Penetro
Prequel: The birth of Penetro
Penetro was just getting off the bus and walking through the parking lot to school
when he overheard a part of a part of a conversation that caught his interest.
“I think we should tell Manon today”, a female voice whispered sounding anxious.
“I agree”, a male voice replied. Penetro assumed it was Manon’s parents as he
moved in closer. “but we have to be prepared to answer a lot of questions about her
adoption.”
This was the window of opportunity he had been looking for. To be connected to
students in a way that made him feel more involved without personally knowing
them. He didn’t think of the lives he’d be hurting, all he cared about was feeling as if
he was part of something.
So that day when Penetro returned home he wrote his very first post as an online
tyrant.
A year later….
The room was filled with students and Ms Malachai droned on about the new social
welfare assignment for the term, but I barely paid attention, twirling my pen and
trying not to envy the kids who were going home. Suddenly, a dark shadow fell upon
me and I looked up only to see Ms. Malachai looking slightly exasperated as she
snapped her fingers too close to my face and said sharply,” Ms Pierce, you should
really pay more attention in class and not what’s going on outside the window. Your
partner for this assignment is Manon Hastings, I want the assignment on my desk,
completed on my desk in a month.”
Then she took heed and waked away, probably to traumatize some other poor
student by snapping her gigantic fingers in close proximity to their face. I was so
busy wondering about how long it takes her to get a manicure that I almost didn’t
notice when Manon slid a chair next to mine and began,” So I’m your partner I think
……um……… what do you want to do for the assignment.”
She didn’t really look at me, but instead she was fidgeting with a piece of paper. She
looked so vulnerable with those brown doe eyes, I just had to suggest with a smirk,”
why don’t we find out who Penetro is and shut down that terrible site?’
Penetro was a cyber bully who terrorised the students of this prison, west bridge high
with malicious posts of the students’ idiocy and recklessness. Penetro’s first post
Penetro by Devashree Gupta 2
about my partner, Manon Hastings herself. She seemed to perk up at this
suggestion, her eyes glinting, “that’s a great idea,” she exclaimed, “let’s start now.”
So, over the next few days, Manon and I went through almost every single post
Penetro had ever posted on their site. We researched at my house sometimes, and
my mother was delighted that id taken some interest in another human being, but I
told her not to gets her hopes up. It was pretty unlikely that Manon and I would end
up friends.
Today, at Manon’s house we decided to make a list of suspects and narrow down
which grade we think Penetro is from by seeing who they favour, who they haven’t
written about and who they target too much.
“Penetro is probably someone from someone from our grade.” Manon explained.
She seemed extremely keen to discover Penetro’s identity, “it can’t be someone
younger as Penetro first started to post when our batch started high school.”
“hmm. it could be someone older,” I countered.
“I don’t think so, Penetro takes too much interest in our grade. Hey, you know
Penetro could be Nelly Yuki.” Manon suggested, “There’s only one post about her –
Nelly pretended to go to an Ariana Grande concert again; anyone see a pattern –
that’s all.”
“Hmm, I don’t think she’s nearly clever enough,” I said looking around Manon’s room
trying to figure out her personality. There were a lot of posters as well as
photographs. Shy as she was, Manon had many friends. She loved music and
Monet. She talked some more about other students, but I was barely listening, giving
her vague answers like “she doesn’t have any friends” and “he’s extremely annoying”
although I had no idea who Manon was talking about.
“That’s true, who hates Jane Dunphy?” Manon enquired.
“The whole school practically,” I murmured while staring at a poster of ‘The Vamps’.
Manon burst out laughing and I looked at her in surprise. What had caused this
sudden fit of laughter?
“I made the name up,” she said when she finally stopped laughing, but the confused
look on my face as I said “What?!” set off another bout of laughter.
“There’s no Jane Dunphy at our school,” Manon grinned, “You are barely listening to
me, Em.”
“Oh” was my reply. I suppose I could see some humour in it however a warm feeling
was growing inside me as I realised Manon had given me a nickname. Perhaps I
would take a liking to Manon and her shy nature.
Penetro by Devashree Gupta 3
The next day in school, Manon and I were following Nelly Yuki’s every move, as
planned the day before. We saw who she was rude to, who she was friends with, but
alas there was no concrete evidence that Nelly Yuki was in fact “Penetro”. At lunch I
sat with someone for the first time, Manon. I made an amusing comparison of us to
Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. I even went so far as to make an illustration of
me in a deerstalker cap and a pipe; Manon saw it and burst out laughing. The day
after that, on Tuesday, we trailed Blair Fields, a cheerleader who knew everyone.
