by Justin Coke
Chapter Thirty-Six
Hayes didn’t hear back from Kid Twist until 10 the next morning.
Kid Twist: Cheesecake Factory, noon, 1201 16thth St.
Hayes: Cheesecake Factory for lunch?
Kid Twist: Tick Tock has some kind of Cheesecake Factory obsession. Didn’t ever get to go to one; parents claimed it was owned by Satanists? She’s texting me nonstop but I don’t understand most of it. It’s like it’s English but it’s not? I don’t know how to explain it. Very religious people are creepy AF. Her and Mad Hatter are getting into town in an hour.
Hayes: K. You going to wear a red rose or something? How will I recognize you?
Kid Twist: I’ll be wearing a Seattle Sounders hat.
Hayes: Who?
Kid Twist: Green hat. Look for guy in green hat.
Hayes: Okay.
And so that was how Hayes ended up standing in front of a Cheesecake Factory twenty minutes early. A knockoff Hooters and a pizza place were next door and he would have preferred either one of them to the Cheesecake Factory.[118]Mad Hatter and Tick Tock appeared across the street and pressed the crossing button like they were trying to kill it. Somehow he just knew it was them,[119] and his heart leapt into his throat. It was one thing to talk to them on Marconi, and he’d spent a tremendous amount of time over the last few months doing just that, but talking to them face to face made him want to turn around and flee.Calm down, Hayes thought to himself. They’re just nerds like you.
That was when the limo rolled up and parked in front of the Cheesecake Factory. Tick Tock was locked in on the limo,[120] but all three of them were clearly a bit thrown off by the presence of a car like that in front of a Cheesecake Factory. The driver got out and opened the door. A man wearing a green hat got out. He was the most gorgeous man Hayes had ever seen in real life. It was like someone took an elf from Lothlórien and put him in Gucci.
Hayes knew him from somewhere. Tick Tock crossed the street[121] in a hurry. The man in the hat glanced around and waved at Hayes and stepped onto the curb. The driver, seeing three people closing in on them, reached into his jacket for something, but the man waved him off. “Kid?” Tick Tock said, staring at his back.
He turned around. “Yes,” he said.
Tick Tock screamed as if the pits of hell had opened, and she sort of melted into a pile at Kid Twist’s feet as her muscles decided to go on strike.
Kid Twist looked embarrassed and concerned and knelt down to the blubbering and redfaced Tick Tock.
Hayes knew who he was now—one of the guys from that band. The one with the cheesy electro-pop ballads about taking girls to prom. Now that Hayes knew that Kid Twist was a celebrity, he emanated a holy perfume; it was like standing in the presence of a God.
Hayes tried to go to Tick Tock, but his legs were rubbery and it took a lot longer than it should have.
Mad Hatter watched all of this with utter confusion.
Kid Twist waved at him and gave an awkward grin and shrug.
Kid Twist lifted Tick Tock’s legs at a 30-degree angle as she started to mutter gibberish.[122]
“You’re prettier than I pictured,” Mad Hatter finally said as Hayes clung to a lamp post and took deep breathes.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Finally, they made their way into the restaurant; the staff reacted only a little better than they had.
Tick Tock sat next to Kid Twist, her eyes locked on him while he gracefully ignored her. Mad Hatter just kept staring at everyone, as if waiting for the next eruption.
“So,” Kid Twist said. “You know my big secret now.”
Tick Tock grunted.
“I, uh, well, I play Mundis because I like being able to interact with people like a normal person. I hope that once the shock wears off we can go back to the way it was.”
“You being in some boy band is cool and all, but I can get over it,” Mad Hatter said.
“That’s great.”
“You’re Jason Angel,” Tick Tock said, her first coherent words.
“You’re related to that Goth douchebag? The card tricks guy?” Mad Hatter asked.
“My real name is Jason Schuster.”
Tick Tock lost some blood pressure at that and nearly fell out of her chair.
“I don’t get it,” Hayes said.
Kid Twist looked at him quizzically.
“You’re famous, rich ... what on earth are you doing with us?”
