The Homecoming Masquerade

by Baum, Spencer

  How did that big hole get in their boat in the open water?

  Nobody asked because the mere presence of these questions gave the only answer anyone needed. The Evans family had angered someone important. Now they were dead.

  And their survivors were being careful not to go overboard in celebrating their lives. The funeral was tasteful and quaint. Colleagues of Shannon’s parents joined members of the Thorndike senior class in the private cemetery and said kind words about the deceased. People cried. They hugged. They moved on.

  Except for Annika. To her, Shannon’s death was a tragedy that was worthy of more than a two-hour mourning period. While everyone else went right back to their lives the minute the funeral was over, Annika went into exile, her friends claiming she had locked herself in her bedroom and wouldn’t come out.

  Jill remembered that time well. Early summer in DC, the first round of fabulous summer getaways already starting for the Thorndike community, and the most outgoing, popular girl in school was locked in her bedroom. Annika never asked her friends to skip their trip to Cozumel, but they did anyway. It was very eye-opening to Jill. There was no good reason for Mattie, Jenny and the rest to stay home, but so powerful was Annika’s influence on them that they couldn’t leave while she was in pain.

  Jill was watching all of this play out when Gia Rossi approached her about the plan to get Nicky Bloom into Thorndike. The Network wanted to fill Shannon’s vacant spot in the senior class with an undercover agent who would not only enter Coronation, but win. It was a plan so bold as to be absurd, but Gia called it, “Our one and only chance to kill Sergio Alonzo, a mission we must attempt, even if we all die trying.”

  Perhaps it was the timing that made Annika’s role so obvious in all this. Jill’s first task that summer was to figure out how in the world a new girl who was totally unknown in Washington could somehow stir up enough support to win Coronation. The new girl needed a group of friends who were easily manipulated. A group of friends who were so devoted to their leader they would stay home from Cozumel just because she was sad.

  If they got Annika to support Nicky Bloom, they got all of Annika’s admirers as well.

  The road to Annika went through Mattie Dupree, who was Annika’s Number 1 now that Shannon was gone. Jill and Mattie, though not good chums, had a friendly relationship dating back to their time as lab partners in freshman biology. Still, the thought of making that first phone call out of the blue, that Hi Mattie I know we haven’t talked much but I want to be friends sort of moment – it terrified Jill. She was so nervous about coming across as a fraud that she spent a week preparing herself for the phone call. She imagined hours of conversation between herself and Mattie, conversations about the sad state of Annika’s psyche, the cute boys at school, the goings on around town, the girls who might wear black to Homecoming, and for each topic, Jill imagined the ideal things she could say and wrote them down.

  Lunch with Mattie led to afternoons shopping with Mattie and Jenny led to a movie outing with Mattie, Jenny, Vince, and Jake which led to more lunches, more shopping…when Annika came out of mourning just before Independence Day, Jill was a bona fide member of the group. Annika was more than welcoming of this new addition; the first time Annika joined the group for lunch that summer she gave Jill a big hug, as if there was nothing unusual about her presence. A week later, Annika herself invited Jill to join the gang on their rescheduled trip to Cozumel.

  Beach volleyball, body surfing, frozen drinks with little umbrellas, open fires on the beach at night, looking at boys with Jenny, talking about boys with Mattie, parasailing, water skiing, scuba diving—a funny thing happened to Jill during those weeks. In pretending to like these people, she came to actually enjoy their company. It was something Gia had warned her about.

  “Every undercover operative is in danger of losing her identity at any time,” Gia had said. “It’s something you must both accept and look out for. You will come to see yourself as one of them. If you didn’t, you’d be doing a poor job. But you must take time every day to remind yourself who you really are and why you’re really here, lest you lose yourself entirely.”

