Transitions (A Thousand Words Book 1)

by Brooks, Tori

  As promised, Dev texted Lindsay several times throughout the day and called when she got home from school. They promised to save video conferencing for weekends as dates. To try to keep her from crying about missing him, Dev decided to send Lindsay flowers, balloons, or chocolate for the smallest of occasions. That should keep her happy. Jess said girlfriends required maintenance, Dev was willing to do what was necessary for Lindsay to feel secure in their relationship. The time investment after the first week was enough to make Dev cringe, however, and he realized he was going to have to monitor his time carefully.

  Despite his job with the band, Dev still modeled for Oskar Viktor. He had photo shoots scheduled for Oskar’s new men’s line, and had to rearrange them upon seeing his midterm and project schedule for his classes. There was no way the three sessions fit neatly into his class schedule, but Dev figured he’d do what he could and that was what caffeine was for. Oskar was usually pretty easy going. Dev hoped that he’d understand that he couldn’t do as many events as he did in the previous six months. It was too bad that, just when he was finally getting control of his shyness, his schedule made him slink back into the shadows again.

  Bryan reported Kenny was ranting about Dev’s webcam and amp setup before they’d even tried it. Unfortunately, Dev wasn’t surprised when Bryan confirmed Kenny and Jess were both complaining about it after their first session two weeks later. It didn’t work out as well as he’d hoped. The sound was great. It was the concept that was, well, awkward.

  Dev did what he could to alleviate Kenny’s concern when their high-strung leader called to tell him off personally: Yes, he understood. Yes, he was taking it seriously. Yes, he knew the band was important. Yes, of course he knew they would tour this summer. Kenny, get bent and drop it. Dev hung up on him after an hour and refused to answer his calls the rest of the day.

  By the end of January, Dev came to a conclusion: juggling modeling, the band, and Lindsay for the next four years was going to be as challenging as college itself.

  ○ ○ ○

  “Hey, Becky, can I talk to you a minute?” Lindsay asked, pulling her older sister into her bedroom.

  Becky watched her close and lock the door with a raised eyebrow. “This is going to be good, I can tell.”

  “It’s about Dev.”

  “Missing him already? He just left a month ago.”

  “We text all day, and email, and he calls every afternoon. I do still miss him, actually.”

  “What can you possibly find to talk about? That’s more communication than when he was local.”

  “What we talk about isn’t the problem, it’s what we don’t talk about.”

  “I’m game.” Becky sighed and folded her arms. “What don’t you talk about?”

  “Sex.”

  “Phone sex? I can’t see Dev getting into that.”

  Lindsay either actually. “No, real sex. Phone sex can come later.”

  “He’s on the other side of the country, Lin. That’s not happening no matter how determined you two are.”

  “That’s just it, he’s determined not to,” Lindsay huffed.

  Becky raised an eyebrow again and stared at her. “I hope you took that well.”

  “I didn’t throw a tantrum or throw myself at him if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Okay, what do you need me for?”

  “I want to know how serious he is,” Lindsay said finally, hinting at Becky’s status as a hacker in Dev’s online group. Becky knew him first. Sort of.

  “You’re dating him.” Becky laughed at her.

  “Yeah, but you know him in a different way,” Lindsay pleaded and Becky sighed as she sat down on the end of the bed. Her older sister glanced around the room, her eyes falling on the poster of A Thousand Words behind her door. Darts were sticking out of Kenny’s forehead and Jess’s crotch. Becky clearly saw that and Lindsay stood her ground as her sister’s blue eyes met hers and held them. Lindsay won. Becky knew about the animosity between Lindsay and Dev’s friends and she let it go.

  “We don’t talk sex in the chat room,” Becky finally said. “I take that back, there’s a lot of sex talk in the chat room when nothing’s going on, but Dev doesn’t participate. Actually, he usually leaves, so I’d say he’s not going to budge. What’s his official position?”

  “Abstinence.”