Kid Twist sipped his water. “Like I said, it’s nice to be normal sometimes. Have people who like me for me, not because I’m rich or famous or because of what they hope they can get out of me. I know it all looks glamorous, but there’s a reason so many celebrities have meltdowns. It’s exhausting, sometimes. This was my way of keeping sane.”
Hayes nodded like he knew exactly what Kid Twist was saying.
“I want the buffalo blasts,” Mad Hatter said.
“I vote for the pot stickers,” Kid Twist said.
“Tick Tock?” Hayes said.
“Pot stickers,” Tick Tock said.[123]Mad Hatter waved his hand in submission to democracy.
“What’s your real name?” Kid Twist said to Tick Tock.
“Emily,” Tick Tock said.
“I’d like to be referred to as Mad Hatter,” Mad Hatter said.
“I’m not doing that,” Kid Twist said. “What’s your real name?”
“Daniel,” Mad Hatter muttered.
“You?” Kid Twist said to Hayes.
“Hayes,” Hayes said.
“That’s your first name?”
“My name is Hayes.”
“Okay,” Kid Twist said. “Well, Emily, Hayes, Daniel, it’s really nice to meet you in person.” He gestured to the waitress that had been waiting like a butler for their order. “Pot stickers please, and a bottle of the house red and four glasses.”
“I’ll need to see ID,” the waitress stuttered, looking at the very under twenty-one Emily.
“No, you don’t,” Kid Twist said, gentle yet firm.
“Okay,” the waitress gushed, and disappeared into the back.
“I didn’t know being a celebrity gave you Jedi mind powers,” Mad Hatter muttered.
“So,” Kid Twist said. “I know we’ve got some major problems to deal with, but I think we should just have a nice lunch and worry about real life later. Sound good?”
Jesus, Hayes thought as he looked at Kid Twist’s statuesque face, utterly devoid of blemish or wrinkle, is it possible that I’ve been gay this whole time?
Chapter Thirty-Eight
“So,” Mad Hatter said after three bottles of wine and a round of cheesecake. “Where do we go from here?”
“You’re all invited to stay at my place,” Kid Twist said.
“Will we all fit?” Hayes asked.
“That won’t be a problem,” Kid Twist said.
“You sure?”
“It has fourteen bedrooms.”
Hayes choked on the last bite of cheesecake. Tick Tock nearly fainted again. Even Mad Hatter looked impressed.[124]Hayes felt like a complete jackass while he followed the limo to a three-story granite house that looked like the kind of place where some duke who had fought Napoleon would have lived. His shabby Civic, which was unimpressive in a Waffle House parking lot, looked hopelessly ridiculous in the drive beneath such an amazing house. Hayes couldn’t tell if Kid Twist was genuinely oblivious to how desperately out of place they all were in his world, or if he was trying very hard to ignore it.[125]“It’s like the house from Clue,” Mad Hatter said.
“So,” Kid Twist said, “want to check in on Mundis?”
“I don’t have a computer,” Hayes said.
“I’ve got you covered,” Kid Twist said, and led them into an enormous room of rich, dark, probably extinct and certainly endangered Amazonian hardwoods. Six computers lined a long table, ludicrous ergonomic chairs in front of them.[126]“The guys like to play Call of Duty sometimes,” Kid Twist said.
“The guys?” Tick Tock said.
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“The other members of BLU mostly. But other people. Johnny Depp played once. He was a P90 whore and he kept doing cocaine off the mouse pad.”[127] Tick Tock made a gurgling noise and steadied herself by grabbing a chair.
Hoping returning to Mundis would shake them out of the starstruck awe and back into foul-mouthed scammer mode, he got the game loaded up. The others followed.
“Holy shit,” Mad. Hatter said. “I just got hit with a dozen private messages the instant I logged on.”
“Me too,” Tick Tock said.
“Wow,” Mad Hatter said. “They really want to fuck my mom.”
“Our accounts haven’t been canceled though,” Hayes said. “So there’s that.”
“Yeah, but I don’t really feel like getting heckled the whole time,” Kid Twist said.
“Level some alts?”
Leveling alts felt very anticlimactic given their situation, but trying to deal with that situation felt deeply tedious.