  For Jill, those reminders of who she really was came late at night, when everyone retired to their separate rooms in the Veranda Hotel and Resort on the beach. Before getting in bed, Jill spent at least an hour every night hacking into the admissions database at Thorndike, laying the groundwork for Nicky Bloom to go from absolute nobody to ideal candidate for the open spot in the senior class. Those late-night hacking sessions brought Jill back to reality, and kept her brain aware that there was a larger purpose in all this, that she was more than another rich girl on the beach.

  On the morning of their second-to-last day in Cozumel, Jill feigned a hangover, releasing herself from the day’s scheduled activity (cliff diving behind a beach house Jake’s family had purchased last winter). Jill watched from her tenth floor window as the limo took away all her friends, then she retrieved a plastic box from a hidden compartment in her luggage. Inside that box was a key card encoder that Gia had given her.

  Jill had asked for two keycards to her room at check-in. One of those key cards had been with her throughout the trip. The other had been held safe in her luggage, not needed until now. Taking the spare key card and the encoder box, Jill left her room and took the elevator to the top floor, room 1858, Annika’s room.

  She slid her spare key card into the lock on Annika’s door. An LED on the lock turned red, notifying her that she was not granted access. Jill removed the card and put it in the encoder box, which read the trace magnetic signature the lock had left on the card. Two seconds passed, then the encoder spit out the card, which was now re-keyed to open Annika’s door. Jill slid the card in the lock, watched the LED turn green, and opened the door.

  She was surprised at the mess in Annika’s room. Housekeeping hit these hotel rooms daily, yet somehow Annika had found a way to scatter clothes, makeup, and toiletries everywhere. Jill was careful not to disturb a thing on her way to the desk at the back corner of the suite. Paying close attention to the position of the chair before she moved it, Jill sat in front of Annika’s open laptop and turned it on. She interrupted the boot-up before the operating system was loaded, and began controlling the computer at the command level, speaking directly to the compiler. In a few minutes, all the secrets that made this laptop run were revealed to her. Annika’s user name and password, the network key that identified its operating system, the GUID, the CPU number, the IP address.

  She allowed the boot-up to continue, and used Annika’s user name and password to gain full access to the operating system. She pulled a thumb drive from her pocket and plugged it in, installing a modified version of the software she had written freshman year to spy on her classmates. This new version gave her total (and invisible) access to Annika’s laptop and everything on it. Jill took a moment to check the install, ensuring it worked as planned and, more importantly, left no trace of its presence. Satisfied that all was well, she shut down the computer and left.

  That night, after everyone returned from their scuba excursion, Annika got online. Everything she did was visible to Jill.

  Annika surfed the Net, visiting the web site for a band named Grogtail, then a web site for amateur artists, then her social media pages.

  She sent an email to the sculptor who was making her mask for Homecoming, asking for an update.

  She sent another email, from a free web mail site, but didn’t use her own name.

  Jill, who had been dozing in and out of sleep, sat up straight in her chair and paid closer attention. Why was Annika sending emails under someone else’s name?

  The name she was using was Zhang Li Gong, and the person she was emailing was named Hong Chung.

  “What in the world?” Jill whispered.

  At first she suspected that her software was malfunctioning, and somehow had intercepted computer activity from China, but the contents of the email were definitely from Annika.


  Dearest Hong,

  Cozumel Day Six. Scuba diving with everyone except for Liu, who had too much to drink last night. I’m going to have to teach that girl how to party…

  The email went on to describe a day of scuba diving between a girl and her friends, only all the friends had Chinese names.

  Chen spotted a turtle and then dove all the way to the bottom trying to catch it, the dork. Duan and Xu’s on-again off-again status is back to on-again – they couldn’t keep their hands off each other today. And Ming – that girl is so strange – be glad you aren’t here. She’d be driving you nuts. She had no interest in actual scuba diving, just in cannonball diving off the side of the boat. She thought she was funny, but let me tell you, after an hour, it’s not funny. I would have made her stop but I wasn’t in the mood. I tell you, I’m not myself these days. I miss you more than I can put into words. I love you so much. I’m counting the days until we can be together again.