She was almost friends with the entire school. Penetro had not written a single
malevolent thing about her, but she hadn’t taken Computers as a subject and did not
seem very bright. So, we knocked Blair of the suspect list.
On Wednesday, we continued with our real-life version of Cluedo to pursue our next
suspect – Caleb Humphrey, who had got top marks in Computers and who was
rumoured to have hacked into the NASA website. Manon even walked up to him and
questioned him, “What do you think about Elena Salvatore and Serena Gilbert?”
These were Penetro’s common targets. He responded, “I think both of them are
snobbish and good for nothing”. Then he walked away.
“I’m sure it’s him now,” Manon whispered while looking around warily, “but I think we
need more evidence before we confront him and tell him to take down the site”. The
gleam in her eyes told me that Manon felt quite strongly about this issue and I
suddenly had the urge to comfort her.
“Yeah, I’m sure it’s him as well,” I started “Don’t worry,” I continued as I put a hand
on her arm and squeezed it in a reassuring way, “We’ll take down Penetro together. I
know you really hate that site.”
“Oh! You have no idea, after Penetro posted that I’m adopted, the day my parents
were about to tell me was the worst day of my life,” Manon explained, “It didn’t
change anything. I still love my parents, but I didn’t want the school to know before I
actually did. It was just really humiliating.”
Her eyes burned with rage and her fists curled into balls. She looked as if she was
about to cry, but then she cleared her throat, turned away from me to wipe her eyes,
then turned back to me and said perkily, “So, who are we stalking next, Holmes?”
I had to let loose a chuckle at that comment. Manon should get an award for being
an ice breaker. “I guess whoever’s next on our suspect list, my dear Watson.”
On Thursday and Friday, we continued with our list, but also kept an eye on Caleb
Humphrey. The more evidence we collected, the more evident it became Caleb is
Penetro; Manon was absolutely convinced of it.
On Friday evening we took a break from being detectives. Manon and I just sat in
her room while she gave me song recommendations and I gave her book
recommendations.
“I’ve brought you my copy of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd especially for you. If you
do anything to it, I’ll hunt you down and murder you.”
Penetro by Devashree Gupta 4
Manon gave me a look of mock terror, however what I said was true. I hold all my
books in high regard and usually would never lend them out to anyone. Possibly, as
there was no one I could lend it out to.
“Fine, I’ll read your boring Poirot book,” she pouted. I gave her a death glare. She
ignored it and continued, “but you have to listen to all the songs I list out and you
have to love them.”
I came to the realization, right then that over the past two weeks Manon and I had
grown close or as close as we could have for me to consider her as a friend, but I
still wasn’t sure, so I asked in a most idiotic manner, “are we friends?”
“Yeah, of course, Em”, Manon said with a smile. “Now you have to listen to…”
We continued talking and watching movies very late into the night and I had a feeling
that Manon and I were going to get a lot closer, so I knew what I had to do.
--------------
It was Sunday morning and Manon had just finished reading the Murder of Roger
Ackroyd after pulling an all nighter. The first thing she did after putting down the book
and sighing; was race to Emily’s house. By the time she reached, Manon was
panting. As she went up the stairs to Emily’s room Manon thought, “Will we fail the
project if Caleb isn’t really Penetro? Do we have to report him to the school?”
However, as she entered Emily’s grey-blue room (which matched Em’s eyes) with
absolutely nothing decorating the walls except many, many bookshelves, she
completely forgot about Penetro. Emily though was nowhere to be found, so Manon
went up to Emily’s glass desk and sat on her chair waiting. When she turned around
to face the desk, Manon’s lips parted, and she let lose a gasp. Emily’s MacBook was
open onto Penetro’s website and the cursor was right in the middle of typing out a
post.
--------------
When I walked into my room I had no idea how long Manon had been sitting there,
gaping at the screen. I had to think, quickly before she realized I was in the room. My
first approach would be to shut her out completely, but I was going to close down the
site because I saw all the pain Penetro had caused to Manon, my friend, my only
friend. I could beg her for forgiveness but…
“How could you?” Manon croaked, her face showing a mix of emotion-anger, no-
something stronger. She looked at me with hatred.
I knew it was too late then and used my natural tendency
“How could I what?” I drawled, setting my face to a bored look, not showing a hint of
emotion. “What are you doing in my room?”
Manon turned a blind eye to my second question and hit me with an assortment of
questions, “How could you be Penetro? Why did you even suggest discovering who
Penetro by Devashree Gupta 5
Penetro was? Were you messing with me?” she inhaled sharply, “How could you tell
the whole school I was adopted before I even knew?”