  Becky doubled over in laughter. Lindsay wasn’t amused by her sister’s enjoyment over her predicament and stomped on Becky’s foot in retaliation. Becky sobered almost immediately.

  “Okay, he might budge. He’s young and that’s lofty. You missed your window of opportunity though. He’ll be eighteen soon – an adult, and you’re not. The age of consent is sixteen, I know. But if he won’t touch you now, I suspect he’s too uptight to budge on that one.”

  “Two years?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Becky! He’s a guy! He can’t be seriously thinking he’ll wait two more years.”

  “He’s waited nearly eighteen, what’s another two to him? Besides, that’s assuming he’s thinking marriage the day you turn eighteen, which he probably isn’t. Also assuming you stick it out and he marries you.”

  Lindsay groaned in frustration and threw herself on the bed. “I think he’ll stay with me. I have needs too, and Dev says he understands that. I need him to understand two years isn’t going to happen. I won’t make it.”

  “Wait, you told him you’re a nympho? Really?” Becky looked at her with wide eyes.

  “Yes,” Lindsay admitted softly.

  “Honestly?”

  “The whole story.” Lindsay nodded.

  “Wow.” Becky just shook her head. Lindsay wasn’t sure what her sister was thinking, and it scared her. She knew Becky and Dev were friends, and their friendship was different. Lindsay felt almost threatened by her sister’s access to her boyfriend through the hacker group they were both part of.

  “How did he take it?” Becky asked after a long moment of silence passed.

  “He was shocked by the abuse. By my age,” Lindsay answered. “He wants to fix it. That’s how I left it, with him being the only one who might be able to help me.”

  Becky gave her a low whistle. “Bold. And manipulative.” Becky frowned. “You shouldn’t be this good at sixteen.”

  “Hey, I’ve been honest with him about how I manipulate Mom – showing her what she expects and all that. He’s good with it.”

  “Okay. Listen, Lin, Dev’s one of the best hackers I’ve seen in a long time. He’s smart, he’s got heart, and it doesn’t hurt that he’s rich and cute as a button. You could do worse. Unfortunately, that he’s a rock star and rich and cute as a button means other girls will try to take him away from you.”

  “Why do you think I freaked when he told me he was leaving for MIT early? I threw together the ‘save me from myself’ plan on the fly!”

  “Relax, Dev likes you. I doubt you needed to draw him in by playing the damsel-in-distress card. It’s amusing he’s willing to play your knight-in-shining-armor when he’s so ill-suited to what you really need.” Becky shook her head to dismiss that thought. “Putting that aside, do not mess this up by pushing him on something that’s important to him. I’ll buy you some toys to keep your libido in check, but go easy on him.”

  “Becky, I have toys, I want him. On me, in me, now. Like yesterday.”

  “Well he’s safely in another time zone, so get over it. Wait two years and wash the dye out of your hair. That goth thing’s a turnoff for him and you know it. You’re not going to get him dressed like that. Show him what he’s getting and maybe he’ll come around on his own. Until he does, go online and make me a list of what you want. Just no porn sites. There’s evidence streaming porn causes erectile dysfunction in men, so who knows what it does to women?”

  Lindsay looked at her sister and shook her head in amusement. “You know, for someone who’s pathologically anti-porn, you spend an extraordinary amount of time researching it.”

  Becky gla
red at her. “Fine. How about it’s just that I’ll only go so far in corrupting a minor?”

  “You draw the line at advice on how to seduce my boyfriend who’s committed to abstinence and buying me sex toys?” Lindsay raised an eyebrow then nodded. “Okay.”

  Chapter Two

  Dev couldn’t watch Lindsay’s expression on his screen when he told her he had to stay at MIT for spring break. A last minute disaster with a group project meant they simply had to take the time to do the work over again. Lindsay was crushed, but her disappointment didn’t hold a candle to Sophie’s tantrum. Little sisters were like bizarre mini-moms. Dev promised to make it up to both of them when he got home after the semester ended. He didn’t know how, but he would.

