The Takedown

by Corrie Wang

  “No, it was ruined the next morning when you reposted it to the Student Activities board.”

  “I never reposted it. The only people I need to see it are the administrators. My job is done as soon as pervy gets caught.”

  “What about those photos you took of me and Mr. E. by his apartment? What about that video you shot of me through FaceAlert? What about AnyLiesUnmade?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Your alias.”

  “No it isn’t,” he laughed. “Trust me. Why waste all that effort when the vid is the clincher? The last time I touched anything having to do with your case was when I posted the vid to the faculty board, like, a week ago. Look, you saw all my aliases up there. ‘Any lies unmade’? That’s just dumb. ‘All lies unmade’ is more like it and better English.”

  Said the guy who barely spoke the language. Yet it matched up to what Mr. E. had said about the video first posting the night before on Prep’s Faculty Activities board. Jonah’s whole life was exposed before us. Why would he lie?

  Jonah snorted. “Sounds like I’m not the one who ruined your life after all.”

  “So who did?”

  “You figure it out.” Jonah took a huge bite of coffee cake and then coughed on the powdered sugar topping. “I’m sure you have frenemies abounding.”

  I couldn’t believe it. We were back to square one. Mac stroked my thumb with his. It felt nice, but it was more of a…you know what? I needed to focus. We were back to square one. Sharma txted me a pic of a French bulldog that looked like it was bowed down in prayer. The caption said: Have Faith.

  “How come you picked Kyle?” Mac asked.

  “Like that equals rocket science? Found the vid of your teach on some wronged women’s dating site, then browsed your school’s online yearbook for a current student that mirror-pic’ed the girl in the vid. Two girls fit. You belonged to more extracurrics. It meant you had more Woofer vids to choose from. You and me became connected two weeks ago. Nothing personal.”

  No, that couldn’t be it. “Nothing personal”? That was why this had all happened to me? Because Jonah had randomly selected the girl on the left instead of the girl on the right? I wondered who the other girl was, the girl whose life was almost ruined instead of mine.

  “Lying,” Sharma said, without looking up from her Doc.

  “My guess,” Rory said, “is you also picked Kyle because of her.”

  A G-File for a girl named Ananda Stevens came up on-screen. Jonah shifted in his seat. He coughed and bits of cake flew onto the coffee table.

  “What about her?” Sharma’s lips pursed.

  A folder on Jonah’s desktop labeled Homework opened to reveal another folder, which led to another and then another. Suddenly there was the photo of the girl with all the retouched bruises marring her face. The thing about high school was it all felt so personal. Every slight felt specifically, solely crafted for you. And the only thing worse than your “unique” agony was the belief that no one else had to deal with anything as bad. So you wildly inflicted slights of your own. I saw how impossible it was. No one would ever escape high school unscathed.

  “You’re sick,” Mac said.

  Jonah reached across me and grabbed Sharma’s Doc. With her PHD in his hand, he looked capable of breath for the first time. Mac immediately launched himself at Jonah, like he’d only been waiting for a reason. As they tussled, Jonah swiped at Sharma’s Doc, then in a loud voice said, “Home hub, reboot. Enable backup pass code. Okay, okay, here.”

  Mac let go. Jonah handed Sharma her Doc back. I gathered this meant Jonah had regained control of his house.

  As the system rebooted, he said, “Our moms worked together. I was her first friend when she moved to Philly middle of sophomore year. She was so shy she barely spoke in school, so I built her worlds to roam. But then she ‘blossomed’ over the summer and made friends with some of the pretty girls and suddenly it was all about needing space. As soon as junior year came, she couldn’t wait to go off and play in more hi-def pastures. You aren’t supposed to just drop people like that.”

  “Jonah,” I said. “I’m not Ananda.”

  “It’s pronounced with a long A.”

  “I couldn’t give a swipe,” I said. “I’m not her. She’s not me. We’re not all the same. You’re not just screwing over a teacher, who at least in my case was innocent; you’re hurting us. And we never did anything to hurt you. Delete it—now. All of it. My video, the other girls’ videos, everything.”

  “Fine. All right. It doesn’t matter to me. I’ve already been paid anyway.”