  Love you,

  Zhang

  Annika was describing her day, but giving everyone a code name. Liu, the one who had too much to drink, was Jill, who had skipped the outing with a phony hangover. Chen, the dork who chased a turtle, sounded an awful lot like Jake. The strange girl who cannonballed off the side of the boat was named Ming in the email but was almost certainly Norah, who probably wouldn’t be invited on anymore of Annika’s fabulous trips. And the on-again off-again couple named Duan and Xu were Mattie and Vince, who had been a couple in and out of hiatus since freshman year.

  More interesting than any of this was the sign-off. Who was Hong Chung, this mystery man who not only got a recap of Annika’s day, but a “Love you” at the end? It appeared Annika had a secret boyfriend, one so secret that they had to use anonymous email accounts where all the names had been changed to Chinese. It was smart of them. Clean Street was always surfing the web, always reading emails. It looked for key words that identified what was going on in the context of an email conversation, and picked out proper names. Had Annika typed in Jill and Mattie and Jake and the rest, it wouldn’t matter that she was using an anonymous account. Clean Street would find those names and know who was typing. Whatever Annika and ‘Hong Chung’ wanted to keep so secret that they were using anonymous web mail accounts – to Clean Street, it wouldn’t be secret at all if Annika was using real names.

  This of course begged the question: what was the big secret? Who was this guy and how come Annika was hiding him from her friends? What did she mean when she said, “I’m counting the days until we can be together again?”

  Adding even more mystery was the location of this Hong Chung fellow. When Mr. Chung sent a return email an hour later, Jill was able to trace it to the source IP address.

  “Brazil,” Jill whispered.

  Annika had secret boyfriend in Brazil? A secret boyfriend with a Chinese name, or a fake Chinese name?

  Jill did an Internet search on all the names in Annika’s email, and learned that Zhang Li Gong and Hong Chung were the main characters in a Chinese film from the seventies named Crimson Sunrise. What little there was about the film online was posted anonymously. Apparently, the Chinese government had banned the film immediately after it was released and executed the moviemakers. While the immortals in America had never declared the movie unacceptable viewing, people on the Internet treated the film as taboo, only speaking about it on anonymous message boards in discussions that were peppered with warnings not to take the movie too seriously or speak openly about it.

  It was an exciting development. Secrets were weaknesses that could be exploited. The key for Jill was to figure out what this secret was all about. She spent the rest of the summer trying. In the mornings she was one of Annika’s “peeps,” joining her and the rest of the crew for lunch dates, shopping excursions, visits to the museum, visits to sporting events, and whatever else Annika felt like doing. In the evenings, Jill spied on Annika through the computer.

  The emails between Zhang Li Gong and Hong Chung were a daily occurrence. Annika’s emails were a recap of the life Jill was living, told from Annika’s point of view with all the names changed into Chinese. Hong Chung’s return emails were like a travelogue, describing a family (also with Chinese names) touring the countryside, learning the ways of the locals, deep sea fishing off the coast, and waiting eagerly for Zhang Li’s eventual arrival. There was nothing on the surface that suggested subversive activity, but it was curious just how secretive they were being. Not only were they using anonymous web mail accounts and encoding the names of their friends, they were also deleting the emails immediately after reading them. Jill went through Annika’s sent items, saved items, deleted items – all were empty, even of emails she had read only a day before. All Jill could learn from the history of the web mail account was that it was created on November 15th the year before. There was only one email address in the contacts folder, and one email address in the memory cache.

  Clearly, they were being careful. They were acting like the Network sympathizers Jill had met in so many chat rooms. But no one from the Network knew a thing about this. The Network’s intelligence officers were just as puzzled by this development as Jill.

  “Never once have we seen a shred of evidence that Annika Fleming has an interest in overthrowing the immortals,” said Alvin Green, who, until Jill’s arrival, had been the Network’s best computer hacker. “Everything we’ve ever seen from the Flemings suggests a family who is in deep with the powers that be. I mean, her father is the governor of Oklahoma. These are people who play by the rules.”

