Antisocial

by Jillian Blake

  Phrases and emojis return to the screens, and our voices fill the space. Only now what’s being read aloud are things like ur the best and don’t worry you’re a and come find me after 4th and he don’t deserve u and ur not alone and she’s wicked and can I help? and we should let her come or she’ll be and he s like a playa and can you tutor me in geom? and it’s gonna be off the , can’t do it without u and whatup new b-fry and I’m here 4 u forevs.

  As my friends’ voices continue, mine comes in over the top again. “We bitch about each other, share secrets and gossip, and we’re bad friends to each other sometimes. Sometimes. But if the data tells a story, it’s not that we’re monsters. It’s that most of the time, we look out for each other and check in on each other and keep each other’s spirits up. It’s that the nasty things we dash off when we’re frustrated or sad or pissed at our friends aren’t the real us any more than our Instagram comments are the real us. If the leaks tell our true story, it’s that we’re more back havers than backstabbers. Six thousand, nine hundred ninety positive things we said to each other can’t be wrong. That’s twice as many good ones as there are bad ones.”

  The kids standing inside the installation are frozen still, mesmerized by the absurd amount of positivity flashing before their eyes.

  “You need more proof?” my prerecorded voice continues. “If you count all the ways we signify it, all the ways we emoji and write and shorthand it, can you guess which word was used most often when you combine all the data that was leaked over the last two weeks? You won’t even believe it. You’ll probably throw up in your mouth when you hear it. But it’s also the ridiculous, sickly sweet truth about us saps. This word is what we think and write about most.”

  LOVE appears on the screen.

  Then a .

  And six .

  Then fifty more LOVEs.

  A hundred more .

  Almost every kid is smiling now. Probably some of them are embarrassed. But they also realize what we realized when we started sifting through all the data: that our embarrassment doesn’t make it any less true.

  A minute later, the total number of times the word LOVE or a heart emoji appeared in the exposed data is covering every inch of the room’s walls.

  “Fourteen thousand, nine hundred and eighty-seven times, one of you used that word in your secret texts and DMs,” I tell them finally. “How cheesy is that? I mean, really, who are you people?”

  “If we shadows have offended,

  Think but this, and all is mended,

  That you have but slumber’d here

  While these visions did appear.

  And this weak and idle theme,

  No more yielding but a dream…”

  If you can believe it, that’s Haven.

  It’s been two months since the art show, and by some we’re all in this together, High School Musical miracle, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is going off without a hitch—without so much as a heckle. (Okay, maybe a chuckle or catcall here and there, but compared with what this place was not long ago, it’s way tame.)

  Nikki’s half the reason why; she threw herself into the production, taking on much more than the sets, practically hip checking the drama teacher and stage manager out of her way and making this happen by sheer force of will. Her friends, old and new, are the other half: we were all happy to help her banish the memory of Mattie Eizenberg and his Puck out of existence in whatever way we could. I even did my part by putting all my post-art-show energy into painting the sets.

  Haven’s impishness has found a perfect home in Puck. He’s filling in for the scum who shall not be named, to “branch out” and keep distance from his dad, who he’s still not talking to. And, I think, like me, to keep his mind off his still-MIA best friend.

  “Where’s Reek?” Nikki whispers behind me.

  “You said no bows for her.”

  “Oh right,” she says. “Gotta take advantage of the final night.” Nikki nods curtly. It makes me so happy to see that her confidence is back.

  Reek, the artist formerly known as Radhika, has subjected herself to being Nikki’s right-hand slave/personal assistant the past couple of months in order to make up for what she did. Her contract ends tonight, with this final curtain. It’s been grueling for Rad, but she’s taken it like a champ. Plus, right after the art show, the Xandria got to run a special commentary issue about the leaks, and people are saying Rad’s gonna get some kind of student Pulitzer for it or something. She wrote brilliantly about the school’s terrible technology practices while commenting on the culture of our generation and how we all have to share not only the blame for what happened but the responsibility for picking up the pieces. Shame on me for ever saying Rad couldn’t write.

  The leaks cast a spell over us, had Prep bewitched in some weird, hostile trance. The art show didn’t exactly snap things back to normal, but I think it was the first blink out of our collective hypnosis. Some friends, like me and Nikki and Rad, quietly made amends, while others didn’t. For the most part, social groups, with little fuss or fanfare, re-formed, reclaimed their tables in the dining hall. People aren’t any nicer or meaner than they were before the leaks. If anything, I think everyone is a little more private, a little less trigger happy with the Post and Comment buttons. I wonder how long it will last.