With the last question, my cool façade broke and I stammered, “Uh… I… I’m sorry. I
was just messing around at first, but then I genuinely started caring about you and
I’m taking the site down. I just wanted to post one more thing, to have that feeling of
power one last time. I would really do nothing to hurt you, you’re my only friend.”
At that, something clicked in Manon, I had never seen her look at me or anyone else
like this, with such raw unhinged fury, she clenched her jaw, her fists shaking as she
said, “Don’t you dare call me your friend, ever!”
Manon strode the length of the room and was about to walk out, but I stopped her.
“Can you blame me?” I cried out, my last pathetic attempt to try and save this
friendship. “Oh my God! The number of Neanderthals in our school. I think they
deserved it.”
But Manon didn’t so much as give me a glance as she hurried down the stairs and
slammed the main door. This made me think, did I deserve this? Did Manon?
Fortunately, my mother did not come upstairs and question as to what just occurred.
Suddenly, this was all too much for me and silent tears ran down my face. I couldn’t
remember the last time I’d ever cried. As fast as I could, between sobs and my blurry
eyes, I walked towards my laptop and deleted the stupid site that had been the
cause of so many problems for so many students, even Manon. Perhaps, this
website had damaged me and my personality more than anyone else’s. I felt
excruciatingly stupid. How could I ever think this site would help me get closer to the
other students. It alienated me from them even more.
In an instant I rushed down the stairs, running to Manon’s house, but my mother
stopped me, “What do you think you are doing?”
“I’m going to fix this mess with Manon”, I said.
“You should let her cool down, give her time, then approach her.”
“I have to at least explain, or she’ll think that I don’t care.”
Then I left running down to Manon’s house. I almost missed her as she was sitting
on a bench by the pavement. She was listening to some music on her iPod.
“Hey”, I said, sitting down next to her. “What are you listening to?”
I was sure she wouldn’t reply and that we’d be sitting there on the bench for hours in
awkward silence, I was prepared to do that, id give her any amount of time she
needed, but she surprised me by saying, “My sad playlist.”
Of course, she was listening to her sad playlist. Manon had a playlist for almost
every mood.
“Would you care to listen to my explanation?” I asked. When she did not reply I
continued, “I took down the site.”
Penetro by Devashree Gupta
Prequel: The birth of Penetro
Penetro was just getting off the bus and walking through the parking lot to school
when he overheard a part of a part of a conversation that caught his interest.
“I think we should tell Manon today”, a female voice whispered sounding anxious.
“I agree”, a male voice replied. Penetro assumed it was Manon’s parents as he
moved in closer. “but we have to be prepared to answer a lot of questions about her
adoption.”
This was the window of opportunity he had been looking for. To be connected to
students in a way that made him feel more involved without personally knowing
them. He didn’t think of the lives he’d be hurting, all he cared about was feeling as if
he was part of something.
So that day when Penetro returned home he wrote his very first post as an online
tyrant.
A year later….
The room was filled with students and Ms Malachai droned on about the new social
welfare assignment for the term, but I barely paid attention, twirling my pen and
trying not to envy the kids who were going home. Suddenly, a dark shadow fell upon
me and I looked up only to see Ms. Malachai looking slightly exasperated as she
snapped her fingers too close to my face and said sharply,” Ms Pierce, you should
really pay more attention in class and not what’s going on outside the window. Your
partner for this assignment is Manon Hastings, I want the assignment on my desk,
completed on my desk in a month.”
Then she took heed and waked away, probably to traumatize some other poor
student by snapping her gigantic fingers in close proximity to their face. I was so
busy wondering about how long it takes her to get a manicure that I almost didn’t
notice when Manon slid a chair next to mine and began,” So I’m your partner I think
……um……… what do you want to do for the assignment.”
She didn’t really look at me, but instead she was fidgeting with a piece of paper. She
looked so vulnerable with those brown doe eyes, I just had to suggest with a smirk,”
why don’t we find out who Penetro is and shut down that terrible site?’
Penetro was a cyber bully who terrorised the students of this prison, west bridge high
with malicious posts of the students’ idiocy and recklessness. Penetro’s first post
Penetro by Devashree Gupta 2
about my partner, Manon Hastings herself. She seemed to perk up at this
suggestion, her eyes glinting, “that’s a great idea,” she exclaimed, “let’s start now.”
So, over the next few days, Manon and I went through almost every single post
Penetro had ever posted on their site. We researched at my house sometimes, and
my mother was delighted that id taken some interest in another human being, but I
told her not to gets her hopes up. It was pretty unlikely that Manon and I would end
up friends.
