then who was it? You’re the one with the diary!”

“I’m not the only one! If you recall correctly everyone in our ChatCat has everything I’ve transcribed so far! Look at the website I linked you again. The full diary isn’t there. It hasn’t even been fully proofread.” She said.

Instead of waiting for me to get my phone out to check, Lilith took the initiative. She turned her laptop towards me and went to the diary-blog directly. When she was there she showed me the blog’s directory that had each section of the diary aligned into an index. She was right. There was a great deal of missing content.

“You’re right. I was wrong. Sorry.”

Lilith grumbled. She turned her laptop back her direction and sat back down into her seat. When I sat my tray down on the table and took the seat next to her she moved her chair further away. She clearly wasn’t happy with my apology. Worse yet, I managed to put her into such a bad mood that it’d be hard to clear things up.

I reached my hand out to hers on the table.

“Lilith, really, I’m sorry.”

She pushed my hand away.

“I only linked that stupid website because I was wondering if anyone in our ChatCat group knew about it. When I was in class earlier I was browsing the web on my phone. I wanted to look up any information I could dig up about Malorie Noelle online. The link to this blog appeared a few pages into the search.”

“Is it possible that Jacob was creating a blog for Malorie’s diary before?” I asked.

“I don’t think that’s likely. Going by the dates on the blog the first upload was this morning, before dawn.”

“So it had to be someone from our group.” I said.

“That, or…”

“Or what…?” I asked.

“Or our ChatCat group chat was compromised. If any of us had a weak password or an unknown user was able to access our chat logs then it could’ve been someone else. We could’ve been hacked and not even known about it.”

“Does that sort of thing happen often with ChatCat?” I asked.

“I don’t have enough information. The possibility of a hack was the first thing I thought of. I looked it up and apparently it has happened before by people guessing passwords.”

“That seems too coincidental.” I said.

“It isn’t if we consider the possibility that someone has been watching us. We suspected another person of going down in the basement after all. What if they’re on to us?” Lilith asked.

“That’s not an idea I want to entertain.” I said.

Sam came in with her lunch tray. She was strangely upbeat this afternoon. Could she have been the one to upload the diary? I made the mistake of accusing Lilith before I could establish some base facts. I wouldn’t make that same mistake twice.

“Sam, did you see that link posted in the group chat?” I asked.

Sam casually set her tray down at the end of the table, beside me.

“Hmm…? Oh, yeah, I saw that. It was an interesting idea to make a blog for the diary. I checked it out as soon as Lilith linked it. I linked it to Naomi’s group chat also so the girls could see it.”

“You did what?!” I asked.

Sam blinked curiously.

“What’s the problem?”

Lilith let out an amused chuckle. At least someone here was having fun.

“We have no idea who made that website.” Lilith said, “I found it as I was searching for more information on Malorie.”

“No way, I thought you guys made it so that we could share Malorie’s diary.” Sam said.

“Why on earth would we want to do that?” I asked, “If the Malorie story blew up then we could be staring down the vice principal again. For obvious reasons we want to avoid that.”

“It looked like nothing risky has been added to the blog.” Sam said, “It’s not like anyone would be able to make a connection to Malorie and what we saw in the basement. We were the only ones down there.”

“We weren’t the only ones.” Lilith noted.

“What are you saying?” Sam said.

“I was considering the idea that our group chat was hacked. It’s possible whoever was maintaining the basement is on to us.” Lilith said.

“I just showed everyone how to use ChatCat yesterday.” Sam said, “Do you really think someone would manage to intercept that information in less than a day? That’s a conspiracy theory.”

“Never mind that,” I said, “Ms. Sampson would be able to make the connection if she saw the blog. That should be our main concern.”

“Actually, I wouldn’t be concerned about that either.” Sam said.

“What are you saying?” I asked.

“Are you on that blog website right now Lilith?” Sam asked.

“Yes. What about it?”

“There’s a hit counter at the top of the page. Can you tell me how many hits the blog has?”