  Flynn forced an agreement that Dev would spend breaks at home with Sophie and Gunter unless he had work, like the upcoming tour. It was a deal with the devil as far as Dev was concerned. When Dev left for college, he was a minor and Flynn held all the cards. He couldn’t legally sign a rental agreement, or access enough of his trust fund to finance his venture without his stepfather’s approval. Dev was also forced to see a shrink on a regular basis, per the agreement, although at least Dev knew Dr. Braithewait couldn’t report her observations back to the nosy bastard. His new shrink zeroed in on Dev’s dislike for said nosy bastard in their first meeting. To Dev, it implied Flynn had given her information, and probably a bias that Dev now had to overcome. It did little to decrease Dev’s stress if the exercise was meant to.

  His stepfather’s unspoken disapproval of Dev skipping a trip home made it almost worthwhile to endure the collective guilt trips from Sophie and Lindsay. Actually, their guilt trips were well coordinated, Dev reflected. A wave of paranoia crashed over him when he considered the possibility they could be working together. Again. Lindsay initiated a pact with Sophie before, with his knowledge and consent, meaning it was really his own fault if they continued now. He’d have to watch that. No, there wasn’t anything he could do, so why bother?

  Everyone in the group was pretty upset about staying behind over spring break to do two months’ worth of work over again in a week. Dev took it upon himself to play host and put his family room and baking-happy housekeeper to good use. In the first two days, the six of them became good friends: discussing other classes, assignments, and how to handle an obnoxious professor. Dev didn’t have trouble with the one the rest of them did, and they didn’t have a problem with the one who seemed to single Dev out as unworthy to be there. They even tentatively planned fall semester together. Everyone else started MIT the previous fall, so Dev was a semester behind. Despite Kenny’s displeasure, Dev would have to take a couple online courses while touring this summer to be eligible to take the same classes as the rest.

  “So how’s college compared to high school, Dev?” James asked as the group sat around Dev’s dining room table. Everyone was hunched over laptops with discarded plates of strudel, cake, chicken salad, and pizza everywhere. Dev knew Frau Schmidt was insulted that he ordered pizza, but he also knew pizza was a staple of college all-nighters for those who didn’t have a housekeeper and cook. She was going to have to get used to it, he wanted to fit in.

  Dev shrugged. “Harder I suppose, but not as much as I expected. I took almost all Honors and AP classes in high school, so this isn’t so bad. Fewer distractions without the band makes it easier I suppose.”

  “Weren’t they just here?” George asked. Georgia Bancroft, AKA George, was a ‘wild redhead trapped in a brunette’s body,’ by her definition. Dev wasn’t exactly sure what that meant and gave her a wide berth. He would have preferred not to have her in the group at all, but Noah swore she was the best programmer he’d ever seen. Dev thought Noah was just trying to sleep with her. His behavior reminded him vaguely of Jess, until James quietly agreed that George really was that good.

  Dev was determined to show her up as the ultimate programmer until he told Lindsay he had to stay for spring break and her eyes brimmed with tears. He watched her struggle to hold them back as he denied ‘some coed had her hooks in him.’ Dev told her the group line up, and Lindsay zeroed in on George as the likely culprit. He didn’t stop himself from laughing at the absurdity of it in time and Lindsay hung up on him.

  When Dev finally got Lindsay back online and calmed down, he promised to steer clear of unnecessary interaction with George. Challenging her for the title of best programmer probably counted as unnecessary interaction in Lindsay’s mind, Dev decided; plus it might draw unwanted attention to himself. Noah could have her, she could keep the title. In the future, he would break unpleasant news to Lindsay over the phone instead of webcam.

  “Yeah,” Dev answered George, trying to ignore the way she watched him as she flipped her long dark hair back over her shoulder. “Bryan and Brenda just left a couple days ago.”

  “Must be tiring to have people traipsing in and out all the time,” she said with a look on her face he assumed she meant to be sympathetic.

  “Not really. I miss having them close.” Dev turned back to James, leaving George to Noah and ignoring the snickers of Kevin and Krista.

