Me and Banksy

by Tanya Lloyd Kyi

  I toss the laptop aside and flop back on my bed. It’s done. Maybe there will be a few more whispers and whistles, but everyone will forget soon.

  I’ll be an unknown entity again, with no social media accounts, no embarrassing posts, and no boobs on the internet.

  They’ll forget.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  PROTEST RIOT RODENT

  MOM’S IN THE KITCHEN on Friday morning. When I emerge from my room, she presents a plate of French toast with a proud flourish.

  “I made your favorite!”

  “I’m not really hungry.” The thought of facing the school hallways again is making my stomach clench. I know my video was only posted two days ago, but I’d like everyone to hurry up and move on to other things.

  “You’ve been so busy lately. They ask so much of you at that school! Have a few bites, at least.”

  Mom has an ulterior motive. I can tell by the way she’s pasted on a super-wide smile.

  Cautiously, I take a bite. It’s delicious. It might even be worth whatever she’s about to spring on me.

  “So, I’ve invited Frank to dinner tomorrow.”

  Or not.

  “Do you want me to go out with George?” Then Mom and Frank could have the apartment to themselves.

  “No! I want you to meet him. You and George both. It’s time.”

  Of course it is. Because the best way to end the worst week of my life is definitely to meet my mom’s new boyfriend.

  I shove a giant bite into my mouth to avoid having to respond. This doesn’t seem to faze Mom. She plants a kiss on my forehead and squeezes my shoulders.

  “You’re going to like him.” Her super-wide smile gets even wider.

  I think I manage to nod.

  * * *

  —

  There are only a few random bursts of giggles when Saanvi, Holden, and I get to school, and people might be laughing about something else. I might be imagining the eyes on my back.

  At least I have art first period. When I breathe in the smell of watercolor paints, I feel immediately calmer.

  Until Ms. Crofton takes attendance.

  “Marcus? Where is Marcus?” She scans the room as if he might be hiding.

  “He hasn’t been here for a couple days,” someone says. “There was a video…”

  Ms. Crofton immediately pales. For a moment, she stands frozen at the front of the class.

  I notice she’s not wearing one of her bamboo dresses today. Instead, she’s in wide black dress pants and a long-sleeved sweater, with an art smock tied over top.

  After a moment, she shakes her head. “Alright, I’ll check in with Marcus later. Let’s get out our sketchbooks and work on some initial ideas.”

  I have a half hour of perfect, blissful quiet before we’re interrupted by Ms. Marcie on the public address system.

  “Attention all students. Please pardon the interruption. There will be an assembly in the auditorium, starting in ten minutes. I repeat, an assembly in the auditorium, beginning in ten minutes.”

  I find Holden and Saanvi in the middle of the crowded hallway. I glance around as I join them; no one seems to be staring at me.

  “They’ve moved on to new dramas,” Holden whispers, reading my mind.

  “Fingers crossed.”

  “Why the sudden assembly?” Saanvi asks.

  “As long as we’re not publicly discussing my forum post, I don’t care.” We couldn’t be, right?

  As we file into a long row of flip-down theater seats, I feel a bit safer. In the front row, there’s a line of VIP visitors, their gray hair perfectly parted. A few bald heads reflect the light. I’m pretty sure they’re too old to know about the internet.

  Ms. Plante takes the stage, taps her microphone, and begins her usual spiel about securitas genera victoria.

  “Security breeds success.” She turns her smile like a spotlight to the front row. “That motto guides all our decisions here at Mitchell Academy.”

  As she begins listing statistics about the eradication of vandalism and bullying, Saanvi leans toward me.

  “You were right about Josh,” she whispers. “His username and the anonymous one who posted your video are linked. Definitely the same person.”

  Ugh. I don’t even want to think about this.

  “From top to bottom, inside and out, Mitchell Academy is designed for the enriched pursuit of academic excellence,” Ms. Plante says.

  “So he posted it?” I whisper.

  Saanvi nods. She looks angrier than ever.

  Holden leans across. “You got something? Who?”

  “Josh.”

  My stomach drops. I was the one who suggested that Josh might be involved, but now the full implications sink in. Josh treats the school like his own personal kingdom. He has enough access—to his mom’s office, for example—to accomplish something like this. And he’s basically untouchable.

  “I can’t stand that guy,” Holden says.

  At the front, Ms. Plante welcomes one of the guests onto the stage.

  “This is Mr. Sousa from Infinity Security. He’ll be working with Mitchell Academy this month to help create and maintain safe online spaces for all of our students.”

  Crap. We are discussing the forum posts.

  “Whoa. That was fast,” Holden mutters.

  “It can’t possibly be related,” Saanvi says.

  “This is all because of me!”

  Someone shushes us.

  At the front, Mr. Sousa is talking about internet safety and not posting naked pictures of yourself online. Of course he is.

  My face burns, and I’m thankful it’s too dark in here for Holden to classify the color.

  “This isn’t all about you,” Saanvi hisses. “She can’t have hired an internet company and arranged a presentation that quickly.”

  Mr. Sousa extends both arms, as if he’s going to hug the entire student body. “We are all looking forward to working with you.”

