is the name given to hackers who break into computers for criminal gain; whereas, can also be internet security experts hired to find vulnerabilities in systems.

***

You probably thought that my relationship with Hunter had changed drastically after the kiss; that we were now like two love birds who couldn't keep their hands off each other, or like those couples in their honeymoon stage who spout cringe-worthy declarations of love every five seconds. Ha. Fat chance at that.

When Monday came, we fell back to our usual routine: Hunter annoying the hell out of me, and me, trying my hardest to avoid homicide. It didn't help that Shawn was absent today, giving Hunter the excuse to occupy the seat beside me.

It was only Monday and I was already tempted to commit one of the cardinal sins. Definitely not a good sign.

I gripped my pen tighter as I felt the fifth poke on my side courtesy of Hunter's ever reliable, demon-possessed pen. I promised myself that as soon as I get the chance, I would steal that pen, burn it into ashes, and bury it in consecrated grounds.

"What?" I said through gritted teeth.

No matter how much I had fallen for him, he had no right to distract me from learning Tesla's life and works. He had already ruined Newton and Einstein for me. I wouldn't allow him to do the same thing to my favorite inventor.

Physics was not something to joke about.

His lips curved up into a lazy smile.

"Saturday, 7pm." He said.

As usual, he was munching something as he spoke. I was beginning to suspect that Hunter had some sort of an eating disorder. Honestly, the guy eats like a construction worker who got stuck in Timbuktu and hadn't seen food in years.

"I beg your pardon?" I whispered, eyebrows drawn. Why was he suddenly giving me random dates and time?

Hunter's smile widened, obviously amused by my reaction.

"Our date." He said in a loud voice that instantly caught the attention of our classmates and most unfortunately, Mr. Charleston.

Holding my breath, I slowly looked at our professor in front and immediately regretted doing so when I saw him giving us the same look he usually reserved for child-molesters, arsonists and vegetarians. The muscles in his biceps twitched and I gulped. I was sure he could snap me into two using those arms alone.

"No offense but I really want to hit you with a chair right now." I hissed at Hunter, knowing that Mr. Charleston would call me out again because of him.

Hunter just grinned devilishly, not in the least worried.

"I have a better idea." Mr. Charleston said in a clipped tone, confirming my hunch. "How about you two revel in the beauty of magnetic flux density rather than worry about your upcoming date?" He said in distaste, his spiky, whitish hair strongly giving off a mad scientist vibe... A mad scientist addicted to protein shakes to be more precised.

I silently cursed myself. How could I let one infuriating man distract me from relishing the glorious wonders of modern Science? I was an abomination to the geek community!

"I'm sorry, sir." I mumbled And I'm sorry too, Nikola Tesla. I failed you.

While I was wallowing in shame, Hunter, on the other hand, was busy making things worse.

"I'm sorry about that, prof. But our date has everything to do with our mutual love for Physics." He said thoughtfully, giving Mr. Charleston an innocent smile.

Oh, God. I knew that smile.

Hunter's statement caused an uproar from the whole class. Loud sighs of disappointments erupted from the girls while the boys hooted and whistled. I even heard someone suggested to Hunter to: "Shut up and kiss her already!" and I was pretty sure it was Collin Anderson who said that.

I silently wished he would get leg cramps on their next game.

"And how do you say so, Mr. Cole?" asked the professor, one eyebrow raised up high.

Hunter smiled.

"We just want to prove one of Einstein's theories."

Mr. Charleston threw Hunter a curious look through his eyeglasses.

"And what theory are you referring to?"

Hunter leaned forward, his fingers playing with his pen.

"Theory of relativity, of course." He said matter-of-factly. "Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That's relativity according to Einstein. I want to check if it's true."

I'd never wanted to be abducted by aliens prior to that moment.

I saw some of the girls looked at me incredulously, like they were struggling to find out where was the pretty part in me.

I'd sell my first born for Harry's invisibility cloak right now.

