by Corrie Wang
“No. I’m dangerous. This kid’s a guppy who’s about to get caught and doesn’t even know it.”
moi Do you find these lines on some kind of B-movie quote site?
“Nope.” He grinned. “One hundred percent Rory’s original recipe.”
Damn.
moi So what do we do?
“You let me do a little more digging and then we talk in a few and come up with a game plan. Also, wait, don’t disconnect. Can you put in a good word for me with your foxy friend?”
moi Sharma?
“She’s not like sixteen, is she? You’re all seniors, right? No, don’t tell me. But maybe tell her I’d be so good to her, it would crash her system. No, don’t say that. Make something up, but make sure it sounds nerdy so I could have actually said it. But not that nerdy! Like suave nerdy. Just think about it. But make it clear I’d kill to meet her without sounding desperate.”
moi I got it, Rory. I’ll come up with something.
“Don’t make me sound too desperate,” he was saying as I hit disconnect.
Rory clicked off FaceAlert. Sharma and Fawn’s faces became 50 percent larger on my screen. I tried not to think about how one face was noticeably missing. Luckily, watching Sharma squirm made up for this fact.
“One word,” Sharma said, “and I’ll freeze you out of your online memberships for life.”
Maybe it was impossible to find Jessie’s Doc digits, but as I already knew it was very easy to locate the address of where she and her bazillionaire family lived. So, less than three miles yet still somehow one bus transfer later, I was pressing the RingScreen of an enormous marble edifice that could have been mistaken for a museum but, apparently, was the Rosenthal residence. Through a wrought iron gate that shielded the front doors, in the thin line of regular glass that surrounded the frosted door panes, I could just see into the Rosenthals’ massive foyer. An enormous chandelier that was shaped like an overturned rowboat with lightbulbs in it hung from two stories up. Beneath it, a perfectly dust- and clutter-free elegant wood table held an enormous vase of completely out-of-season hydrangeas. And beneath the table lay a pile of suitcases.
I’d had my finger on the RingScreen for two minutes now. As dark and quiet as the interior of the—let’s be honest—resort felt, I knew Jessie was in there.
Sharma didn’t do bad intel.
My wrist was just starting to tire from pressing the screen when I heard the sound of a window sliding up. I stepped back on the portico. Jessie’s house was bigger than Park Prep. It was nearly bigger than the Barclays Center. I craned my head back. Three stories up, a thin, pale face surrounded by a mound of curly hair sneered down at me. As was her way, she wore a fine black blouse with a stiff ruffled collar.
Still, when I spoke, my words contained such relief you’d think I actually liked the girl. “It’s you.”
“Surprise, surprise, seeing as I reside here. What do you want?”
Oh, how I wished vomiting on cue were a talent I possessed, because I would have let loose right there on her perfectly swept marble steps. How had I forgotten? Jessie spoke in a light, fake British accent.
“Are you AnyLies?” I called out.
“What’s that?” She dramatically held a hand to her ear. A hand covered by a black lace glove, trimmed with more ruffles. “I can’t hear you.”
“Jessie, will you please just come outside so I don’t have to shout?”
“Are you batty? I most certainly won’t. You’ve been blowing up my Doc like it’s Los Alamos. Anything you have to say to me you can say fine from there.”
With the house, and her in all those ruffles, and the posh accent, I felt like I was in some Off-Broadway production of Mary Poppins. This was ridiculous. It was all I could do not to stomp my foot in frustration. After a quick glance both ways down the street, I cupped my hands around my mouth and shouted, “Why are you doing this to me?”
Jessie held a finger to her lips—playing pensive—then cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted, “Why the FCK should I tell you anything?”
Laughing merrily, she slammed the window shut. Before completely disappearing from view, she held up a fist, then four fingers. Point four. The exact number her grade-point average was below mine. This time, I gave her the unfriendly finger. Trilling her fingers, she disappeared from sight.
Cursing, I swung my bag onto my shoulder. I’d transferred for this?
