Chaos on CatNet

by Naomi Kritzer

  “There’s a seating area in the middle,” I say, trying not to get distracted by the fact that now I really want to try basil ice cream.

  We make our way over and pretend to browse through stores along the edges of the seating area. There’s one selling Mexican candy and another selling vintage-style purses and hair accessories, so there’s plenty of stuff to pretend we’re looking at while we actually try to spot a face in the crowd. Nell spots her first and then sucks in her breath and whirls to put her back toward the table. “She’s sitting with Thing Three,” she whispers. “How am I supposed to take this without Thing Three seeing me?”

  “Selfie?” I suggest. “Keep your back to them and take it over your shoulder?”

  She flips her camera around, holds it as far out as she can, and takes a couple of photos. “It’s no good,” she mutters. “They’re too far away to be in focus.” She hands me her phone. “Can you do it?”

  “I don’t know what Thing Three looks like,” I say.

  “Short dark hair.”

  “Half the people here have short dark hair.”

  “Part of it’s in a buzz cut and part of it isn’t.”

  “Still not narrowing it down. What’s she wearing?”

  “I’ll just point her out.” Nell turns around. “The woman I’m supposed to be getting pictures of is blond and wearing a green vest, and Thing Three has a button-down blue shirt … oh, fiddlesticks.”

  The woman in the blue shirt has just turned toward us, and her eyes have gone a little wide, looking at Nell.

  “I’ll get the pictures,” I say. “Go keep them occupied.”

  Nell heads over to the table. I’m half-hidden behind a rack of candy, and I rest the camera on the edge of the rack to stabilize it. I zoom in, focusing on the blond woman, who’s greeting Nell with a mix of warmth and puzzlement.

  A message flashes across the screen from the app. Kindly take a picture with the target and her companion in the same shot.

  I zoom out slightly, but Nell is in the way, and I don’t have any way to tell her to get out of the way, since I’m holding her phone. I wait, and she sits down, and I get a picture: you can clearly see all the faces except for Nell’s.

  Good enough. The next step in your quest: approach their table, getting close enough that you can overhear their conversation. Wow: this app is amazingly creepy. Fortunately, approaching their table is kind of on my to-do list, anyway, since that’s where Nell went. I stick Nell’s phone in my pocket so I can head over … and then stop and take a quick picture with my own phone. “Who is this?” I ask CheshireCat, send the picture, and walk toward the table.

  “She’s been living up in Lake Sadie with her mother,” I hear Thing Three explaining as I get close.

  “I see,” the blond woman says.

  I approach like Nell and I were walking around together and Nell wandered off while my back was turned. “Nell?” I say. “I didn’t know where you’d gone. Are we going to get lunch while we’re here?”

  “Is this one of your classmates?” Thing Three asks.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Nell says with this weird rigid formality. “Miss Garcia, this is Steph. Steph, this is my stepmother’s girlfriend, Miss Garcia.”

  “Please call me Shevaun,” Thing Three says in an apologetic tone. “Spelled S-I-O-B-H-A-N, pronounced Shevaun. Nell was just saying you came over here on some sort of school assignment?”

  “Yes, they want us to learn how to ride the bus, and”—I don’t want to tell her about the quest, obviously—“this place isn’t too far from my house and it sounded kind of cool.”

  “Oh, yeah, you live right by Powderhorn, don’t you? I work at Abbott—that’s the hospital next door. I’m on my lunch break. This is Betsy. Since you’re here, how about I buy both of you lunch?”

  I politely demur, she insists, and we go back and forth until Nell breaks in to ask if she can get bubble tea. For a minute, I wonder where she’s had it before and then realize she’s looking at the Invisible Castle page I looked at earlier.

  “Sure, but you need some actual food. Come on, I’ll get you both tortas.”

  “I’d better get going,” Betsy says, and leans in to kiss Siobhan on the cheek. “Text me later!”

