Chapter 3 - Girlfriends
Sunday was slow and quiet, which was just fine for Manny, after the fevered pitch of the last few days.
He woke up late, and found the house quiet - his Dad was out golfing, his sister Betty out for the day as well, while his Mom was gardening in the backyard. He quickly got a big glass of milk and toasted up some Pop-Tarts, and ran back up to his room to sit in front of his computer.
Pouring over the backup tapes from Principal Cole's computer, he hoped that his time away might have jarred something, but he still didn't notice anything exceptional. Following too many dead ends, he finally decided to put it away and get to the schoolwork he'd been neglecting.
Hours later, crouched over his biology textbook, an idea struck Manny, and he jumped over to his computer. He set up a comparison of the school database backups on Mrs. Cole's computer, against the similar school databases that were on backed up from other computers. Since they should have all been synchronized at the end of the school year, they should theoretically be the same. Manny waited.
"A-ha" he muttered under his breath.
That was followed by a grumble. The search did find some extra information in Mrs. Cole's files, but it didn't reveal anything spectacular.
Manny looked further.
The anomalies were all on records pertaining to girls that had graduated from school last year. Where the standard record just had some basic information about the name of the college or university, Mrs. Cole's records had an extra line of information for about a third of the female students - a name. No indication of what the name meant, but it looked like some sort of contact.
This is strange
, Manny thought, as he looked further,
every single record with a contact name is for some school far away...and they seem so obscure, I've never heard of any of them. And the same contact for each school, and sometimes the same contact for different ones, that might be geographically close. There were no addresses. The other girls, a lot of them are going to school in the city, or somewhere relatively close.
So what do I have now? Just a list of names that for some reason aren't on any other student records. When in doubt, check the 'net.
It took some diligence to look through the results for each name, knowing that pouring through these results was like checking for a needle in a million haystacks.
It was evening when Manny came up with something interesting. One of the names, 'Roger E. Latham', turned up a website for a Nevada brothel, among other results. Mr. Latham was on the 'about us' page, apparently involved somehow in business administration. In a combination of boredom and puerile interest, Manny clicked through and browsed around a bit.
There. That face.
One of the pictures of the 'new girls' working at the brothel looked familiar. He'd seen her, seen her around school. Though of course that that time her name wasn't 'Suzy Sweetheart' like the website proclaimed now.
Manny jumped back to the database, and scrolled through the entries.
Oh yeah, that was her name. I thought I remembered from some assembly presentation.
And on record as going to something called, 'Mountain Plains College', and beside that the name of the mysterious Mr. Roger E. Latham.
Hmmm,
Manny browsed further,
measurements, hours...does groups up to three, men and women. Cool.
-
When his sister came back later that evening, he knocked on her bedroom door, "Hey, Betty, can I come in?"
She sounded exasperated, "Aaargh, I guess. What do you want to bug me about?"
"Well, I was just thinking about our choices for next year. Made up your mind about where you're going?"
"Um," she looked up into the air, trying to grasp some thought. "Not exactly, but I know I'm going away. The school has these great little independent colleges they have ties with, very exclusive, that they can set you up with if you work real hard. That's what I'm aiming for. Girls only though."
Manny raised an eyebrow, "Girls only?"
"That's right, jerk-off." She chuckled. "How about you?"
"Uh, no idea. Yet," he replied, truthfully.
"Well, unless I can help you right now with your soul-searching, do you mind fucking off? I was in the middle of something."
Manny left her room. He decided to roll up some of the pot he had left over from Saturday night, and go for a walk, think, and smoke.
This is so bizarre
, he thought.
The school sending off...selling? Gotta be big money involved somewhere. Skimming off a good third of the females of the graduating class...and no one protests? For...well, I guess it's pretty obvious what for. The eternal demand.
And now I'm tied up in it. This is so fucked-up.
-
Biology class was Manny's first on Monday morning. A knock came on the classroom door.
"Hey there, is Manny in class today? Can I borrow him?" It was Mr. Anderson, one of the primary figures in the Phys. Ed. department, as usual walking around with a smile and a grin and a jump in his step no matter how early in the day it was, and showing off his tanned muscles underneath a golf shirt with the school logo. "You might as well take your books with you Manny, I don't know if you'll make it back by the time the period ends. No, no, nothing bad."
They walked together down the hallway, and then down the staircase to the main floor.
Manny asked, "What's this about, Mr. Anderson?"
