The girl spent several weeks browsing the Internet; in the meantime she had learned additional features to make more precise searches. One day she discovered that one could also enter pictures on the search engine. Immediately she rushed to Jag's room in search of a picture of him, but, rummaging through his things, she only found his drawings. Considering them a start, she returned to the computer.

Seated in front of the monitor, she felt a bit disoriented: she had no idea how to put them in the search engine. She rummaged through the musicians' rooms, finding some change on Ted's bedside table and in one of Nef's drawers, and finally, a banknote in a pocket of one of Jess's suits. She didn't dare to go into Sushi's room.

She switched off the laptop, unplugged, and put everything under her arm to go to the nearest computer store. She tiredly reached the counter and setting the laptop, charger and drawings down loudly, she asked the salesman, "How much will it cost me to put these drawings on this computer?"

The boy looked at her slightly dumbfounded. He found the bizarre girl's behaviour really absurd and replied holding back a laugh. "There was no need to bring your computer, we can scan them and put them on a disk for you!"

The next few minutes went by slowly, like the neon of the scanner that completed its passage over the drawings. Fade was irritated: it wasn't her fault if she didn't understand anything about that stuff; if she had known it, she wouldn't have carried that dead weight of a laptop to the store.

The salesman, realizing the girl's technological limitations, turned the computer on and explained how to open the disc images. In the end the girl paid him and happily left the store, she felt a subtle euphoria given by the anticipation of the search.

Back in Ted's room she set everything up and started the computer, uploaded an image on the search engine but found nothing. She tried a second and a third and at the end, at the fourth picture, she found some answers. The boy had uploaded one of his drawings on a social network of artists and, trying to find a clue, Fade discovered that he called himself "evilNat29"; she also found that the release date was February 2001, therefore it was quite recent. She read the comments on the drawing, which were simple back and forth messages, but all she could understand, from the childishness of the answers, was that they were definitely Jag's, and nothing else. She still tried the other drawings, but got lost in a myriad of links and references that made her move away from her original search. She decided to start over and type in the child's nickname in the search engine. She found that he had signed up in some forums, most of which were of Momuhts' fans.

Before trying to enter them, the girl paused on a forum dedicated to "Baby Scientists" which perhaps explained why the brat always went around wearing a white lab coat.

In the forum there were discussions on various inventions, most of them weird and without any scientific logic. The girl noticed that Jag had commented on some ideas he found interesting, but he hadn't offered any of his own. She noticed, instead, that his answers on this forum sounded much less childish.

Discouraged by not finding anything new, she tried the Momuht forums, but the last visit of the kid was before the band left for the tour, therefore when Jag was still in the studios. Her attention was caught by a post written in capital letters and followed by countless exclamation points. Within it, a girl with exaggerated tones, spoke of her presence at the band's last concert, completing it with a many pictures, mostly blurry. She said she met the group and showed the pictures that she had taken with them, while other people, in a sort of euphoric hypnosis, answered repeatedly that she had been blessed to have met them.

Fade snorted in a scornful smirk; if only those people had met them personally, maybe they wouldn't have considered them so wonderful. Yet, in those pictures, the four components looked different: they signed autographs, took pictures and toasted with the beers offered by their fans at the backstage exit. Even Nef smiled, something she had seldom seen him do.
Sliding over other pictures she noticed how the group's male components enjoyed getting fawned over by their scantily dressed excited fans with bright smiles.

The girl quickly browsed over those pictures, all the same, all filled with cheerfulness, and a false happiness linked to such high expectations that it exploded in a senseless manner when it crossed the border from printed paper to reality.

She found that they were all idiots, attached to sterile ideals. Surely those people didn't have the slightest idea of what it meant to fight to live, they had been spoiled and were used to getting what they wanted. Her anger flared at that thought, amplified by her witnessing Nef, who was keeping his promise to have fun with other women. No matter what their age, he touched them and let himself be touched, while people, crowding around him, waved sheets of paper for his autograph. She got up and shut the laptop by closing the monitor over the keyboard. She returned to her room in the grip of an anger she had felt only a few other times in her life.

She reflected on that senseless behaviour, she couldn't explain why, but she felt extremely lethargic. She blamed Jag for having taken her away from her previous routine, but she realized that perhaps she couldn't continue to live that way forever, sooner or later the authorities would have caught her or someone would have killed her in the luckiest case scenario. That change had filled her with new emotions and experiences that had now been taken away from her all at once, leaving her empty.

She shuddered and decided to go out.

The roads she encountered were as dejected as her skates sliding through them. It had been a long time since she zigzagged through the alleys, leaving only a red blur behind her.

Going ahead, she looked at her slim, curved figure reflected in the windows and her hair falling down in front of her face. She felt sorry for herself. She had even left her knife at home, and she never left the house without it. She had become the washed-out reflection of herself.

She kept wandering for a good part of the night thinking of Nef and the contrasting feelings she felt for him; of how cruel he had been with her, and his direct way of speaking without considering the feelings of the person before him, but at the same time, he had become a haven in which she could forget the seven stitches of her scar and all that had happened before them. After all, she deserved to be treated that way; she was the first to despise herself, and she deserved any verbal or physical attack that scarred her soul.

The more she thought of those things, the more she wrote in her diary, and the more she wished she had never existed.

The day the band returned to the studios, Fade was faced with conflicting feelings. She had no idea how to behave and, above all, how the others would behave after months without seeing her. The fact that even Jag, the only connection between her and the band, was who knows where, made her anxious. She just waited in the lobby of the building, alongside an increasingly inexpressive manager, who didn't even speak to her anymore.