“It says 7 hits so far.”

“Does that sound like something we need to worry about Holly?” Sam asked.

“It only has 7 now but that number could grow. What about that link you sent to Naomi’s group?” I asked.

“I sent them that link this morning. The link has since been buried in the group chat. Keep in mind, Naomi’s group chat has about 20 or so people on it. The chat box fills quickly and nothing stays for long. The other girls also drop random links to websites, music, videos, art, and so on. I wouldn’t worry about the website becoming popular.” Sam said.

“In fact, it’s pretty hard for a random website to become popular.” Lilith added. “I only found it deep in a web search using Malorie’s name and family address. No one is going to find it unless they go specifically looking for that type of thing.”

After hearing this I started to feel that my concern was unwarranted. I could relax in my chair knowing that the vice principal wouldn’t pick up the website as easily as I imagined. The cat would’ve been out of the bag. This didn’t fully rid me of all my concerns though. It was possible that our ChatCat group was compromised by some outsider.

“You’re both right, the website isn’t the end of the world.” I said. “But we still need to find out how someone got access to our ChatCat information and managed to upload the diary file.”

“Now that’s where the real concern lies.” Sam said.

“Maybe we should all check our accounts for mysterious activity.” Lilith said. “If anyone here has a weak password someone could be using that as an in.”

“I’ll check my account but that still sounds unlikely.” Sam said. “Peaking in on our group chat is one thing, but why would they upload that information. I mean, you came across the website through a specified search. Why risk being caught.”

“Who knows?” Lilith said. “Going by the name of the website it sounds like someone wants to immortalize Malorie’s thoughts. Honestly I think it’s a good thing. People need to know Malorie’s story.”

“You’re bringing this up again?” I asked.

Lilith turned her whole body towards me.

“A major crime may have been committed on school grounds and no one has been punished.” Lilith said. “We can’t just let that go. My great grandmother’s school has suffered other tragedies, but nothing comes close to Malorie’s story.”

“I disagree.” Sam said quickly. “I have no problem with people reading excerpts from her journal, but that doesn’t mean they can know everything we know. We still don’t know everything about Malorie ourselves. We need more information.”

I leaned back into my chair and looked at Sam.

“I’m surprised to see you agreeing with me.” I said.

“Why wouldn’t I? We shared the same position about this before.” She said.

“I thought we did too, but then you started letting Val in.” I said.

“You’re still upset about that? Try to understand my perspective. We needed Val to accept the deal with Naomi. We plan to be working with Val all year if our student council plans work out. We should be straight with her, Jay too.” Sam said.

Sam was argument would’ve been agreeable for most people, but Val wasn’t most people. Sam was too new at this school to know that.

“You don’t know Val like I do.” I said. “She is dangerously unpredictable and has problems controlling her emotions. She might seem reasonable on the surface, but below that she is dangerous.”

Sam shrugged.

“To be fair I don’t exactly know anyone here all that well yet, and you all don’t know me like that either. The most important thing is that we’re honest with each other.”

“That’s nice of you to say, but I don’t think Val will feel the same way.” I said.

“Holly, check this out.” Lilith said, pivoting her laptop towards me, “I just refreshed the website and the banner was updated. The websites banner has the school logo on the side, see?”

“There’s no doubt about it then.” I said, “Whoever uploaded the diary is here at this school.”

Sam got up from where she was sitting to get a good look at the website’s banner. We were all lost in thought when the library office door opened. Val and Jay walked into the room together. They were both carrying their lunch trays with them. They were also both late. They took their respective seats across the table.

“What’s going on?” Val asked as she saw us gathering around Lilith’s laptop.

“We’ve got a problem.” I said. “Malorie’s diary has got out onto the open internet. Lilith managed to find it through a search.”

“Ah, yeah, I’m well aware.” Val said.

“You already saw it?” Lilith asked.

“Of course I saw it.” Val said, “I was the one that made it.”