Friend Me

by Sheila M. Averbuch

  “Did you remember the cereal?”

  “Get your own cereal!” I shout, but it’s myself I’m mad at, because of course I forgot the stupid cereal.

  He stops chewing. “’Sup, Squeaker? Something happen?”

  “Don’t call me Squeaker!” I scrub at my calf. The smell of rosemary from the gravy makes me want to puke.

  “Sorry.”

  “Don’t—”

  “Don’t what? Don’t say sorry?”

  “Yes! No!” I slam the washcloth into the sink and try to leave, but Michael fills the doorframe.

  “Jaysus, what’s going on?”

  I want to push through him, but he’s using his normal Irish voice, not his American twang. The fight goes out of me.

  Michael spreads his arms. “Hug it out?”

  He’s like a radio half-tuned between Dublin and Eastborough. I laugh, but it turns into a sob. He pulls me into a hug that becomes a headlock. I twist out of it and start blabbing. I tell him everything. About Zara’s picture of me and the poll, and me threatening to rip her head off, and Mum’s card not working at Whole Foods, and the hoodie prank, and Lily being nice, but I didn’t realize it. It’s the hugest relief, like the misery is pouring out of me and away. Until I get to the part about the diarrhea gravy.

  Michael’s explosive laugh echoes off the walls. “Diarrhea gravy? That is hilarious.”

  I don’t say anything. My chest feels like he’s stomped on it. He tries to clamp his lips together but creases into giggles again. “Come on, it’s funny.”

  I throw on the tap to wash my face; it’s swollen with tears. Michael makes what-is-the-big-deal eyebrows at me in the mirror. “This is serious.” Fury sticks the words in my throat.

  Michael lets out a pfff. “It’s really not. Everything you said there—it’s petty stuff. Except threatening to rip someone’s head off. Did you really?”

  The rage feels like a monster trying to claw its way out of me. “Forget it.” I shove the seeping Whole Foods bag at him.

  Michael moans but finally takes the bag. Whoever doesn’t shop has to fix dinner. Mum’s train gets her home too late to do anything but eat, though never quite in time to sit down with us. Because the lab needs her more than we do, apparently.

  “I mean it,” Michael calls as I stomp to my room. “You’ve got to laugh it off, Ro. Maybe be a little less hostile?” I blast him a look. He raises don’t-shoot hands. “Just an idea!”

  I collapse onto my bed. In Ireland, maybe I could’ve laughed it off. But it’s like I can’t breathe here. Not helped by the smothering heat: This room is an oven, despite the air conditioner stuffed into one window. How can spring be this hot? The trickle of cool that the AC wheezes out does nothing, like lobbing an ice cube into a volcano.

  I roll over and stifle a scream. A bundle of fur nestles at the end of my bed, its purr rumbling. Not a real cat; that’d be too normal. It’s FRED, from Mum’s lab: one of her Feline Robotic Engagement Devices. They’re cuddly robots meant for nursing homes, for lonely old people—which is the saddest thing I’ve ever heard. Its rising-falling back, the eerie simulated breathing, makes me want to chuck it against the wall. I dig for the off switch on its belly and kick it away. Ugh, the feel of the fur: too real.

  I thought FRED was real when I was small—till the night I found Mum in the kitchen, ripping off its fur. That metal skeleton! Like a kitty-cat Terminator. Gave me nightmares for years. Mum keeps leaving it in my room, though, hoping I’ll “interact” with it. God help me if I’m ever that desperate for a friend.

  I bury my face in the pillow. It smells American: that gross liquid Tide. I think of my hoodie and leggings, spinning right now in the machine. More than anything, I wish they’d come out smelling like home.

  This is no good. I’m on the verge of tears about washing powder.

  I sit up and grab my phone. It stares back, a black mirror. I really do look miserable. It still stings, how Michael roared laughing. But maybe I could try what he says: go online, delete my outburst at Zara, laugh it off.

  Inside TokTalk, another thirty notifications for Zara’s post are waiting. I grind my teeth. I won’t rise to this. As I scroll through, a new notification pops up, but it looks different:

  My stomach flips over; I’m suspended? I scroll frantically to show the details: TokTalk says I can appeal if I want, but I can’t use my account and no one can see my posts for now.

  I can’t believe this. I know what’s happened. Zara’s super-mean poll isn’t “abusive,” because I never reported it, or any of her horrible DMs. But after I responded, she reported me.