“Cards Against Humanity?” Kid Twist suggested.
“No,” Hayes said. “We need to talk about what’s happening.”
“You’re right,” Kid Twist said. “I just don’t know what to do.”
“We call the cops,” Hayes said.
“They won’t do shit,” Mad Hatter said.
“We have to try. This has gotten too serious.”
“We could do that,” Tick Tock said. “But we should be careful about what we say, exactly.”
“Why?”
“Well, from a certain point of view, we broke into their shit, stole a link, and then tried to gain unauthorized access to their file system.”
“Yeah?”
“Well, I guess what I’m saying is that if anyone is guilty of hacking, it’s us. It’s not illegal to have malware, per se, it’s only illegal to distribute it. But if we’d minded our own business ... we’d never have gotten exposed. So, like, we’re kind of like a crack head calling 911 to complain their dealer ripped them off. We’re kind of more guilty than they are, and we’re going to be a lot easier to arrest,” Tick Tock said.
“That can’t be right,” Kid Twist said.
“Some kid in Florida got charged with a felony for changing his teacher’s wallpaper,” Tick Tock said. “They charged some guy for downloading too many academic papers he had legal access to. Some other guy for getting information that AT&T was handing out because of shitty security.”
“Surely we wouldn’t ... ” Kid Twist said.
“You probably wouldn’t,” Mad Hatter said. “Us though? Who knows. I don’t want to risk it.”
“But ... I mean, they might be trying to kill you!”
“Ninety percent odds they say, huh, that’s weird, call us once someone stabs you. Five percent chance they arrest us for hacking. Five percent chance they get off their ass, track down some anonymous people whose worst crime, as far as we can prove, is being weird on the internet. I think that’s being generous,” Mad Hatter said.
“I think he’s right,” Tick Tock said. “Though I do know a bit more about Teabagz than I’d told you guys.”
“What?” Hayes yelled.
“I told you he lived in Orlando, which is true, but I didn’t mention that he games out of a nerd store called Changing Hands. They have a static IP.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Mad Hatter said.
“I was concerned that Hayes would end up waiting in the parking lot with a baseball bat.”
Mad Hatter grunted.
“Well, alright, fair enough,” Kid Twist said.
“Hey wait!” Hayes said. “Fair enough?”
“You—and I say this with much respect for the dedication—you took it pretty far,” Mad Hatter said. “She was probably right.”
“Well, okay, we know where he plays now. So?”
“I say we go find him and deal with this directly.”
“So we beat him with a bat?”
“No, but we watch him. I think he’ll lead us to the real assholes, sooner or later. In real life or online.”
“I really don’t like that idea,” Kid Twist said. “That’s real crime stuff.”
“I need to be able to go to college in six months and not worry some weirdo is going to slit my throat in my dorm room,” Tick Tock said. “As much as I appreciate the help, I also don’t want to mooch off you for the rest of my life. We need to settle it, and I think taking the fight to him is really the only chance we’ve got to turn the tables on him. Otherwise we’re on the defensive forever.”
“You know, they probably didn’t even send anybody.”
“That may be true,” Hayes said. “I don’t think I want to take the chance they did. They wanted our identity, and odds are they didn’t want it so they could send us some Omaha Steaks. Probably the only reason I don’t have $20000 in new credit card debt is that my credit score is too shitty to ruin twice.”
“I really don’t want to be at the mercy of the people Teabagz looks up to as role models,” Mad Hatter said.
Hayes grimaced at the thought.
“Might as well stick our heads in an oven over that,” he said. “They’d torture us just for kicks.”
No one disagreed.[128]
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Despite their resolve to do something about Teabagz, it was hard to find the motivation with so many toys to play with, and Kid Twist had everything. Every card game, board game, and video game, obscure films in 35 MM,[129] a Blu-Ray collection that was imposing even for a house as large as this one, and a chef who was churning out amazing meals three times a day, plus snacks, and all the beer and wine and weed they wanted on demand.[130] It was hard to get motivated, in short, and the day of reckoning kept getting put off.[131]A week went by like it they were poolside in Cancun with free drinks; which is to say, it felt like time had ceased to exist at the same time it ran at 10X, and then it was over.