I looked in front and saw Mr. Charleston's lips twitched upward, obviously trying hard to stop himself from smiling. He looked amused by Hunter's explanation and I was sure Hunter only said those things because he knew that Mr. Charleston was a sucker for theory applications in real life.

Scheming asshole.

"Well, if that's the case then I think I can forgive you for disrupting my class only for this time." Said Mr. Charleston to my utter disbelief. I shot Hunter a sideway glare.

The jerk just winked at me.

Beautiful.

Uhm, I meant, bastard.

"But, I suggest you all be in your best behavior starting tomorrow." Continued Mr. Charleston.

Some of our classmates let out sounds of protests.

"But why?" Asked Collin. "My best behavior is non-existent!"

Mr. Charleston shut the book he was holding and placed it to the table in front of him.

"Well, Mr. Anderson, a number of students from St. Mary Montessori will be joining us tomorrow as a part of our student exchange program partnership with their school. The program will last for a whole month and Principal Curtis will not be pleased if you go around with your philandering ways and tarnish our school's excellent reputation in front of those students."

I felt so thankful and relieved when Mr. Charleston announced that little chunk of information because it diverted our classmates' attention from our date to the new topic at hand: the unknown exchanged students from our school's number one rival.

The room started to buzz with excitement.

"Student exchange program?" said the guy in front.

"Partnership with that snobby school?" huffed the girl sitting in front of me.

"This hellhole has an excellent reputation?" Collin exclaimed, looking totally incredulous.

"I wish they'll send us the hottest girls in St. Mary." James Alison said in a wistful tone.

"Or the hottest guys. All the Gorgeous guys in this school are either taken or too weird to date anyway." murmured Georgia Hemming, shooting Hunter a longing look.

"Hmm, that's interesting." I heard Hunter mumbled, unaware of the lustful looks the other girls were shooting in his direction.

"What is?" I inquired despite myself.

Hunter shook his head, looking deep in his thoughts.

"Nothing." He said but his eyebrows were drawn, as if something about the student-exchange program bothered him.

"Is there something wrong?" I asked nervously.

He gave me a distracted look before shaking his head again. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and started texting, telling me wordlessly that the conversation was over.

Despite my curiosity, I decided to just leave Hunter to his own thoughts for now. I knew that if he wanted to tell me something, he would eventually. I knew from experience that there was no use drilling Hunter for information. If he didn't want to talk, he wouldn't, no matter how much I beg for it.

I was starting to realize how much I still didn't know about Hunter. He seemed to project a mischievous and comical attitude most of the times but I knew there was more to him than that. I sometimes caught glimpses of his darker, more enigmatic side, and to tell you the truth, that side of him terrified me.

I decided to focus my attention back to Mr. Charleston who already proceeded with the lesson. I had to admit I felt slightly grateful that I could concentrate now since Hunter was thoroughly preoccupied with his phone.

Halfway through the lesson though, Principal Curtis dashed into the room without knocking, looking like he owned all the problem in the whole world.

"Mr. Curtis?" asked Mr. Charleston, looking slightly scandalized.

"Sorry about this Phil, but it's urgent." said the Principal, catching his breath. He probably ran all the way from his office to our room. Poor guy looked like he would have an asthma attack. Our principal's only idea of exercise was shouting at loitering students in the hallways. They said the last time he had any physical activity was way back two years ago when Hunter set off the sprinkler in his office and he was forced to evacuate.

His eyes scanned our room and immediately narrowed when they landed on Hunter.

"You! Follow me!" he said in a cold, condescending voice, as if he was calling his dog rather than a fellow human being.

I didn't know why, but Mr. Curtis' tone pissed me off. How could he talk to Hunter like that? Like... Like he was already accusing Hunter of something? That was so unfair! Hunter picked me up at my house earlier and we had been together ever since so I was one hundred percent sure he didn't pull off any pranks this morning. There was no excuse for Principal Curtis treating him like he was some sort of a dangerous criminal!

Before I could stop myself, I found myself standing abruptly from my chair.

"Hunter didn't do anything wrong today! We've been together since early morning!"

