by Ryan Schow
“It’s 310,” Georgia says.
“You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
We come to room 310, an ornate white door reminiscent of the more expensive hotel doors in places like the Beverly Wilshire, or just about every other five star hotel on New York’s Fifth Avenue, and it’s perfect. Lots of grooves. Lots of panels and beveled ridges.
“Are you really going to do this?” Georgia asks. The look on my face says everything. She backs away, slowly.
I step backwards, too, assessing the situation. The splash-back will inevitably soak the carpet where it will hopefully stink for the rest of the semester, but if I’m not careful it’ll hit me, too. In a smooth swinging arc, I hurl the wet contents at Cameron’s door. Hot vomit explodes everywhere. The door looks instantly ruined. Gobs of undigested slop and bile stream brown and yellow down the opalescent white face. Some of the more meatier chunks slide to a stop on the decorative edges while the remaining swill continues its slow, thorough descent.
Georgia’s gorgeous face is an expression of surprise and wonder, perhaps even disbelief. She has the kind of look that’s saying, “Did that just happen?”
Yes, my love, it did.
Half the bucket is on the door, but the other half is soaking into the carpet in a wide, dark stain. I launch the remaining juices from the bucket onto the floor outside her door, making sure Cameron gets every last drop of what was originally hers, plus a little extra.
With great satisfaction, I turn to Georgia and say, “My inner child is beaming.”
She says, “We need to go. Like now.”
“For sure.”
We are rounding the corner to take the elevator back to the first floor when a blood curdling scream rips through the air around us. Georgia and I freeze, then settle into knowing smiles. Our bold act of retribution is somehow artistic, perhaps even religious.
Fully satisfying.
“You’re dead bitch!” the voice screams. Cameron’s words are sharp with the tenor of fire and indignation, a serpent’s voice born of razors and hatred meant for me and me alone. “Do you hear me, Savannah?—you little bitch? You’re DEAD!”
Georgia snickers and says, “You’re dead bitch. Dead.” We don’t exactly laugh together, but then again, Cameron has no idea about Georgia, which is just as well.
The Slop of Rage and Retribution
1
Reality settles in and I’m terrified to go to dinner but the non-triplets say they will protect me. When I ask what will happen if they try to hurt me, Bridget says, “Don’t think I won’t stab a ho. I will. For you, after what you did with their puke, I swear it.” Everyone laughs, me included, even though my insides are roiling with fear.
Bridget says, “Serious though, Savannah, you can be afraid—which is what they want, what parasites like them feed off of—or you can fake an unshakeable confidence.”
Inside, I’m totally spineless. “I don’t know how to do that.”
The girls crowd me with advice and suggestions to which I say, “Hello, you’re all gorgeous and confident. I’m hideous and totally weak.”
“You know what confidence looks like,” Bridget says, “just portray it, even if you don’t feel it.”
Faking confidence for me is like trying to fake speaking Swahili or Cantonese when I’ve never even heard the language before.
Victoria says, “Fear is a filter in your head. It stops you from being you, from speaking your mind. Turn the filter off, be completely reckless.”
“Yeah,” Bridget says, “be more mean to them then they are to you. But only to them, not everyone else.”
Again, with all my bravado gone, what I can’t say is I fear for my physical safety. “Seriously, though, you should’ve heard how mad Cameron was. She actually threatened to kill me.”
Victoria says, “She may try to hurt you. But really, will it hurt any more than dealing with their puke, or the harassment on Facebook, or the embarrassment of vomiting in front of everyone in the cafeteria?”
“Plus, you’ve survived worse,” Bridget says. “Physical injuries heal, right? And the things you’re going through each night, isn’t that so much worse?”
“I know I just…wait…how do you know about that?”
The three of them trade glances and finally Georgia says, “I told them you were losing so much weight so quickly because you’ve been sick at night. But that’s not the point.”
“What is the point?”
“That if you never stand up for yourself, you will always be someone else’s doormat.”
