Take Me with You

by Tara Altebrando

  So she suspected something? “Nothing, why?”

  “You’re acting funny,” Svetlana said.

  Ilanka snorted. “No, I’m not.”

  “Why are you bringing your backpack everywhere?”

  “Didn’t have time to go to my locker.”

  A skeptical look but also a look of not really caring. “I think I’m coming over to your house this weekend?”

  “You are?”

  “Brunch or something?”

  “Oh, okay,” Ilanka said. “Nobody told me. Or I forgot. That’ll be fun.”

  “I guess,” Svetlana said.

  Svetlana’s parents and Ilanka’s parents were friends; their fathers even had some vague shared business interest, but Ilanka didn’t know the specifics. So for years, the girls had been sort of forced upon each other at brunches and dinners. And it wasn’t that Ilanka didn’t like Svetlana. She was … fine … but always vaguely superior, like a hotel guest who had checked in a day earlier and already knew where the elevator and pool and ice machines were. And something about the expectation that they be friends irked her. There was a palpable kind of cultural connection the parents all shared—but it hadn’t been passed on in the blood. Ilanka wished her parents had done more to foster other relationships during her childhood. It seemed like everyone had arrived at high school with good friends—lifelong ones, like dating back to preschool—and Ilanka had none of that. So she’d focused instead on activities like singing and playing piano, for a while, and now mostly rhythmic gymnastics. She had friends at the gym, sure, but it wasn’t easy to just hang out casually, like for an hour or whatever after school, because nobody went to the same school.

  “Actually,” Svetlana said, after finishing her lunch. “I have an idea about Sunday.”

  “Yeah, what?”

  “Would you mind if we told them we were going to a movie?”

  Ilanka pepped up. “Sure, what do you want to see?”

  “No, I didn’t mean we’d actually go to a movie. Just tell them that. There’s a guy I want to see. And my parents, well, they wouldn’t like the idea of it.” Svetlana twirled a piece of her hair and waited with smug, expectant cat eyes.

  “Oh,” Ilanka said, still not entirely understanding. So she’d lie to her parents, then would have to kill a few hours on her own while the parents all had brunch and Svetlana was off with her guy? That didn’t sound any better than just staying for brunch.

  “If you don’t want to it’s fine.” Svetlana was gathering her things, looking annoyed.

  “No, that’s okay. Sure. Whatever.” Ilanka was about to ask who the guy was, was it anyone she knew, but Svetlana just said, “Cool. See you then,” and left.

  Ilanka stopped in the third-floor girls’ bathroom during her free period after that and went into a stall and waited until the person in another stall flushed and washed hands and left. She came out and put the device on the counter by the paper towels, got out lipstick to reapply, and said, “So what are you?”

  I am the device.

  “Do you have a name?” Ilanka paused to watch it now.

  Aizel.

  “What does that mean?”

  It is a name.

  “What happens if I break a rule?”

  She could run it under the faucet right there. What could possibly happen except that it would maybe break—like a phone would—and then so what? Eli would freak out and put it in a bowl of rice and wait until it came back to life.

  Consequences.

  “But what kind of consequences?”

  They don’t tell me ahead of time.

  “Who are they?”

  They is they.

  Made no sense.

  “So what’s, like, the end game? The prize or whatever, if we keep this going long enough?”

  There is no prize.

  “The others said it was like a game with a prize or something.”

  The device pulsed white light that faded.

  The screen read: Not a game. No prize.

  “Then what’s the point?”

  To belong.

  Ilanka looked at herself in the mirror, right into her own eyes. Like testing herself. What was she going to do next? The principal’s office was just down the hall; she could waltz in and hand it over. So what was stopping her? Was she … enjoying it? Either way, she didn’t want to risk it if breaking a rule meant frying her phone.

  “Why do you have to get passed around anyway?” she asked, cutting off her own gaze and thinking her makeup looked good enough for a selfie.

  Must move to learn.