  I’ve never been so happy to have an assembly end. Except that as we file from the auditorium, Saanvi and Holden go back to talking about Josh.

  “Not a huge surprise,” Holden says.

  Saanvi nods. “His was the first account I checked, but it took a few days to get past the log-in page and confirm it.”

  Of course it was Josh. Last year, there was a computer glitch and the entire school got straight As in math. The letters that went home explaining the “software error” never fully dampened the rumors that Josh had somehow accessed the system.

  Which makes me wonder. “Did you actually hack the school computers to figure out who hacked the school computers?”

  Saanvi shushes me.

  “I knew you were good at programming, but this is impressive,” I tell her.

  “It’s not that hard. Which is the scary part. I shouldn’t be able to get in, and neither should Josh.”

  “Can we rob banks now? Or jewelry stores?” Holden asks.

  “Dom would faint the first time we tried.” Saanvi rolls her eyes.

  “Very funny.” Though probably true.

  “Can we get back to Josh?” Saanvi says.

  “Can we get back at Josh?” Holden suggests.

  “I guess seeing Principal Plante again would be a waste,” I say.

  “Total,” Holden says. “We need to go directly to the source.”

  Then, as if Josh is Voldemort and speaking his name has made him appear, we round the corner and find him and his posse clustered in the hall outside the math room.

  Saanvi doesn’t hesitate. She steps directly in front of him. “We need to talk.”

  His entire group falls silent.

  I consider dropping to the floor and trying to crawl away. It wouldn’t work, though. And my crawling would probably be caught on video, go viral, and make my life even worse.

  Josh shrugs at Saanv
i. “If you need me that badly, all you have to do is ask.”

  He waggles his eyebrows at his friends in a way that makes them laugh.

  Holden looks as if he’s stepped in dog poop.

  Saanvi seems like she might explode.

  “Maybe we should go talk to your mom. Together,” she says, her words low and menacing.

  “Talking to the principal is an excellent option, if you’re going to skip second period.”

  It’s Mr. Nowak, and his gravel voice makes us all jump. Where did he come from? He stands in the center of the hallway, arms crossed over his chest.

  “To class. Now!”

  Saanvi and I immediately scoot down the hallway. Holden saunters in the other direction, toward art.

  “Chop, chop, Mr. LaClaire.”

  “I swear that man is stalking us!” Saanvi says before she splits off, heading for the computer lab.

  I barely breathe all the way to gym. If I could get enough air into my lungs, I might scream. I’m not so embarrassed anymore, I realize. Now I’m furious. There’s pent-up adrenaline zooming around inside me.

  My phone buzzes.

  MIRANDA: I’m going to post what I’ve got. If you want to comment, I can always add later. Hope you’re doing okay!

  I still hate the thought of talking to Miranda. But I have to do something or I’m going to self-combust. My hands are shaking.

  I slow as I reach the hallway outside the gym. A dozen basketballs pound from the floor and the walls, and shouts echo as someone shoots.

  I can’t go in there. Not in this state.

  There’s a camera mounted to the left of the double doors, pointed along the hall. If I stand directly beneath it, I should be invisible.

  I glance around. No other cameras.

  When Banksy’s angry, he channels it into art.

  My heart beats loudly in my ears as I dig for a marker in my backpack. If I don’t find one, I’m not supposed to do this. If I do find one…

  This doesn’t even make sense.

  My hand closes around a marker.

  I glance quickly up and down the hall once more. There’s no one in sight.

  I still have a video-game-style map of the school cameras in my mind. Once I started noticing them, I couldn’t stop. Each camera can “see” in a cone shape, narrow near the camera lens and wider farther away. Depending on how close the cameras are to one another, some of the cones overlap. Some of them have gaps in between.

  This exact spot is a gap. There’s a camera above me, but its cone radiates along the hallway, not directly down the wall.

  As I stand in the blind spot, marker clenched in my fist, I remember a word. Panopticon. It’s a word I think Banksy might like. Holden’s mom would approve, definitely. She was the one who taught it to me.

  Last year, when the cameras were first going in, Holden’s mom was dead-set against them. I remember talking to her about it in her kitchen. Her fancy, ultra-modern but still Victorian kitchen.

  Ms. LaClaire has what George calls “presence.” She takes up space. That afternoon, she was wearing a long, flowered caftan that on anyone else would have looked ridiculous, but that somehow made her seem even more creative and brilliant than usual.

  “I ordered this spectacular new coffee machine,” she told Holden and me. “What would you like? Americanos? Espressos? Lattes?”

  Holden chose an espresso, so I did the same, even though I wasn’t sure what that would turn out to be. I don’t even like coffee.

  His mom hit buttons. The machine ground and whirred.

  “And how was lunch at the Sunshine Spot?” she asked, arranging three tiny white mugs on the counter.

  “How did you know we were at the spot?” Holden asked. It was one of those rare sunny Saturdays in February and we’d met Saanvi for a walk on the beach and then stopped for lunch at a diner on 4th Avenue. One of those diners that looks old-fashioned but costs a fortune.

  “The panopticon, darling,” Holden’s mom said.

  I assumed this was another coffee variety, but apparently not.