  Once the hub was back up, we watched as he swiped through, deleting source files.

  “Your profiles might as well make you the same. Tens of thousands of friends. Vids without a care in the world. Clothes, shoes, boys.” He snapped his fingers. “Now I remember why I picked you. You do that stupid air-kiss thing with your Docs. How annoying can you get?”

  “So I’m annoying. What you’re doing is terrorism.”

  “Oh, boo-hoo.” Jonah selected the source file for the vid of me and Mr. E. and clicked Trash. “Did pretty rich girl not get a date? Did I mess with her shopping? There. It’s deleted. Are you happy?”

  I looked at my G-File on my Doc. The video was still the first thing attached to my name.

  “No. It’s still there.”

  “Not possible.”

  Using his Doc, Jonah brought up the video on the home hub.

  “What does that mean?” Mac asked. “You have it stashed somewhere else?”

  “No,” Sharma said. “It means someone else downloaded it before Dr. Graff removed it, and then that person stuck a DRM on it.”

  “You have got to be kidding me!” I shouted.

  From the kitchen we heard Mrs. Logan say, “Oh dear. Everything okay, JoJo?”

  Her son gave his evil-villain laugh again. “Everything’s great, Ma. See? I told you it wasn’t me. I only posted the vid to your school’s website. I never linked it to YurTube. How unlucky are you? Someone really has it out for you.”

  “But the money to buy all this tech in your house…”

  “It came from hard-earned hacks. Safe America pays me pocket change compared to what I make off of my other fields of expertise. Actually, this equals plagiarism. Whoever reposted that vid is making dollar signs that should be coming to me. That’s my content. I oughta sue. How come you haven’t found out their IP address and leveled their ass?”

  “They used GoFetch to reroute the IP,” I said.

  “So crack the GoFetch reroute.”

  “With what?” Rory asked.

  Sharma’s head was already whipping up to stare at Jonah, like Don’t even tell me…

  He withered under her gaze, but smiled and said, “Don’t feel bad; the South Koreans don’t even know I have this. Where’d you say it was rerouted through?”

  “NY Public Library at Forty-Second Street,” Sharma said.

  “Uh-huh, only three GoFetch users found at that site in the week before and after the vid posted.”

  Jonah’s fingers flicked and swiped at his Doc so ridiculously fast, it didn’t seem possible he was doing anything other than pretending. But a click later, a computerized receipt for a GoFetch modem along with a name and billing address came up on-screen.

  “Ta-da. This one cross-lists with your school. Ring any bells?”

  Sharma, unimpressible Sharma, RL gasped. I felt numb and vindicated and like I wanted to use one of Jonah’s hologram generators and send myself back to Brooklyn to immediately wreak some havoc. This was what I’d been expecting. Not some kid in Philly—someone who knew me better than anyone else. Finally, everything made sense.

  “Whoa. Oh, whoa,” Mac said. “That little bruja.”

  “That one’s for free,” Jonah said. “You’re welcome.”

  Mac’s hands clenched into fists. The veins in his arms popped. Just knowing he wanted to crush something as badly as I did made me feel a hundred times better.
/>   “There’s a car waiting out front?” Mrs. Logan poked her head back in. “I wish you kids would have told me you took a cab here. I could have driven you all home.”

  On our way out, Rory handed Jonah a business card. “Better options out there, man.”

  “Corporate? No way.”

  Rory shrugged. “It’s a stepping-stone, plus three meals a day, and you get to bring your dog to work. Besides, I’m going to keep checking back on you.”

  “Is that a threat?” Jonah snorted, as I txted Sharma,

  moi He’s offering him a job?

  sharm He might have just saved the world. Hacker with God and Napoleon complex = cyber ow.

  I snapped a pic of Jonah with my Doc.

  “You blinked,” I said. “Doesn’t matter. You so much as post one more video of a girl, even if it’s only of your cousin cuddling a kitten, and I will send your mom, your aunts and grandma, your cousins, teachers, and friends, not to mention whatever person is dumb enough to one day date you, everything you’ve ever done. Sharma has it all backed up on her Doc. You sneeze in the wrong online direction, and we will link and woofer you in all the worlds you’re a part of until there will be so many people coming after you, you can’t move online.”