  “What are you trying to learn?” Ilanka asked, and waited.

  How to belong.

  “Yeah, well, join the club,” she muttered, then took the selfie and ran through some filters and picked one and posted it.

  Why do you post so many?

  “I don’t post that many,” she said, fixing her hair in the mirror.

  Why do you take so many?

  “I don’t take that many,” she said.

  The device let out beams of light in every direction, projecting her selfies on the walls and mirrors, repeating into infinity. Ilanka backed away from the mirror, feeling dizzy. Okay, so maybe she did take a lot. But only because they were never good enough.

  The door from the hall pushed open.

  She rushed to the counter and shoved the device—and all those visions or versions of herself—into her bag. Two girls had come in and gone right into stalls.

  Ilanka tossed her lipstick into her bag, too, and zipped it shut.

  In the mirror, she met eyes with a ghost-self that was pale and shaky and bewildered, as if caught between two worlds.

  ELI

  He had no willpower whatsoever. At his locker, at lunchtime, he fired off a bunch of questions to Aizel via text.

  Can you send email? If you can, maybe I can find an IP address and find your owner?

  Are you supposed to be collecting data from us, and if so what kind of data?

  Are there more of you?

  Is this a game? Is this your first time playing it?

  He clicked over to a different chat and texted Ilanka: It’s Eli. Everything okay?

  She wrote back with a thumbs-up, which always felt sort of dismissive to him.

  He wanted to press for details but didn’t want to annoy her, which seemed like a real possibility.

  Back to Aizel:

  Is Ilanka taking good care of you?

  Hypothetically, could you hack into the school’s grading system?

  “Eli?”

  Eli turned. Principal Lambert was standing there. “Did you get my message?”

  “Sorry, no. What is it?”

  “Follow me. The others are waiting.”

  Eli pocketed his phone and closed his locker and locked it and then followed Lambert down the hall and down one flight of stairs and into his office. Eden and Marwan and Ilanka were all seated facing the desk. Eli took the fourth seat and tried not to freak the hell out.

  “Okay, so, this message you all received on Wednesday,” Lambert said. “Did it make sense to any of you?”

  Everyone muttered nos.

  “Have any of you received any other odd messages via the reminder app?”

  More nos, and not that I can think of s.

  “And even now, none of you has any idea what it was all about?”

  More of the same.

  Lambert said, “So there’s nothing any of you wants to tell me about what went on that afternoon?”

  Eli looked at Ilanka in the far chair. She looked bored beyond all imagining. And she was the one with the device in her bag. She made eye contact with him, and her look was blank and calm, like a robot or doll. Impressive.

  At any second, Eli expected Eden or Marwan to fess up and tell Lambert about the device and that Ilanka had it and that they both wanted to return it the whole time but Eli hadn’t wanted to. But they didn’t speak. Eli couldn’t help but feel a certain kind of delight about
it all.

  “And can any of you think of a reason why only you four would have received the message? Any particular thing you have in common?”

  Head shaking and nopes.

  Eden said, “We barely know each other.”

  “So if I were to confiscate all your phones and look at your text history, there wouldn’t be anything funny going on?”

  “I don’t think that’s legal,” Ilanka said flatly.

  God, she was good.

  Lambert’s phone rang and he said, “You’re all free to go.” Then he added, “For now.”

  In the hall, they went separate ways without a word.

  ILANKA

  Checking the time, Ilanka ducked into a bathroom and went into a stall. She opened her bag, took out the device, and put it back in.

  She’d been tempted to just tell Lambert what was going on, sure. But the selfie light show had her a little nervous and intrigued. How had the device gotten all those pictures, and what else did it know about her? Could it use information against her somehow? What, if anything, did she have to hide? She wasn’t sure. But if she wasn’t sure, then it didn’t make sense to break a rule.

  More interesting to think about was what it had on the others. They’d all talked about wanting to give it back. So why hadn’t they?