I was sure my voice wasn't that loud but the entire class fell completely silent. I looked around and saw dumbfounded faces staring back at me.

Oh, God.

I braved a look at Hunter and saw him looking at me with a mixture of amusement and surprise on his face.

It felt like all the blood in my veins went up to my head.

Stupid, stupid! What have I done? It was definitely a mistake to confirm to the whole class that Hunter and I were spending a lot of time together. With my luck, rumors about us would get even worse. I already heard this one rumor in which somebody supposedly caught us making out in the library. As if you'd caught Hunter inside the library. Hell, I wasn't even sure Hunter knew where the library was.

I slowly sank down to my seat, cheeks blazing from embarrassment.

Before anyone could react, Hunter stood up, his hands tucked inside the pockets of his jeans.

"Curtis, my man, what's with the urgency? You're making my girl nervous." He said, his voice amused, but he was looking at the Principal with piercing eyes, as if he already knew what he was about to say.

Principal Curtis frowned at Hunter. He obviously didn't appreciate him questioning him in front of the class, or maybe he just didn't like the way Hunter called him without honorifics.

"Crackers." He said, as if that explained everything.

The whole class groaned and I couldn't blame them. All this drama just because of some crackers?

"What's so urgent about your crackers? Crackers are just the lame version of cookies. I have an Oreo here, you can have it." Collin said, rolling his eyes while pulling out a packet of Oreo biscuits from his bag.

Principal Curtis threw him an annoyed look.

"Not the food, you idiot!" He snapped. Collin pouted, looking more offended that the principal ignored his Oreo than by being called an idiot.

The principal looked back at Hunter as if it was his fault Collin asked a stupid question.

"The school's system is down. Someone managed to crack your codes."

Silence.

Then all hell broke lose.

***

Hunter barely managed a quick "I'll see you later." before following Mr. Curtis to God-knows-where.

They left the class in mayhem, making it impossible for Mr. Charleston to continue his lecture. People just couldn't believe someone would be able to crack Hunter's codes. They thought Hunter finally found his match and it would be a battle between genius hackers.

"So crackers are bad hackers, right? Like, they hack to destroy stuff?" I heard Georgia asked James.

"I think so." James answered.

I blocked them all out.

Hunter didn't come back to class which got me really worried and kind of pissed off. Mr. Curtis shouldn't have pulled Hunter out of class to fix the damned system. Didn't he care about his education? Didn't this school have an IT department? What was so important than Tesla's magnetic flux density?

When lunch came, I sprinted my way to the cafeteria, hoping to find Hunter in our usual spot. To my disappointment, he was still nowhere to be found. All of our other friends were already there though, so I told them about what happened. None seemed surprised. Apparently, the news about the hacking incident already reached them.

"I didn't know Hunter coded our computer system's security software." I confessed, a little embarrassed. I didn't know a lot of things about Hunter which made me feel bad since I've known him for weeks now. Kissed him twice too. Not that I was thinking about that a lot.

"It's the reason why Hunter became a hacker." Rush said, "He wanted to look for the vulnerabilities of the most secured systems so that he can develop the perfect security software and anti-virus that he can distribute to everyone for free. That's why he hacked the DOD, the Pentagon, and the NSA." Rush said matter-of-factly, as if hacking government computer systems was a usual occurrence in this group of friends.

I almost choked on my tuna sandwich.

"Hunter was able to hack those systems?" I exclaimed, wide eyed. I knew Hunter was a computer genius but these new information just about blew my mind.

Parker chuckled.

"You don't really think CIA would be interested in a sixteen year old boy just because he linked DOD and YouPorn, right?" He asked, sounding amused.

Yep. That was what I thought but I wasn't going to admit that. It all seemed silly now. Of course it would take more than petty hackings to catch the attention of CIA. I should've known Hunter did something worse than hacking DOD's website. But I never would have imagined he was suicidal enough to hack three of the world's most secured systems, though. That was just crazy, not to mention, dangerously stupid.