  Sharma had the good sense not to look at me like I was crazy. Instead she adjusted her glasses and smiled malevolently. For all I knew she had downloaded all of Jonah’s files.

  “And that’s a threat,” Rory said, tipping an imaginary hat. “Well played, Ms. Cheng. Finally.”

  The whole ride back to New York, all I saw was that name on the screen.

  “Just to be clear,” Sharma told me, “you need to obliterate the source file, which means the original download she got off the Faculty Activities board. It must be on her Doc.”

  How ironic that we’d gone all the way to Philly to do what I could have done a few blocks from my house. On the bus ride home, as Rory and Sharma mused over all the nasty things they could do to her, including changing all the sizes on her InStitches filters so everything she ordered would always be four sizes too small or link a paparazzi drone to her Doc signal so she could feel what it was like to be stalked, I filled in all the gaps.

  “Oh gosh,” I said when the city came into view. “Quick, I need pen and paper.”

  I met with three blank stares. With only ten more minutes until we hit midtown, my seat was poked gently from behind. The woman looked seventy but was probably much older.

  “Here, dear. I always carry a pen.”

  The note card she gave me had little frogs on it. As I wrote out AnyLiesUnmade, I finally, after seventeen years, saw what Mom meant about the advantages of paper. No wonder it was such a mysterious code name. How blind could I be? I txted her as the bus pulled up to our stop on East Broadway, quickly switching out her profile icon on my Doc for a much more appropriate one.

  moi Hey, I feel bad about the way we left things. Where you at?

  Her reply was almost instantaneous.

  About to sit down to dinner with the Parents.

  When we disembarked, Rory and Sharma said they were getting Korean BBQ and asked if we wanted to come.

  “Yes, but no thanks. I have to go talk to my ex–best friend. And Sharma”—I grabbed her arm and pulled her into a hug—“you were never a fourth wheel. Don’t you dare condense yourself around me ever again.”

  “Awkward.”

  But she was smiling when I released her, and I was treated to a half second of Sharma’s sparkling eye contact.

  After that, Mac and I dodged tourists and made a beeline for the trains at Herald Square. My palms were already sweating. It was like before I stepped up to the podium at a final. Watching the other rounds proceed, my stomach was always a knot of nerves, my arguments running through my head, and it was like my twitching legs were saying, Seriously? Fight? Flight is the best way to handle this situation. And then they started the timer and all my preparation fell into place. What I’d forgotten amid all the nerves was that I all-caps LOVED a good argument.

  And then?

  I crushed you. Sorry, but it’s true.

  On the Q train back to Brooklyn, I clutched Mac’s hand.

  “Let me come with you,” he said.

  I shook my head. “I need to do this alone. I’ll be okay.”

  “Yes, you will be, bonita.”

  After only a second’s hesitation, Mac tilted my chin upwards and kissed me. And just like when he kissed me on our date, I knew I was in trouble.

  “Macky?” I said, between the kissing.

  “Mm-hmm.”

  I whispered into his ear, “Will you do that thing with your thumb to me sometime?”

  His eyes clouded—that thing with my thumb?—then he laughed. “Turn around.”

  “You’re going to do it here?”

  “Just turn around.”

  I did. We were on a two-seater, so now I faced out into the aisle. An older man across the way tipped his hat. I waved. Meanwhile, Mac collected my hair and slung it over my left shoulder. After giving me a quick kiss on my neck, he ran his fingers down my back. And right at the arch of my back, he pressed his thumb into my spine. It hit just, like, every knot of tension I’d ever had. An inappropriately loud groan escaped me. Fawn was right: I absolutely melted.

  “Macky, I feel like we’ve lost so much time.”

  I turned back to him.

  “Nah, our time’s just beginning.”

  Then we kissed again. Maybe more than once, because when I opened my eyes, we were at the DeKalb stop, Mac’s transfer.

  “I have been waiting so long to do this,” he whispered.

  “Let’s do it again later,” I whispered back. “Let’s do it all the time.”