  Krista was a weak programmer, but that wasn’t why Dev didn’t want her in the group. Kenny and Jess were irritated that Dev had returned to avoiding girls. He avoided them in high school because they were annoying and freaked him out. Now he avoided them in college because they were annoying and freaked Lindsay out. In Dev’s mind, not much had really changed. George had been hitting on him for nearly twenty hours straight and Krista hadn’t been much more subtle. She was only here because Kevin, her twin, was and he was a decent guy. In fact, all the guys seemed cool, it was just the girls Dev had to get rid of.

  “James, can I see your variable list?” Dev asked. James handed Dev a list as Dev’s computer sounded a quiet fanfare.

  “What was that?” James leaned over to look.

  Dev wasn’t worried, he knew nothing would show on the screen from the special alert. “Nothing important. Just an update.” He pulled his phone from his pocket and opened the browser.

  Across the table, George closed her laptop and excused herself. Dev glanced at her briefly as she wandered into the kitchen. He scanned the news article the alert was for, trying hard to suppress a smile. Dev had been a hacker for years, but he didn’t have the stereotypical mentality that accompanied his passion. He was grateful to be accepted into a group of like-minded hackers who called themselves The Web Wizards. They were a structured organization who saw the hazards of the Internet and dangers posed by the more criminally minded computer geniuses out there. The Wizards took it upon themselves to correct the problem in their own unique way. In short, they wrote viruses, worms, and trojans to take down malicious viruses, worms and trojans. They also wrote programs to fix security holes, attacked botnets, and watched for other malware.

  Their avatars all wore white hats, although technically Dev knew The Web Wizards would be classified as gray-hat crackers because they didn’t report their findings, like true white-hat crackers did. Yes, they exploited them, but they only did it to fix the problem. To Dev, the distinction was important. The technicality was enough to land the group on the FBI’s most wanted list, however. Personally, Dev had doubts the FBI was really that interested in the group. They were on the list because they met a set of definitions and had to be, but they weren’t causing trouble. The FBI had bigger problems.

  Within the group, Dev had a knack for security and this article had his appreciation because it concerned a program he helped write. It seems a program was discovered in numerous corporate systems during a routine software upgrade. Specialists were brought in, but they weren’t sure where the program came from, or that it had done any damage. In fact, in one system, the small piece of software built a selective quarantine and isolated over thirty pieces of malware the company’s traditional security systems failed to catch. The unnamed company was still unsure how to uninstall the software, or if they will.

  “Something funny?” Noah as
ked.

  Startled, Dev looked up to find Noah was talking to George. Dev stood up and leaned over the table to see into the kitchen better. She stood, leaning against the counter laughing quietly and looking at her cell phone.

  “No. Well, yes, but you’d have to know the backstory.” George shook her head.

  Dev sat down, almost swearing in the realization that she was reading the same article he was. Another Wizard? Here?

  Why not here? Why not MIT? It made sense, Dev thought. The Wizards were all smart and most of them seemed fairly young.

  Dev waited for George to return and posted a comment to the article. He quietly listened for some alert on her computer, but missed it in the background conversation. George got up almost immediately though, closed her computer, and retreated to the kitchen again with her phone.

  She came back again a moment later and looked carefully around the table. Initially she skimmed over Dev. He leaned back in his chair, not even trying to disguise his amusement. Dev glanced around the table, eyes following where George was looking. Everyone was busy writing code and eventually George’s eyes came back around to Dev.

  “No,” she shook her head in denial.

  Dev laughed and returned to his program. He had a big part of the program to write and didn’t have time to waste on George. Besides, he promised Lindsay.

  A fanfare played on his computer. “Scheiße,” he swore as he involuntarily glanced at George. She was watching him, a smug look on her face. He could ignore it, but it was really too late now. Of course he knew she was one of The Wizards, and he already gave away that he was too. With his comment, she knew who he was, with her comment at least he’d know who she was. He might as well check.

  Pulling out his phone, he typed in the website again.