The second week went a bit like the same, though a bit of cabin fever was starting to set in.
The third week was Denver Nerd Con, and Kid Twist had bought four tickets before the rest of them had gotten to town. He was friends with a guy who had done Idris Elba’s Klingon makeup in Star Trek into Darkness,[132] and he had called in a lot of chips to get his own prosthetics custom made, since it allowed him to go to cons as a non-celebrity. The makeup was so good it was basically an instant win in the costume contest, but after the first few times he stopped entering, feeling like it was a) cheating and b) likely to end up getting him busted. The only downside is that the guy had to fly in and it took three hours to get in the makeup and two hours to get out. But it allowed Kid Twist to be both unrecognizable and fantastic at the same time. Even before he was famous, Kid Twist had felt something enormously liberating in the wearing of a mask; it was freeing to pretend of be someone else. It was as if the consequences and awkwardness that you had to worry about when you were you were transferred, was scapegoated even, onto the latex, leaving you free to be you in a way you could never be when you were you. Now that his true face was a mask, he found even more joy in putting on a mask; with his true face belonging to Jason Angel instead of Jason Schuster, he was far more himself when he was someone else.Tick Tock went as Misa Amane,[133] which basically amounted to putting her hair in pigtails and sending her to Hot Topic. Mad Hatter went as Wedge Antilles (He shoulda been in Rogue One, Mad Hatter kept saying as he sharpied Vs onto the side of his helmet), and Hayes went as a Ghost Buster. He’d tried multiple times to get them all to go as Ghost Busters, and Kid Twist had been so happy they’d forgotten why that would be a terrible idea he’d almost agreed, until he remembered that it would be a terrible idea. Since he’d refused to join the quartet, the others had stuck to their guns, and Hayes, just a little passive-aggressively, stuck with the Ghostbusters thing anyway. Not that he’d ever say anything about how disappointed he was or anything like that.Kid Twist rolled his eyes and moved past it.
Now came the rough part.
“Now, ya’ll need to understand,” K
id Twist said after he emerged from his bedroom, reeking of liquid latex and carrying his bat’leth[134] in his off hand, “is that if you spill the beans about who I am, it’s done. People will not be able to handle it. I will not be safe. I will leave. Please do not spill the beans. Don’t even nibble around the edges of the beans. I’m Jason, I’m broke, and I’m in art school where I study makeup. I’m whatever sexual orientation will get the person you’re talking to to give up hope.”
“Uh,” Mad Hatter said, “if you want anyone to believe you’re straight, you should change the makeup story.”
“That’s so, like ... What’s it called when you discriminate against heterosexuals?”
“I don’t know, man, maybe I’m just being stupid, but you ever meet a straight male makeup guy?”
“I haven’t,” Chris said as he left Kid Twist’s bedroom, carrying his enormous makeup case. He slapped Kid Twist on the ass. “Have fun for me. I’ll be back at ten.”
Seeing Kid Twist crumple a bit put a smirk on Mad Hatter’s face.
“Yeah, okay, just art school then.”
“Better. Still ... I mean. You’re just so pretty.”
“I’m straight. It is possible to be good looking, have a gym membership, and shower every day and like women,” Kid Twist said. Tick Tock almost fell out of her chair. “Stop fucking fainting every time I say something!”
Tick Tock, flushing bright red, grabbed her pig tails and fled the room bawling.
“Oh Jesus,” Kid Twist moaned and started to go after her.
“Stop,” Mad Hatter said. “You’re just going to make it worse. I’ll take care of it. If it’s any consolation, she’d earned that a week ago.”
Mad Hatter chased after Tick Tock, leaving Kid Twist to slump into a chair. The bat’leth left a long gouge in the leather.
“Fuck me,” Kid Twist said.
“That’s what she said,” Mad Hatter said, his voice trailing away in pursuit. Hayes kind of stared at the ceiling, uncomfortable with confrontation and feeling like pretending he hadn’t noticed what was going on was the best way to deal with the awkwardness.[135]