“So this is how It started.”


“William Hughes get down here right now!!! With that I resourcefully buried my head into a school book and shut off my computer monitor. I heard marching and was awaiting my doom. My door swung open at the command of my mother, door lock broken off, and in her anger had a small, uumm, “discussion” with me about my grades. I had this discussion before, but my procrastination overpowered every attempt I had made at getting better grades. “But Mom, what about my computer technologies and educations class?” She had replied in one of those typical mother responses “Maybe if you put the effort that you put into that class into the many other classes you take we wouldn’t be having this discussion right now.If you don’t get your grades up within the next week you will lose computer and friend privileges for the next four months. Now go straight to bed.” I obeyed her order and went to bed. I felt my eyes flick to sleep…


Beep…Beep…Beep…

My dreams were disturbed by the eternal annoyance hated by all teenagers that was known as “The Alarm Clock.” I had woken up, showered, brushed my teeth, eaten breakfast, and went out the door in a rush to walk to my school and see to come up with an idea to raise my grades. Just then I heard a familiar voice. “Hey Will, wait up!!” “Hey Jerry,” I had replied “How are you doing?” “All right, I guess.” Jerry is my best bud; we’ve been friends since fifth grade. I told him about the debacle the night before between my mom and I. “That stinks” he had replied. “Well what about your computer education classes.” Since Jerry has ever known me, he knows I know quite a bit about computers, especially since my dad is a software programmer, (he rarely comes home, and he’s very busy.) Right at the tail end of my thought we had arrived on the doorstep of my school “Hamilton High School.” I had rushed to my first period class, World Cultures. The teacher in that class was Mr. Finks, a nice guy, just had us take a ton of notes. He had a small talk with me after class about my dropping grade, and how I was a good guy and all. Second period English had come up. With my teacher Mrs. Kromer. She was a nice teacher too. But my O.P. was supposed to be turned in, but I have almost zero idea on what I will be writing about. And on Tuesday my short story draft needed to be turned in. It came and went and I had a similar discussion with her. In third period was study hall in which I would play paper football and talk about videogames. It came and went.


Fourth period came, and we would play many different variations of chess. It went by pretty fast. So came fifth period lunch and Jerry started talking to me about a wacky scheme of hacking into the school’s online grade books. With the end of that discussion I had asked my group of friends where this idea sprouted from. They replied with a childish tone “We heard of your bad grades and thought with your computer expertise that you could “hack” into grades.” I replied jokingly “yeah maybe if you guys could find the password.” After lunch they scrambled off to there classes and the hallway was soon clogged like an artery. I went to sixth period math, which I was doing alright in, and scuttled off to seventh period Computer Education. The class was about I.P. addresses and how they could be tracked easily. That class slipped away and in came Biology, the most dreaded class of the day. The teacher murmured on and off about “March of The Penguins,” and it seemed I was getting so bored in that class, It felt that my very consciousness was slipping away. After 45 minutes of sheer torture, I walked off to Spanish class. It ended pretty quickly, and I collected my things and walked back to my house. One quarter of the way home and I saw my friends, Jerry, and Patrick run up to me with a sheet. They explained the one big huff a breath that they could get, and told me they got the password. “What??!!?!?” I replied with an especially surprised look on my face. “Howowow couldedded you-ou?” I said scared and stuttering. “That’s illegal, and how did you even get it?” I asked with uncertainty in my breath. “Oh don’t worry, we got it from Bones.” Bones was one of those scary looking and acting kind of people. He had written the word “Atheist” on his left arm, had a mini Fro. And just was always in a dark mood. My friends suddenly broke off my thoughts, “So you wanna do it or what???” I was backed into a corner in my mind, surrounded by invisible peer pressure, slowly approaching me. I, beyond my control accepted, So I ate dinner, rushed to bed, and awoke at three o’clock in the morning to make sure my mom did not get a whiff of what I was doing. I logged on as a school administrator, changed by grades by 5-11 percentage points a piece, and did the same for my friends.


The next day came by and suddenly I was hence forth the king of popularity. Kinda. Some how everyone at school found out about it, and all asking me for a favor. I said with a clear and serious tone “NO,” and they replied with bribes and blackmail. Awe Jeez now I just became a puppet for the master puppeteers,” The Populars.” You know those people whom are “perfect” but cheat from people they end up picking on, so yeah I was in the most viscous part of that cycle. I went through my classes and went to lunch and asked them. “What happened?” They replied” We tried it out too and changed our grades by 25 percentage points.” I stood there in awe. “How could you do that, they will notice that grade change so easily!” They stood there in shock. There was a the second pause that seemed like an eternity. And Patty replied, “Don’t worry Will they probably don’t check that often anyways. Later I had changed many kids’ grades reasoning with myself how the school doesn’t probably even check grades so often. The day whizzed by besides the fact of me sweating in all of my classes.





I had gone home with a guilty conscious, and dreamt on…
William Hughes, you are hereby sentenced to life in jail!!!! Beep, Beep, Beep…
I had awakened sweating from my guilt trip alone. I had gone to school and heard all of my friends’ names and such, being called down to the office. I was called down. There were two police officers on either side of me and they were talking to me about changed grades. They explain to me that the school has been hacked. At that time I was sweating bullets and replied “Who?” They answered in uniform, “We don’t know who yet but when we do, they will be locked up for a while.” That was enough for me and rushed to tell my friends that the changing grades thing was off. They replied “You can, but we will change all our grades!” “I went through school feeling like I was on the death row awaiting my sentence. I went straight home and changed my grade back to all the normal grades and went straight to sleep.


I woke up and raced to school to see what happened with my friends. When I walked in I was escorted by the same two police officers as before to the office. “William Hughes, we have conducted an investigation and discovered that a computer, in your household, was the first to log in as a school administrator.” They went to the phone and called my mother. They went on talking to me about how I did wrong and can end up with a felony charge. I had asked how they found out and they replied, “We traced your IP address and some of your buddies helped us out.” They read off some names of people and immediately I knew they were the people whom I changed grades for. Under my breath I whispered “Traitors.” My mother at that moment had walked in and overheard the police officer yelling at me about the felony I had committed and shouted “Quiet, we’ll settle this in court. A day later we had gotten a lawyer. The days following up a trial date we were busy calling schools that might accept me if I were to get expelled. None had accepted me, even with pleading. So I went to Trial and the school wanted me to be expelled and get 4 years sentence. My lawyer was fighting for community service. The Trial was a blur however and I can’t remember much of it. The court sentenced me to two hundred and thirteen hours community service at a nursing center and a year’s expulsion.


I had secretly had a personal victory, for I had thought that I was going to prison for a few years. I had almost messed up my life by “helping” others. “And that’s how I ended up here.” “Did I miss it?” a voice from the back had said. I replied ,” No, I can start it all over again. So this is how It started.


“William Hughes get down here right now!!!"