I’m still stuck on Georgia telling them about my “sickness.” She shouldn’t have done that. Really, though, if we’re girlfriends and she truly cares about me, I guess I can’t blame her.
“You deserve to be happy, Savannah,” Victoria says. “We want to see you happy.”
I lower my head into my hands, burying my fingers into the mass of my frizzy hair. My mixed emotions are colliding. I smile, but it’s a desperate smile I’m sure is transparent. The kind of smile that means tears are inevitable. No one ever said I deserved happiness before. Except maybe my father. And honestly, what did I ever do to deserve anything good? I mean really. I want to know.
“Why should I be happy?” I ask.
“Because you’re human,” Georgia says. “Because you’re sweet and yours is a bright light that needs to shine into the world.”
“I don’t know—”
“It starts with respecting yourself,” Victoria says. “Respecting yourself enough to not be walked on is the first step to not letting those sour douchebags trample over you. The way you threw their puke back at them, I swear on my future unborn kids, I bet it was amazing.”
“Yeah,” Bridget says. “If you can throw their vomit back at them, then you can throw their words back, too. If they bully you, project strength. Project confidence.”
“So be like Brayden?” I say.
“Be like Brayden,” Georgia says with a grin, like I’m finally getting it.
“Speak of the devils,” Georgia says. Julie Satan and two of the Diabolical Three waltz through the cafeteria doors and head straight to the buffet line. They fill their plates with tiny portion sizes of everything. I can’t take my eyes off Cameron. She’s looking for me. The minute she finds me, terror floods my system with adrenaline, but I force a big smile on my face and blow her a kiss. She frowns, then looks away. The girls erupt into a chorus of snickering.
Victoria says, “Like I said, you’re my mother-freaking hero.”
Cameron is with Julie and Theresa and the three of them attack us with hateful eyes and middle fingers, but me and the non-triplets completely ignore them. My stomach is a clenched fist. I’ve started something that I should milk for all it’s worth before it backfires. Which will be soon, I’m certain. That’s when I come up with a preposterous idea. Before I even consider the consequences, I take a disgusting tasting vegetable patty that looks like a faux-hamburger made with all the crap you find at the bottom of the kitchen sink’s garbage disposal, and I zing it like a Frisbee at Cameron. It lands with a splat on the table right beside her elbow and everyone at her table falls into sharp and utter silence. Me and the girls can’t stop giggling.
I’m sick with fear, but overcome with freedom all at once.
With the holy fires of Hell burning in her eyes, Cameron shoots to her feet and heads straight for me. All the delight in my heart bows to something else: weakness, doubt, hesitation, terror. Wordless, her face twisted in fury, Cameron slaps me across the face. The entire cafeteria draws a stunned, collective breath, fueling my humiliation. The slap rattles my bones, but it’s nothing compared to the way Margaret hit me, or the debilitating effects of Gerhard’s shots.
I burst out laughing. I can’t help it, I just start laughing.
The non-triplets join me, then so does everyone else in the cafeteria. This is my moment and everyone gets to see it. Cameron hits me again and it only makes me and everyone else laugh h
arder. Embarrassed, unable to break me, Cameron turns on her heel and stomps out of the cafeteria.
“Fat girl one,” I announce, my eyes running with tears of laughter, “douchebags zero.”
2
Back in my room, an icepack on my cheek, I finish most of my homework, saving my Investigative Journalism assignment for last. That’s when I try finding something, anything, on the dead girl from the cemetery. The girl’s name is Kaitlyn Whitaker. A quick Google search shows me a host of Kaitlyn Whitaker’s, but not my Kaitlyn. In the mass of results, somewhere on page five, there’s a link to an article in a small, independent newspaper out of Sacramento. The article’s headline reads: WHAT REALLY HAPPENED TO KAITLYN WHITAKER?
Hello, she’s dead is what happened.