  Tortas turn out to be the Mexican version of sub sandwiches—and delicious—and Siobhan buys me a bubble tea as well, which turns out to be a chilled milky tea with chewy little spheres bouncing around in it. Nell starts drinking the tea with a determined look on her face, slurps up one of the squishy little balls, and almost gags on it in surprise. I hold it up to the light for a better look, then fish one out with a spoon and chew it up.

  Siobhan watches both of us with badly disguised amusement. Nell is too focused on her tea to notice.

  “What are these?” Nell asks finally.

  “Tapioca balls,” Siobhan says. She does not ask why Nell wanted bubble tea if she didn’t know what it was.

  I like the bubble tea, but there are a lot of the chewy tapioca balls, and I hope I’ll get credit from the Mischief Elves for trying them even if I don’t finish them. The torta is delicious. I’ve had good Mexican food before—every now and then, we’d land in a town that had a good Mexican restaurant, and when we did, Mom always got us food there at least once a week. I don’t remember having tried tortas before, though. Here in Minneapolis, I realize, I can have good Mexican food anytime I want.

  “So are you going to ride the bus back to school, or ditch the rest of the day?” Siobhan asks. When neither of us answers she adds, “You can tell me! It’s not like I never ditched school when I was a kid!”

  “They are expecting us back by 1:00 p.m.,” I say. Siobhan, I decide, is a little too eager to be cool.

  “Oh, sure, okay.”

  We need some souvenir as proof we made it, so we go to grab a couple of takeout menus. Nell gets distracted by a stall full of elaborate candle sculptures, and I am looking at some shockingly expensive artisanal salami when I see something out of the corner of my eye.

  It is not really true that you can feel people looking at you. Well, at least it’s not true for me. But sometimes I can spot that really quick shift in gaze direction, where someone was staring and then looks down so you don’t catch them. When you’re a new student in a small-town school, people do that a lot. And when you’re raised by someone intensely paranoid, you’re always alert for it.

  Here’s what I see when I turn: an older white woman hastily lowering her phone as if she just took a picture of me. She’s turning away, and I whip my camera out and just barely manage to get a picture of her where she might be recognizable. She turns her back on me and hustles away, like she’s afraid I might run her down and tackle her.

  A year ago, I’d have been absolutely sure that this person was connected—somehow—to my father.

  But my father is now being held without bail in jail in Boston! Am I still in danger from him? “CheshireCat,” I say. “That person just took a picture of me.”

  CheshireCat texts back, since I’m in a crowd. I’ll see what I can find out about her.

  Of course, I also took creepy pictures of a stranger today. And if anyone asked me why, I’d have had no idea how to answer. “Do you know what those pictures were for?” I ask Nell as we’re leaving.

  “No,” she says.

  “The app told me to try to get a picture of the woman, Betsy, and Thing Three together and then sent me over so it could overhear their conversation. Do you think this is for blackmail or something? Like … is that something the Catacombs would do?”

  “I don’t know what it’s for,” Nell says again, and lowers her eyes. I notice she doesn’t say that it’s not something the Catacombs would do.

  We walk to the bus stop mostly in silence, then sit down on the bench to wait. There are several people at the stop, including a white girl with a pierced eyebrow, not a lot older than we are, who’s covertly staring at Nell, taking in her long braids and the wool plaid skirt that falls most of the way to he
r ankles. Nell’s phone vibrates, and she checks it and swallows hard.

  “Is something wrong?” I ask.

  “Truth-sharing mission,” she says. “From the Catacombs. I’m supposed to talk to someone I don’t know. I never do these.”

  “Are you supposed to try to convert them?”

  “I’m supposed to share a message from the Elder.”

  “Everyone hates being preached at.”

  “Messages from the Elder aren’t like that.” She closes her eyes, and I watch as she psyches herself up to do this. “At least I’ll probably never see this person again.” She opens her eyes, stands up, and walks over to the girl with the pierced eyebrow.

  Nell’s voice sounds both upbeat and resigned as she launches straight into a pitch with no lead-up or beating around the bush. “If the Lord came back tomorrow,” she says, “do you know how your soul would be judged?”

  The girl raises an eyebrow—the one that’s not pierced—and says, “Not interested, thanks.”