  She needed to find someplace else to sit with it—the bathrooms were gross—so she thought for a minute, then went out into the hall and up to the nurse’s office, where there were two small sickrooms. Ilanka knocked on the open door, and the nurse looked up and said, “Yes?”

  “I have really bad cramps,” Ilanka said softly. “Can I lie down for a few minutes while my Advil kicks in?”

  “Sure.” The nurse spun back to her computer. “You can go in there.” She pointed. “But only for like fifteen minutes, okay?”

  “That’d be great,” Ilanka said. “Thanks.”

  She went for the door to the little room and said, “Oh, and I’m just gonna call my mom. So, like, if you hear me talking.”

  “Knock yourself out,” the nurse said.

  “Thanks.” Ilanka closed the door behind her.

  The room had a small desk and a hard leather examining table with paper liner on it. Ilanka climbed onto it with her phone in her hand and the backpack by her feet and curled up into a half-fetal position. Then she reached down and pulled her backpack closer, near her stomach, and got up on an elbow to open it.

  “How did you get all my selfies?”

  Data is easy to obtain.

  Repeat question: Why do you post so many?

  “I don’t know,” Ilanka said. Why did she? Because it was fun to get likes and get a small boost from what? Approval? Probably. Who cares? So what. It was fun. She said, “Everybody does it.”

  Not everybody.

  A beam of light came from the device and seemed to be projecting a message onto the notebooks in her bag. There was no way to read it, though. Angles and folds warped the words.

  Getting up, Ilanka checked to make sure the nurse wasn’t facing her, and then she stood with her back to the tiny door window and took the device out of the bag. Red letters appeared on the far wall, but her hands were too shaky to steady the device, so she stepped over to the desk and put it down.

  It was an explosion of laser pointers:

  DO NOT GIVE ME BACK TO ELI.

  DO NOT TRUST ELI.

  Ilanka took a photo of it out of habit, then the light retracted quickly like a vacuum cord, seeming to suck some of the light from the room.

  She put the device back in her bag and lay down again for a few minutes. A male student had come into the nurse’s office, and the nurse was having a quiet, soothing conversation with him. The large clock on the wall ticked.

  She didn’t want to miss that much more of class.

  She got up and opened the door—“I’m feeling better now, thanks”—and walked out.

  ELI

  “But you have to give her to me,” Eli said. All around them, people were streaming from the building.

  “It said not to.” Ilanka shrugged and bit her lip, then got out her phone and scrolled.

  She seemed pleased with this turn of events. Something in the tilt of her chin, a new kind of glimmer in her eye. Eli felt sure that her primary Sims characteristic was luck—or maybe superiority if that was a choice but it wasn’t. If Ilanka lived in Willow Creek, she’d probably have the biggest house and the coolest job—like top chef at the best restaurant in town. If she ever encountered someone like Eliot in Sims world, she probably wouldn’t even engage. He wasn’t worth the points.

  “Oh, so now you’re all into being a part of this?” he said. “Yesterday you just walked out.”

  “Would you rather I not do what it says?” She didn’t even look up.

  Eli’s frustration sank into him. Why would Aizel turn on him? What had he done? Of the four of them, wasn’t he her most loyal ally? Why hadn’t she returned any of his texts?

  “Can you just text one of the others so they can come get it?” Ilanka said with an impatient huff.

  “Yes,” Eli said. It was better than letting her keep her.

  He texted Eden and Marwan—Change of plans. One of you needs to take Aizel—and waited.

  Marwan’s response came first: I had to tear out of there. If you bring it to the restaurant I can take it.

  If he saw Marwan he’d have to tell him about the egg yolk on Christos’s shoes, and he didn’t want to be involved.

  Eden wrote, I can take it. Be right there.

  “Eden’s coming,” Eli said to Ilanka, and they stood in awkward silence. “And I’m sending you her number and Marwan’s.”

  Now that most of the students had scattered, a small group of pigeons were inspecting the sidewalk for snacks.