I skim the first paragraph, which ends mid-sentence at an underlined, blue hyperlink that reads: SUBSCRIBE HERE FOR THE FULL ARTICLE.
“Hey, how about not?” I mumble.
The free portion of the article describes Kaitlyn as being a charming young woman with a bright future who was lucky enough to gain entrance into the enigmatic Astor Academy, a school shrouded in mystery, a school so expensive you have to know Bill Gates just to apply.
“Are you stroking me right now?” I say, shocked. I re-read the article and, holy cow, this has to be a misprint. But no. It’s right there, plain as day: Astor freaking Academy.
The article claims Kaitlyn comes from parents of modest means, which is where the mystery deepens further. Modest means? I don’t think so. People with “modest means” don’t go to a school like Astor Academy. They don’t know Bill Gates. No way. Apparently the local authorities are looking—rather they were looking—into Kaitlyn’s disappearance. That’s where the article stops. I click the link, considering for a moment on buying the article, but my father says I should be wary of buying things off the internet.
I bookmark the page, redirect my search.
Unfortunately, after about an hour of varying my search terms and switching search engines, I come up with a whole lot of absolutely nothing.
Not even one article.
I run a search for Astor Academy. There’s nothing on Astor Academy either, with the exception of the one article I refuse to buy. I click Bookmarks, slide down to the article from earlier, click the link. A cursory search on the independent newspaper that ran the article tells me it’s long since closed due to the passing of its founder and editor.
Great.
Dead girl, dead end.
Looking at the clock, which says it’s just after nine, I expect my skin to start heating up, but it doesn’t. Replaying my day’s victories, reveling in the memory of them, I decide to call Brayden. He wants to talk about Cameron’s slap, but cuts me off saying, “I have to get out of my room. I’m coming over.”
I think about it for a second, then: “Yeah, okay.”
Exactly seven minutes later he waltzes into my room. He gives me a hug, which is awkward. Sort of. I don’t hug boys, and from his lame exchange I get the idea he doesn’t usually hug girls. He smiles. It’s not a pretty thing.
He says, “I still can’t get over how different you look.”
“I’ve been sick,” I say. With as much as I’ve been using this excuse, the words just fall out of my mouth on their own. He looks at me, his brown eyes studying me, almost to the point of appraising me. “Stop staring, you’re making me uncomfortable already.”
“Sorry, it’s just…I don’t know, for being sick, you look really healthy. Thinner, too. And your face, it seems different.”
“How do you mean?”
“I don’t know. Not so ugly, I guess.”
Recoiling, leveling him with a nasty look, I say, “Is that supposed to be a compliment?”
“Sure, I guess. Don’t get me wrong, you’re still not pretty.”
“Thank you for clearing that up, that’s super sweet of you.”
He blushes, runs a hand through that terribly floppy, Tobey Maguire hair of his and says, “Sorry, I’m just nervous is all.”
“Yeah, well you’re being a jack-ass.”
“I know.”
“So stop it, seriously.”
“Okay. I just was really excited to see you. My fart app is now up for sale through Apple and already I’ve made twenty-seven thousand dollars!”
“What?”
“I’ve been dying to tell you. It’s gone viral! I’m already brainstorming for the next app, but it’s kind of hard doing that without computer access. I was able to use some guy’s computer down the hall, but I’m pretty sure I wore out my welcome last night. I left after midnight.”
“You said you got into trouble with the FBI.”
“Last year I was arrested for hacking into their system. I guess it was some kind of a big deal, so when they told me about federal penitentiaries and my life being ruined and all that, I asked if they wanted to know how many agents—including those in supervisory positions—were looking at child pornography and next thing you know they’re negotiating with my father. The deal is I can’t have a computer and my room isn’t internet ready. The feds even made sure I’m not allowed library access unless a librarian is sitting on my shoulder. Plus, my cell phone is one of theirs and it’s not internet capable. Not in any capacity.”
“How long is that supposed to last?”