Today, at Manon’s house we decided to make a list of suspects and narrow down
which grade we think Penetro is from by seeing who they favour, who they haven’t
written about and who they target too much.
“Penetro is probably someone from someone from our grade.” Manon explained.
She seemed extremely keen to discover Penetro’s identity, “it can’t be someone
younger as Penetro first started to post when our batch started high school.”
“hmm. it could be someone older,” I countered.
“I don’t think so, Penetro takes too much interest in our grade. Hey, you know
Penetro could be Nelly Yuki.” Manon suggested, “There’s only one post about her –
Nelly pretended to go to an Ariana Grande concert again; anyone see a pattern –
that’s all.”
“Hmm, I don’t think she’s nearly clever enough,” I said looking around Manon’s room
trying to figure out her personality. There were a lot of posters as well as
photographs. Shy as she was, Manon had many friends. She loved music and
Monet. She talked some more about other students, but I was barely listening, giving
her vague answers like “she doesn’t have any friends” and “he’s extremely annoying”
although I had no idea who Manon was talking about.
“That’s true, who hates Jane Dunphy?” Manon enquired.
“The whole school practically,” I murmured while staring at a poster of ‘The Vamps’.
Manon burst out laughing and I looked at her in surprise. What had caused this
sudden fit of laughter?
“I made the name up,” she said when she finally stopped laughing, but the confused
look on my face as I said “What?!” set off another bout of laughter.
“There’s no Jane Dunphy at our school,” Manon grinned, “You are barely listening to
me, Em.”
“Oh” was my reply. I suppose I could see some humour in it however a warm feeling
was growing inside me as I realised Manon had given me a nickname. Perhaps I
would take a liking to Manon and her shy nature.
Penetro by Devashree Gupta 3
The next day in school, Manon and I were following Nelly Yuki’s every move, as
planned the day before. We saw who she was rude to, who she was friends with, but
alas there was no concrete evidence that Nelly Yuki was in fact “Penetro”. At lunch I
sat with someone for the first time, Manon. I made an amusing comparison of us to
Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. I even went so far as to make an illustration of
me in a deerstalker cap and a pipe; Manon saw it and burst out laughing. The day
after that, on Tuesday, we trailed Blair Fields, a cheerleader who knew everyone.
She was almost friends with the entire school. Penetro had not written a single
malevolent thing about her, but she hadn’t taken Computers as a subject and did not
seem very bright. So, we knocked Blair of the suspect list.
On Wednesday, we continued with our real-life version of Cluedo to pursue our next
suspect – Caleb Humphrey, who had got top marks in Computers and who was
rumoured to have hacked into the NASA website. Manon even walked up to him and
questioned him, “What do you think about Elena Salvatore and Serena Gilbert?”
These were Penetro’s common targets. He responded, “I think both of them are
snobbish and good for nothing”. Then he walked away.
“I’m sure it’s him now,” Manon whispered while looking around warily, “but I think we
need more evidence before we confront him and tell him to take down the site”. The
gleam in her eyes told me that Manon felt quite strongly about this issue and I
suddenly had the urge to comfort her.
“Yeah, I’m sure it’s him as well,” I started “Don’t worry,” I continued as I put a hand
on her arm and squeezed it in a reassuring way, “We’ll take down Penetro together. I
know you really hate that site.”
“Oh! You have no idea, after Penetro posted that I’m adopted, the day my parents
were about to tell me was the worst day of my life,” Manon explained, “It didn’t
change anything. I still love my parents, but I didn’t want the school to know before I
actually did. It was just really humiliating.”
Her eyes burned with rage and her fists curled into balls. She looked as if she was
about to cry, but then she cleared her throat, turned away from me to wipe her eyes,
then turned back to me and said perkily, “So, who are we stalking next, Holmes?”
I had to let loose a chuckle at that comment. Manon should get an award for being
an ice breaker. “I guess whoever’s next on our suspect list, my dear Watson.”
On Thursday and Friday, we continued with our list, but also kept an eye on Caleb
Humphrey. The more evidence we collected, the more evident it became Caleb is
Penetro; Manon was absolutely convinced of it.
On Friday evening we took a break from being detectives. Manon and I just sat in
her room while she gave me song recommendations and I gave her book
recommendations.
“I’ve brought you my copy of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd especially for you. If you
do anything to it, I’ll hunt you down and murder you.”
Penetro by Devashree Gupta 4
Manon gave me a look of mock terror, however what I said was true. I hold all my
books in high regard and usually would never lend them out to anyone. Possibly, as
there was no one I could lend it out to.