"To make up for all the troubles he caused this school, Hunter volunteered to upgrade the school's anti-virus software before he left for DC. It's an anti-virus he created himself and it's supposedly the best anti-virus two years ago according to the reviews from security experts." Parker explained in between munches. He was eating his Burrito enthusiastically, not in the least worried about the recent happenings.

"Our school's anti-virus is Hunter's first prototype of the perfect anti-virus he was developing. It is the best anti-virus two years ago but it is still far from being perfect. I think Hunter already expected that someone's bound to crack his code sooner than later." Heather mused thoughtfully, peeling off the skin of her apple using a peeler she borrowed from the cafeteria's kitchen.

Well, that explained why Hunter didn't look surprised earlier. As a matter of fact, he even looked slightly amused. If I didn't catch the fiery anger that flashed in his eyes for a split-second, I wouldn't feel this worried. But I did see it. And it scared me.

"Who do you think cracked our system, though? They must be as good as Hunter if they managed to crack his codes" I asked, not really expecting to get specific answers from them. I mean, the cracker(s) could be anywhere in the world, right?

For the first time, everyone in our table looked uncomfortable, not exactly worried, but I felt them tensed, as if I just opened a sore topic.

I raised my eyebrows at them.

"What's wrong?"

Natalie cleared her throat, and leaned forward.

"The thing is, the only way to crack Hunter's security code is to access the school's main computer. Cracking it remotely would have been impossible." she said in a low voice as if she had just divulged a confidential bit of information to us.

"Are you telling me someone sneaked inside the mainframe room and hacked our school's computer system?" I said incredulously. "That's something only someone as crazy as Hunter would do."

I heard someone chuckled and the biggest surprise came when I turned around and saw Callan grinning humorlessly.

"You haven't been with us that long." He said. "You haven't seen real crazy stuff yet."

Goosebumps ran across the skin of my arms. His voice didn't sound threatening but it felt ominous, and the worst thing was, none of the others contradicted him.

***

I received a text from Hunter telling me to wait for him at the Parking lot after class. He said he'd take me home since Parker's not here to do the job. I couldn't help but feel relieved when I saw his text. I wanted to talk to him about... Well, whatever he wanted to talk about. I guessed I just missed him and listening to him talk about how his day went would be enough to make me feel better. Scratch that. Just seeing him would be more than enough.

God, being in love was making me so cheesy.

I was running a bit late because I had to drop by the library to return the books I borrowed last Friday so I wasn't surprised to see that only a couple of cars were left at the parking lot. I saw Hunter's Chevy parked at the farthest corner so I began walking towards it. My eyes almost popped out of their sockets when I saw a brand new Maserati parked just beside Hunter's car.

"What the hell?" I whispered to myself. "Is Justin Bieber here?" I tried to peak through the windows to see if someone was inside but the windows were heavily tinted.

I heard my phone ringing, taking my attention off the glorious piece of metal in front of me.

"Buddy."

My heart leapt just by hearing his voice.

"Yes?"

"I'm so sorry, how long have you been waiting for me?" He said, his voice sounded apologetic and tired at the same time.

I shook my head even though he couldn't see it.

"No, no. I dropped by the library so I literally just arrived here." I said, making my voice sound cheerful. "Where are you?" I asked as I leaned on the door of the passenger side of his car so I was facing the driver side of the Maserati.

"I'll be there in a minute. I miss you." He said.

My cheeks instantly felt warm despite the cold.

"Hunter, can't you survive a day without teasing me?" I tried to sound annoyed but I was actually smiling from ear to ear.

"It's true. I wasn't teasing."

I was about to answer him when the door at the driver side of the Maserati opened.

A boy stepped out of the car, wearing Doctor Martens boots, black jeans and a white t-shirt. He looked just about my age, or maybe a year older, I couldn't tell. He casually stood in front of me and stared at me with open curiosity and amusement in his silver eyes. His long dirty blonde hair was tied back in a ponytail and a small smile was playing on his thin lips. I noticed he had a piercing on his lower lip.

The boy was beyond attractive but there was a cruel glint in his eyes that made my skin crawl.

"W-who are you?"