  I still haven’t heard from Jethro. No one has since we found out Palmer was dead. I’ve sent him DMs and texts, even tried to call him once, but a random woman answered; he’s given up his number entirely. Jethro’s mom, afraid of repercussions or getting SWATed like Haven and his dad did, I guess, is in New York with his grandmother. I called once but hung up in a panic when she answered.

  Maybe one day I’ll be ready to try her again.

  Dr. Bechdel tells me that sometimes closure is one sided. It’s in the letting go rather than the resolution. So that’s what I’m working on. It doesn’t matter how I may or may not feel about Jethro—about us; I may never see him again. The only thing I can control is how I think about that.

  “So, good night unto you all,” Haven bellows into the audience.

  “Give me your hands, if we be friends,

  And Robin shall restore amends.”

  The lights dim, the curtain closes, and the audience applauds thunderously. Haven, it turns out, is just as good an actor as he is a hacker. People whoop and whistle. Finally, the curtain opens again, and the lights come back up for the cast to take their bows. After they’re done, Nikki leads the stage crew out, grabbing my wrist on the way. The roar of the audience—the sound of positivity and support—feels surreal.

  —

  In the lobby, cast, crew, and audience mingle. I stand near Andrew, behind the concessions table. He, some of his fellow outed athletes, and their supporters are managing the concessions and programs. All profits from the play are going to a memorial fund benefiting at-risk teens.

  From my wallflower position, I watch people chatting, hugging, congratulating one another. Nikki is on the other side of the room, talking and laughing with a stage-crew/debate-team guy. The guy is tall, and gangly, and so shy, I’ve never actually heard him speak, but Nikki looks happy.

  Wallace, a full head taller than most of the crowd, finds a very sweaty Reek/Rad, who’s just finished closing down the sets as her final task from Nikki, and gives her flowers. I’ve never seen the big lug so smitten—or Rad so flustered around a boy. It turns out, when no one else would sit with them in the cafeteria—when Nikki was still avoiding Rad, when members of the basketball team could barely look at one another after their MVP died—they wound up sitting together. However weird it is, it’s actually working.

  “Hey, creeper.”

  Rad stands in front of me, Wallace trailing behind her.

  “How does it feel to have broken free of the chains of bondage?” I ask.

  Rad exchanges a look with Wallace, and they laugh at the word. I don’t know if Wallace has managed to give Rad all the experience she never had over the past month or so, but I
’ve been encouraging Rad to keep those things to herself for now, either way.

  “Oh God,” I say. “Please don’t put that image in my head.”

  Just then Haven walks up behind them—still in his tights.

  “That was money,” Wallace tells him.

  “Dude,” Andrew says. “You should change out of those. It’s weird.”

  “Don’t knock ’em till you try ’em,” Haven says, winking.

  “You should wear ’em to the party,” Rad says. And then, to me: “See you there?”

  “Gotta stop home first,” I say, pointing to the paint all over my shirt from last-minute touch-ups, “but I’ll be there.”

  —

  I’m nervous but excited for the cast-and-crew party, to spend time with my friends and the people who worked so hard to pull this off despite all that’s happened.

  “I’m home,” I call out to my parents as I dump my bag by the door.

  They’re drinking wine in the kitchen. Mom rushes in and says how wonderful the show was. Dad tells me he loved my sets, but he doesn’t think Shakespeare was much of a comedian. “I prefer the tragedies,” he says with a laugh.

  Suddenly we’re wrapped in a group hug. As much as I can’t wait to get out of Northern Virginia and the craziness of this year, I’ll miss these two weirdos.

  Upstairs, I throw on a fresh pair of jeans and the only clean, cute sweater I can find. I put on lipstick and place a few bobby pins in my hair. I’m ready to blow back out, but just as I’m about to close my bedroom door, something on my desk catches my eye.

  Topping off the pile of papers and schoolwork is a postcard.

  I walk back in and pick it up. It’s a sepia-toned artist’s drawing of two llamas standing beneath massive sand dunes that rise above a lake. My heart skips as I turn over the card. Foreign stamps and postmarks that cover the top right corner say:

  Huacachina, Peru

  On the left side of the card is an unsigned message in familiar handwriting:

  We can sandboard together, all the way down to the bottom.

  JILLIAN BLAKE grew up in New England, where she kept her deepest, darkest secrets password-protected. Antisocial is her first novel.

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