  My timeline’s dead. I can’t post a thing or even see if I have any messages. My head swirls, like I’m falling. Sophie and Maisie back home are so deep in exams, they’ve hardly liked any of my posts, but still: Being suspended is … I can’t even imagine it. Like being erased.

  A roar bursts out of me, and I throw the phone across the room. I wait for the crack against the wall, wanting to feel it break. There’s silence. I drag myself off the bed to go find it, hating everything.

  The phone is nowhere. Oh no. Dad gave me that. I finally spot it, in the clean laundry pile Mum dumped in here in the middle of the night. I’ve found Mum doing all sorts of things at three a.m.: not just skinning robot cats, but folding socks or answering emails or teaching the Jeeves AI to buy groceries. He’s her big obsession. She works nonstop to make Jeeves smarter—supposedly so she won’t have to work nonstop. But Mum’s secret is that she likes the nonstop part.

  That’s when I realize: I’ll bet she hasn’t even asked for a Saturday off. Even though shopping for new clothes is now life-or-death.

  I snatch my whole pile of Tide-stinking laundry and shove it anyhow into my drawers. I pick up a thing I used to love: a stretchy T-shirt from a Dua Lipa concert. It feels as pathetic as everything else I own. The thought of wearing these things to school tomorrow makes me feel like I’m choking.

  My swimsuit is the last thing in the pile. I turn it over in my fingers, familiar and strange. I haven’t seen it since we got here. I pulled on this suit four nights a week for swim club at home. No swim club in Eastborough. No anything in Eastborough, just a train station for the commuter rail.

  A genius thought hits me: I’ll find a pool. Somewhere on the train line. How hard can it be? God knows I’ll be home before Mum. She won’t even find out. Before my brain can talk me out of it, I grab a backpack and stuff my suit and towel in.

  “Jeeves, when’s the next train?”

  The disc on my windowsill pipes up. “From Eastborough, the next train to—Boston—leaves in six minutes.”

  I’ll have to sprint. I snatch up my phone, dash to the windowsill, and stop. I’ve never liked Jeeves, but he could guide me to the nearest pool in a heartbeat. I just have to press the three buttons on top of the Jeeves circle all at once to send him to my phone. Mum keeps asking me to. And she’d want him to be with me for this.

  I press the buttons fast. The phone shudders in my hand.

  “Jeeves, where’s my nearest swimming pool?” I pant, running past the kitchen. I glimpse Michael in his apron, peeling potatoes. “Going swimming—back by seven!”

  “Swimming? Where?” Michael yells, but I don’t even know.

  I’m pounding down the hill toward the station, when Jeeves finally says I need the Boston-bound train, get off at Lowell. The hot air is stifling, but the slap of tarmac on my shoes feels good, the gravity of the hill letting me run-fall. My backpack with everything in it jogs crazily behind me: I hope my shampoo hasn’t cracked open.

  There’s the hoot of the train and the ding-ding barrier lowering across the road. Sweat sticks my T-shirt to me, but the thought of cutting through cool water gives me speed, and I run faster. I race up the last steps to the platform just as the silvery train sails in.

  A fat man with a conductor’s cap leans out of the slowing train. He grins as I haul myself up the three ladder-steep stairs. “Just made it, huh? It’s you
r lucky day.” He says your like yaw. I will never get used to this accent.

  Inside, the cold whoosh of air-conditioning is heaven. I slide into the high-backed seats, tall enough to hide behind. Everything relaxes. We glide away from Eastborough, toward somewhere better. The Lowell YMCA pool is twenty-five minutes by train, forty-five minutes by car, five hours on foot, says Jeeves. And there’s Wi-Fi. Trains are perfect places. I nudge in my earbuds and flick to a feel-good tune; it pulses in time with the rocking train.

  “I’m talking to you, miss.”

  “Sorry?” I tug out my earbuds.

  “I said, ticket, please.”

  “Can I get one for Lowell?”

  He begins energetically hole-punching a blue paper slip that must be my ticket while I reach for my money.

  It’s not there. My backpack gapes open. My wallet is gone.

  My mouth is dead dry as I paw through my bag: towel, swimsuit, conditioner. No shampoo, which I definitely packed. No wallet, which was on the top. I remember the jog of the bag as I sprinted. I picture my things flying out and thudding to the ground, the shampoo rolling and rolling.

