Mickey opened his mouth and shut it. “I can’t.”
“Mick, please,” his mother groaned, looking badly distressed. “Honey-”
“No, I can’t, mum,” he said urgently, “I don’t know them! We weren’t meant to tell each other our names. It was all secret, you had your own codename.”
I sat back in my chair, staring at Mickey. Unfortunately, I thought he was telling the truth.
“No real names,” I said, my voice flat with disappointment. I gave a heavy sigh. “I hope that’s not a lie, Mickey.”
“No! It’s not, I swear, okay?”
“Alright. Give me the codenames, then, please.”
Mickey nodded and reeled off five or so before he had to stop and think about the others. None of them meant anything to me, other than sounding exactly like the kind of silly nicknames fifteen-year-olds might come up with for themselves.
“Now I need physical descriptions, as detailed as you can remember.”
After a brief pause and a pleading look from his mum, Mickey obliged. We went through the list of codenames he’d provided, and he gave descriptions for each of them, as much as he could remember.
“They’re gonna kill me for this,” he muttered halfway through.
I looked at him for a second, trying to decide how serious he was being.
“We won’t let you get hurt,” I said.
“Yeah? How?” he demanded. “Soon as I’m back at school, they’ll all know I snitched.”
“We’ll have them all brought in, to face the consequences-”
“There’s too many,” he hissed, suddenly fierce. “You don’t understand!”
“Mickey,” his mother said gently, touching his shoulder, “what do you mean? Do you think they’ll hurt you?”
Mickey went sullenly quiet and just shrugged.
“What do you mean there are too many?” I pressed. “Are there more people involved than on this list?” I pointed to my notebook, where I’d written out the codenames Mickey had provided.
“Of course there are.” He sounded tired and resigned now. “It’s a whole thing.”
“Do you know who’s running it?” I asked. This was worrying news, and even as part of me thought I saw a bigger pattern in all this, I was very much hoping it wasn’t true.
“I don’t know,” Mickey mumbled. “The blond guy seems like he’s in charge usually.”
We’d only gotten partway through the code names list so far, and Mickey hadn’t mentioned a pale blond teenager yet, which I’d been listening out for.
“What blond guy?”
“Pale blond, tall?” Mickey sighed. “I don’t know. He has a lip ring or something. He’s older than the others and kinda bossy.”
“Alright, that’s good to know,” I said, pleased. “Do you know anything more about him?”
Mickey shrugged and then shook his head.
“How did you all meet then? This is bigger than just kids from your school.”
“Online.”
“Where online?”
At that, Mickey stalled, looking sideways towards the door. A long moment passed where I stayed quiet and waited for him to decide what he was going to say.
“Look, I’ve told you what you wanted, haven’t I?” he said finally. “That’s enough to get me let off, isn’t it? I’ve helped with your investigation or whatever.”
“I can’t promise leniency if we don’t have your full cooperation,” I said with a slight frown. I wasn’t sure why he was pulling back now, at this question, when he’d been willing to give up the rest.
“I want some water,” Mickey said after a second.
I looked between him and his mum before giving a nod and getting up to fetch him a cup, and his mum one too. I hoped his mother could talk sense into the kid while I was out of the room, but I wasn’t sure. For a kid that seemed to have been pushed by his peers into doing these stupid things, he also had a streak of stubbornness.
When I came back, Mickey and his mum weren’t looking at each other. I put the cups on the table and sat back down opposite.
“Which website did you guys meet on?” I repeated the question after Mickey didn’t seem inclined to speak first.
“I can’t tell you.” He looked up from the table to give me a pained look. “They’ll kill me, and I mean it this time. It’s like- the biggest rule, okay?”
“We’ll leave that for a minute,” I sighed, rubbing my forehead, “but we’ll be coming back to it. What can you tell me about the patches I’ve seen teenagers wearing?”
I flipped through my notebook and pushed my sketch towards Mickey so he could see the flammable warning symbol. He barely looked at it, though, and I had a feeling he knew exactly what I’d meant as soon as I’d said ‘patches.’
“What about them?” He rubbed a hand through his messy hair, looking uncomfortable.
“What do they mean?”
“I don’t know. They’re just a way of showing membership, I guess.”
“Membership to what?”
“The group?” Mickey didn’t look too sure.
“Does the group have a name?”
“Not really,” he said but wouldn’t meet my eyes. I guessed that that was a lie but pushed on, regardless.
“Who designed these patches? Whose idea were they?”
“I don’t know.” Mickey shrugged.
“Kid, so far, you’re not helping me much. We’ve got a few codenames, and that’s it. If you want-”
“Alright!” he snapped. “You don’t need to threaten me. It was the blond guy, I guess, who was handing them out. I dunno whose idea it was or whatever.”
“Where did he get them made?”
“How would I know?” Mickey pulled an affronted face.
“Have you got a patch?”
“No,” Mickey huffed. “I’m not high up enough, I’m not important.”
“So they’re a sign of rank?”
“I guess so.”
We continued on, cycling back around to the same questions that Mickey still wouldn’t, or couldn’t, answer. I tried to tell him that there was no point being half-hearted about it; he’d told us this much, so he would do better to tell us all of it. That way, we’d be able to catch the teens faster, he wouldn’t be in any danger, and he’d have us on his side. But Mickey was stubbornly determined not to give up the website name, and glancing at the time on my watch, I relented.
“Okay, we’ll call it a night,” I