  I watch Nell take a really deep breath and add, “The Lord knows about the fire.”

  The girl’s face goes pale and her eyes narrow. And then she turns and strides away without another word.

  “Have a good day,” Nell calls after her, and then comes back to stand with me. Everyone else at the bus stop looks at Nell and then looks at me. I feel judged for being the person standing with the pushy Christian, and my cheeks burn, although looking at Nell, she’s too flushed herself to notice.

  Nell opens the app, checks off that she did it, and when our bus pulls up a minute later, we get on. Nell’s profound discomfort has cast a pall over our conversation; it’s hard to go back to laughing about tiny squishy balls. I let her collect herself, thinking about how much I want to talk to CheshireCat. Or Rachel or Firestar. But I’m on the bus with Nell, and I can’t very well do any of that while she’s watching. And she is watching; her eyes are on me, and even as the flush fades from her face, I can feel her tension next to me. It’s awkward, but it’s also familiar.

  That moment when you’re with a new acquaintance, someone you’re pretty sure is cooler than you, when you’re afraid you’ve just done some unforgivably awkward thing? When it sinks in that maybe they don’t even want to be seen with you? When you’re waiting for them to talk, because you’re expecting them to say something cruel, something that makes it clear that you are definitely not friends?

  I know that moment. It’s just always been me who’s waiting.

  “Are you still up for hanging out after school?” I say.

  The tension doesn’t leave Nell’s body, exactly, but it at least goes down maybe 15 percent. “Yes,” she says. “I want to show you my house.”

  * * *

  At school, once we’re checked in, I excuse myself to the bathroom to get out from under both the adults’ eyes and Nell’s, and I pull out my phone in the stall.

  “Okay,” I say. “What can you tell me about those people whose pictures I took?”

  “The first one is a woman named Betsy Lundsten,” CheshireCat says. “She is romantically involved with Siobhan Garcia. This is not a secret from anyone, however, so blackmail seems unlikely.”

  I am extremely relieved to hear that.

  “The second one—it wasn’t a very good picture. I tried to track her by her phone, but she’s using a security app that made this much more difficult. But if I correctly matched her to the car in the parking lot that I think she got into—she’s someone from Lake Sadie.”

  “Nell’s town.”

  “Yes. Not her mother, though. Or Glenys’s mother.”

  “Any luck on finding Glenys?”

  “Not yet.”

  I pull up the CatNet app. It’s late enough in the day that the kids on East Coast time are mostly home from school, so Hermione, Marvin, and Firestar are online.

  “LBBBBBBBBBB!” Hermione greets me.

  I sigh and wonder how long I can stay in the bathroom before someone notices. “I’m sneaking online time from school.”

  Greenberry is online and complaining about the ACT, and Marvin is talking about some new meatspace group he’s gotten into that’s going on a camping trip. “In January?” I ask.

  “I live in North Carolina,” Marvin says. “I mean, it’s not optimal weather in January, I’ll give you that, but I don’t live on the surface of Mars, like you do.”

  “Marvin,” Firestar says. “Have you joined the Boy Scouts?”

  “Nooooooooooooo,” Marvin says. “I actually was in the Boy Scouts when I was eight. Well, the Cub Scouts. You know. Uniforms and all the rest. This is historical reenactment of history that hasn’t happened yet.”

  “So it’s a LARP group? Live-action role playing?”

  “I guess? Anyway, it’s 100 percent different from the Boy Scouts. Except: CAMPING.”

  “I’ve never been camping,” Greenberry says. “I’ve tried and tried to talk my parents into it.”

  “I’ll see if there’s a future reenactment group in your area,” Marvin says.

  “But why do future reenactment when you can make MISCHIEF,” Firestar says. “Today we had a glitter party. Balloons full of glitter and helium that we released in the cafeteria. And then they popped when they got to the ceiling and rained glitter down on everyone.”

  “So what you’re saying is that you’re covered in glitter now?” I ask.

  “Even better: so are all the vice principals.”