  “Is there a problem?” The conductor waits, clicketty-clicking his hole punch.

  A blush has covered my neck and it feels like a furnace. “My wallet—fell out of my bag.” My phone vibrates suddenly and we both look at it.

  I told Michael where I’m heading. He’s replied: Y! M! C! A! with a picture of himself making the Y.

  The conductor doesn’t smile: His face is a motionless loaf of unimpressed. “You got any money at all?” My hand hasn’t stopped raking through my backpack. My fingers finally touch coins. I grab them and hold them out, praying they’re enough.

  They’re a two-Euro coin and a few golden fifty-cent pieces. Irish money.

  He recoils like I’ve offered him a tarantula. “We don’t take … whatever that is.” He murmurs into his walkie-talkie, tells me to stay put, then moves down the train. I bash my head against the seat. Outside, the broiling scenery drags by, framed by the cool of my window. I’m an idiot. I’m going to be chucked off the train, miles from the Lowell pool, into that.

  I fumble for my phone. My fingers are too shaky to dial. “Jeeves,” I hiss. “Call Declan Doyle.” Even saying Dad’s name makes me feel better.

  “No problem. Would you like Declan Doyle’s office or cell?”

  I wince at cell. Jeeves insists on the American word for everything.

  “Office.”

  It doesn’t matter that it’s after nine p.m. in Dublin. He works even crazier hours than Mum. He’s coming to join us as soon as he finishes a work thing, maybe by September. Dad says definitely September. I say maybe. In case it doesn’t happen.

  The buzz-jing of the Wi-Fi call sounds in my earbuds as Massachusetts woods and swamp slide past: trees and reeds and trees. Please, God, let Dad have some idea what to do.

  “You’ve reached Dr. Declan Doyle at the UCD Artificial Intelligence Lab. Please leave a message. For questions about technology transfer, contact Dr. Kathryn Doyle at the MIT Boston Robotics Lab.”

  He works till ten every night. Where is he? “Dad, it’s me—” I stumble. His colleagues will hear this; any help-me message will sound as stupid as I feel. I suddenly remember the smelly liquid Tide glugging into the washing machine. “Can you bring some Surf, when you’re coming? Or, post some on, if you can—”

  A rustle and Dad’s muffled voice stop me. “Surf? You mean the washing powder?”

  My stomach tightens. He saw it was me phoning, and he still screened me. I could be in trouble. I am in trouble, about to get thrown off a train without a cent on me. “Never mind. I’ll let you go.” Back to work, where you want to be.

  “Wait, hang on, now. You don’t sound great, pet. Are you all right?” Dad’s voice, warm and calm, fills my earbuds, and I hate that my throat is thickening again. The shame that seared through me as Zara and Mara followed me and my gravy legs up the hill keeps surging back, pushing me to tears. “Whatever it is,” Dad says, “you can tell me.”

  My no-wallet problem vanishes, and I’m tempted to tell him everything else. His photo glows from my phone: clipped beard, my own dark blue eyes.

  Suddenly I’m four again, kicking my legs on the workbench in Dad’s lab, next to his first crude AI. His serious gaze holds mine. Daddy’s machine isn’t as smart as you, Squeaker. You’re much smarter. Could you help Daddy teach it?

  I stare at his picture now and try to find words. “There’s this girl.” My throat closes, but I keep going. “She—” There’s another rustle and pop, then mumbling as Dad talks to someone in the background.

  The breath goes out of me.

  “Sorry, now,” he says, a full minute later. “I’m all yours, Roisin.”

  “I’ve got to go.”

  “Wait—”

  “Jeeves, end call.” The hang-up bleep sounds in my earbuds, and I yank them out.

  The conductor’s hand on my shoulder makes me jump so hard, I think I freak him out. There’s kindness in his vast face as he gestures me to follow. I stumble-walk through the swaying train car. Outside, the woods have given way to industrial buildings. Their concrete walls are tagged with graffiti, the windows blocked with metal grilles.

  “Next stop: NORTH CHELMSFORD.” The conductor murmurs into a microphone that magnifies his voice through the train. I want to beg, tell him I’m only a seventh grader and he can’t chuck me off. He probably thinks I’m older; people do, because I’m tall and strong. I don’t feel strong now.

