Kyla’s Secret

Corrine knew she had to be as mean and crazy as she was sweet and kind, and often wondered if something was wrong with her. She told herself she deserved to suffer for the way she’d illegally hacked into and spied on people through their webcams, and now for the way she was messing with Kyla. “Kyla has to be utterly terrified right now, you stupid old fool!” she chided herself. “How could you do that to someone you’ve come to really care for?” It was true. She really did care about the girl. There was no denying that. Yes, it had started with mere physical attraction, but the more she got to know the person inside the pretty package, the more she liked what she learned. Then why was she terrorizing her? How could she do this to her, and why was it that she just couldn’t seem to help herself? She tried to tell herself that no one was perfect, that everyone had a dark side, and that she couldn’t expect herself to do everything right all the time. Pitiful excuse or not, she was who she was: a kind, caring, mostly honest, law-abiding citizen who liked to have a little fun now and then. Besides, no one she’d ever watched through their webcam knew they were being watched. Their ignorance might not make it okay, but still... “Kyla now knows someone somewhere, somehow knows about Meagan, and she’s got to be utterly terrified right now. You know she is. You saw her horrified reaction as she read the message,” she told herself. She didn’t think Joe, who sat nearby in the background, could tell, but she wasn’t sure. She could only see part of his arm, and Kyla had moved out of the camera’s range just seconds after the last message was sent. She heard a few words exchanged between the two, but couldn’t make out what was being said. She went back and forth in her mind. One minute she told herself she had a right to some imperfections in life, and the next, she beat herself up for being so cruel. She wondered if deep down she wanted to be Kyla’s heroine by cheering up a damsel in distress. The only problem was that Kyla would probably keep their messages secret, because telling anyone about them would mean explaining who it was she supposedly killed by accident. Just in case the girl did mention them to someone else, Corrine made sure the messages were untraceable. While Kyla had slept the other night, she had installed some tracking software on her laptop that allowed her to access it from the privacy of her own home. The only potential issue would be if they both tried to access the same thing at the same time. Kyla might see a message telling her that the file or program was already in use. If Kyla were as computer-illiterate as she made herself out to be, she wouldn’t understand it or even worry about it too much. Once she tried again a short while later, she would find she could access it without any problems. Corrine tried to log in only when she felt it was safer—when Kyla would be less likely to be using whatever it was she wanted to access. As her fondness—okay, maybe obsession—for Kyla grew, so did her curiosity. She was mostly interested in her private journal, which she kept offline. This was a source of regular flattery that brought an ear-to-ear grin to Corrine’s face when she read about how hot Kyla was for her. What luck it was to learn that the one you were hot for was hot for you in return. An hour before she was due to leave for campus, she saw that Kyla had updated her journal with details of the night before. Corrine felt a stirring in her most intimate parts at the way Kyla described being turned on by her muscle tone, her snug ass, her sexy eyes—and apparently, the girl had a thing for a babe in uniform, too. Kyla also went on to express regrets about meeting someone so far from home. “Then again,” she wrote, “Corrine may not even be a lesbian for all I know, and even if she is, that doesn’t automatically mean she’d be interested in me.” “Oh, but I am, girl, I am,” whispered Corrine. “I may not be a saint, but I think I do pretty well compared to the average person with the shit so many of them pull these days.” She reached down and patted Spotty’s head. She reminded herself that she hadn’t been interested in looking in on anyone else since she’d found Kyla, and once she actually got with Kyla, she wouldn’t need to peek anymore—because she would be there all the time. “Oh, you silly fool,” she again chastised herself. “Why would you think someone as beautiful as Kyla, with so much to live for, would want to move in with you on a piece of land in the middle of nowhere? So she can watch the stars and listen to the wind chimes at night with you?” She knew she had to either forget about Kyla altogether in ways that weren’t professional, or settle for whatever she could get from the girl. Sooner or later, Kyla would return home and get on with her life. Then where would Corrine be? Alone, just as she had been for a while now. She tried to remind herself that she hated being in a relationship and all the hassles that came with it, and how she preferred to keep things casual. But she couldn’t imagine being casual with Kyla—unless she had no choice. After a while, Kyla appeared on screen again, face pale as a ghost. “Are you okay?” she heard Joe ask her. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. I just… I just have a bit of cabin fever getting to me, I guess.” “I can take you out for a walk again, but it has to be quick.” Bastard, thought Corrine. You’re not supposed to be doing that, and you should know it! Then again, I’m not supposed to be taking her to the gym, am I? She waited until Kyla and Joe returned from their walk. Kyla still seemed visibly shaken. Maybe she should send her messages only when Kyla was alone so no one else could see her reaction and sense trouble. She could casually send a message or two from her smartphone when Kyla was in the bathroom, if she just couldn’t stop herself altogether. Corrine returned to analyzing her behavior as she watched Kyla sip a bottle of fruit juice. Why did she feel so compelled to play with the poor girl’s head? Just because she could? She took advantage of Kyla not using her computer to delete the messages she’d sent. She wiped her mailbox and hard drive completely clean of everything from today. Last night, she had already erased the initial message. When she was done, she sat back and studied the beautiful native Pacific Islander. She looked both cute and sexy today with her hair in two long braids. It took all Corrine had not to send a message saying how adorable she looked. She wondered how much Kyla would take before she exposed herself just to expose anyone else. Probably quite a bit. But still, she wasn’t about to go that far and get the girl totally freaking out in ways she couldn’t even hide from Joe, no matter how hard she tried. Besides, she was still basically a good person with a conscience, right? Sending Kyla into confusion and making her a bit alarmed was one thing. Scaring the living shit out of her was another. She watched as Kyla set her juice bottle beside the monitor, and then the look of confusion began. Corrine couldn’t help but giggle, knowing Kyla was probably trying to figure out where in the hell those damn messages had gone. “Seek and you shall not find, my dearie,” she whispered to the monitor, knowing full well Kyla couldn’t hear her because her sound input was disabled, making her built-in microphone worthless. That was how Corrine usually preferred it. She had secretly hidden a program on Kyla’s hard drive that recorded her every move—even the passwords she typed to access various accounts. Corrine noted that she closed and reopened her mail program a few times, thinking the messages might reappear, but after a few minutes of futile searching, she and Joe began making small talk. He asked her questions about her home state. He’d apparently been to Honolulu as a child, but not to Maui. “I can’t imagine living elsewhere,” Corrine was dismayed to hear Kyla say. But then she felt a twinge of hope when Kyla added, “At the same time, I long for something different, just for variety’s sake.” Corrine listened to the mundane chatter and then realized it was almost her time to guard the little queen. But first, she decided to send one last quick message. Her fingers tapped at the keyboard, and she watched as a weary-faced Kyla opened it and read: I’m sorry if I freaked you out. I’m just a random joker. My sisters are clowning around right now, and one exclaimed that the other nearly killed her by accident with the pillows they’re slamming into each other. I was just quoting the idiot. She watched Kyla take in the words on her screen and saw the doubt that crossed her dark and lovely features.