  “Have they ever been to Brazil?” Jill asked.

  “Perhaps that’s something you should find out,” said Alvin.

  The next day Jill initiated a conversation at lunch about the places they’d been. After suffering through Jenny and Mattie announce how many tropical paradises they’d been to since high school began, Jill turned to Annika and asked her directly.

  “What about you? Where have you been?” Jill asked.

  Paris, London, Rome, most of Germany, the Alps in Switzerland and in Italy (“skiing was best on the Swiss side”), London, Vienna, Greece—but only as a cruise stop—Turkey, Morocco, Dubai, Sydney, Hong Kong, Tokyo, “and all the beaches we’ve hit on breaks,” was Annika’s answer.

  “Is there any place you haven’t been but want to go?” Jill asked.

  “Rio de Janeiro,” said Annika.

  “Ooohhh….let’s go there,” said Mattie. “School doesn’t start for another month.”

  “No way,” Annika said. “When I go to Rio it’s going to be special. It will be more than just another thing to do on summer vacation.”

  I’m sure it will be, Jill thought.

  In August, Jill started fishing for opinions from the group about Coronation, about Kim Renwick. She got nothing but fluff. Annika was unwilling to speak ill of Kim, so no one else was either. Even when Jill spoke openly about her disdain for the Renwicks, the best she could get from the others were gentle nods of agreement before they changed the subject.

  And that was only when Annika wasn’t around. When Annika was present, she wouldn’t tolerate any mention of Coronation or the Renwicks at all.

  “It’s such a boring topic,” Annika said. “Any time wasted on Coronation is time we could have spent having fun. We all know who we have to support in the contest. I, for one, am focusing on looking fantastic at Homecoming and getting on with my life.”

  Such was Annika’s stance out in the open, but in her secret emails to Hong, she sang a different tune.

  Liu really hates the Chairman, and wants the rest of us to hate her too. She’s practically on a campaign. I had to shut her down on the whole topic today, even though I admire her spunk. Here she is, one of the richest girls in school, and she’s trying to rally all of us to support someone other than the Chairman. I wish I could help her. The problem is, there is no one else to support. As we expected, the Chairman is running away with a victory this year.

  Liu, of course, was Jill, as s
he had been in the emails all summer. Jill assumed ‘The Chairman’ was Kim Renwick. If that was the case, then Annika might change her tune when Nicky Bloom showed up. Despite her insistence that she had no interest in the politics of Coronation, Annika secretly wished to support someone other than Kim, other than The Chairman.

  On the last Friday night before school started, Annika called Jill, Mattie, Jenny, and Norah to her house for a “Girls Night Out” party. Annika’s parents were in New York, and she insisted that the girls spend the night together in an old fashioned slumber party, “Just like when we were kids.”

  Just like when we were kids, if kids got drunk out of their minds. By midnight, Jenny was puking, Mattie was asleep, and Norah was ready “to find some guys and get this party started.” Annika asked her driver to take Norah to a dance club. While Annika walked Norah out the front door, Jill, under the guise of checking on Jenny, went exploring in Annika’s bedroom.

  She found a copy of Crimson Sunrise in an unmarked black box on the bookcase. Betting that Annika was already so sloshed that she wouldn’t remember anything that happened in the next few hours, Jill took the movie downstairs and popped it in. The title screen was rolling on the TV when Annika came back inside.

  “What are you doing?” Annika asked.

  “I should be asking you the same thing,” said Jill. “This movie is banned, you know.”

  “It’s not banned, people just think it is, and who the hell cares? You were snooping in my stuff. What the fuck?”

  “Relax, Annika. Your secrets are safe with me.”

  Secrets. Plural. Hopefully Annika wasn’t too drunk to catch the reference.

  “Besides,” Jill continued, “I’ve always wanted to see this. Come watch it with me. I need you to explain the symbolism.”