“Fine, I’ll read your boring Poirot book,” she pouted. I gave her a death glare. She
ignored it and continued, “but you have to listen to all the songs I list out and you
have to love them.”
I came to the realization, right then that over the past two weeks Manon and I had
grown close or as close as we could have for me to consider her as a friend, but I
still wasn’t sure, so I asked in a most idiotic manner, “are we friends?”
“Yeah, of course, Em”, Manon said with a smile. “Now you have to listen to…”
We continued talking and watching movies very late into the night and I had a feeling
that Manon and I were going to get a lot closer, so I knew what I had to do.
--------------
It was Sunday morning and Manon had just finished reading the Murder of Roger
Ackroyd after pulling an all nighter. The first thing she did after putting down the book
and sighing; was race to Emily’s house. By the time she reached, Manon was
panting. As she went up the stairs to Emily’s room Manon thought, “Will we fail the
project if Caleb isn’t really Penetro? Do we have to report him to the school?”
However, as she entered Emily’s grey-blue room (which matched Em’s eyes) with
absolutely nothing decorating the walls except many, many bookshelves, she
completely forgot about Penetro. Emily though was nowhere to be found, so Manon
went up to Emily’s glass desk and sat on her chair waiting. When she turned around
to face the desk, Manon’s lips parted, and she let lose a gasp. Emily’s MacBook was
open onto Penetro’s website and the cursor was right in the middle of typing out a
post.
--------------
When I walked into my room I had no idea how long Manon had been sitting there,
gaping at the screen. I had to think, quickly before she realized I was in the room. My
first approach would be to shut her out completely, but I was going to close down the
site because I saw all the pain Penetro had caused to Manon, my friend, my only
friend. I could beg her for forgiveness but…
“How could you?” Manon croaked, her face showing a mix of emotion-anger, no-
something stronger. She looked at me with hatred.
I knew it was too late then and used my natural tendency
“How could I what?” I drawled, setting my face to a bored look, not showing a hint of
emotion. “What are you doing in my room?”
Manon turned a blind eye to my second question and hit me with an assortment of
questions, “How could you be Penetro? Why did you even suggest discovering who
Penetro by Devashree Gupta 5
Penetro was? Were you messing with me?” she inhaled sharply, “How could you tell
the whole school I was adopted before I even knew?”
With the last question, my cool façade broke and I stammered, “Uh… I… I’m sorry. I
was just messing around at first, but then I genuinely started caring about you and
I’m taking the site down. I just wanted to post one more thing, to have that feeling of
power one last time. I would really do nothing to hurt you, you’re my only friend.”
At that, something clicked in Manon, I had never seen her look at me or anyone else
like this, with such raw unhinged fury, she clenched her jaw, her fists shaking as she
said, “Don’t you dare call me your friend, ever!”
Manon strode the length of the room and was about to walk out, but I stopped her.
“Can you blame me?” I cried out, my last pathetic attempt to try and save this
friendship. “Oh my God! The number of Neanderthals in our school. I think they
deserved it.”
But Manon didn’t so much as give me a glance as she hurried down the stairs and
slammed the main door. This made me think, did I deserve this? Did Manon?
Fortunately, my mother did not come upstairs and question as to what just occurred.
Suddenly, this was all too much for me and silent tears ran down my face. I couldn’t
remember the last time I’d ever cried. As fast as I could, between sobs and my blurry
eyes, I walked towards my laptop and deleted the stupid site that had been the
cause of so many problems for so many students, even Manon. Perhaps, this
website had damaged me and my personality more than anyone else’s. I felt
excruciatingly stupid. How could I ever think this site would help me get closer to the
other students. It alienated me from them even more.
In an instant I rushed down the stairs, running to Manon’s house, but my mother
stopped me, “What do you think you are doing?”
“I’m going to fix this mess with Manon”, I said.
“You should let her cool down, give her time, then approach her.”
“I have to at least explain, or she’ll think that I don’t care.”
Then I left running down to Manon’s house. I almost missed her as she was sitting
on a bench by the pavement. She was listening to some music on her iPod.
“Hey”, I said, sitting down next to her. “What are you listening to?”
I was sure she wouldn’t reply and that we’d be sitting there on the bench for hours in
awkward silence, I was prepared to do that, id give her any amount of time she
needed, but she surprised me by saying, “My sad playlist.”
Of course, she was listening to her sad playlist. Manon had a playlist for almost
every mood.
“Would you care to listen to my explanation?” I asked. When she did not reply I
continued, “I took down the site.”
Penetro by Devashree Gupta
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