  “Seriously,” he said.

  “Eyes everywhere.” When she raised her brows, she looked exactly like her son.

  “The what-i-con?” I asked.

  “Don’t get her started,” Holden said.

  “The panopticon was a prison designed by Jeremy Bentham. Brilliant thinking, though in this case his ideas took a rather sinister turn. The prison was designed like a wheel. The prisoners would live along the edges and the guards in the center. From the core, they could see what any prisoner was doing, at any time.”

  “See? Creepy,” Holden told me. He took a small sip of his espresso. I did the same and almost choked. It was insanely bitter.

  “The prisoners never knew when they were being watched, so they had to assume they were under surveillance at all times,” Ms. LaClaire said.

  “Story of my life,” Holden said.

  She laughed. “Well, the panopticon was never built. And in this case, your dad happened to drive by the café as you were going inside.”

  Which was a relief of sorts. I didn’t like the idea that Holden’s mother had us under secret surveillance. But I didn’t think much more about the panopticon, back then.

  The panopticon seems perfectly relevant now.

  Inside the gym, the noise has dampened a little. It sounds like there’s only one basketball now, and an actual game going on. I can hear the shouts for the ball, and the hammer of shoes on the polished floor.

  Around me, the hallway’s still empty.

  I turn toward the wall and the camera and reach as high as I can underneath the lens. I start with the outline of a rat, like Banksy, but that seems like copying. Then I remember the squirrel I drew in the bathroom cubicle.

  It takes only a minute to turn my rat into a squirrel. The squeak of the marker against the white paint of the wall seems extra-loud, but I keep going.

  THE PANOPTICON, I write beneath.

  One more time, I scan up and down the hallway. Completely clear. I stuff the marker back into my bag. My hands are shaking again, twice as badly. But I feel strangely better than I did a few minutes ago. Like something that was tied too tightly inside me has released a little.

  I head down the hall to the girls’ changeroom, swing open the doors and…

  Oomph.

  I run smack into Ana. We rebound in opposite directions, her binder flying open onto the hallway floor.

  “What are you—”

  “Sorry!”

  I recover first and reach for her binder, but she scrambles toward me on her hands and knees and tries to snatch it away. The corner of it catches on my bracelet.

  “Wait,” I say.

  “Let go—”

  It’s hard to extricate myself when she’s pulling on the binder at the same time. Then the strings of my bracelet break, and tiny blue beads go flying, half into the hallway and half onto the grimy tiles of the changeroom.

  “Oh no! Sorry!” She sounds sincere.

  “It’s okay. It was a garage-sale find.”

  I turn back to the binder. Without meaning to, I see the pages that have spilled from the cover. The top one says, in pink block letters, underlined twice: PASSWORD. Written underneath in turquoise ink is a string of numbers. A Fibonacci sequence. Probably no one but me would recognize it.

  Ana scoops everything up and leaps to her feet, clutching the binder to her chest.

  I can’t do anything except stare at her.

  “I’m late,” she says, and scurries down the hall.

  What was she doing in the changeroom, I wonder? And why is she wandering around with codes in her binder?

  It’s enough to keep my mind churning for the rest of the day. That, and ideas for more drawings. And thoughts about the panopticon.

  I’m not the only one who’s busy. Before the bell r
ings, an alert pops up on my screen. There’s a new blog post available.

  The Mitch Mash

  Hackers Strike Havoc

  by Miranda Bowen

  Several people were targeted earlier this week on the Mitchell Academy’s forums. Anonymous users uploaded inappropriate videos of four students and one teacher.

  “It’s really hurtful,” said one of the students targeted. He’s asked that his name not be published in order to protect his privacy.

  “What’s left of it,” he said.

  “You’d like to think people are good, and then something like this happens,” said another student.

  “This is a horrific, complete violation of students’ privacy rights,” said Saanvi Agarwal, a close friend of one victim. “I think the school should take immediate action, and whoever did this should be expelled.”

  Art teacher Ms. Crofton was unaware of the forum posts until recently, but has promised swift action. “When I find who put up those videos, we’ll be having a long chat about values,” she said.

  Ms. Plante declined to comment.

  CHAPTER NINE

  MOB MENTALITY

  I THROW MYSELF into a chair at our cafeteria table. Saanvi sets her tray beside mine, looking as if she might murder someone. Holden—wisely—says nothing. He takes a bite of his Friday Surprise cafeteria special, looks back and forth between us, then waits.

  “I can tell Josh posted the video, just by the smirk on his face,” I say.

  “I thought we were going to let things slide and hope everyone forgets about this,” Holden says.

  Saanvi mutters some questionable vocabulary words.

  “What if they don’t move on? What if they’re planning something worse? Did you hear them talking in humanities?”

  I tell them about Josh bragging that he was going to rack up a billion points.

  “They’re probably running a football pool,” Holden says.

  “It’s April.”

  “Betting on baseball, then.”

  “Holden! It’s not baseball!” Saanvi says.

  He sighs. “What are we supposed to do about it?”

  Fortunately, I’ve already figured this out. I figured it out while holding my breath between the gym and here. “You need to go undercover,” I tell him.