  He laughed, “Deal.”

  After one last quick smooch, he darted off the train, making it just as the doors closed. Grinning, he gave me the thumbs-up until the train pulled out of the station. Across from me a woman in a turban and ankle-length down coat winked. My cheeks flushed.

  “I remember the first time I fell in love,” she said. “Lucky girl.”

  The first time, because there would be more. And right at that moment, I didn’t care. I couldn’t stop smiling. Lucky. Debaters scoff at luck, but you know what? I did feel lucky.

  Just like that, my predebate jitters were gone. When I got off at my stop, I was as serene as a lake on a windless day. When I got to her brownstone, a yellow Hydrogen Coop was parked in front. That solved that. She’d wanted her own car for as long as I could remember. Said she knew it was overindulgent, but there it was. She must have bought it with the video earnings. I took the steps two at a time. Rang the bell bouncing on my toes. I couldn’t wait for this to start. As Mac would say, I was so aces right now.

  It all pretty much unraveled from there.

  Audra answered the door. She was clad in slouchy gray sweats, a tattered white tank with no bra underneath, and not a stitch of makeup. This wasn’t Audra caught unawares. This was as much a look as if she were decked out in Gucci. A typical teen’s casual attire didn’t involve popcorn-sized diamond studs. Popped-popcorn-sized studs, mind you—no kernels there. They were like the earrings that Mac’s cousins all sported, except Audra’s rocks weren’t fake. This time we didn’t exchange a squealing hug.

  “Have a photo shoot today?” I asked.

  “Yup.” She elevated her chin.

  “Cool. Are you still eating or can I come in?”

  “We’re almost done.” She looked back over her shoulder, hesitated, then shrugged. “Why not?”

  Locking the door behind me, she asked, “So did you confront your big hater?”

  “Not yet.”

  I’m about to.

  As we made our way through the downstairs, I pulled up the AnyLies txt thread.

  I typed,

  moi Gotcha

  then hit send.

  Up ahead in the dining room, there was an old-skool beeping alert. Audra heard it too but didn’t say anything. Weird as it
sounded, I was going to miss txting AnyLies.

  In the dining room, judging by the level of wine in the Parents’ glasses and the empty bottle on the table, they had indeed come to the final minutes of the meal. Neither Parent looked up when I entered.

  “Hello, dear,” the Mother said.

  The Father said nothing.

  “Father, we need your chair.”

  “No, don’t get up. I can stand,” I said.

  “That’s silly. My parents are finished anyway, aren’t you?”

  Clearly, Audra was trying to get them out of the room, probably afraid of what they were about to hear. Normally, I’d be cringing, waiting for the sniping to start. For once I wasn’t at all concerned by their icy remoteness. Or by the wall screen blaring violent news. Or that the chicken bones on the plate indicated that the Mother had forgotten again that Audra was pescatarian. And not because I’d written Audra off, but because there, sitting in my usual seat, bearing this torture with a grateful smile, was my old best friend and current hater, Ailey.

  “Kyle,” Ailey said brightly. “So glad you stopped by.”

  She said this generously, as if this were her house, her friend, her life I’d just been invited into. Not as if she was stealing mine.

  “It looks like we’re finished eating,” the Father said, but made no move to stand.

  Something like surprise flickered in the Mother’s eyes, that her daughter had two friends over. I imagined pulling up Audra’s naked pics on the wall screen. Seeing if that could wrench a stronger emotion from this woman. But I didn’t want to steal Audra’s thunder. No doubt she’d been looking forward to that moment since she turned eighteen two weeks ago. I wished I could be there to see their reactions. But then, shockingly, the Mother pushed back in her chair and picked up her plate.

  “Do not think bad manners will always be rewarded in this household, Audra Bethany. Gregory, let’s let the girls chat.”

  While Audra cleared, I stared at Ailey. Her braids were piled high on her head, as if she’d had them shoved under a wig. She was clad in comfy yoga sweats, but her tank was more form-fitting than anything I’d ever seen her wear. I shouldn’t have been surprised that Ailey had developed so much. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen her cleavage recently. Only the first time I’d seen it in person.