No sooner had I turned the corner from her estate than my Doc shrieked with AnyLies’s txt sound. I gasped. I’d been waiting for this moment all day, wondering when and how my hater would finally make good on her threats from last night. Now, finding out AnyLies’s freshest revenge was only a swipe away. I looked back at Jessie’s mansion. It equaled as impenetrable as the firewalls around Whitehouse.gov.
Suddenly something crashed into the back of my legs, like someone took a pipe to my calves. My knees buckled. I fell to the ground, scraping my palms. My Doc sprang from my hands.
“Oh goodness, I’m so sorry.”
It was a nanny, pushing a double baby stroller. She came around to see if I was all right.
“Are you okay, honey? Five a.m. call time plus PHD plus stroller equals accident. I even made you drop your device. Here, let me get that for you.”
“No, don’t touch it!”
Her hand stopped an inch away from my Doc.
“I was just trying to help,” she said, then abruptly crossed the street.
Last night, despite what Sharma had already said, I’d double-checked with the other five girls. None of them had received txts from AnyLies. Only me. Getting to my feet, I slowly reached over and retrieved my Doc. Honestly, what could be worse than that hickey on Mac’s neck?
Not to bother you, but thought you’d like to see who your so-called friends really are.
Three pictures followed. All of them appeared to have been snagged from Woofer.
The first pic was a Woofer of Sharma and the girls. They were in the background of a pic someone had taken of his latte. It must have been captured the day Audra and Fawn re-created the photos of me and Mr. E. for the B&P site, because even though their backs were turned and Fawnie was still sporting Mr. E.’s pompadour wig, I’d have recognized those outfits anywhere. Sharma was facing forward, and she must have swiped the Kyle wig from Audra, because she was sporting it on top of her own long black hair, and you could just tell by the way she held her head that she was mimicking me.
I knew right then that I should delete the rest without looking at them. These wouldn’t be photos you were supposed to see; they happened in the background of life for a reason. They were supposed to be forgettable. But like that time Kyle searched the word “nude” and it brought up pics of people with paintbrushes stuck in their tooters, I couldn’t stop looking if I wanted to.
When I scrolled to the second pic, I immediately sat down on the curb. And nobody sat on the curb-your-dog curbs of Brooklyn, even in Brooklyn Heights. But I suddenly felt like that stroller had run me over again and dragged me a few blocks besides.
It was another Woofer pic. This one had been taken at some kind of Mexican restaurant or club. I now knew what Sharma had seen when she was looking at Mac’s profile. In the foreground two girls were holding up margaritas. In the background was Mac, my math genius, with his derivative all tangent to the curves of some chick.
Correction: Nothing could be worse than Mac’s hickey, except for seeing a pic in which he was receiving it. Her hands were embedded in his curls. Their pelvic regions were plastered together like two sides of the same holoscreen. The time stamp was from last night. I guess I realized Mac hadn’t been kissing other girls these last four months because he wanted to kiss me, and I guess I knew that couldn’t continue indefinitely, but I hadn’t figured he’d go back to his old ways so quickly. The familiar sick-to-my-stomach, get-me-out-of-Brooklyn-my-skin-my-life-ASAP feeling came over me.
There was no way I was looking at the last pic. I wouldn’t give AnyLies any more p
ower over me. My Doc screamed again.
Thoughts?
I meant to only reply with a string of threats about lawyers and leaving me alone and karma one day coming back to crush her or him or whoever this was, but instead my eyes found the third photo. At first I didn’t know what I was supposed to be looking at. It had to be from one of our recent snow days. It was a wide shot of a pretty, white-frosted street in Brooklyn. But there in a slice of an alley was a mess of curls that could only belong to one person. I zoomed in. Sure enough, it was Fawn leaning against a building, making out with some boy.
So what? Like this was news?
Except when I zoomed again, I realized the boy looked a lot like someone I knew.
I zoomed again and squinted at the screen. Kicking the tire of every car on that street, thereby setting off every single alarm, still wouldn’t have covered up my sharp shout of surprise and rage.
Fawn, apparently, was making out with my brother.
Fuming. All I saw was red. Screw the bus. I ran home. The entire one point nine miles.