•••••

Finally a large dark-colour car stopped at the entrance and the four components came out, irritable because of pains in different parts of their bodies, due to the trip. Ted and Nef stopped in the yard to light a cigarette, while Sushi and Jess went inside with the intention to rush into their rooms.

When they walked by Fade and the manager, the two merely gave them a general greeting.
"Hello!" said the singer. "How are you doing?" the drummer asked, without even waiting for an answer. The manager echoed with a "Welcome back", while Fade couldn't even get her brain to work before the two went away. She just didn't understand how a person could ask a question and - at the same time - not care to hear the answer. When Nef stood in front of her, the two stared at each other. "Hello," she broke the ice, slightly raising her hand. "Where's the brat?" He answered half-heartedly, looking around. "Well, he's been away from the studios for quite a while, more or less since you left; I thought he'd hidden in your luggage..." but she stopped, noticing that Nef wasn't listening to her.

The bass player just looked at the manager who answered with a nod.

"All right, she can stay," he concluded, going past her. The girl realized that a much bigger dialogue had taken place in that exchange of glances. Probably Nef wanted to know if the funding had disappeared with the kid, and if the manager had answered positively, she could even have gone to the devil. Her stay there depended only on that, bluntly.
The manager turned her heels and left, letting her contempt for the girl show, but she didn't care. It was Nef's behaviour that drove her crazy. Irritated, she disappeared sliding on her skates, ignoring Ted, who had just came in and was about to say hello to her.

"No one gives a shit about me..." the boy said to himself, heading to his room.

•••••

That night and the next ones she waited for Nef's footsteps, but she never heard them.

Exhausted by that senseless behaviour she decided, one night, to go to him. She knocked on the door but there was no answer, she kept on knocking, saying softly, "It's me, I know you're in there. Open the door!" Exasperated by his silence, the girl used the master key card and walked in.

She burst into the room and found Nef lying on the bed, with his hands behind his head, completely naked. The unexpected situation caught her by surprise and, trying to retrace her footsteps on her skates, she slipped and fell on the carpet.

"I was waiting for you, Ragamuffin" he said, making fun of her.

"The fuck you were! You idiot!" She yelled as she tried to get up. The girl stood on her legs, rubbing her hip; she looked at him, and, embarrassed, turned away. "May I know what the hell you are doing?"

"Do I make you feel uncomfortable? It's not the first time you've seen me like this! Or has it been so long since the last time that you've forgotten? Don't tell me you haven't had sex all these months!"

"Unlike you, I don't have masses of admirers asking me to take my virginity," she replied, surprised at how those words came out.

The man sat on the bed "I just wanted to see if it was true."

"What?"

"That you have the keys to our rooms."

She flinched for being caught. He simply stretched out a hand, demanding its restitution, which she did after a moment of hesitation.

"I realized it when Jess told us that one night he wanted to hear some music and that his eardrums almost broke because the volume was at its highest. He listens to everything in his headphones..."

Fade felt as stupid as a kid caught with his hands in the jam. That's why no music came out of that hellish device, the headphones were connected.

"Don't worry," he continued. "Apart from this small detail nobody suspects anything, you've been a shadow and I'm the only one who knows that the kid had the extra cards, so no one will come to complain. Jess will have a bit of mental confusion for a while, but it'll pass."

The girl still didn't understand what all that had to do with the fact that he wasn't wearing any clothes. She had to admit that he always knew how to surprise her and, therefore, she had nothing else to say.

"Anyway tonight I don't want to fuck."

She almost fell again. How did he manage to do that? He was always able to keep her on thin ice, twirling her like an expert juggler.

"And who? What? I don't want to either!" she said scowling.

"Ha-ha, it's hard to believe you, little rascal! So what do you want?"

"I wanted to know what happened to Jag," she replied, finding a good excuse to change the subject. "He's been gone since you left and I really thought he was with you..."

"No baby, I fortunately didn't see him at any of our concerts" but the fact also worried him. What could have happened to that miniature psychopath? Could he really have followed them throughout the tour without being seen? They stared at each other in meditation. The girl began to get nervous; she resisted another minute, and then headed towards him.

"Halt!" He said, raising his hand. "Do you think I forgot the trick you played on me the last time?"
Her glance burned him, but she had expected such a reaction. "It wasn't a 'trick' you idiot!" And she took a pack of condoms from her trouser pocket and threw it on the bed.

Fade, having seen the images on the internet, had begun to steal boxes of condoms. Over time she had stolen so many that they would last for months; she had made up her mind that she would make up for all the nights - supposed or true - that the bass player had spent with his fans. She had counted them and multiplied them by the many tramps and had rounded the number up upwards so as not to have any doubt. It was obvious that in five months of absence it was an exaggeratedly high number, and the more the figure rose as the days passed, the more the girl got obsessed.

"I just want to pick up again where we left," she said, pulling off her shirt.
"I seem to remember that when we left I had the sign of your hand imprinted on my face, but it's okay, now we're even," he joked while he enjoyed her strip tease.

Fade stopped. She should've given him at least another hundred and fifty smacks like that one for them to get even, but now she didn't care anymore. She took off her skates and was right in front of him. "Okay, then let's run through the general rules again," he amusedly continued as the girl unzipped her pants right in front of his nose. "You remember them, don't you? First rule: no thought of lasting ties." She pushed him to lie down on the bed. "Second rule: no more 'tricks'." At those words she dug her nails into his flesh "Ouch! I get it, you remember the rules!" He concluded as he relaxed, letting the girl continue.

"Third rule: get out of the room when we're done fucking," Fade repeated as she closed the door behind her.

---
LOL I censured the drawing because Wattpad send me a warning note. So I put a shirt on the girl, but she was actually topless... Then they make a movie out of "After". Go fig.