“Until I graduate high school. Then I have to spend six months with their techs assessing their firewalls and their encryption coding from a hacker’s perspective. You know, find their vulnerabilities since I penetrated them. I’ve got a big softie over it all, and to be honest, cutting me off from computers, you might as well cut out my eyes that’s how big a deal it is to me.”
“They can’t stop you from getting on a computer, they’re everywhere.”
He lifts up his pant leg and shows me an ankle bracelet with a green light. “GPS tracking. It goes red if I leave my room after dinner.”
“But it’s not red.”
“Yeah, I used my cell phone to duplicate the frequency, so as long as my cell phone doesn’t leave my room, I’m free to roam. At least for a little bit. I’m writing a program independent of my cell phone that can make it look like I go to all the places I have to go, without showing where I really go. Then I can take off the ankle bracelet and have my phone with me. I just program in my day and voilà, I’m a good citizen without having to be a criminal on a leash.”
I don’t know how to feel about all this, about him. I’m not used to hanging around felons, unless you count my friend Netty’s father who, according to Netty, will be shipped to a white collar prison soon enough. “So why did you hack the FBI?”
“I was taking non-terrorists off the no-fly list since most of the people on that list aren’t even terrorists anyway.”
“You don’t know that.”
He gives me a snide laugh and shakes his head, like I’m getting this so wrong. Then: “My cousin got put on that stupid list last year when she was trying to fly out to Toronto. A TSA agent, this fat, sweaty dude, squeezed my cousin’s breast really hard so she punched him in the throat. He almost died. Some former Navy Seal guy did a tracheotomy right there in the airport using a Bic pen, which saved his life. They arrested my cousin, but let her go when she said she was pressing charges for sexual assault. She called it “gate rape.” Kind of like date rape, but…you know what I mean. Anyway, after my cousin spent a fortune in attorney’s fees, the TSA dropped the felony assault charges, but put her on the no-fly list. They listed her as a potential terrorist threat.”
“Wow,” I hear myself saying. “What about the TSA worker?”
“That asshole was praised for doing his job right.”
“Your cousin didn’t counter-sue?”
“She did, but she lost the case on account of National Security.”
“So you thought you’d change the system.”
“As long as there’s gate rape going on, and innocent peoples’ lives are being ruined under the guise of National Security, I plann
ed on pressing on.”
“So how did you establish innocence off a list of names?”
“I studied the names and backgrounds of more than a hundred people on the list—which is now more than a million—and from what I found using Homeland Security’s and the FBI’s files, most of the one hundred people I researched should never have been on that list. I liberated sixty-seven people from the list before the FBI came pounding on my door. Neither the FBI nor Homeland Security know exactly who I removed, which means they can’t put those people back on the list. So for my patriotic duty of freedom, justice and the American way, I am officially a slave to the Feds.”
“What about your cousin?”
He grins, all proud of himself. “She’s flying again, unmolested.”
“So if you can hack the government,” I say, thinking how my Investigative Journalism teacher said a good investigator will eventually bend the rules, but only if he can properly cover his tracks, “how hard would it be to access school records?”
“Simple, with computer access. Why, what are you looking for?”
“Information on a previous student.” I tell him about my assignment, the name I chose at the cemetery, how she went to Astor Academy. I say, “She’s a ghost, literally and figuratively.”
“She must be before my time. You say you found nothing online?”
“No,” I say. “You don’t know her?”
“Nope.”
“Well I hit all the search engines and didn’t get squat, except that she went to school here and disappeared two years ago under suspicious circumstances.”
He gets onto my computer, breathes a euphoric sigh, then sets his typing fingers ablaze. “I have to say, this is better than sex for a computer geek like myself.”
“You know what sex is like?” I say, surprised.
“No more than you, but I can guess.”
“How do you know I haven’t had sex?”
Brayden says, “Please,” then pulls up the school’s website and clicks a few buttons. He accesses the coding window, seems to find what he’s looking for then opens the Administrator’s page containing login and password fields.