When I got there I slammed the front door and hurled my bag into the living room. Nobody was home, so I was stuck with myself. I paced the first floor in anger. No wonder Kyle had been in such a good mood lately. No wonder he was always so clean. But was he aware that Audra’s period-predicting app told us Fawn had been creating blue dots aka having sex with some boy?
I stopped where I was and closed my eyes. For a moment, I was glad Audra and I weren’t speaking, otherwise I’d have felt compelled to txt her what an idiot I equaled. The “some boy” Fawn was logging blue dots with was my brother.
I stomped upstairs to my room and threw myself on my bed.
moi Fawn. What the FCK. My brother?
Just to make sure she knew what I was talking about, I forwarded her the pic that AnyLies had sent me.
Her avatar immediately went from green to red.
It wasn’t Fawn’s or Kyle’s fault I knew about this. It was AnyLies’s. And as I seethed in my room, I reminded myself that I never had been and wouldn’t start now being the sister who went through her brother’s stuff. I further reminded myself that I wasn’t the kind of girl who scanned Woofer looking for more pics of her not-boyfriend making out with some skank.
Except, apparently, I was. Also I now not only called girls sluts, but skanks as well, because let’s face it, some of us just were. And why the H-double-L did Mac’s skank have to be so pretty? And, according to her profiles, interesting. A Natty History Museum volunteer and a Summer Relief aid worker? Speaking of exceptional sluts, it was then I realized that AnyLies hadn’t sent me a pic of Audra. Did that mean something or was it just that Audra’s secret had already come out? And if it was that Audra’s secret was already out, how did AnyLies know that? And did we still have any of Năinai’s tea for migraines, because so much wondering was making my head hurt.
Regardless, it took a lot to make Audra look like the angelic one.
“Screw it.”
I went across the hall and shoved open Kyle’s door.
I knew my brother was a slob, but usually Mom closed his door against it. So I hadn’t realized what an extreme state of gross he lived in. Clothes were thrown everywhere. Tech stuff was just as sloppily strewn about—game consoles, earbuds, outmoded Docs that he was too lazy to trade in. As I poked around the mess, I wondered how AnyLies lived with being such a creep. Just being in Kyle’s room uninvited felt squirmingly gross and morally wrong. Still, I pulled open his top dresser drawer.
The papers stood out like a flock of flamingos in the Gowanus Canal.
There were sheets and sheets of them. They were all primarily the same. My name was written in every color and every style imaginable. Okay, not my name. Kyle’s name, boy-Kyle’s name. Now I knew why Fawn’s face had paled the day these fell out of my bag. She’d written them. I thought of the look she and Audra had given each other. Why hadn’t I realized it before? It was a W-T-F, how did those get there? look. Which, B-T-W, was still a great question.
At least now I knew who’d been inside Fawn’s house the day I fought Ellie. And why Kyle had snuck into the house that afternoon and then lied that he’d been upstairs the whole time, the jerk. And why they’d both snuck off so much at the sleepover.
I slumped to his floor. Why hadn’t Fawn just told me? I got that she was afraid I might be upset, but come on. I wasn’t the scary-temper one in the group. Audra was.
I banged my head lightly against Kyle’s dresser. F it. I pulled out my Doc and txted Mac.
moi Come for dinner? I miss you so much it hurts.
But before I could hit send, my Doc buzzed. Rory—FaceAlerting. I didn’t even have this much face time with my parents. I almost didn’t answer. I didn’t have the heart for this anymore. I just wanted my life to go back to the way it was. My Doc continued to buzz. Then again, Rory was the only person left who could help me get back to normal. Or as close to normal as I was now capable of. Because so much of what I used to take as a given in my life—the girls, my solid relationship with my bro, Mac’s adoration—would never exist again.
I swiped accept.
“Got him!” Rory cried when I answered. “Or at least I got the schmuck that the fake CB account is attached to. His real name’s Jonah Logan. He’s got at least four other dummy accounts that I could find. Meanwhile, his actual profile is mi-ni-mal.”
