Wide awake now, I untangle the cheap, thin sheets from my legs and jump down from bed, yanking my phone free from its charger. Then I scroll through the messages, and a silent laugh of disbelief rises to my lips.

I’d thought Chanel was only joking about the review last night, but it turns out she really went ahead with it. Not only that, but it must’ve been pretty convincing—convincing enough to cause a 770 percent spike in user activity overnight.

My pulse quickens as I read over the new requests. There’s an odd fluttering sensation in the pit of my stomach, caught somewhere between nerves and excitement and impatience, like that feeling I sometimes get right before heading into an exam.

I filter through the smaller requests, the ones that wouldn’t make me much money and probably aren’t worth my time, and a few troll messages asking about weird sex stuff. Then I come to the most recent work order, and pause.

The message is surprisingly detailed and long enough to be an essay, and even comes with its own nondisclosure agreement attached, but that’s not what makes an alarm bell go off in my head. It’s the request itself; the user wants me to remove a series of nudes from Jake Nguyen’s phone before he can send them out.

Everything I overheard from Rainie’s conversation—or supposed audition—in the bathroom comes rushing back to me. It all seems like too much of a coincidence. Besides, almost everyone knows Rainie and Jake have been on and off since last year, and their most recent split was ugly. Apparently Rainie burned 100,000 RMB worth of the gift bags Jake gave her in a fit of rage, and Jake responded by hitting every bar and club in Thailand over the summer break.

But the nudes—that’s definitely a new development. It wouldn’t be the biggest scandal to hit our school, of course, not since Stephanie Kong’s potential Olympics career was cut short by a leaked sex tape, but it’s no small matter either.

After some deliberation, I type in the private chat:

This counts as child pornography, you know that right? Why don’t you go to the school, or the police?

My suspicions are confirmed when the user replies, almost immediately:

it’s complicated. i can’t risk anyone finding out abt this...would do more harm than good, tbh.

but you’ll help me, right??

I haven’t had a chance to form a response yet when new messages pour in:

please?

this is rly urgent.

like he told me he’d send the pics to his friends when/if he felt like it

i tried to talk to him but he’s blocked me on all social media alr. even facebook.

i don’t know what else to do...

I can practically feel Rainie’s panic radiating through the other side of the screen, and with each new message I read, I can also feel my own anger simmering. Rising. First there was Chanel’s cheating father, and now this. If nothing else, these couple of days have served as a great reminder of why I’m glad to be single.