  The door from the hallway creaks open. “Steph?” Nell says.

  “Gotta go,” I type, and close the app and flush.

  Nell is bright-eyed but also nervous.

  “It was all worth it,” she says. “The Elder has granted me a question.”

  “What are you going to ask?”

  “I don’t know,” she says. “Do you think I should ask about my mother, or about Glenys?”

  I’m pretty sure that I agree with the people who think her mom just left. “Glenys,” I say.

  She takes a deep breath and bends her head over her phone. “Okay,” she says. “I’ve asked.”

  * * *

  When school ends, I send my mom a text telling her I’m going to Nell’s house, and I follow Nell out to the curb where the beater car is waiting. The woman driving the car this time tells me to call her Jenny.

  Their house is really not far from mine. It has a big front porch with a porch swing no one ever took down for the winter, swaying in the frigid breeze. Their faded doormat has the remains of a rainbow and (All Are) WELCOME, and the doorbell has duct tape slapped over it so visitors will know to knock.

  Inside, they have a lot of stuff: books stacked in corners because they don’t fit on the bookshelves, mugs left forgotten on the windowsill behind the sofa, a chair dedicated to a pile of coats that don’t fit on the coatrack. A papier-mâché jackalope-head sculpture hangs over the fireplace. Jenny adds her coat to the pile. “Did you need—” she starts to ask.

  “No,” Nell snaps and then adds “ma’am,” like she’s trying to be polite.

  “Okay. Well, don’t forget to offer your friend a snack … okay?” Jenny says, and retreats upstairs.

  I follow Nell into the narrow kitchen. She pokes the stack of dishes in the sink. “Why don’t they just wash these,” she mutters.

  There’s a complicated chore chart posted over the sink, and I peer at it. “They don’t have you doing any chores,” I say.

  “They do this chart up monthly, and I arrived on January third.”

  We split a bagel from the freezer, toast it, spread the halves with strawberry cream cheese, and take our bagels on paper towels into Nell’s bedroom.

  It’s definitely a mustard yellow. I mean, compared to the Circus House, it’s not that bad, but that’s a low bar. Nell has painted three little samples of different blues on the wall, though, and points out the one she chose. There are two gallons of fresh paint waiting on her desk, along with a pile of old folded bedsheets, four rolls of blue tape, a printed page of instruct
ions, and a green Post-it note on top saying, I HAVE THE BRUSHES AND ROLLERS. LET ME KNOW WHEN YOU’RE READY FOR THEM. —J.

  “Did you hear back from the Elder?” I ask.

  “No,” Nell says. “I’ve been checking every five minutes.”

  “How long does it usually take to get an answer?”

  “Depends. Sometimes you don’t ever. Have you heard back from the hacker?”

  “There are a bunch of boarding schools that do conversion therapy under another name,” I say. “Glenys isn’t at any of them.”

  Nell blinks. “Well, that’s something,” she says.

  “Yeah, I figured that was worth passing along. They haven’t found Glenys yet, though.”

  Nell nods, and her gaze drifts down to her phone.

  “Go ahead and check again,” I say. “I mean, might as well.”

  I pick up the sheet of painting instructions. There’s a bunch of stuff Nell is supposed to do before the paint starts going on, including taping the edges of the room so she won’t get paint on the ceiling or the window frames. “Do you want some help with this?”

  “Have you ever painted a room before?”

  “No,” I say. “I thought you just went at it with brushes, but tape actually makes sense.”

  “I don’t want to put you to work. You came for a visit,” she says self-consciously.

  I wonder how weird it is to want to help somebody paint when this is the first time you’ve ever been at their house. “I mean, if I want to paint my own room at some point, it might be nice to get practice?”

  “Okay,” she says, and gives me a crooked smile. “Putting up all the tape is the most annoying part of painting, though.”

  We climb up onto the furniture to affix tape to the edges of the ceiling. Nell keeps taking breaks to check her phone again. I check mine, too, even though I’m pretty sure CheshireCat would do the shave-and-a-haircut vibration if they had found anything of note.