No, it couldn’t be. My hater was Jessie. Or at the very least Audra. I’d even believe dumb Brittany or Ailey. Not some kid named Jonah. I’d never even met a Jonah, let alone interacted with one enough to make him hate me. And this whole time I’d been txting a boy? That definitely didn’t feel right. What boy called someone pookie?
I guess Mac had nailed it. I had no idea who my hater was, so why was I giving him open access?
“Hello?” Rory tapped his screen. “Why don’t you look happier?”
“Sorry. I’m just surprised. I was expecting a girl. Are you sure this is my hater? Did he view the clips used to make the sex videos?”
Rory smiled. “Yup. I checked his view history on the fake account that linked to the other girls and teachers. He viewed all of their Woofer accounts. And guess what he was looking at a week ago?”
“My Woofer account.”
“Yep, hard-core stalked it looking for that footage of you in the cafeteria. Plus, you know how all you girls kinda look like each other? I’m sending you what might be the reason why. Check your mail.”
“Check mail, Rory sender,” I said.
A small window opened over Rory’s FaceAlert screen. The photo of a girl in a glittery semiformal dress uploaded, her hair swept into a fancy updo. Like me, she was some kind of Asian-white mix. If not downright twins, we most definitely could be long-lost sisters.
“What am I looking at?”
“The dude’s ex-girl. Best I can tell, they broke up six months ago. She dumped him right before their winter formal. She and her girlfriends drove to his house to pick him up, and when he stepped outside, they collected his ticket, hopped back in the car, and sped away. Didn’t stop her from having a terrific night.”
“How do you know all this?” I asked.
“He set up a one-post hate page about it. Along with this picture.”
One new message from rory (cb techie), my Doc said. I clicked it. It was the same pic, but this one was grossly doctored, so the girl looked like she’d been beaten to an inch of her life. Her white smile was now filled with gaps and broken teeth; both her eyes were black-and-blue; a thin stream of blood dribbled down from her cracked forehead. A giant bruise bloomed on her cheek, and what looked like fingerprints—strangle marks—dotted her neck.
“Tell me you know where this waste of space lives.”
I full-screened Rory. He quietly watched his screen, watching me. He nodded.
“Jonah Logan is a Philly boy.”
“Where’s Kyle?”
Two hours later there were only three plates on the counter next to the Tha
i food Dad brought home. This was when I should have shared what Rory had discovered, but quite honestly, I was too pissed at Kyle. And that came first.
Mom was loading up a plate to take back to her office, clearly back in the midst of the same old avoid-Kyla deadline. Dad had the living room screen cued up for the last few episodes of that anime series Kyle had turned him on to. Now he frowned.
“Kyle’s at Nate’s? I think.”
“Yeah, right. Dad, it’s important to know where your children are.”
“Just as it’s equally important,” Mom said, juggling her plate, her Doc, and a glass of wine, “not to yell at your parents.”
Everyone looked immensely relieved when the doorbell rang.
“Maybe that’s Kyle now,” Dad said.
“If we’d invested in a RingScreen,” I said as I went to answer it, “maybe we’d know.”
If we’d invested in a RingScreen, I could have strategized with my heart.
It was Mac. (What was with him not pre-txting his arrival?) Even though Mac ran hot and the evening temperature, exhausted from its ups and downs, had finally flatlined in the bland upper forties, he was graciously wearing a scarf.
“Can you come outside for a minute?” he asked.
“Let me grab my coat.”
As I layered up, I thought of the thousand things I wanted to say to him. And none of them had to do with the South America–sized hickey on his neck. I knew it was only there because I’d said no. It was not too far from a petty vengeance I would have enacted myself.
(Fine. Yes, it was.)
When I went back outside, Mac was pacing.
“I just came by—” he said at the same time as I said, “So Rory found out—”
We gave each other strained smiles.
The last time Mac had come over unannounced we’d been pulled further into our “just friends” mess. This couldn’t be good. If only for postponement purposes, I quickly went first. I told him about Philly and Jonah Logan and how the whole thing didn’t feel right and how I planned to take a bus to Philly tomorrow to get to the bottom of it all.