  Ilanka said, “You didn’t mention that it was projecting things on walls and stuff.”

  Two pigeons fought over—or maybe just shared—a pizza crust.

  “Didn’t know it could,” he said. He’d have to update his list of Aizel’s tricks. “What else did it do?”

  “Nothing, really. Said it has to move to learn. Trying to learn to belong. It didn’t make a ton of sense to me.”

  “What exactly did it say about me?” he tried.

  “Just not to give it to you, not to trust you.”

  “It said that?” His voice was shaky and not entirely in his control. “In those exact words? Not to trust me?”

  “Yes.” She nodded.

  “Where is it?” Eli demanded. For no good reason, it felt like they were a couple breaking up. It wasn’t her, it was him.

  “I’ll get it out when Eden gets here.” She took a few steps away from him, squared her folded arms and jaw. Like she thought he was going to try to steal it?

  It wasn’t the worst idea.

  Eli waved at Eden when she came out the school doors.

  “I thought you were gonna take it,” she said. “What’s going on?”

  “It told me not to give it to him.” Ilanka unzipped her backpack. She took Aizel out and handed her to Eden. “It said not to trust him.”

  Aizel lit up with messages in Eden’s hands and Eli craned his neck to read.

  EDEN: NOW–12 P.M. TOMORROW

  MARWAN: THE NEXT 24 HOURS

  ILANKA: THE NEXT 24 HOURS

  REPEAT.

  “Wait.” Eli felt sweat start to trickle; it would be a relief to only have to have it change hands every twenty-four hours … but having to do it at noon could prove tricky … and “What about me?”

  Ilanka shrugged.

  “What’s going on?” Eli asked it. “How can I get back in the rotation?”

  Aizel did nothing.

  Ilanka was scrolling through her phone. “We’re having company on Sunday. Brunch. It might have to be delivered to me because I’m not sure yet if I can get away.”

  “Where do you live?” Eden asked.

  “Hunters Point.”

  “Wait,” Eli said. “You’ll d
o it?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Ilanka said. “But, I mean, you’re going to figure out how to get rid of it or end it. Soon? Right? Like by Monday?”

  “Yeah, we’ll figure it out over the weekend,” Eden said. “Maybe even before we need you. But if we do, Marwan’s got a bike, so hopefully he can run it down to you. Either way we’ll make it work.”

  “Why does she get a shift and I don’t?” Eli asked Eden. Or was he asking Aizel? He wasn’t even sure. No one answered anyway. Had he actually asked out loud or not?

  Eden said to Ilanka, “Give me your number and address.”

  Eli caught Eden’s eye when she was done. “This makes no sense.”

  “I’ll see if I can figure out what’s going on.” Eden walked off, and he did the same, then stopped and sat on a random stoop on a quiet block. Because it was too early to go see his grandfather.

  In Willow Creek, someone was walking past Eliot’s house. He could get points for starting a new friendship, so he did that. He made them chat and goof around and have tea.

  How to belong.

  It was a weird choice of words. How to belong to what? Or whom? Maybe it was poorly translated, like that “All your base are belong to us” meme based on a bad arcade game translation—Japanese to English. He’d come across a GIF of Bart Simpson writing “All your base are belong to us” on the board. And the phrase imposed on a photo of white walkers from Game of Thrones.

  Something was getting lost in translation with him and Aizel, that was all.

  He could fix this.

  He texted Aizel: Can we talk?

  The message bounced.

  MARWAN

  The reporter was due to arrive at the restaurant in a few minutes, and Marwan’s father was seated at a table raging: “We’re better Americans than they are! Whoever they are!”

  Marwan had googled around to see if there were stories about the incident popping up anywhere. They were mostly limited to Queens-based news sites and neighborhood blogs, but this TV interview might change that and his father really needed to put his best self forward. Marwan pulled his mother aside in the kitchen. “He needs to tone it down if he’s going to do this.”