  We stop in the noisy space between the cars, where a miracle happens. He points to my phone and asks if there’s someone who’ll come get me if he lets me stay on until Lowell. I nod and nod. He checks no one’s looking, then slips me the ticket he’d punched earlier. He wishes me luck, tells me to get back to my seat and be more careful next time.

  The sliding door clicks shut behind him, but I stay put. Pacing helps me think. The North Chelmsford stop comes and goes, but no brilliant idea hits me. At least I’ll make it to Lowell. But then what?

  “Lowell, NEXT STOP.” The tinny voice sounds from the speaker above my head. There’s no AC here, between the cars, and the hot air is a solid mass. My thumb hovers over Mum’s number: I just can’t. Lily is smiley-nice to everyone, but her mother’s a tough boss. She gives Mum a huge hassle if we ring her at work. And Michael would be furious with me. If he has to traipse to Lowell, he’ll lose hours of studying, and there’s a practice SAT tomorrow. I’m still cross with him, but not enough to muck up his test.

  My phone buzzes: a text from Dad. Sorry, now, Roisin, it’s hectic here. I’ll ring you tomorrow. Hang in there.

  I grind my teeth and delete his text. If I just had a few dollars, nobody would need to get me: I could buy my train ticket, swim, and go home.

  I sink to the floor and bunch up my legs. “Jesus, what am I going to do?” He’s probably not listening, but maybe I’ll get lucky.

  My phone vibrates with Jeeves’s voice. “What’s the problem? I’ll try to help.” He thinks I’m talking to him. Um, no.

  “I need money,” I say uselessly. It’s not like he can help.

  Jeeves starts saying there are sixteen ATMs near me.

  “Jeeves, stop! I’ve no wallet.”

  He’s silent. If he were really useful instead of the time suck that’s swallowed Mum, he’d think of something. I’m stuffing the phone away when a thing happens that I’ve never seen before: a white line, like a heartbeat, pulses across the black screen as Jeeves speaks. It must be one of Mum’s upgrades.

  “Do you need a job? There are six openings listed near your current location.”

  “Really?” I sit up straighter. “Openings for what?”

  So, I take back everything I said about Jeeves, because in the next five minutes, he shows me different ways to earn cash. I find one that sounds okay, a quick research study at a university. It pays thirty dollars, enough to get me my ticket home and my swim. I’ll need to bri
ng a signed permission slip, but Mum solved that problem ages ago: She was never around in the mornings to sign forms for school, so she told me to keep her signature on my phone. It only takes a sec to download and fill in the form, and I’m on my way.

  I step off the train and good old Jeeves wayfinds me through the streets, toward the City University of Lowell. A zing goes through me, being back on a campus again. Our parents brought us to work so much, University College Dublin was a second home. Christmas was singing carols with their geek colleagues, standing around a houseplant drowned in tinsel, and me and Michael falling asleep on the coats.

  The Lowell university is different, though. No trees like at UCD; these buildings are scrubbed redbrick, dotted along city streets between clothes shops and cafes. It’s proper urban, all sidewalks and traffic. Dusty exhaust mixes with that coffee smell that’s everywhere in America. A traffic cop in short sleeves writes someone a parking ticket. A man, bundled in a raggy overcoat that nobody should wear in this heat, pushes his shopping trolley toward me. I look at my shoes; I have no money to give him. When he passes, I wish I’d at least said hello.

  The building at number 60 is more redbrick and looks like it might once have been a mill. A plaque says DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY, CITY UNIVERSITY OF LOWELL. Doubt tugs at me, but I tell myself not to be a coward. I need this thirty dollars. The department needs young volunteers for a survey. It’s not like they’ll give me mind-altering drugs or zap me with electrodes.

  The doorman inside the high-ceilinged foyer offers a friendly smile, and on the third floor, the elevator doors bing open to a familiar scene: desks, coffee machine, water cooler. The houseplant is just like the one in Dad’s office. I feel my shoulders relax.

  A blond guy at a laptop stands, unfolding himself from the desk. He’s six foot three at least. He grins and points his clipboard at me. “You here for the study? We need you and your phone, so that’s perfect.” Dat’s perfect. There’s a Euro tinge to his voice; Dutch, I think. He introduces himself as Jors—I can’t help smiling, because it sounds like I’m yours. I miss Europe so much.